Intersections of religious identity and ethical dimensions in ESL teacher identity: A malaysian case study

Abstract

This qualitative case study examines the influence of religious identity on English as a second language (ESL) teachers’ identity in Malaysia. Coupled with the concept of transidentitying as a conceptual framework, this study applies the notion of ethical self-formation in language teacher identity (LTI) research to analyse how religious identity shapes professional ethics in ESL teachers’ professional identity. This study employed semi-structured interviews, observation data and document analysis to explore how ESL teachers navigate their professional ethics using their religious identity. The findings reveal that religious identity is a formative force in ESL teachers’ professional ethics in promoting fairness and inclusivity in ESL teaching, maintaining professional integrity, and building positive collegial relationships in workplace. Thus, this study offers insights for both researchers and educators regarding the complexities of ESL teacher identity in a multireligious setting such as Malaysia, and the need for culturally responsive training for ESL teachers to help them acknowledge and engage with these connections between religious and professional selves.

Keywords

English as a second language teacher identity teacher professional identity religious identity ethical self-formation transidentitying

Introduction

Language teacher identity (LTI) is conceptualised as a dynamic construct influenced by personal, contextual and professional factors. Pennington and Richards (2016) describe LTI as an evolving entity shaped by individual characteristics and institutional contexts where personal attributes integrate with contextual and professional factors. This perspective is supported by Yazan (2022), who emphasises the importance of understanding the multifaceted dimensions of a teacher's identity, specifically within Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL contexts). Kayi-Aydar notes that LTI research increasingly considers ‘the ethnic, racial, cultural, and gendered identities of teachers in historical, socio-political, educational, and socio-economic contexts demonstrating the complexities associated with language teacher identities’ (Kayi-Aydar, 2019: 282). Recently, researchers have begun to explore religious identity within language teaching and education due to its potential influence on English teachers (Almayez, 2022; Askaribigdeli, 2024; Wong and Mahboob, 2018). However, more research is needed to understand the intersection of religious and professional identities in diverse, multicultural and multireligious English as a second language (ESL) contexts (Wong, 2013, 2018).

Therefore, this study draws on the notion of ethical self-formation (Foucault, 1997) and its application in LTI research (Clarke, 2009, 2010) as well as transidentitying (Richards and Wilson, 2019) as a conceptual framework for understanding ESL teacher identity. Previous studies have described how religious identity guides language teacher's professional behaviours and interactions (Tajeddin et al., 2021; Vaccino-Salvadore, 2024) but this study moves the argument towards religious identity's interplay with professional ethics as part of professional identity. Malaysia offers a unique multireligious context to understand how ESL teachers regulate their professional selves with their religious identity.

Language teacher identity is multifaceted, continually shaped by teachers’ personal and professional contexts (Richards and Wilson, 2019; Sang, 2022). Kayi-Aydar (2019) and Sang (2022) assert that LTI research should emphasise the complexities teachers face in constructing their multifaceted professional selves. Language teachers have dynamic self-conceptions and imaginations of themselves as teachers, which shifts as they participate in varying communities, interact with other individuals and position themselves (and are positioned by others) in social contexts (Richards and Wilson, 2019; Sang, 2022; Yazan, 2022). Moreover, LTI construction is inseparable from teachers’ other social identities in relation to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, class, nationality, community membership and religion. These social identities inform the directions of teachers’ identity depending on their significance in teachers’ personal lives (Yazan and Lindahl, 2020). While current research has addressed language teachers’ social identities, religious identity has received limited attention (Almayez, 2022; Vaccino-Salvadore, 2024). Farrell et al. (2020) argue that language teachers should be perceived as a whole person; thus, it is likely that their religious identity comes to bear in how they act and understand what they do, perhaps in important ways.

Language teachers’ religious identity in TESOL

Religion has been a neglected area in the field of language teaching research (Almayez, 2022; Mahboob and Courtney, 2018; Wong, 2018) perhaps due to concerns of proselytisation (Johnston, 2017), particularly in regards to the English language. This concern has likely led to the expectation that religion should remain separate from language teaching as a profession, reinforcing the silencing of religious identity in TESOL discourse (Baurain, 2016), thus hindering broader engagement with the multifaceted relationship of religious identity and language teaching (Mahboob and Courtney, 2018; Wong, 2013 ).

While early work on religious identity and teaching remained predominantly centred on Christian perspectives in Western contexts (see Baurain, 2012; Wong and Canagarajah, 2009), notable exceptions of late demonstrate how religious identity can inform teacher professionalism while maintaining clear boundaries against proselytisation, with work emerging from the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, as well as parts of Asia such as Indonesia, Thailand and China (Almayez, 2022; Andriani et al., 2026; Ding and De Costa, 2018; Jenkins, 2019; Louber and Almayez, 2024; Vaccino-Salvadore, 2024). Baurain's (2016) study of 11 Christian English teachers in Southeast Asia, for instance, found that while their professionalism is rooted in religion, they developed authentic, caring relationships with students and presented transparent expressions of religious identity without proselytisation. Brown (2018) reveals that Buddhism guides ethical reflection, classroom practice and harm reduction. Meanwhile, Islamic beliefs support wellbeing, resilience, fairness and context-sensitive pedagogy (Almayez, 2022; Arcila, 2024; Askaribigdeli, 2024; Rohmah et al., 2025; Tajeddin et al., 2021; Vaccino-Salvadore, 2024). Recent work from Indonesia and Thailand, however, shows that Muslim religious identity may shape English teacher professional identity through vocational motivation, the integration of Islamic content into English lessons and a sense of responsibility to uphold students’ religious values, thus creating possible tensions when moral and religious instruction take precedence over English language proficiency (Andriani et al., 2026), indicating once again that the interplay between religious identity and language teacher professional identity must be better understood to address such situations.

Collectively, these studies suggest that religious identity does function as an ethical resource where language teachers internalise religiously informed norms and translate them into everyday practices of care, justice and pedagogical judgment. Consistent with this view, religious identity is likely to contribute to professional ethical formation by informing teacher's sense of morality, purpose and engagement with the world, influencing their perceptions of what is good and how education should unfold (Brown, 2018; Wong et al., 2024).

Language teacher ethics

Clarke (2009, 2010) foregrounds LTI as an ethico-political phenomenon and proposes that teachers engage continuously in ‘identity work,’ a process marked by navigating paradoxical demands of individual agency within socially constructed roles. LTI formation is thus not a static achievement but an ongoing process of becoming, involving ethical reflection on practices, discourses and relational engagements within educational contexts. Clarke (2009), and subsequently Miller et al. (2017), draw on Foucault's (1997) four axes of ethical self-formation to study ethical self-formation in LTI (the four axes are explained in the subsequent Conceptual Framework subsection). Ethical self-formation essentially underscores teachers’ reflective capacities to critically evaluate and adjust their teaching practices, thereby affirming their professional responsibilities towards student success and moral engagement. Warren et al. (2025) similarly highlight the ethical dimension of LTI through an advocacy-oriented framework. In their work, language teacher educators engage in advocacy as ethical self-formation by reflecting on prior experiences, professional relationships and theories shaping their professional choices. Advocacy thus emerges as both an ethical responsibility and identity enactment, fostering commitment to social justice and equity within language education (Warren et al., 2025). Together, these scholarly works suggest that ethical considerations are central to LTI because it involves interaction, meaning co-construction and the negotiation of social and individual aspects of teaching (Clarke, 2009; Miller et al., 2017). This ethical dimension also encompasses recognising and building ethical agency, fostering reflective capacity, and developing an awareness of oneself as an ethical subject who acts on others.

Yet, within this stream of scholarship, the role of religious identity remains unevenly specified although, as previously argued, religious identity could be a source of ethical substance (Brown, 2018). Accordingly, this article uses Clarke's (2009) application of Foucault's (1997) four axes of ethical self-formation to study how professional ethics interplays with the religious identity of Malaysian ESL teachers.

Religion in malaysia

Religion serves as a key component of individual and national identity in Malaysian society, which is embedded in constitutional arrangements and public policy (Buttny et al., 2013; Lim et al., 2014). Malaysia is religiously diverse, with Muslims forming a majority alongside sizeable Buddhist, Christian and Hindu communities. However, religion does not map neatly onto ethnicity (Ibrahim, 2007). This is partly because ‘Malay’ is a politico-legal category that is constitutionally linked to professing Islam (Federal Constitution, Art. 160[2]), while non-Malay communities encompass multiple religious affiliations (Harding, 2012). Accordingly, it is more accurate to note that while Malays are Muslim, Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians may be Christians, Buddhist, Hindu or even Muslim if they choose to convert. Reflecting this context, the present study focuses on teachers who identify with Islam, Buddhism and Christianity, the three major religions in Malaysia. In this multireligious context, teachers are expected to navigate heterogeneous expectations and moral obligations and to respect diverse religious practices that shape workplace norms as well as interaction. These demands extend teachers’ roles beyond instruction to include mediating intercultural dialogue and social cohesion (Aziz et al., 2023).

Conceptual framework

This study adopts a conceptual framework that integrates Foucault's (1997) construct of ethical self-formation as articulated by Clarke (2009) for LTI, with Richards and Wilson's (2019) concept of transidentitying.

At the core of this framework lies Clarke's (2009) ‘Diagram for Doing Identity Work,’ which uses Foucault's four axes of ethical self-formation: (a) the substance of identity, what aspects of the self are regarded as ethically significant (e.g., beliefs, emotions, dispositions); (b) authority sources, what norms or discourses inform ethical judgments (e.g., religious doctrine and professional standards); (c) self-practices, what techniques or actions individuals engage in to shape themselves ethically (e.g., reflection, restraint and discipline); and (d) the telos, the ultimate ethical goal toward which identity work aspires. These four axes are selected because they enable conceptualisation of LTI as ongoing ethical work on the self. It is therefore well suited to examine how teachers reflect on, regulate and negotiate themselves across power-laden contexts involving institutional demands, sociopolitical discourses and personal commitments. In short, the four axes make religious identity salient in professional contexts, shaping what the selected ESL teachers value, how they conduct themselves and what kind of teacher they aspire to become. Within this framing, ethical identity work is viewed as a continuous and critical process of constructing oneself as a ‘good’ language teacher.

Transidentitying (Richards and Wilson, 2019) complements the four axes by providing a mechanism-level account of how such ethical identities are dynamically enacted in interaction. Richards and Wilson (2019: 182) define transidentitying as ‘adjusting or transitioning between different identity-markers, features or processes’ within social interaction. In this study, transidentitying is understood as the situated process through which teachers adjust, foreground, or recalibrate identity markers, roles, affiliations, stances and relational orientations in response to contextual and relational demands. It is implemented in this study to explain how religious identity becomes professionally consequential in ESL teacher identity, not as a shift between separate ‘religious self’ and ‘teacher self,’ but as the interactional reconfiguration of identity resources as teachers negotiate what it means to act ethically as ESL professionals. Richards and Wilson (2019) identified six categories that characterise these transitions. For ease of reference throughout the manuscript, particularly within the findings, each transidentitying category is assigned a code (C1–C6): (C1) marks a change in social proximity: evidence of shifting relational closeness between the teacher and stakeholders (students, colleagues, or the institution); (C2) shows authenticity: evidence that the teacher presented an authentic self through alignment between personal beliefs and professional conduct; (C3) shows stance and affiliation: evidence of explicit moral stance-taking, evaluative positioning, or alignment with a value community (religious/professional); (C4) marks status: instances where the teacher indexed role-based authority, obligation, or accountability associated with the institutional role of teacher; (C5) shows a change in role: evidence of role shifting during an episode; and (C6) acknowledges audience: instances where conduct, discourse, or ethical positioning was adapted in response to the audience, institutional expectations, or situational demands. These categories offer a mechanism to trace how religious identity is mobilised in ethical decisions and actions. In this study, the six categories were treated as analytical possibilities rather than mandatory codes for every case, with categories assigned only when clear evidence was present in the data.

By integrating ethical self-formation and transidentitying, this framework facilitates analysis of how religious identity informs selected ESL teachers’ professional ethics. Analytically, Clarke's (2009) four axes were used to identify what ethical concern was at stake, while transidentitying categories (Richards and Wilson, 2019) were used to trace how religiously informed professional identity was enacted interactionally. This integrated framework offers a means to understand how religious identity is translated into professional ethics in TESOL contexts.

Methodology

Data collection

This qualitative case study research design involved three methods: (i) semi-structured interviews (IT) as the prominent method, inviting selected ESL teachers to articulate their religious beliefs and narrate how religious identity relates to and shapes their ongoing identity negotiation in terms of ethics; (ii) teacher reflective essay (TRE) provided written accounts that supplemented interview data; and (iii) classroom observation field notes (FN) offered contextual evidence of practice. Participants’ perceptions and self-interpretations are highly meaningful data in and of themselves (Baurain, 2016), thus, teachers’ voices are the prominent data in this study.

Participants

Three teachers with pseudonyms – Zanni (Z), Ashy (A) and Linda (L) − were selected through purposive sampling. Only three participants, each bounded as a single case study, were involved to facilitate the identification of case-specific themes, cross-case thematic analysis and in-depth interpretation (Creswell, 2013). The participant selection criteria were as follows:

Teachers who self-identify as religiously oriented and espouse religious identity.

Teachers who have at least five years of teaching experience in English language teaching (ELT) to allow for a more stable teacher identity.

Teachers who are teaching in the Intensive English Programme unit, Layla University, a pseudonym.

Zanni (Malay Muslim), Ashy (Chinese Buddhist) and Linda (Indian Christian) are Masters’ degree holders in ELT. They work full-time as English teachers in the same unit at Layla University, a private university in Malaysia. The choice of a single institution was intentional to allow for more contextual similarity between participants.

As a former lecturer at Layla University, the lead researcher maintained close ties with ELT colleagues, which facilitated open and respectful discussions about religion. Without disclosing a personal religious affiliation, the lead researcher strove to remain critically self-aware, monitoring how prior relationships and assumptions could shape data generation and interpretation. To minimise the risk that the researcher's identity or prior relationships shaped participants’ accounts, interviews paid attention to foregrounding participants’ meanings rather than the researcher's views. Potential bias was mitigated through consistent prompts, bracketing evaluative reactions during interviews, adherence to the conceptual framework and evidence-grounded interpretation (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016).

Data analysis

This study employed Saldana's (2015) manual coding strategies for data analysis. The steps included: raw data chunking; clustering similar units; assigning codes; categorising codes; and identifying themes. Interviews (IT), reflective essays (TRE) and observation FN were transcribed, reviewed for accuracy and validated by participants. Themes were generated from the codes based on the four axes of ethical self-formation and six categories of transidentitying.

Findings

To address how religious identity shapes ESL teachers’ professional ethics within LTI in multireligious Malaysia, the findings are organised into three themes: promoting fairness and inclusivity; maintaining professional integrity; and building positive collegial relationships.

Promoting fairness and inclusivity

Religious identity functioned as a professional guide which formed the selected ESL teachers’ ethical substance of LTI. Religious beliefs of fairness authorised their concrete self-practices to enact fairness and inclusivity in the classroom. In general, they seemed to align religious beliefs and professional practices. Seen through transidentitying, they oriented themselves toward the telos of being a socially just ESL teacher.

Zanni understands classroom participation and student development through an Islamic ethical reference of fairness and the avoidance of marginalisation. In her second interview, she referred to the story of Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ, an African companion of the prophet whose abilities were recognised despite being racially marginalised and poor, to justify her professional obligation towards students. Zanni believes students’ worth should not be judged by race, social status, or wealth, and teachers have a responsibility to notice and cultivate each student's strengths. This Islamic belief seems to facilitate the manner she used of peer scaffolding in speaking lessons to prevent weaker or less confident students from being sidelined. Instead of leaving group dynamics to chance, she implements mixed-attainment grouping and assigns roles that make peer support an expected part of the task. In her words, she mixes ‘people who are reluctant to learn’ with those who are more motivated, and she appoints stronger students as ‘examiner[s]’ so that ‘each group member understands their role and the expectations for their work’ and can ‘scaffold one another’ (ZIT2). Zanni interprets the value of this design in relational and motivational terms because peer feedback creates constructive pressure that prompts less engaged students to ‘do something to improve,’ while also lowering interactional risk because students ‘are more willing [to] talk to their friends… [they] don’t like talking to teacher but prefer talking to their friends’ (ZIT2). Such actions show a firm ethical stance (C3) of fairness and inclusivity by using differentiated instruction and peer scaffolding to improve student engagement in speaking activity. Through transidentitying, she positioned herself as a nurturing facilitator (telos), drawing on the Bilāl narrative to frame fairness, individualised support and resistance to bias, to nurture students’ individual ability as well as empower them to develop holistically while transcending biases.

Linda frames her commitment to fairness and equal treatment through a Christian-informed ethic of fairness and equal worth. Fairness in this context is not exclusive to Christianity, but to Linda, it functions as an interpretive and justificatory frame through which she understands her obligations toward students. In her second interview, she described students as ‘like my kids’ (LIT2), positioning herself in a caring, quasi-parental role that carries moral weight. She also explicitly linked this orientation to Christian teaching, stating, ‘I’m embracing Christian teaching to love everyone equally’ (LIT2). This makes the religious basis of her ethical reasoning interactionally visible, where fairness is a Christian-informed obligation that shapes what she perceives as ethically required in her treatment of students. That religious identity is further lived in her self-practice through her avoidance of favouritism and her auditing of attention across groups. This religiously informed concern for fairness is enacted through equitable group facilitation. In her reflective essay, Linda explained that during group speaking activities she ‘make[s] sure [she has] given each group the same attention’ and intentionally circulates to ‘monitor, assist… [and] facilitate’ every group, which she interprets as ‘a way that I reflect my… religious teaching which is to be fair’ (LTRE). The observation of her classroom corroborates this statement where she distributed feedback evenly across groups during group presentation. She carefully attended to individual pronunciation, grammar and fluency, and maintained a consistently patient and affirming tone even with the weakest group, repeatedly acknowledging their efforts with comments such as ‘Very good try’ despite frequent errors. Students showed appreciation by saying ‘thankyou’ in multiple times (LFN2). Linda's Christian belief in the inherent equality of persons functioned as an authority source which shapes a self-practice of systematic attention auditing. By monitoring each group to avoid favouritism, she oriented herself toward the telos of being a fair and caring ESL teacher. Linda's fairness operates at two categories of transidentitying. She shows a fairness stance (C3) by orienting interaction toward the ethical principle that all students deserve equal dignity and attention. She marks her institutional status as an effective ESL teacher (C4) who is responsible for regulating classroom participation and ensuring equitable pedagogical support through systematic monitoring and balanced facilitation, so that every student receives the same level of attention and support in learning English.

In both cases, fairness was translated into routine pedagogical practice rather than left as an aspiration.

Maintaining professional integrity

Religious identity operated as a moral compass in all three participants, functioning as an ethical substance of ESL teachers’ identity, which helped them take an ethical stance (C3) as a professional language teacher when institutional demands conflicted with religious beliefs. In such moments, their religious beliefs in honesty operated as a source of authority which legitimised the rejection of dishonest practices and directed concrete self-practices (e.g., refusal/moral repair) when they could not sustain the rejection due to institutional pressure. Through transidentitying, the participants navigate their identity of principled ESL professionals as their telos, showing an ethical stance (C3) as they justify decisions in institutional discourse and tried to sustain honest conduct.

For Zanni, Islamic beliefs in Amanah (trustworthiness) shaped her response to her institution's grading moderation policy in language assessment, which required overall class results to fit a normal distribution by adding or subtracting marks after scripts had already been graded. She rejected this practice not simply as unfair, but also as religiously impermissible. She stated in her second interview, ‘this bell curve … allows teachers to lie … you need to add and minus students’ marks,’ and that it was in ‘conflict[s] with religious belief because I’m not being truthful and honest anymore’ (ZIT2). Her further statement that manipulating grades would make her berdosa [sinful] (ZIT2), together with her reflective essay highlights that ‘to me, to conspire is extremely wrong as both a teacher and a Muslim’ (ZTRE). These statements show that she interpreted assessment dishonesty through an Islamic moral framework in which professional misconduct carried religious consequence before God. Although she navigated the dilemma by applying adjustments uniformly to all students, her telos remained that of an honest and principled ESL teacher.

Linda similarly viewed a document falsification ESL teaching file through a specifically Christian understanding of divine accountability. Her statement that ‘God is watching’ (LIT2) positioned falsification not merely as administrative wrongdoing, but as conduct evaluated under God's gaze. In her reflective essay, she further linked honesty to Christian teaching, explaining that religion teaches her ‘to go to the right path,’ to be ‘honest’ and ‘truthful,’ and that forging documents was wrong because ‘one of the commands [is] do not lie’ (LTRE). These statements show that Linda drew on biblical teaching as an authoritative source for judging professional conduct. Meanwhile, her statement also revealed the lived tension of this identity position under institutional pressure, as she imagined praying for forgiveness if compelled to comply (LIT2). In this situation, she shows a principled yet constrained ethical stance (C3), with her telos centred on being an honest and ethically accountable ESL teacher who had marked reluctance to engage in ethically questionable activities.

Ashy likewise interpreted backdating student's academic documents through Buddhist truthfulness and karmic consequence. She described the act as morally wrong because ‘it's against my religious belief. I shouldn’t lie’ (AIT2) and later explained that ethical conduct mattered ‘because good karma will come’ (AIT3). Her statements suggest that Buddhist moral reasoning shaped how she judged workplace practice, even though she complied out of concern for job security. In her reflective essay, she reaffirmed an educator's responsibility to uphold ethical standards and to cultivate integrity in educational relationships, arguing that dishonest practices ‘undermine the value of education’ and damage ‘trust and credibility’ between teachers and students (ATRE). While institutional demands caused an ethical dilemma, she transitioned into a principled and honest teacher (telos), affiliating with Buddhist beliefs (C3) to assert her ethical awareness despite systemic limitations.

In this sense, all three teachers enacted religious identity as a professional evaluative framework through which honesty became professionally and religiously consequential.

Building positive collegial relationships

Religious identity seems to form the ethical substance of LTI in how the three participants approached collegial relationships. They described active self-practices, such as de-escalation, right speech, forgiveness and reconciliation, to regulate emotional responses in professional contexts which they link to their religious identity, thereby orienting themselves toward the telos of a respectful mediator or compassionate colleague.

Zanni aligns her approach with Islamic beliefs that prioritise harmony and forbearance to avoid unnecessary confrontation when dealing with collegial disagreement. When reflecting on how she handles tension with colleagues, she explained ‘You don’t need to get angry…So, if we go back to beliefs as well, everything can be discussed. I think Islam is like that’ (ZIT1). Zanni expressly states that she uses Islam as the interpretive frame through which she understands appropriate professional conduct. In doing so, she frames collegial restraint, discussion and emotional control as consistent with the kind of Muslim ESL teacher she understands herself to be. By integrating Muslim identity into professional conduct, Zanni shows a stance (C3) of professionalism, tolerance and respect in her interactions with colleague. Rather than retaliate, she chose courtesy and professionalism, positioning herself as a respectful mediator who upholds collegial harmony (telos).

Ashy similarly aligned her Buddhist beliefs of mindful communication, emotional restraint and conflict avoidance as interpretive resources for managing collegial tension. When describing how she responds to conflict, she stated in her first interview, ‘My religion taught me to say nice things. If you have nothing to say or you have no nice things to say, then just shut up and don't say anything’ (AIT1). This shows that Ashy herself uses Buddhist beliefs as an interpretive frame through which she understands appropriate workplace communication. This is reinforced in her description of delaying interaction when upset: ‘I’ll just tell them “I can’t talk to you right now… I just gotta calm myself”’ (AIT1). This indicates that she is making a conscious effort to ensure that speech remains controlled, non-harmful and relationally responsible. Her self-practice therefore reflects more than emotional suppression where she uses Buddhist beliefs to justify delaying speech until she can speak in a way that preserves harmony. These practices demonstrate a shift of role (C5) from a reactive co-worker to a peace-oriented professional, who prioritises relational harmony over immediate emotional expression to maintain collegial stability.

Linda's Christian belief in grace and forgiveness informed her compassionate engagement with colleagues and interpersonal hurt management. In her second interview, she explained that she does not want to ‘keep any grudges or any negativity’ and instead chooses to ‘still talk to them’ and ‘be normal,’ even when others treat her badly (LIT2). Linda explicitly grounds it in Christian teaching, drawing on biblical language to explain why retaliation is inappropriate: ‘if someone slaps your right cheek, you have to show your left cheek. You don’t slap them back… If someone does something bad to you, you don’t do the same thing to them. You just have to forgive them, pray for them. We should forgive others like how God has forgiven us’ (LIT2). These statements suggest that Linda draws on Christian teachings as an interpretive and moral resource through which she understands what a good colleague should do. This belief system allowed her to transition from a position of emotional distance to one of relational closeness (C1), actively choosing reconciliation over resentment in collegial interactions. Her telos thus centres on being a compassionate colleague who responds to conflict through grace rather than reciprocity. Transidentitying allowed her to bridge potential interpersonal divides and establish greater closeness and harmony in her workplace relationships.

Discussion

This study seeks to contribute to the growing body of research on LTI by illuminating how religious identity operates as an ethical resource that informs the ESL teachers’ professional ethics through the four axes of ethical self-formation (Clarke, 2009; Miller et al., 2017). Consistent with Richards and Wilson's (2019) view of transidentitying as the interactional adjustment of identity markers, roles, relationships, stances, meanings and intentions, the concept helps this study to explain how teachers made religious identity professionally meaningful within ESL practice. Specifically, it captures how the selected ESL teachers foregrounded, aligned, or recalibrated religiously informed values in relation to pedagogical responsibilities, institutional expectations and collegial relations, thereby enacting ethical teacher identity in context. The findings suggest that ESL teachers’ ethical behaviours were not merely reactions to institutional rules, but forms of identity work rooted in religious belief system.

Analysis of the participants in this study revealed that religious identity can shape ESL teachers’ professional ethics in three ways. First, it anchors fairness and inclusivity as non-negotiable ethical commitments that were enacted through classroom interactional practices. They operationalised fairness by distributing attention systematically and avoiding favouritism, for instance through equitable group facilitation and ‘attention audits’ (Linda) and through participation routines such as structured peer scaffolding that reduced exclusionary dynamics in group work (Zanni). These practices also shaped how Linda used classroom language as she moderated presentation evaluative talk when responding to errors or low performance, and adjusted corrective feedback to preserve student dignity, thereby supporting a psychologically safer learning environment in diverse cohorts. In this sense, fairness informed by their religious identity operated as an authoritative source that legitimised specific self-practices (Clarke, 2009), translating religious identity into routine pedagogical decisions about ELT interaction, feedback and participation. This pattern aligns with research linking fairness to more positive learner emotion and classroom climate in multicultural learning contexts (Tajeddin et al., 2021). They positioned themselves as socially just ESL teachers who resist bias and affirm student diversity (telos) due to their religious beliefs of fairness. This finding supports Barkhuizen's (2016) work that suggests LTI encompasses how educators perceive themselves and their roles in the educational landscape, which is influenced by their background, experiences, and in this case, religious identity, as well as the sociocultural context in which they operate.

Secondly, religious identity seems to operate as a formative force in the ESL teachers’ professional ethics by supporting integrity under institutional pressure in ELT-specific sites of practice, particularly assessment and programme administration. As Rashid et al. (2017) argue, English language policy reforms in Malaysia have repeatedly placed teachers at the forefront of implementation pressure. Consistent with Porto and Zembylas (2024), participants in this study encountered dilemmas where institutional expectations conflicted with ethical commitments (e.g., manipulating language assessment grade and falsifying documents). In response, all three ESL teachers complied in bounded instances under job-security pressures but subsequently engaged in post-hoc moral repair that re-aligned their professional conduct with religiously grounded integrity such as prayer, reaffirmation and recommitment to honesty. Importantly, this repair work is not merely a generic feature of ‘good teachers;’ it is realised through language-teacher professionalism, because what is being repaired concerns the ethical legitimacy of language assessment decisions and institutional ELT documentation that structure students’ learning trajectories and the credibility of language programmes (Ahmadi Safa and Nasiri, 2025; Hamid et al., 2019; Porto and Zembylas, 2024). This finding suggests that religious identity can prompt self-conscious ethical reflection before, during and after action (Brown, 2018). In this way, this study extends LTI scholarship by suggesting that religious identity is an internal framework for language teachers' ethical self-formation. This internal framework is the mechanism through which ethical dilemmas are negotiated by the participants in a multireligious context, potentially explaining how language teachers transform religious beliefs as legitimising reasons for situated practices and stabilised professional ethics through transidentitying. In other words, transidentitying captures how they repositioned themselves in response to ethical tension from a compliant employee to integrity-driven ESL professional.

In contrast to studies suggesting that religious identity hinders professional relationships (see Karimpour et al., 2024; Nazari, 2024), this study argues that it shapes the ethics of collegial relationships as a resource for emotional regulation and conflict management. Yazan (2025) also highlights emotional entanglements in LTI, suggesting that teachers navigate both personal emotions and external sociocultural pressures that intersect with their professional identities. Thus, this study supports and extends Yazan's (2025) work by suggesting that religious identity can function as an ethical substance of LTI. It seems to help teachers develop socio-emotional competence for harmonious and respectful interaction in professional settings, as evident in this study where participants’ religious beliefs served as authoritative sources which enabled them to enact self-practices to regulate emotional responses in professional contexts. They enacted religiously informed stances such as anger regulation, avoidance of harmful speech and active respect for others (Tajeddin et al., 2021). These emotional and social intelligence responses enhanced their interpersonal effectiveness and supported strong collegial relationships (Gkonou and Mercer, 2018). In short, it can be suggested that it is through transidentitying that religious identity dynamically interplays with teachers’ professional behaviour and interactions (Brown, 2018; Tajeddin et al., 2021), as they work to achieve their telos to honour institutional expectations while remaining faithful to religiously anchored values. Moreover, this finding demonstrates that religiously resourced emotion work enhances collegiality and extends accounts that often bracket religion as a private variable or a source of friction, explaining when and how religious identity becomes enabling rather than divisive in LTI research.

Conclusion

The findings have significant implications for TESOL and ELT, particularly in multireligious contexts such as Malaysia, where religion is an identity marker embedded in daily life (Buttny et al., 2013; Lim et al., 2014). In this study, religious identity is a formative resource for ESL teachers’ professional ethics in terms of professional integrity, positive collegial relationship, and fair, inclusive language classroom practices. Accordingly, prevailing notions of ‘teacher identity’ in TESOL or ELT should be broadened to include teachers’ religious identities as legitimate components of LTI, rather than treated as taboo (Baurain, 2012, 2016). For practice, language teacher education should engage religious identity as part of ethical self-formation which links who teachers are to what they do, producing more integrated, inclusive and publicly accountable language educators (Farrell et al., 2020).

This qualitative study is limited by a small number of individuals, each representing Islam, Buddhism and Christianity. Future research should adopt broader, comparative and longitudinal designs, to examine how different traditions, institutional regimes and career stages shape ethical self-formation over time. Mixed methods work and institutional ethnographies would also help to trace how religious commitments interact with policy and accountability structures. Overall, the findings warrant sustained attention to religious identity within LTI research and teacher professional development to support holistic, ethical and inclusive English language education.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

We thank the teachers who participated in this study.

ORCID iDs

Yii Tyng Lee

Fatiha Binti Senom

Jia Wei Lim

Informed consent

The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Yii Tyng Lee is currently pursuing a PhD in Education, specialising in TESL, at Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. She obtained her Bachelor of Education in TESL and Master of Education in English as a Second Language from Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. Her research interests include TESOL, Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE), ESL teacher identity, and teacher professional development.

Fatiha Binti Senom is currently Senior Lecturer at the Department of Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. Her research expertise is in TESOL and Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE), focusing on ESL teacher identity; mentoring and professional development; translanguaging and language-learning investment; and ESL writing anxiety.

Jia Wei Lim is currently a Senior Lecturer and Masters of Education in English as a Second Language programme coordinator at the Faculty of Education, University Malaya, Malaysia. She lectures, supervises, and publishes research related to literature in education as well as language teacher education in general. Her areas of expertise are reading, post-compulsory education and literature education which current projects capitalising on the use of literary texts as stimulus and response.

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