Language Teacher Identity in TESOL

Teacher Education and Practice as Identity Work

Bedrettin Yazan, Kristen Lindahl, Bedrettin Yazan, Kristen Lindahl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000076103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Sprachen unterrichten

This volume draws on empirical evidence to explore the interplay between language teacher identity (LTI) and professional learning and instruction in the field of TESOL. In doing so, it makes a unique contribution to the field of language teacher education.

By reconceptualizing teacher education, teaching, and ongoing teacher learning as a continuous, context-bound process of identity work, Language Teacher Identity in TESOL discusses how teacher identity serves as a framework for classroom practice, professional, and personal growth. Divided into five sections, the text explores key themes including narratives and writing; multimodal spaces; race, ethnicity, and language; teacher emotions; and teacher educator-researcher practices. The 15 chapters offer insight into the experiences of preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and teacher educators in global TESOL contexts including Canada, Japan, Korea, Norway, Sri Lanka, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

This text will be an ideal resource for researchers, academics, and scholars interested in furthering their knowledge of concepts grounding LTI, as well as teachers and teacher educators seeking to implement identity-oriented approaches in their own pedagogical practices.

Part I
Teacher Identity Work in Narratives and Writing

1
Repurposing Identity Reconstruction as Transformative Pedagogy

Multilingual Teachers in the US First-Year Composition Context

Cristina Sánchez-Martín

Introduction

The transnational nature of the 21st century involves, as stated by De Fina and Perrino (2013), “mass migrations and global communications that bring people together both spatially and virtually in ways that would have been unthinkable in the past” (p. 509). This new landscape where virtual and physical realities of mobility coalesce necessarily complicates previous paradigms by which individuals, their identities, and practices were conceptualized prior to the “transnational turn.” I draw on Vertovec’s (2009) definition of transnationalism as a process and an outcome involving “sustained cross-border relationships, patterns of exchange, affiliations, and social formations spanning nation-states” (p. 2) through which languages and identities are formed and shape these various aspects. Within this landscape, terms and concepts rooted in structuralist approaches to language such as the binary “native versus non-native speaker” have been subject to scrutiny by scholars in applied linguistics who have argued that these concepts do not capture the complexities and realities of language practice (Park, 2017; Rudolph, Selvi, & Yazan, 2015). Today’s transnational spatial repertoires (Blommaert, 2007; Canagarajah, 2017) require us to move beyond these established categorical notions and consider the implications of this dynamism in terms of language learning, as scholars from different traditions have argued, for example, from the perspective of language teaching and identity (Rudolph et al., 2015) in language learning (Norton, 2000), in writing (Fraiberg, Wang, & You, 2017; You, 2018), in language theorization (Canagarajah, 2012; Lee, 2017), and in English as an International language (Matsuda, 2017).

In the same line, educational contexts across the world are experiencing and facilitating the outcomes of transnationalism and are undergoing social transformations in the way the educational policies and programs are designed for these realities (Fraiberg et al., 2017) as well as the day-to-day practices embedded in specific spatiotemporal contexts. For example, in the US, Kitalong (2017) recently pointed out that it is increasingly becoming more common to find international multilingual graduate assistants teaching writing to students who were born in the US and grew up speaking English.

In these continuous, intrinsically dynamic, and changing spatiotemporal contexts, it is essential to look at the identity transformations that individuals go through as they grow and expand their language, writing, and disciplinary repertoires. In this educational climate of increased mobility, writing teacher education programs must pay attention to the dynamic and contested learning spaces where lived experiences and intersectional identities (Shields, 2008) contribute to promoting teacher development as “a safe space for transformation” (Matsuda, 2017, p. xv) and as “an external mediating artifact” (Lee, 2013, p. 340), an area largely unexplored from a transnational and translingual perspective (You, 2018).

From different disciplinary angles, scholars have addressed the relationship between transnationalism and teaching/learning. Interestingly, from a composition studies lens, Tardy (2014) discusses the discrepancies in discourses of internationalization of US universities, especially the “surprising paradox” that goes with neglecting foreign language education of US students and the general “lack of institutional emphasis on language study” in a context of transnationalism (p. 244). On the other hand, from the perspective of English as an international language, Matsuda’s (2017) edited collection includes a number of studies that offer insights into the types of programmatic and curricular practices taking place to prepare teachers to respond to the tensions between global and local English language issues.

To contribute to this conversation, this chapter reports on a study about the transformations of three multilingual teachers of writing in the US. By drawing on Beach’s concept of learning as “consequential transition” (1999), this study examines these teachers’ identity, language, and writing negotiations as potential dimmensions of pedagogies for language teacher education programs.

Literature Review: Language, Writing, and Identity

This literature review requires transdisciplinarity, a methodological and theoretical practice addressing the “knowledge silos” produced by categorical disciplinary expectations born out of geographical isolation (Morales, 2017, p. 29). Since the study is centered on the relationship among writing, language, and identity, I draw on transdisciplinary scholarship from applied linguistics and rhetoric and composition studies (a scholarly tradition from which writing programs and education in the US are frequently studied).

Norton (2000) defines identity as relational, co-constructed, and contextual. Attention to the sociocultural and ecological nature of identity as an activity (Lee, 2013) is therefore a pivotal part of investigating and conceptualizing identity formation. Sociocultural theories of learning provide a framework to understand identity as a process of ongoing transformation according to factors outside of the human mind and body. I draw on Beach’s (1999) concept of “consequential transition,” defined as “the conscious reflective struggle to reconstruct knowledge, skills, and identity in ways that are consequential to the individual becoming someone or something new, and in ways that contribute to the creation and metamorphosis of social activity and, ultimately, society” (p. 130) to investigate the relationship among identity, language, and learning. From this view, all aspects that encompass teachers’ practices in a classroom, like their diverse identities, new understanding of the spatiotemporal and sociocultural contexts where they are situated, and the practices that they engage in with their students, are interconnected and mutually constructive. I consider Lee’s (2013) framework to understand identity as discourse, practice, and activity, whereby identity is influenced by the contexts in which it is performed, constructed, and constructive of other practices. In Lee’s study, teachers’ beliefs regarding “good teaching” were transformed by moving from a teacher-dominated approach to a more engaging classroom in which students have more prominent and less passive roles through new pedagogical tools, and by seeing themselves as “agents of change” in their institutional settings (Lee, 2013, pp. 339–340).

Poststructuralist and sociocultural approaches to language and writing provide the theoretical space for the investigation of identity (Reis, 2011; Rudolph et al., 2015; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). From a transnational lens, these identities consist of myriad of traits that construct identities across both physical and liminal spaces (Canagarajah, 2018). Moreover, varying identity features intersect in unique ways depending on the social spaces where the individual is situated, creating “forms of unique situations of disadvantage and marginalization” (Shields, 2008, p. 307) or, according to Park (2017), in a continuum of privilege and marginalization.

Moreover, this study takes on a postmodern, transnational feminist perspective to identity as activity (Lee, 2013), to investigate: 1) the types of transformations that teachers of writing go through in a context deemed monolingual and 2) the types of knowledge-construction practices around embodiment and affection necessary (Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, González, & Harris, 2012) to implement “identity as pedagogy” (Motha, Jain, & Tecle, 2012). By understanding how teachers interact and negotiate their identities in transnational spaces, this study contributes to the call for teacher education paradigms that move beyond categorical notions of language reminiscent of structuralism and monolingualism and keep identity at the center of teaching.

The Study

The research question that this study addresses is “How do the lived experiences of three multilingual teachers¹ inform their first-year writing pedagogies?” The study took place in the spring 2017 semester at a public Midwestern university in the US. Table 1.1 shows information about the participants, who chose pseudonyms for the study.

Table 1.1 Overview of participants

Participant	Country of Origin	First Language(s)	Other Languages	Current Teaching Assignment
C.S.	Spain	Spanish and Fala	English, some Greek, Portuguese, and French	First-year writing
Olya	Russia	Russian	English, some German, Italian, and Spanish	First-year writing, introductory linguistics
Helen	South Korea	Korean	English and German	First-year writing

The writing program where instructors worked as graduate assistants endorsed a philosophy based on a Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) perspective (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010) and Pedagogical Cultural Historical Activity Theory (P-CHAT) (Prior, Walker, & Kieffer, 2019). A RGS approach to writing draws on Miller’s (2015) notion of genres as social action by which writing enables humans to accomplish specific purposes. P-CHAT is the pedagogical application of Prior et al. (2007) model for rhetorical analysis by which writing involves participation in activities immersed in specific sociocultural and ecological contexts in a dialogic and dynamic relationship with the writer itself (Prior et al., 2019). As far as language is concerned, one of the learning outcomes that all writing instructors are required to address in their course design is translingual and transnational writing practices. These epistemologies emphasize that human’s languaging, writing, and identity construction are historically constructed and in a symbiotic relationship with the environment, the sociocultural context, and other agents relevant to those practices. However, the scope and focus of each theoretical framework zooms in additional issues. For the purposes of this study, it is also important to mention the decolonial purpose of translingualism as an orientation to language that brings back to the front-line marginalized voices (Cushman, 2016).

As writing teachers in this writing program, the participants in this study were guided to develop their own personalized course designs and syllabi while reflecting the philosophies of the writing program and the established learning outcomes. Through a series of professional development events and resources (new instructor orientation, two annual mini-conference, podcasts, cohort meetings, teaching resources), teachers were mentored throughout their journeys in the program.

Methodology

This study uses a combined methodology consisting of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) and ethnographically oriented case studies. Due to time constraints, I was not able to engage in long term observations during a sustained period of time; therefore, I used ethno-graphic approaches rather than full ethnography. These ethnographically oriented case studies allowed me to fill in the gap between text and context through an emic perspective and to consider the cultural and social frameworks that inform participants’ practices (Paltridge, Starfield, & Tardy, 2016). Finally, as a researcher, I was aware of my own positionality throughout the study, in particular because of my role of writing program professional development coordinator and mentor of two of participants (C.S. and Helen).

Data Collection and Analysis

The data collection process involved an initial online questionnaire about teachers’ identity backgrounds and experiences, a classroom observation of an hour per participant, ethnographic notetaking, analyses of teaching materials (e.g., syllabi, class assignments, course plans), semi-structured audio recorded interviews (one hour per participant), and other artifacts discussed during our conversations. I collected these data from January to May 2017. I analyzed the data on Nvivo in different coding stages that led to the main themes I discuss.

Findings

Table 1.2 summarizes the types of transitions that the three participants from this study underwent. Specifically it shows how certain lived experiences across languages were critical in the construction of their teachers’ identities and their impact on their pedagogies in classrooms often deemed “monolingual” (Matsuda, 2006). These three participants’ experiences were chosen because they illustrate three different degrees of how identifying and embracing experiences of and across difference facilitates (or not) the ongoing reconstruction of identities.

Table 1.2 Teachers' reconstruction of identities

Participant	Experience with Language Difference and Writing	Reconstructed Writing Teacher Identity	Pedagogical Practices
C.S.	Study abroad program in Ireland.	From ...