What constitutes a "good teacher" and "good teaching" has come under much scrutiny in an age of globalization, transnationalism, and increased demands for accountability. It is against this evolving ...landscape and the pathbreaking work of the Douglas Fir Group (DFG, 2016) that this special issue engages the following two broad questions: (a) In what ways is language teaching "identity work"? and (b) To what extent does a transdisciplinary approach to language learning and teaching offer insight into language teacher identity? We begin this Introduction with a discussion on identity research in second language acquisition and applied linguistics, and then address innovations in language teacher identity research, exploring how this work has been advanced methodologically through narratives, discourse analysis, and an ethical consideration of research practices. We then consider how the transdisciplinary framework of the DFG, and its focus on macro, meso, and micro dimensions of language learning at the ideological, institutional, and classroom levels, respectively, might contribute to our understanding of language teacher identity. In the final section, we argue that the host of complementary theories adopted by the six contributors supports the view that a transdisciplinary approach to language teacher identity is both productive and desirable. Further, the contributors advance the language teacher identity research agenda by taking into consideration (a) how teacher identity intersects with the multilingual (Higgins and Ponte) and translingual (Zheng) realities of contemporary classrooms, (b) the investment of teachers in developing the semiotic repertoires of learners (Stranger-Johannessen and Norton) and a socially inclusive learning environment (Barkhuizen), and (c) the emotions (Wolff and De Costa) and ethical practices (Miller, Morgan, and Medina) of teachers. Central to all articles in this special issue is the need to recognize the rich linguistic and personal histories that language teachers bring into the classroom in order to promote effective language learning.
This article aims to broaden the scope of language teacher identity research by investigating the emotional demands on teachers-in-training and nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in ...particular. We examined how our focal NNEST participant, Puja, was confronted with and successfully negotiated numerous emotional challenges in her first year in a U.S. MATESOL program. Furthermore, we investigated the impact emotions had on her overall teacher identity development and how her growth as an educator was evident in her use of strategies. Following past research that viewed teacher emotions through a narrative lens (e.g., Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2014; De Costa, 2015a), we created Puja's 'story' by analyzing data sources that included interviews, teaching observations, journal entries, and stimulated verbal and written reports. Our narrative construction focuses on the reflexive relationship between Puja's emotions and her subsequent identity development. While we acknowledge that emotional tensions are part of teachers' identity development (and potentially more so for NNESTs), Puja largely navigated emotional challenges in a positive manner. The article concludes with a call for new pedagogical models that help teachers develop their reflexivity and negotiate potential emotion-related challenges they might encounter.
This case study investigates how one community college instructor in California navigated a set of rules regarding how teachers should feel – feeling rules (Zembylas, 2006) – at the workplace, ...imposed by a new language policy to accrue emotional capital, embodied emotions developed over time through power structures and daily interaction with students and faculty. A post-structurally oriented emotion and emotional capital framework was adopted to highlight the unequal power relations between the institution and teachers. Our study, which drew on data from a questionnaire, interviews, observations and policy documents, revealed that our focal participant, Alan, was able to align with the feeling rules and manage his emotion labor by employing different strategies (i.e., spirituality and empathy). Instead of resisting the feeling rules or avoiding the emotion labor that stemmed from his workplace, he actively accrued emotional capital by developing tools for future work-related endeavors. The study ends with a call for more research on teacher's emotional capital in TESOL.
The growing interest in identity and language education over the past two decades, coupled with increased interest in digital technology and transnationalism, has resulted in a rich body of work that ...has informed language learning, teaching, and research. To keep abreast of these developments in identity research, the authors propose a series of research tasks arising from this changing landscape. To frame the discussion, they first examine how theories of identity have developed, and present a theoretical toolkit that might help scholars negotiate the fast evolving research area. In the second section, they present three broad and interrelated research questions relevant to identity in language learning and teaching, and describe nine research tasks that arise from the questions outlined. In the final section, they provide readers with a methodology toolkit to help carry out the research tasks discussed in the second section. By framing the nine proposed research tasks in relation to current theoretical and methodological developments, they provide a contemporary guide to research on identity in language learning and teaching. In doing so, the authors hope to contribute to a trajectory of vibrant and productive research in language education and applied linguistics.
This book presents the results of research that focused on international students receiving writing instruction on a US university campus. It explores how the students developed their foreign-student ...identities and their own ways of grappling with the unique issues they encountered as they worked to improve their academic literacy skills. The book extends the theoretical horizons of language socialization research by integrating insights from other disciplinary frameworks, such as a translingual approach, multilingual literacies and writing center theory, to explore international students' university experiences. By adopting these varied lenses, the book provides readers with a more holistic, integrative and ecological understanding of students' language and literacy development. The authors also investigate how a translingual pedagogy informs language instructors and literacy instructors in facilitating multilingual students' academic literacy development across a variety of codes, registers, genres, modes and media.
Despite the widely recognized significance of critical incidents (CIs) in teachers’ professional learning, little research has investigated the role of CIs in language teacher identity development. ...This study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the contributions of a Telegram-based professional development course—framed around CI storying—to the language teacher identity development process of a group of teachers. Data were collected from 10 teachers before, during, and after the course. Data analyses indicated that, before the course, CIs negatively influenced the teachers’ agency and emotions. Participation in the course contributed, however, to the teachers’ enhanced agency and greater emotion regulation. In addition, the course afforded the teachers an opportunity to experience further professional socialization and collegial engagement. Our findings revealed that during the course, the teachers developed greater expertise in storying their CIs and discussed higher order issues relevant to the multiplicity of identity as connected to sociocultural-educational dimensions. These findings suggest that emotions and agency are two significant identity aspects that are profoundly influenced by and influence CIs. Our article closes with a discussion of the implications of embedding CIs in professional development courses to help teachers (re)construct their identities.
The last three decades have witnessed a notable growth in research on affect. Among the various affective variables, foreign language anxiety has been heavily studied. This interest in foreign ...language anxiety is consistent with increased attention to emotions in the neurosciences, cognitive psychology, and the social sciences. Instead of attempting to establish a grand unified theory on affect, this article focuses on and reenvisions the affective variable of language anxiety while recognizing that second language acquisition has benefited much from earlier research insights. In taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on the notion of the social imaginary, this study also seeks to expand the field's current theoretical horizon and respond to calls for epistemological diversity in the field of second language acquisition.
Linguistic racism is magnified when a speaker is multilingual and shuttles between different languages and language varieties. This reality is underscored in this commentary that reviews four ...empirical studies that comprise this special issue on linguistic racism. We see linguistic racism enacted in different forms and contexts: through racial microaggressions experienced by students who negotiate the Catalan/Spanish bilingual educational context; instances of racial prejudice encountered by international students at Australian universities; and sociolinguistics pressures placed upon members of an Australian Aboriginal community as they negotiate ratified and denigrated languages and language varieties. My commentary also highlights the need to consider the affective turn in sociolinguistics, in particular, the emotional fallout that often accompanies linguistic racism. Several suggestions on how to combat linguistic racism are also discussed.
This editorial piece is the introduction of our special issue on English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and transnational higher education (TNHE). In this piece, we argue for a centering of ...diversity, inclusion, equity and access in EMI-TNHE as part of a larger agenda to create a more socially just field of English language teaching.
In this article, we survey the debates and questions relating to scalar approaches in the social sciences. Based on a critical review of emergent scholarship, we propose the adoption of scales as a ...category of practice, arguing that how scales are defined, their relationships conceived, and related to other social categories should be based on how people and institutions adopt scales in relation to their contexts and interests. Based on this position, we review the application of scales in educational linguistics and outline the questions that need to be further explored to make more constructive contributions to the appropriate unit of analysis, the relationship between context and language, and the connections between language and other semiotic resources in learning.
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