Beyond Native and Nonnative: Translingual Dispositions for More Inclusive Teacher Identity in Language and Literacy Education

ABSTRACT

This article proposes translingual dispositions as a way to move beyond the NES/NNES dichotomy in understanding language teacher identity. Recent scholarship in TESOL and Applied Linguistics has problematized the NES/NNES binary from a poststructuralist perspective, highlighting how NES/NNES subjectivities are discursively and performatively (co-)constructed and negotiated. Despite the efforts to empower NNESs, the very binary reifies monolingual ideologies. This article argues that translingual dispositions can help move beyond the binary and complicate theorization of teachers’ identities and practice. To illustrate, we report an ethnographic case study of a “NES” teacher, Daphne, and examine how Daphne’s translingual dispositions shape her teaching and facilitate her students’ creative negotiation of monolingual norms in a writing course. We conclude by discussing future research directions and the implications for language teacher education in fostering translingual dispositions.     

Promoting Issues-based STSE Perspectives in Science Teacher Education: Problems of Identity and Ideology

Although science, technology, society and environment (STSE) education has gained considerable force in the past few years, it has made fewer strides in practice. We suggest that science teacher identity plays a role in the adoption of STSE perspectives. Simply put, issues-based STSE education challenges traditional images of a science teacher and science instructional ideologies. In this paper, we briefly describe the development of a multimedia documentary depicting issues-based STSE education in a teacher’s class and its subsequent implementation with 64 secondary student-teachers at a large Canadian university. Specifically, we set out to explore: (1) science teacher candidates’ responses to a case of issues-based STSE teaching, and (2) how science teacher identity intersects with the adoption of STSE perspectives. Findings reveal that although teacher candidates expressed confidence and motivation regarding teaching STSE, they also indicated decreased likelihood to teach these perspectives in their early years of teaching. Particular tensions or problems of practice consistently emerged that helped explain this paradox – including issues related to: control and autonomy; support and belonging; expertise and negotiating curriculum; politicization and action; and biases and ideological bents. We conclude our paper with a discussion regarding the lessons learned about STSE education, teacher identity and the role of multimedia case methods.     

语文教育评价的三个维度

“知识和能力”是学生学习语文的基本要义，在掌握知识提高能力的过程中，学生总得借助一定的方法，伴随着一定的情感态度，具有一定的价值取向，这是一种客观存在。所以，语文教育评价也应包括“知识和能力”、“过程和方法”、“情感态度和价值观”三个维度，可以说，三个维度的评价才能从根本上解决语文教育评价所要突出的语文课程整体性和综合性特点，这样的评价也才更有利于实现语文教育的总体目标——促进学生语文素养的全面提高。     

A Case Study Exploring the Identity of an In-Service Elementary Science Teacher: a Language Teacher First

Teachers are central to providing high-quality science learning experiences called for in recent reform efforts, as their understanding of science impacts both what they teach and how they teach it. Yet, most elementary teachers do not enter the profession with a particular interest in science or expertise in science teaching. Research also indicates elementary schools present unique barriers that may inhibit science teaching. This case study utilizes the framework of identity to explore how one elementary classroom teacher’s understandings of herself as a science specialist were shaped by the bilingual elementary school context as she planned for and provided reform-based science instruction. Utilizing Gee’s (2000) sociocultural framework, identity was defined as consisting of four interrelated dimensions that served as analytic frames for examining how this teacher understood her new role through social positioning within her school. Findings describe the ways in which this teacher’s identity as a science teacher was influenced by the school context. The case study reveals two important implications for teacher identity. First, collaboration for science teaching is essential for elementary teachers to change their practice. It can be challenging for teachers to form an identity as a science teacher in isolation. In addition, elementary teachers new to science teaching negotiate their emerging science practice with their prior experiences and the school context. For example, in the context of a bilingual school, this teacher adapted the reform-based science curriculum to better meet the unique linguistic needs of her students.

     

论国家语言认同与民族语言认同

语言具有社会交际工具与民族文化和身份认同的双重功能。在多语社会或国家,通常是通用语言承担较多社会交际工具功能,而少数民族语言承担较多文化认同功能,二者互相补充又互相不可替代。因此在语言的工具认同和文化认同意义上,我国国家通用语言和少数民族语言没有根本的冲突。在少数民族语言内部,由于存在强势语言和弱势语言、主体民族语言和非主体民族语言、简单语言环境语言和复杂语言环境语言、保持母语程度不同等复杂情况,所以对于不同民族语言来说,语言的民族认同也存在较大的区别。     

论三种学习理论视角下的教师身份建构路径

教师身份形成是教师专业发展的重要内容,而教师专业发展又无法脱离教师学习。西方三种学习隐喻所代表的学习理论蕴含着分析教师身份建构的重要资源。传统的学习理论以认知为核心,教师通过获得知识和技能增强自身的专业认同,侧重个体维度的身份建构;情境学习理论以实践参与为核心,教师通过对话协商获得他人认可的成员资格,着眼于共同体内部的身份建构;扩展性学习理论以知识创造为核心,教师通过跨界行动实现个人能动性在活动系统中的贡献,聚焦于系统间的身份建构。尽管三种学习理论代表着教师身份建构的不同过程,但其揭示了学习视角下教师身份建构的重要机制:维持与改变。     

Teacher Identity: Claiming Me

This article speaks to the reality of the lived experiences of student of color in society today: navigating the structures of diversity in a white world. For many, the author’s story resonates with what they feel at their core of belonging and unbelonging. It answers the age old questions, “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” The article gives pre-service teachers of color the ability to claim agency about who they are and what their purpose is in life. The author’s story is one of self-authorship. With the hope that White middle class teachers will better understand their students, the author also gives insight into the struggles and realities student of color face on a daily basis.     

Same Language,Different Histories: Developing a “Critical” English Teacher Identity

ABSTRACT

Our paper contends that growing awareness of the historicity of English lies at the heart of the process by which English language teachers develop “critical” identities. We compare novice teachers in three different contexts of English teaching: urban Guatemala, rural Nicaragua, and a Tibetan refugee community in India. Collectively, these ethnographic case studies illustrate the complexity of English teacher identity formation in contemporary global society, as our participants developed new understandings of their positions in history, their relationships with English learners, and the local meanings around English as symbolic capital.     

Emotions and Teacher Identity: A poststructural perspective

This article illustrates the significance of teachers' emotions in the construction of teacher identity by invoking a poststructuralist lens in discussing the place of emotion in identity formation. In suggesting a poststructuralist perspective of emotions and teacher identity, it is argued that teacher identity is constantly becoming in a context embedded in power relations, ideology, and culture. In theorizing about teacher identity two ideas are developed: first, that the construction of teacher identity is at bottom affective, and is dependent upon power and agency, i.e., power is understood as forming the identity and providing the very condition of its trajectory; and second, that an investigation of the emotional components of teacher identity yields a richer understanding of the teacher self. This discussion is motivated by a desire to develop analyses that investigate how teachers' emotions can become sites of resistance and self-transformation. The emphasis on understanding the teacher-self through an exploration of emotion opens possibilities for the care and the self-knowledge of teachers and provides spaces for their transformation.     

教师专业认同：教师教育改革的新视角

教育理论研究的深入和教育实践的迫切需要使得对教师专业认同的研究成为当今教师研究的重点之一。教师专业认同具有动态发展性、个体性和能动性,是提升教师生命意义的内在基础。我们应从关注教师的自我认同、注重职前专业学习和初任教师实习的经历、注重教师的实践性知识三方面反思和改善教师教育。     

Teacher Hiring Practices: Illinois Principals' Perspectives

A growing body of research has confirmed the link between excellent teachers and increased student achievement and school success. Consequently, selecting outstanding teachers is critical. This study examines Illinois principals' teacher hiring practices as well as their perceptions of what teachers do to enhance or hinder their selection. Included also is advice from principals on how candidates can best prepare and present themselves during the job search process.     

Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Effectiveness and School Effectiveness: Perspectives from the USA

This article provides historical overviews of the conceptual and research and development focus of teacher evaluation, teacher effectiveness and school effectiveness research in the USA. Pertinent literature is cited and arguments are made that these lines of inquiry have coexisted for nearly four without adequate integration. With the fourth stage of school effectiveness research in process, there is a recognition that within school context variables, particularly teacher effectiveness, have important effects on school improvement and school outcomes. Similarly, there is the recognition that findings from school effectiveness research have relevance for studies of teacher effectiveness and ongoing developments in teacher evaluation. Examples of: (a) new generation, learner-centered teacher evaluation systems in the USA that are informed by teacher and school effectiveness research; and (b) the fourth stage of school effectiveness research are described. It is proposed that these lines of research should be merged as completely as possible.     

叙述在教师身份研究中的运用——方法论上的考量

本文试图讨论教师身份研究的方法论问题.文章明晰了 teacher identity 一词的内涵,认为教师对自己身份的感知是教师于历经时空变化下在自我、人际群体及政策/制度对教师赋予的角色期待之间协商的结果.这个协商的过程亦是教师身份构建的过程.对该过程进行操作化研究可以甚至只能通过叙述来实现,为此作者进一步讨论了叙述与身份的关系以及如何运用叙述来进行身份研究.     

教师专业身份认同探析

教师专业身份认同作为教师专业成长的核心,是实现教师专业发展的内部保证。但在目前课程改革的背景下,教师的专业身份认同尚存在一些问题,需要学校、教师个人采取多种途径,共同努力,促使教师实现自身的专业身份认同。     

The Ethico-politics of Teacher Identity

Identity is a contemporary buzzword in education, referencing the individual and the social, the personal and the political, self and other. Following Maggie MacLure, we can think of identity in terms of teachers 'arguing for themselves', or giving an account of themselves. Yet in the wake of poststructuralism's radical de-centering of the subject and its highlighting of a number of impediments to agency, we might well ask how teachers are to give an account of themselves? This paper offers reading of identity that recognizes its paradoxical aspects, yet also contains scope for ethical agency. The latter is explored via a 'diagram' that utilizes Foucault's four axes of ethics to elaborate a framework for thinking about teacher identity as ethical self-formation and for engaging in what I refer to here as 'identity work'. This approach to thinking about teacher identity recognizes our discursive determination, yet also offers scope for recognizing and building ethical agency.