Analyzing Elementary Teachers’ Advocacy for Emergent Bilinguals as Identity Dissonances from Cognitive, Emotional, and Social Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how an elementary-level content classroom teacher and an elementary-level ESL teacher in a metropolitan region in Massachusetts negotiated teachers’ identities and identity dissonances in teachers’ attempt to advocate for emergent bilinguals. Using critical discourse analysis of qualitative data, this study examines the cognitive, emotional and social dimensions of teacher advocacy identity negotiations. Furthermore, the current study illuminates two teachers’ different ways of negotiating with advocacy identity dissonances, dependent on teachers’ sense of agency and affordances in their social identity positionings and working contexts. The findings point to the importance of using teachers’ identity dissonances as a tool to develop teachers’ agency and enact advocacy actions. Specific suggestions are made for preparation and professional development of teachers of emergent bilinguals in the fields of language teacher education and teacher education in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Advocacy identity dissonances
• cognitive
• emotional and social aspects of teacher identity
• teacher advocacy for emergent bilinguals
• teacher advocacy identities

Notes

1. Although the studies on language teachers’ identity dissonance often draw on the socio-cultural aspects of identity dissonance in learning to teach (e.g., Golombek & Johnson, 2004), it should be noted that this study emphasizes the teacher advocacy identity dissonance interacting with the socio-political and social contexts of teaching emergent bilinguals.

2. This number indicates the lines of interview excerpts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jihea Maddamsetti

Jihea Maddamsetti is an assistant professor of elementary education at Old Dominion University. Her research interest includes humanizing pedagogies and critical race theory in teacher education and language teacher education. Some of her work has been published in the Action in Teacher Education, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, Journal of Education for Teaching, and Urban Review. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum Instruction and Teacher Education at Michigan State University.