“A Good Start”: A New Approach to Gauging Preservice Teachers’ Critical Language Awareness

ABSTRACT

This study reports findings from a discursive analysis, informed by discursive psychology (DP), of 43 preservice teachers’ 685 written reflections related to critical language awareness (CLA). The findings highlight the discursive features preservice teachers employed to construct their CLA. Three major patterns of discursive changes were unearthed which make the development of preservice teachers’ CLA visible: change from generic statements to deeper scrutiny; change from broad suggestions to specific recommendations; and change from claiming the known to the curiosity of exploring the unknown. The findings of this study offer insights for teacher educators to make sense of preservice teachers’ discursive changes and features in the process of developing CLA and to create stage-appropriate inductive questions to help preservice teachers engage in continuous critiques through written self-reflections.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical language awareness
• discursive psychology
• self-reflection

Note

1. We have substituted the term “multicultural” with the term “multilingual” to reflect our focus on the issue of critical language awareness.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lijuan Shi

Lijuan Shi is a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland. Her research interests are translanguaging pedagogy, heritage language development and multilingualism. She also assists and consults in teacher professional development and translanguaging pedagogy at schools in the United States and China.

Kellie Rolstad

Kellie Rolstad is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Maryland. Rolstad researches theories of academic language, editing a recent special issue of the International Multilingual Research Journal on academic English. Her current projects concern critical language awareness, and language and literacy development among homeschoolers.