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.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• translingual dispositions
• translingual practice

Notes

1. Throughout the article, we use “language teacher” to encompass both language and literacy teachers. This choice is rather purposeful to invite teachers who may not consider themselves as “language teachers,” but teach literacy, to think about their practice and identity in relation to language in their teaching and beyond.

2. In this article, we use the NES/NNES label as a way to extend the previous discussion on language teacher identity rather than to indicate our ideological alignment with the term.

3. Researchers from Education Psychology and Writing Studies have been approaching dispositions as central in students’ learning transfer recently. See Composition Forum’s special issue in 2012.