Critically Examining the Agency and Professional Identity Development of Novice Dual Language Teachers Through Figured Worlds

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the concept of figured worlds, we examined how four preservice teachers in a monoglossically oriented teacher preparation program developed their professional identities and sense of agency as dual language teachers. Figured worlds are socially constructed and culturally recognized realms with a story line and actors who also actively change these story lines in the course of narrating them and participating in them. Drawing on interviews and observations, we showed how four teachers’ personal linguistic, racial, and cultural backgrounds interacted with external affordances, including their own language ideologies and those present in their contexts, leading to the (re)construction of their figured worlds of dual language teaching. These figured worlds were mainly reshaped to include family connections and student empowerment and made salient the limitations of the teachers’ engagement with the centrality of race, power, and immigrant rights in their language ideologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual teachers
• dual language teachers
• agency
• identity
• figured worlds
• preservice teachers

Notes

¹ Due to its new director, who is a person of color with a dual language background, the program has increased its commitment to creating more multilingual spaces, which included creating dual language placements for teacher candidates who were interested in dual language teaching.