A Plurilingual Preservice Teacher's Intersectional Identity and Teaching in an Elementary Classroom

• In Event: 51.078 - MTCC Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 51.078-10 - Cultivating Critically and Culturally Competence Curriculum for Preservice and In-Service Teachers

Abstract

This study examines how an ethnic Korean teacher candidate’s professional disposition and teaching in a mainstream classroom was influenced by her identity variables at the intersection of privilege and marginalization. The findings demonstrate the participant’s identity negotiation through her past ethnolinguistic histories in China and current teacher preparation contexts in the U.S. Despite her positive professional disposition for English language learners, the participant faced inner tensions regarding her social class at a high-poverty urban school. Further, the participant encountered contextual tensions between the English-only approach, and her desires in enacting her and students’ plurilingual identity as resources. The findings point to the importance of supporting plurilingual teachers’ teaching to recognize and cultivate the plurilingualism in English-only mainstream classrooms.

Author

• Jihea (Kang) Maddamsetti, Old Dominion University