"In Your Country": Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Preservice Teachers and Students Discursively Co-Constructing Transnational Identity

• In Event: Multilingual Educators Shaping Culture, Identity, and Literacies Across Contexts

Abstract

In an era of increasing movement and migration, labels commonly used to describe culturally and linguistically diverse learners have become outmoded and may in fact harm the students they are intended to describe. Using discourse analysis and drawing from scholarship on transnationalism and positioning, this study examines how culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) pre-service teachers and high school students (co-)construct national, dichotomous, and transnational identities. By shedding light on participants’ positioning practices, we hope to make teachers and teacher educators more aware of the affordances of positioning students as transnational and of the constraints educators (unintentionally) place upon CLD learners when undermining the fluidity and connectedness of students’ lived experiences across institutional contexts and national borders.

Authors

• Katharine Glanbock, University of Maryland - College Park

• Carmen Durham, University of Northern Iowa

• Melinda E. Martin-Beltran, University of Maryland - College Park