A Deleuzian-Inspired Inquiry on the Teacher Identities of World Language Graduate Teaching Assistants

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Examinations of Teacher Identity Across Contexts (Table 7)

Abstract

The development of a professional identity is critical in becoming a language teacher and maintaining a agentive and resilient professional life (Barkhuizen, 2017; Varghese et al, 2016). However, this development does not occur linearly, rather it occurs in seemingly disconnected yet highly relevant instances that defy traditional frameworks of understanding. This inquiry seeks to understand a understudied yet highly influential part of the world language teaching ecosystem: the graduate teaching assistant (GTA). Despite the GTA teaching the majority of language courses at post-secondary institutions, they are understudied, characterized as underprepared, and trained under systems that rely on linear understandings of teacher development. This inquiry seeks to investigate the teacher identities of GTAs using a Deleuzian framework of the rhizomatic assemblage to more fully understand how GTAs understand their own teacher identity as well as the factors that influence their identity.

Author

• W. Boden Robertson, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author