Reclaiming the Self in Community: Peer Mentoring and Narrative Agency Among Novice Language Teachers

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Mentoring for Teacher Preparation and Practitioner Development

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how a peer mentoring group for novice language teachers provided a professionally generative and identity-affirming space during their first year of teaching. Drawing on Foucault’s (1983) modes of objectification and narrative identity theory, the study examines how participants resisted institutional marginalization by collaboratively constructing agentic professional narratives. Monthly virtual meetings created space for collaborative storytelling that disrupted deficit discourses, affirmed pedagogical values, and enabled participants to construct self-authored teacher identities. Findings suggest that reciprocal mentoring models grounded in narrative and community help early-career teachers counter isolation and reaffirm marginalized professional identities. The study positions mentoring as a relational and discursive process through which teachers make meaning, cultivate agency, and shape more humanizing professional futures.

Author

• Shannon Athey, West Chester University of Pennsylvania