Positioning Practices and Pedagogical Shifts: Early-Career Educators’ Development of Linguistic Ideological Clarity in Multilingual Classrooms

• In Event: Critical and Humanizing Teacher Education for Multilingual Learners: Developing Multilingual Teacher Knowledge Across Contexts

Abstract

This multi-instrumental case study explores how early career educators (ECEs) develop and act upon linguistic ideological clarity (LIC) as they navigate tensions between personal beliefs and institutional norms in multilingual classrooms. Drawing on LIC and positioning theory, the study examines four first-year teachers in a Title I school located the mid-Southern U.S. serving primarily Spanish- and Marshallese-speaking students. Through interviews, classroom observations, and artifacts, findings show that LIC developed non-linearly as ECEs shifted between self- and externally assigned roles. Teachers positioned themselves as learners and advocates, “talking back” to deficit ideologies and monolingual expectations. These acts of reflection and critique illustrate how ECEs leveraged their positionality to steward change for marginalized students and reimagine more just, multilingual educational futures.

Authors

• Alissa A. Blair, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

• Lexi Woodward, University of Arkansas