Language Awareness Workshops as Emergent Boundary Objects: Reformulating Chinese Bilingual Preservice Teachers' Critical Language Awareness

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Educators’ Language Ideologies, Beliefs, and Critical Language Awareness

Abstract

Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Expansive Learning concepts, this qualitative case study illustrated how six female international Chinese-speaking pre-service teachers (PSTs), who came to the US to study in a bilingual teacher preparation program, have reformulated their constrained lived experiences and worldviews in a broader Chinese speech community, which further nuanced their cultural understanding of Chinese language diversity in the diaspora. By analyzing their discourses in the Language Awareness Workshops (LAWs), where they were both attendees and facilitators, a new disposition (e.g. object formation) emerged.

Authors

• Maria E. Torres-Guzman, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Sharon Chang, Teachers College, Columbia University