In “sociocultural in-betweenness”: Exploring teachers’ translingual identity development through narratives

Noriko Ishihara; Julia Menard-Warwick

doi:10.1515/multi-2016-0086

Article

In “sociocultural in-betweenness”: Exploring teachers’ translingual identity development through narratives

Noriko Ishihara and Julia Menard-Warwick

Published/Copyright: April 4, 2018

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From the journal Multilingua Volume 37 Issue 3

Abstract

In this article, we investigate second/foreign language teachers’ translingual identity development through a narrative approach to their life histories. While several studies have investigated how teachers’ intercultural experiences shape their identity formation and pedagogies, we explore not only the impact of teachers’ identity on their practice but also highlight the influences of language teaching itself on teacher identity development. In this process, an emergent theoretical framework of translingual practice becomes particularly useful in interpreting our participants’ “sociocultural in-betweenness,” that is, the capacity and disposition to co-construct meaning across languages and language varieties (Canagarajah 2013b: 3). We aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of this framework by capturing how our two focal participants’ translingual practice emerged, developed, and changed in relation to their identities through a range of intercultural experiences in their life time. As they eventually became language teachers, we also explore their perspectives on language and culture, especially in terms of how they see their interculturality manifesting in their classroom practices, as well as how their pedagogies simultaneously shaped their teacher identities. Our findings have pedagogical implications in regards to narrative knowledge construction in language teacher education.

Keywords: translingual practice; identity; interculturality; life history; pedagogy; positioning

Funding statement: The write-up of this paper was funded by the Grant–in–Aid for Scientific Research (C) offered by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (#15K02802).

Acknowledgements

We thank our teacher participants for sharing their life stories in this research. We are also grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft.

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Published Online: 2018-04-04

Published in Print: 2018-04-25

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https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2016-0086

Keywords for this article

translingual practice; identity; interculturality; life history; pedagogy; positioning