Hayriye Kayi-Aydar

Multiple Identities, Negotiations, and Agency Across Time and Space: A Narrative Inquiry of a Foreign Language Teacher Candidate

Drawing on the post-structural views and the literature on teacher identity and agency, and using narrative inquiry, this paper describes how one teacher candidate majoring in Spanish negotiated her identities across time and space and how her identity negotiations interacted with her agency. The recursive analysis of qualitative data sources demonstrates how this particular teacher candidate gave up teaching Spanish, after years of investment and preparation, and switched her focus to teaching English as a second language. By describing and discussing the identity transformation she underwent and negotiations she engaged in, this study adds to the limited literature on foreign language teacher identity and agency, and provides implications for teacher educators in foreign language teacher education programs.

‘No, Rolanda, completely wrong!’ Positioning, classroom participation and ESL learning

The current study, drawing on Positioning Theory, presents an analysis of various storylines of classroom interaction to illustrate how an adult ESL learner positioned himself and others in an academic oral skills class. Through a recursive micro-analysis of classroom talk, the findings demonstrate how this outspoken student shaped classroom discourse and impacted opportunities for learning for himself and others. Implications for effective classroom interaction and participation are discussed.

If Carmen Can Analyze Shakespeare, Everybody Can: Positions, Conflicts, and Negotiations in the Narratives of Latina Pre-Service Teachers.

ABSTRACT This study, focusing on the life stories of three pre-service Latina teachers in the United States, explored how they positioned themselves as learners of English and teachers of Spanish in their oral narratives, and how their past experience as minority students shaped their current professional identity negotiations as language teachers. Positioning analysis of their narrative accounts indicated that these female teachers, throughout their education, felt different or isolated because of their ethnic identity, language background, and socioeconomic class. They negotiated memberships in different communities across settings in their lives. Understanding the conflicts and struggles that they experienced and unique strategies that they used to overcome them will hopefully provide insights for all teachers and teacher educators in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts.

A language teacher’s agency in the development of her professional identities: A narrative case study

ABSTRACT This narrative case study examined how a Hispanic language teacher invested agency while developing professional identities in different contexts. A recursive analysis of interviews and journal entries indicated that the participant’s English language learning experience, the discrimination and marginalization in the work environments, and the knowledge gained through graduate studies all shaped her agency and professional identities development. The findings highlight the complex links among and significant roles of ethnic and racial background, past experience, and power differentials in shaping the dynamic nature of teacher agency and identities.

Positioning in Classroom Discourse Studies: A State-of-the-Art Review.

Abstract This article reviews the growing number of studies that have drawn on positioning theory in exploring the interactional dynamics of classroom discourse. It discusses key concepts of the theory, provides an overview of empirical studies that focus on student positioning, in ‘mainstream’ content classrooms and classrooms that include learners or speakers of additional languages, as well as studies that concentrate on teacher positioning. As we summarise and critically synthesise these studies, we discuss implications of positioning for learning and teaching, offer a critique of positioning theory and provide guidelines for future research in this area.

Trustworthiness, Current Debates, Future Directions

This chapter unpacks the issues of trustworthiness and soundness, and explains how they can be accomplished in empirical studies that use positioning analysis. It also discusses in detail the shortcomings of positioning theory along with directions for future studies. The chapter concludes with implications and insights that positioning theory and relevant literature offer for second/foreign language classrooms and teacher education.

Classroom Discourse for Positioning Research

This chapter focuses on positioning in language classroom discourse. The chapter begins with an explanation regarding the importance of analyzing classroom discourse. It then further explains how positioning theory can help to understand the complexity associated with classroom participation and talk. The chapter describes, step by step, how a classroom-based study can be designed using positioning theory. It concludes with examples from two different classrooms in order to demonstrate how positioning analysis of classroom discourse can be conducted.

Narrative Texts for Positioning Research

The chapter begins with an explanation of narratology and narrative inquiry. It describes different types of narrative texts that one can collect to conduct positioning analysis in applied linguistics research. After describing the link between positioning theory and narrative inquiry, the chapter introduces Bamberg’s (1997, 2012) and Soreide’s work (2006) on narrative positioning. It concludes with two example narrative texts to illustrate how narrative positioning analysis is conducted, and how positioning and narrative analyses complement each other.

Using Socratic Circles to Engage English Language Learners in Historical Inquiry and Discussion

This chapter describes how Socratic circles, a dialogic tool that is shown to increase learning talk, can engage English learners (ELs) in historical discussion following inquiry methods of learning in the social studies. Drawing on the related literature, we provide educators with a background about cultural competency and positionalities, historical inquiry, and Socratic circles. Evidence-based examples and strategies are then provided for using historical inquiry and Socratic circles in the social studies classroom to teach important yet difficult concepts (e.g., democracy, liberty) and connect them to content-based curricula. We conclude by connecting dialogue to the C3 frameworks to foster ELs’ civic participation, involvement, and agency and discuss implications and applications for teacher education.

Positional Identities, Access to Learning Opportunities, and Multiliteracies: Negotiations in Heritage and Non-heritage Spanish-Speaking Students’ Critical Narratives

Grounded in positioning theory and the Multiliteracies framework, this chapter explores the complex relationships among positional identities, access to learning opportunities, and the development of professional multiliteracies in a doctoral program. The study investigates how seven heritage and non-heritage graduate students in Hispanic linguistics positioned themselves in relation to Spanish and gained access to learning opportunities in their program. The data consisted of autobiographical narratives, collected through life history interviews (Pavlenko, Appl Linguist 28: 163–188, 2007), that focused on the participants’ socio-historically situated experiences while being students. The analysis presented provides insights into the struggles, accomplishments, and identities of heritage language learners who are to become Spanish language teachers or university faculty members, and into how their experiences differ from those of their non-heritage Spanish-speaking peers.