Situating the discourses of privilege and marginalization in the lives of two East Asian women teachers of English

Nonnative‐English‐speaking teacher candidates’ language teacher identity development in graduate TESOL preparation programs: A review of the literature

“…However, Park () also found feelings of inadequacy manifested only upon matriculation. In Pavlenko’s () study, struggle for native‐like proficiency perpetuated a sense of failure and invalidity with one NNES‐TC feeling “less than human” (p. 258) when unable to speak “properly.” Xuan () and Park () similarly observed candidates’ struggle for ownership of English. Further, Aneja’s () participant rejected claims to bilingualism by defining bilingual as a double native speaker, a distinction he did not avow.…”

Exploring professional identities of nonnative‐English‐speaking teachers in the United States: A narrative case study

“…Contrary to studies which highlight the racialized ideology that causes non‐White ESL/EFL teachers to experience marginalization and disempowerment (Flores & Rosa, ; Park, ; Rosa & Flores, ), Wan seldom explicitly spoke of her peripheral participation in the ESL community as a result of non‐Whiteness. Although she was very aware of native and nonnative speaker status, she did not frame her experiences in terms of her ethnicity or in terms of non‐Whiteness.…”

“…When going to an English‐dominant country for professional training, NNESTs often find themselves positioned in comparison with NESTs. As Wan’s example illustrates, this comparison may lead to internalizing deficit thinking in terms of English language proficiency and teacher qualifications, if left unanalyzed (J. Miller, ; Nguyen & Yang, ; Park, ; R. Samimy & Brutt–Griffler, ). Rather than a positive label that acknowledges the benefits that NNESTs bring to the English language teaching profession (e.g., Selvi, ), the NNEST label reinforcing the native speaker fallacy is still prevalent in the field.…”

In This Issue

“…It is critical that we ask ourselves how we would encounter our work differently if our attention to LTI were deeply aware of the interconnected nature of the systems that we use for categorizing, oppressing, and discriminating. In particular, this could push us to look at how privileged and marginalized identities coexist in teachers' lives (Park, , in press; Park, Rinke, & Mawhinney, in press), and how these interact with the identities of their students, as well as the equivocal nature of privilege and marginalization as we consider the intersections of identity categories and how these are constructed, challenged, subverted, or maintained.…”

“…These narratives, and thus our journeys as language teacher educators (LTEs), are illustrative of Clarke's () argument that “… engaging in ‘identity work’ is indispensable” (p. 186) in our desire to “exercise professional agency, and thereby maximize [our] potential for development and growth” (p. 187) as we continue our commitment in various contexts in which we work. These narratives also serve the purpose of touching on the highlights of our scholarship in this area: Varghese's research on the formation of bilingual teachers' professional identities (, ), on religion and English language teachers (Johnston & Varghese, ; Varghese & Johnston, ), and her work with colleagues on theorizing language teacher identity (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, ); Motha's on English language teachers' racialized and colonized identities' (, , , , , in press; Motha, Jain, & Tecle, ); Park's on nonnative speaker teacher identities specifically focusing on the intersection of nonnative‐English‐speaking (NNES) teacher identities and gender, race, and class (, , ); Reeves's work on teacher investment in learner identity (, ); and Trent's research on native speaker teacher identities outside an inner circle English‐dominant country (, ). These narratives additionally demonstrate how unexpected observations and experiences have made the concept of LTI compelling for us, as it has been compelling for many in the field and as evidenced by the sheer number of submissions—123 abstracts—from all over the globe that we received for this special issue.…”