Intersectional Identities and Teaching Practice in an Elementary General Classroom: A Case Study of a Plurilingual Teacher Candidate

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines how an ethnic Korean teacher candidate’s professional disposition and teaching in an elementary mainstream classroom were influenced by her identity variables at the intersection of privilege and marginalization. The findings demonstrate the participant’s identity negotiation through her past ethnolinguistic histories in China and current teacher preparation contexts in the United States. Despite her positive professional disposition for English-language learners, the participant faced inner tensions regarding her social class at a high-poverty urban school. Further, the participant encountered contextual tensions between the English-only approach and her desires in enacting her and students’ plurilingual identity as resources. The findings point to the importance of supporting plurilingual teachers’ teaching to recognize and cultivate the plurilingualism in English-only mainstream classrooms. Further research is needed to contextualize the intersectionality of plurilingual teacher identity with language learning and teaching, as a theory and methodology.