Legitimate Pluralities: Preparing Future Language Educators to View National Culture(s) through an Inclusive Lens

Abstract

Focusing on the case of Foreign Language (FL) teacher preparation, this article makes the case that when teacher candidates conceptualize and in turn represent to students singular notions of national culture, they may be perpetuating existing social relationships of marginalization. As a means to break this cycle at the level of teacher education, the concept of legitimate pluralities is introduced. This concept is an application of discursive theories of nationalism to the context of language teacher education and refers to a teacher perspective that legitimizes diverse cultural expressions of the nation conventionally erased from classroom representations. Legitimate pluralities calls on teachers to contextualize the national mainstream as one possibility out of other potentials and to re-assert national representation on inclusive rather than exclusive grounds. Illustrative examples from teacher education coursework are provided.