Teacher Identity and EL-Focused Professional Learning in a Suburban Middle School

Abstract

Suburban middle schools have been affected by a growing enrollment of English language learners and by the need to demonstrate that this population of students is meeting prescribed academic proficiency benchmarks. These developments necessitate cogent, English learner–focused professional learning across content areas. Using Gee’s perspective on identity, this article examines the engagement of one suburban middle school teacher in a professional learning series focused on English learner (EL) content area literacy. It highlights the impact of school-based structures and teacher discourse on professional learning, and it suggests potentially potent mediators of EL-focused professional learning in a suburban middle school setting. Overall, the study informs teacher educators’ efforts to optimize EL-focused professional learning. The article also offers a critique of Gee’s identity framework as a lens for analyzing teacher identity.