Teachers’ Transnational Identities as Activity: Constructing Mobility Systems at the Intersections of Gender and Language Difference

Abstract

AbstractWhile studies following a translingual orientation have demonstrated the potential for decolonial pedagogical practices (Cushman, 2016), including teachers’ self‐decolonization by drawing on their translinguistic identities (Motha, Jain, & Tecle, 2012), a translingual paradigm and pedagogy also has the potential to address “the intersection of several structuring nodes in the colonial matrix of power” (Cushman, 2016, p. 238). Some studies have put forth women’s narratives and lived experiences as teachers (Motha, Jain, & Tecle, 2012; Park, 2017); however, few studies have investigated identity construction at the intersections of language and gender when teachers are asked to explicitly engage in translingual and transnational labor. Drawing on mobility systems (Fraiberg, 2018), Individual Networks of Practice (INoPs) (Zappa‐Hollman & Duff, 2015), and translingualism (Canagarajah, 2012), this qualitative study offers a detailed account of how four emergent teacher scholars construct their teaching identities when they were encouraged to scrutinize transnational spaces and identities. In particular, the study has two purposes: 1) to investigate the decolonial potential of translingual and transnational paradigms as emergent teacher scholars reflect on their identities at the intersections of language and gender and 2), to document identity reconstruction in relation to the environments and sociocultural contexts of their transnational experiences. Besides the affordances of narrative and/or autobiographical writing through translingual and transnational perspectives, the study demonstrates the benefits of identity reconstruction through mobile systems (Fraiberg, 2018) in creating opportunities for agency within oppressive discourses of language and gender in the TESOL field.