Translingual‐identity‐as‐pedagogy: Problematizing monolingually oriented “native‐nonnative” identity constructions through critical dialogues in EAP classrooms

Abstract

College programs in English for academic purposes (EAP) continue to use deficit “native/nonnative” labels despite a well established academic discourse (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018) that successfully critiques these constructs as being counter to the values of equity, diversity, and inclusion espoused by most higher education institutions. There is a need, therefore, to create spaces within EAP classrooms for students to problematize these constructs, and to provide them with alternative more equitable identity options, as exemplified in the research presented here. The practitioner‐research study focuses on how an EAP instructor fostered critical dialogues in the classroom around “native‐nonnative” identities by drawing upon her own translingual‐identity‐as‐pedagogy. Applying a pluralistic practitioner‐research design and integrating appropriate ethical research generation and collection methods (Jain, 2013, 2014), the researcher coded classroom data using adapted grounded theory and then employed critical and sociocultural lenses to interpret the data. The analyses revealed that by fostering critical dialogue and drawing upon her own translingual identity in her pedagogy (Jain et al., 2021a), the author was able to create opportunities for students to deconstruct the prescriptive “native/nonnative” labels and move beyond their initial over‐simplistic assumptions to a more nuanced understanding of the constructs.