ERIC Number: EJ753075
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Sep
Pages: 24
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-8322
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Racializing ESOL Teacher Identities in U.S. K-12 Public Schools
Motha, Suhanthie
TESOL Quarterly: A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect, v40 n3 p495-518 Sep 2006
Through a year-long critical feminist ethnography, this article examines the challenges faced by beginning K-12 ESOL teachers in the United States as they grappled with the significance of their own racial identities in the process of negotiating the inherent racialization of ESOL in their language teaching contexts. I foreground the significance of race in the teaching, language, and identities of four K-12 public school teachers; three White and one Korean American, whose orientations were specifically antiracist. The study examined the implications of teachers' privileged status as native speakers of standard English, a raced category, within an institutional culture that underscored the supremacy of both Whiteness and native speaker status. The study found the teachers' practice to be complexified by their attentiveness to their own and their students' racial identities and by their consciousness of the situatedness of their practice within a broader sociopolitical context. The findings also illustrated the ways in which the teachers negotiated spaces in which they could challenge the silent privilege accorded to Standard American English by problematizing school policies surrounding World English and African American Vernacular English. Implications for theory, practice of teaching English to speakers of other languages, teacher education, and professional development are discussed. (Contains 1 table and 4 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Standard Spoken Usage, North American English, Race, Elementary Secondary Education, English (Second Language), Public School Teachers, Native Speakers, Language Teachers, Korean Americans, Ethnography, Beginning Teachers, Second Language Instruction, Teacher Education, Professional Development, Feminism, Whites
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. 700 South Washington Street Suite 200, Alexandria, VA 22314. Tel: 888-547-3369; Tel: 703-836-0774; Fax: 703-836-7864; Fax: 703-836-6447; e-mail: info@tesol.org; Web site: http://www.tesol.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A