Language use and novice teacher identity in an online Community of Practice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25170/ijelt.v15i2.1845Keywords:
novice language teachers, identity, online community of practiceAbstract
This paper investigates how novice Singaporean teachers indicate their professional and personal identities through language in an online Community of Practice (CoP). The six research participants were asked to post daily about their professional experiences of teaching using a social networking site and these were analyzed by Alsagoff’s (2010) Cultural Orientation Model which posits that standard and vernacular English use should not be considered as exclusive categories. The findings reveal that novice teachers shift their deployment of linguistic resources alongside a global and local orientation, expressing a multitude of identities. They index themselves as ‘friends’, a semi-professional identity that assumes supporting and encouraging their peers; as ‘beginning teachers’, recognizing the need for development, while at the same time expressing their confidence. Other identities expressed through language are ‘expert’ offering advice to their peers, and ‘insiders’, who converse in a jargon specific to their field. The data also highlights how growing professional confidence, personal emotions, and negotiations of status within a community contribute to the formation of teacher identities.
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Alsagoff, L. (2010). English in Singapore: Culture, capital, and identity in linguistic variation. World Englishes, 29(3), 336-348.
Alsup, J. (2006). Teacher identity discourses: Negotiating personal and professional spaces. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kiss, T., Ong, C. T., & Pelly, C. (2012). Student teachers’ perception of language use and their professional image. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 8(1), 77-118.
Bartels, N. (2003). How teachers and researchers read academic articles. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(7), 737-753.
Benwell, B., & Stokoe, E. (2006). Discourse and identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Brown, T., & McNamara, O. (2005). New teacher identity and regulative government: The discursive formation of primary mathematics teacher education. New York: Springer.
Canagarajah, A. S. (1997). Safe houses in the contact zone: Coping strategies of African-American students in the academy. College Composition and Communication, 173-196.
Cavallaro, F., & Chin, N. B. (2009). Between status and solidarity in Singapore. World Englishes, 28(2), 143-159.
Cheung, Y. L., Ben Said, S., & Park, K. (Eds.). (2015). Advances and current trends in language teacher identity research. Abingdon: Routledge.
Clarke, M. (2008). Language teacher identities: Co-constructing discourse and community (Vol. 8): Multilingual Matters.
Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danielewicz, J. (2001). Teaching selves: Identity, pedagogy, and teacher education. Albany: NY: State University of New York Press.
Driscoll, D. (2002). The Ubercool morphology of internet gamers: A linguistic analysis. Undergraduate. Research Journal for the Human Sciences. Retrieved from http://www.kon.org/urc/driscoll.html
Furlong, J., & Maynard, T. (1995). Mentoring student teachers: The growth of professional knowledge. London: Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2004). Learning language as a matter of learning social languages within Discourses. In M. R. Hawkins (Ed.), Language learning and teacher education: A sociocultural approach Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Goos, M. E., & Bennison, A. (2008). Developing a communal identity as beginning teachers of mathematics: Emergence of an online community of practice. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 11(1), 41-60.
Gunnarsson, B.-L. (2009). Professional discourse. London: Continuum.
Hall, S. (2000). 'Who needs "identity"? In P. D. Gay, J. Evans, & P. Redman (Eds.), Identity: A reader (pp. 15-30). London: Sage.
Hedgcock, J. S. (2002). Toward a socioliterate approach to second language teacher education. The Modern Language Journal, 86(3), 299-317.
Hedgcock, J. S. (2009). Acquiring knowledge of discourse conventions in teacher education. In A. Burns & J. C. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 144-152). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kanno, Y. (2004). Sending mixed messages: Language minority education at a Japanese public elementary school. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 316-338). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Kiss, T., Horvath, G., & Kamal, N. (2018). Professional online communities and networking in the EFL context: What makes them work? Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 15(1). http://journals.melta.org.my/index.php/majer/article/view/590
Kramer-Dahl, A. (2004). Abuses of grammar teaching: The role of crisis discourse in appropriating a potentially innovative language syllabus for Singapore schools. The Curriculum Journal, 15(1), 69-89.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From method to postmethod. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
Leimgruber, J. (2011). Singapore English. Language and Linguistics Compass, 5(1), 47-62.
Leung, C. (2009). Second language teacher professionalism. In A. Burns & J. C. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 49-58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Low, E. L., & Brown, A. (2005). English in Singapore: An introduction. Singapore: McGraw-Hill Education.
Miller Marsh, M. (2003). The social fashioning of teacher identities: Rethinking childhood. New York: Peter Lang Publishing
Morris, P. (1996). Asia's four little tigers: A comparison of the role of education in their development. Comparative Education, 32(1), 95-110.
Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity, and educational change. Harlow: Pearson Education.
Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 91, 33-40.
Richards, J. C. (2008). Second language teacher education today. RELC Journal, 39(2), 158-177.
Towndrow, P. A. (2005). Teachers as digital task designers: An agenda for research and professional development. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(5), 507-524.
VanTassel-Baska, J., MacFarlane, B., & Feng, A. (2008). A cross-cultural study of exemplary teaching: What do Singapore and the United States secondary gifted class teachers say. Gifted and Talented International, 21, 38-47.
Varnhagen, C. K., McFall, G. P., Pugh, N., Routledge, L., Sumida-MacDonald, H., & Kwong, T. E. (2010). Lol: New language and spelling in instant messaging. Reading and Writing, 23(6), 719-733.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Cambridge, USA: Harvard Business Press.
Zelenkauskaite, A., & Herring, S. C. (2006). Gender encoding of typographical elements in Lithuanian and Croatian IRC. Proceedings of cultural attitudes towards technology and communication, 474-489.
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2020-10-31
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