Toward identity-oriented teacher education: Critical autoethnographic narrative

University of Alabama Recent work on the theorization and exploration of language teacher identity contends that teacher education practices should focus on teacher identity as an explicit focus, yet little is known regarding how teacher identity can be integrated in TESOL teacher education. This article describes a teacher learning tool called critical autoethnographic narrative that can be utilized to promote identity-oriented TESOL teacher preparation. Theoretically, the design of this tool relies on the earlier work on critical language teacher education (Hawkins & Norton, 2009), autoethnography as an account of identity development (Canagarajah, 2012), narrative as a teacher learning tool (Johnson & Golombek, 2011), and narrative as identity construction (Barkhuizen, 2016). As a program-wide endeavor, critical autoethnographic narrative requires teacher candidates’ ongoing engagement with their narrative account through coursework and internship by attempting to deconstruct the dominant discourses with teacher educators’ feedback. Acknowledging TESOL teachers as knowledge generators, such endeavors also encourages teacher candidates to make contributions to scholarly publications with their narratives. The article closes with the description of possible challenges for teacher educators.

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