Moving beyond native-speakerism through identity-based teacher education: The roles of positioning and agency

Abstract

In the field of English language teaching, the deeply entrenched dichotomy between ‘native English-speaking teachers’ (NESTs) and ‘non-native English-speaking teachers’ (NNESTs) has forcibly positioned NNESTs as linguistically and pedagogically inferior to their native counterparts. The prevalence of native-speaker ideologies marginalizes NNESTs in professional settings and impedes their agency enactment in claiming identities as competent educators. Therefore, it is crucial to facilitate English teachers (especially NNESTs) to practice agency to (re)negotiate identities to move beyond native-speaker ideologies. Framed by positioning theory, this study investigates how 12 in-service English teachers worldwide exercised agency to (re)negotiate positions throughout an innovative identity-based intervention. The intervention, implemented in three online sessions across six weeks, instigated participants’ identity reflections based on three themes: theories, pedagogy and power. Each session comprised one online seminar and one self-reflective written task. Drawing on data from the intervention and pre- and post-intervention interviews, our findings yielded three distinct identity negotiation patterns, namely active, tentative and reluctant repositioning. Participants of each pattern presented unique combinations of repositioning acts, including resisting inferior positions, selectively engaging with empowering positions, shifting back to initial positions and maintaining existing positions. Agency and positioning were found to be reciprocally informed. While agency was practised to facilitate repositioning, the agentic positions teachers undertook influenced agency enactment as well. Participants’ choices of different repositioning acts were jointly mediated by their evaluation of native-speaker ideologies’ impact on their existing positions and their power to challenge native-speakerism in their own professional settings. At a theoretical level, this article provides a conceptual framework that illustrates the interconnectedness between the intervention, teacher identity and teacher agency. At a practical level, it demonstrates the effectiveness of implementing identity-based intervention in teacher education to foster NNESTs’ repositioning and agency enactment against the backdrop of native-speakerism.