Emotional Entanglements and Intersectional Language Teacher Identities in Critical Autoethnographic Narratives

In this study, I employ critical autoethnographic narrative (CAN) as a teacher-learning activity that pedagogizes identity in teacher education. I specifically rely on a white US-born teacher candidate's (Robert's) data, which included the following: four installments of CAN writing, four recorded individual feedback meetings, one discussion board post, visual mapping of CAN, recorded rubric co-construction, and recorded final CAN presentation. I utilized narrative inquiry procedures to analyze Robert's data to examine how his emotions entangled with his intersectional identities and surrounding ideologies as he constructed his English as a second language teacher in his CAN writing. I present my findings around four major themes with illustrative excerpts from Robert: (1) emotions entangled with intersectional identities, (2) emotional responses to dominant ideologies, (3) emotional engagement in acts of agency, and (4) identity tensions as loci of emotional entanglement. I discuss those findings in relation to the use of CAN in teacher education, the emotional dimensions of teachers’ intersectional identities, and identity tensions in understanding the relationship between identity, agency, and ideologies. I also share the implications of my findings for teacher educators who consider using CAN or incorporating identity, emotions, and agency in their practices.