Languaged lives: A new perspective on teacher identity

Abstract

Teachers of languages generally strive to pass on their love of language in their teaching. As plurilinguals, they work with at least two languages. Students also are frequently plurilinguals, navigating between the different contexts of use of language in their various languages, practices that often go unnoticed in the education system, where they may be required to work in one language, or one language at a time, in a dedicated languages classroom. In this paper, teachers are invited to reflect on their languaged lives, or the relationship between the language(s) they teach and the languages of their histories and heritage, and which figure in determining their identity(ies). New ways of thinking about ‘proficiency’ open up spaces for valuing various levels of use and engagement with languages, and of seeing these as semiotic or meaning-making resources, which impact not only on the teachers’ lives, but how they interact with students, and how they value and acknowledge students’ various language resources, and can usefully invite students to make use of these resources in the classroom.