Volume: 27  Number: 3  Page: 211–224

Bilingual Teachers-in-the-making in Urbantown

Manka M. Varghese College of Education, Curriculum and Instruction, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

This study, based on ethnographic methods, explores how the professional identities of a group of bilingual (Spanish/English) Latino/a teachers-in-the-making in an urban public school district in the USA are formed and enacted. It illustrates the national and local discourses that influence novice bilingual teachers in their professional identities. But it also focuses on the structural influences and the ways that teachers respond to such influences. The study found that teachers developed a complex, sometimes conflicted, sense of their professional identities and these were mediated by their responses to their marginalisation, their professional development, local setting(s) and their personal histories. Another important finding of this study was the resulting variation of professional identities the teachers enacted due to a host of influences, causing some to leave the profession and others to stay. This research suggests viewing professional development for bilingual teachers as a place where discussion and dissent is encouraged, and a process of what teachers may become rather than solely what they should know. It also underscores the importance of viewing professional development and the making of bilingual teachers as an interaction of structural and agentive influences.

Keywords: bilingual teachers, professional identities, teacher education, professional development, bilingual education

© 2006 M.M. Varghese

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