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EAL teachers’ identity and agency : The impact of participant positioning through in-service professional development
conference contribution
posted on 2014-01-01, 00:00 authored by Laura Gurney, Indika LiyanageIndika Liyanage, H GharachorlooIt is commonly believed that opportunities for in-service professional development (PD) contribute to teachers’ professional growth and identities, which in turn result in improved practice and longevity in the profession. Despite this potential, in-service professional development also has the propensity to limit and disempower teachers’ identity, actions, and agency in the classroom through different re-articulations of these within institutional values and through participant positioning (Anderson, 2009). Using post-participation reflections of in-service PD activities by two practicing teachers of English as an Additional Language (EAL) in tertiary settings in Queensland, Australia, we explored the potential that in-service PD opportunities had towards re-articulation of teacher identity, actions, and agency within tertiary settings. All in-service PD sessions reflected upon by the two participants had been delivered in a traditional format with a specified curricular focus and were run at participants’ institutions of employment. In the case of the two participants in this study, the findings indicated that the institutionally endorsed in-service PD activities that they had undertaken had undesired consequences. We discuss these findings with implications for EAL teachers’ identity and agency with a particular emphasis on the design and delivery of institutional offerings of professional development activities specific to the growing and dynamic field of EAL teaching and teacher development.
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Event
Vaka Pasifiki Education Conference (2014 : Nuku'alofa, Kingdom of Tonga)Pagination
60 - 66Publisher
University of the South Pacific PressLocation
Nuku'alofa, Kingdom of TongaPlace of publication
Suva, FijiStart date
2014-09-24End date
2014-09-25ISBN-13
9789820109315Language
EngPublication classification
E1.1 Full written paper - refereedCopyright notice
2014, The University of the South PacificEditor/Contributor(s)
[Unknown]Title of proceedings
Weaving theory and practice in teacher education : Proceedings of the Vaka Pasifiki Education Conference 2014Usage metrics
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