“English Made Me Feel Proud of Myself”:
Student-Teachers’ Evolving Identities within an English-Medium Teacher Education Degree
Abstract
This case study aims to track longitudinally how the imagined identities as English users of two student-teachers evolve during the English-Medium Primary Teacher Education Bachelor’s Degree (EMI-TED) offered by one public university in Catalonia (Spain). The study draws on the identity approach to second language acquisition and Communities of Practice (CoP) perspective on learning. Adopting a qualitative and interpretive approach, the combination of thematic analysis and narrative analysis of individual interviews and linguistic autobiographies shows how the participants’ imagined identities expand and evolve towards fuller participation in real English-medium CoPs as they reposition themselves in relation to English. The analysis also reveals the effect that their investments in learning English have on their identities while they gain more legitimacy as English users due to the process of ‘internationalization at home’, i.e. studying the EMI degree at the home university. The findings indicate that the EMI-TED constitutes a particularly empowering context for those students without any prior experience of participating in real English-medium CoPs. Its international dimension not only affords such students numerous opportunities for language learning and use within their local realities but also allows them to envisage a new range of identities, without negatively affecting their local selves.
Keywords
imagined identities, investment, communitites of practice (CoP), empowerment, English-Medium Instruction (EMI)References
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