Becoming a language teacher educator: An outsider perspective (original) (raw)

This is a reflective piece theorizing my personal and academic experiences working with preservice teachers who are pursuing a Teaching English as a Second Language Certificate with immersion experience participating in a study abroad program teaching English to university students in Ecuador. Teaching predominantly white students as a woman of color is always full of stories, both real and imaginary. This is an opportunity to theorize the role of non-native English speakers guiding preservice teachers to teach English learners in the global south while discussing or contesting language aspects such as pronunciation, accuracy, proficiency, among others. The teacher education field is complex enough as students try to figure out what they need to know to develop their own teaching practice based on a combination of theories, ideas, teaching models, and sets of rules enacted by schools, without a prescriptive set of guidelines to follow for perfect results. Teaching is a completely unpredictable undertaking since it varies based on student's needs, diverse sociocultural contexts, and personal identities of teachers, among many other factors involved in the outcomes, and language teaching is not the exception. Yet, the latest research on language teaching suggests turning the attention to the development of language teacher identity (Sang, 2022). Hence, it is also important to consider the identity of language teacher educators, especially those who are non-native speakers. This is particularly important in supporting the efforts of language teacher educators who are endeavoring toward enacting decolonizing the curriculum and pedagogies. Barkhuizen (2021) identifies 14 categories as partial representations of the types of language teacher educators according to their roles, place