nonnative english-speaking teachers in the united states: issues of identity
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Nonnative English-speaking teachers inthe United States: issues of identityEduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo aa VP Education Partnerships, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ,USAPublished online: 03 Jun 2011.
To cite this article: Eduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo (2011) Nonnative English-speakingteachers in the United States: issues of identity, Language and Education, 25:5, 419-432, DOI:10.1080/09500782.2011.574702
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Language and EducationVol. 25, No. 5, September 2011, 419–432
Nonnative English-speaking teachers in the United States: issuesof identity
Eduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo∗
VP Education Partnerships, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
(Received 13 January 2011; final version received 17 March 2011)
The present study investigated how nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs)working in K-12 schools in the United States perceive their identities in relation tothe school environment and its norms, their coworkers and administrators and thestudents and their families. Specific attention was given to the teachers’ concerns priorto arrival and how initial challenges were overcome, their experiences in establishingauthority and creating a positive self-image in relation to the school community andthe role that language (in particular their status as NNESTs, and their bi/multilingualskills) played in defining these concerns and experiences. Results showed that teachers’bi/multilingual skills were crucial in defining their identities as unique professionalswith cultural sensitivity to students’ realities. However, it was also evident that native-speakerism (Holliday 2006) still affects the ways in which NNESTs are perceived (bothby themselves and by others) in the school environment.
Keywords: ESL; identity; ideology; bilingual teachers; linguistic identity
Introduction
Over the years, the practice of English language teaching (henceforth, ELT) has widelyaccepted the native speaker fallacy, which, according to Phillipson (1992, 193), ‘holdsthat the ideal teacher is a native speaker, somebody with native speaker proficiency inEnglish who can serve as a model for the pupils’. Phillipson explained that this belief, ‘hasdiverted attention away from the solution of urgent pedagogical questions, and preventedthe flourishing of local pedagogical initiative which could build on local strengths andlinguistic realities’ (199).
The issue of relying on native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) as the best models forELT has also been problematized by other scholars. Holliday, for instance, has used the termnative-speakerism, which he defines as: ‘a pervasive ideology within ELT, characterized bythe belief that “native-speaker” teachers represent a “Western culture” from which springthe ideals both of the English language and of English language teaching methodology’.This ideology, Holliday explains, ‘can be seen in many aspects of professional life, fromemployment policy to the presentation of language’ (Holliday 2006, 385).
In fact, several studies have shown the effects that the native speaker fallacy and/ornative-speakerism can have on institutional policies and practices (e.g. Canagarajah 1999;Liu 1999; Clark and Paran 2007). One of the most recent examples of these consequenceshappened in the state of Arizona, where teachers who are reported to speak English with
∗Email: [email protected]
ISSN 0950-0782 print / ISSN 1747-7581 onlineC© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09500782.2011.574702http://www.informaworld.com
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‘heavy accents’ were required to be removed from classrooms with students who are stilllearning English (Oboler 2010).
On the other hand, some states in the United States rely on NNESTs to work with theirEnglish language learners (ELLs). In the school year 2002–2003, it was reported that therewere over 10,000 international teachers in American public K-12 schools teaching severaldifferent subjects (Barber 2003), one of which is English as a second language (ESL).Given the fact that many of these teachers come from countries where English is not theprimary language (such as Spain and Latin American countries), and the pervasivenessof native-speakerism in ELT, it is important to understand the linguistic and professionalexperiences of these teachers, since such an understanding can shed light into how thenative speaker fallacy is possibly reflected and contested in the public school sphere in aninner circle country (as defined by Kachru 1992).
Therefore, the objective of the present study was to understand how NNESTs workingin K-12 schools in the United States perceive their identities in relation to the schoolenvironment and its norms, their coworkers and administrators and the students and theirfamilies. While I am fully aware of the political construct behind the terms native speaker asopposed to nonnative speaker, and of how they have been problematized by many scholars(e.g. Leung, Harris, and Rampton 1997; Butcher 2005), I have still chosen to use theseterms here as tools of inquiry. I am aware that this choice may be viewed as problematic, inthat it could reinforce the essentialized notions of native and nonnative, yet it was motivatedby the fact that the native/nonnative binary is still strongly present in ELT practice, despitethe growing awareness that scholars have of how problematic this dichotomy is.
For the purposes of this investigation, identity was defined in two ways: (1) ‘self-definition by groups or individuals’ (Edwards 2009, 258); and (2) ‘[B]eing recognized as acertain “kind of person”, in a given context’ (Gee 2001, 99). By using these two definitionsconcurrently, it is possible to address not only self-perception, but also how one’s image(s)is (are) observed and defined by others.
According to Gee, the importance of understanding issues of identity in public schoolslies in the fact that this particular construct is ‘an important analytic tool for understandingschools and society’. As Gee explained, ‘[A] focus on the contextually specific ways inwhich people act out and recognize identities allows a more dynamic approach than thesometimes overtly general and static trio of “race, class and gender”’ (Gee 2001, 99). Inthe specific case of NNESTs (particularly those working in inner circle institutions), theirnonnative (and foreign) status may play a significant part in the understanding of the rolesof language and sociocultural relations within the dynamics of public schools.
More specifically, I focused on the following three issues related to NNESTs identities:
� Teachers’ concerns prior to arrival and how initial challenges were overcome;� Experiences in establishing authority and creating a positive self-image in relation
to the school community;� The role that language (in particular their status as NNESTSs, and their
bi/multilingual skills) played in defining these concerns and experiences.
The first of these three factors is important to understand how NNESTs positionedthemselves in relation to their future environment (personal and professional), where En-glish is used as a primary language. This relates to the way in which Norton (2010, 355),drawing from the work of Wenger (1998) and Anderson (1991), defined imagined commu-nity: ‘A reconstruction of past communities and historically constituted relationships, butalso a community of the imagination – a desired community that offers possibilities for
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an enhanced range of identity options in the future’. The second factor is directly relatedto Zimmerman’s (1998) notion of situated identity (in this case the identity being thatof a teacher). It also relates to what Gee (2001) called institution-identity (I-identity), inthat it deals with power relations within an institution. Finally, the third aspect addressesthe overall importance of language for the construction and perception of the teachers’identities. This particular aspect was considered across the other two issues (concerns andexperiences), and also individually, since language is the main factor of consideration inthe present study.
Native and nonnative speaker identities: some relevant literature
It is important to understand that the notions of native vs. nonnative speaker, and theirimplications for identity issues in particular, have been considered problematic by severalscholars. One issue of concern is the use of the term native speaker itself. Butcher (2005,20), for instance, argues that the term is used to ‘create and sustain a national identity’,thus creating divisions between groups. Leung, Harris, and Rampton (1997) also see theterm as problematic, due to its inappropriateness to the realities of teachers and students.By drawing from the work of Hall (1988), they defend that: ‘members of minority groupsare not simple inheritors of fixed identities, ethnicities, cultures, and languages but areinstead engaged in a continual collective and individual process of making, remaking,and negotiating these elements’ (547). Thus, they propose that instead of using the termnative speaker, professionals ‘should be concerned with questions about language expertise,language inheritance, and language affiliation’ (543).
In fact, some studies have shown how relative the notion of the native speaker actually is.Liu (1999), for example, showed how seven NNESTs differed in their understandings andacceptance of this label, and how some of them actually navigated through native speakerand nonnative speaker identities depending on their contexts. As Liu defends, ‘people canhave multiple social identities. These identities can change with new experiences and newsocial interactions, according to people’s needs and their readiness to accept how they areperceived by others’ (95). Liu goes on to explain that the labeling of NEST vs. NNESThas several professional effects for teachers, one of which is the change of name by manyteachers, in an attempt to hide their nonnativeness.
Other studies have also addressed the consequences that the (non)native speaker labelsmay have on the professional realities and identities of teachers. In one of these studies,Tang (1997, 578) shows how NNESTs may feel a certain degree of ‘threatened confidenceand authority’, in spite of their advantages in possibly sharing a mother tongue with studentsand being able to relate to their experiences as learners. Amin (1997, 580) also discussesthe issues of authority and confidence, especially when it is considered that there is anassumption that ‘only native speakers know “real”, “proper”’ English. For Amin:
When the students give the message that they consider their teacher to be a nonnative speakerof English and therefore one who cannot teach them the English they want or feel they need,minority teachers are unable to effectively negotiate a teacher identity. (581)
In addition, Amin addressed the issue of race and its relation to the construct of being anative speaker of English. For her, there is a connection between being White and beingperceived as a native speaker of English. She argues that this connection influences theattitudes of students to non-White teachers, as well as their investment in learning English.
The issue of race in relation to (non)native status has also been discussed by Kubotaand Lin (2009, 8) (see also Chacon 2009). According to them, equating NESTs with White
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and NNESTs with non-White is a tendency that has blinded us ‘to the discriminationexperienced by teachers who do not fit this formula’, including Asian and black nativespeakers of English and white native speakers with a southern US accent. Indeed, theassociation between language and ethnicity is not exclusive to relations between nativenessand nonnativeness, as other scholars have shown (e.g. Giles and Johnson 1987; Giles andCoupland 1991).
Another important relation that needs to be taken into account is that between languageand nation-state (Edwards 2009). Doerr (2009), based on Pennycook (1994), discusses threemain ideological assumptions usually made in this sense: (1) that being a native speakerof a language is strictly connected to citizenship; (2) that language is homogeneous, andspoken by homogeneous communities; and (3) that native speakers of a language areusually associated with a high level of proficiency. Doerr relates these three concepts toIrvine and Gal’s (2000) ideological processes of iconization (indexing particular groupsas representations of a whole society), erasure (making other groups invisible) and fractalrecursivity (projecting an opposing group), respectively. In fact, Pennycook also presentsanother ideology that is prevalent in relation to the notion of a native speaker: ‘that thereis a rigid and clear distinction between being a native speaker and not being so’. Thisdifference, Pennycook argues, helps to perpetuate ‘language standards derived from thecentral English-dominant nations’ (Pennycook 1994, 176).
Finally, the issue of teachers’ perception has been considered directly by some studies.A good example is Inbar-Lourie’s (2005) quantitative investigation of the gap between selfand perceived identities of 102 EFL teachers. Inbar-Lourie’s results confirm ‘the existenceof an assumed gap between self and perceived identities’ among her participants (277).These results were interpreted as evidence that: ‘perceived native speaker identity is nota generalizable phenomenon but rather the product of the interaction between the judgeand the person being judged and the relevant knowledge both parties bring to the jointencounter’ (279). What Inbar-Lourie’s study seems to demonstrate is that (non)nativenessis not necessarily a ‘transportable’ identity (Zimmerman 1998) or a ‘nature-identity’ (Gee2001), as it may be believed by some; instead, perceptions of (non)nativeness may varydepending on context and other sociocultural factors.
Method
An anonymous survey with 19 open-ended questions was devised for the purposes ofthe present investigation. Eighteen of those questions directly addressed the three specificissues that were chosen as the basis of the study (teachers’ concerns prior to coming tothe US, their experiences in the schools and the role of language). One question (‘Do youfeel that having (or not having) native-like proficiency makes a difference in terms of howyou are perceived in your work environment in your own country? Please explain and/orprovide examples’) was used as a basis for understanding how participants’ answers abouttheir new work environment reflected beliefs from the old one. Recurrent themes relatedto the objectives of this investigation were identified. The responses to each question wereanalyzed individually based on these themes, and then categorized accordingly.
The choice to use direct questions in a survey format is interesting for at least tworeasons. First, it allows teachers to discuss their self-perceptions, which is a very importantfactor when considering identity. Second, it also allows teachers to reflect on how they wereperceived by others, based on issues that they consider important.
I also acknowledge, on the other hand, that there are limitations with this survey-basedapproach. First, a survey may be seen as a simple method to elicit one’s understandings of
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identity, which is a notion that involves emotion, reflection, negotiation and engagementwith the questions asked. Another limitation is the fact that others’ perceptions of theteachers are filtered through the eyes of the teachers themselves, which may be somewhatbiased. Finally, the questions were devised with a specific kind of identity in mind (NNEST),which may have led teachers to think of the issues presented in a particular way only. Noneof these limitations, however, invalidates the importance of understanding how teachersperceive themselves, how they think they are perceived, the role that their NNEST identitiesplay in their identities and the richness of the data collected.
Participants
Fifteen Brazilian teachers of ESL working in public elementary and middle schools in theSoutheast of the United States were contacted by email and asked to participate in thepresent study. All of them were at least 25 years old, and had at least one year of experienceteaching in the US at the time of the study. Seven of those teachers had already ended theirwork in American schools, and had either returned to their country of origin or startedteaching in another country. The other eight participants were still working in US publicschools when the study was conducted. The choice to contact teachers from the samecountry was motivated by the intent to have a more homogeneous group of participants,even though it is acknowledged that homogeneity is difficult, even among people fromsimilar backgrounds.
Eight teachers (out of the 15 who were contacted) responded to the call to participateand answered the survey questions. Of those, seven were female and one was male. Dueto the small number of participants, no further demographic questions were asked, in orderto make sure that their anonymity was protected. Participants were labeled with numbers(one through eight), for reference purposes.
Analysis and discussion
The responses to the questions were grouped based on the three specific categories relatedto the objective of the study: (1) concerns prior to arrival; (2) experiences in establishingauthority and a positive self-image; and (3) the role of language. Each of these categorieswas subdivided based on recurrent themes that were present in the participants’ answers.In what follows, I present an analysis of each of the three categories individually.
Concerns prior to arrival
The participants were specifically asked about their professional and linguistic concernsprior to arriving in the US, about whether any of these concerns turned out to be realisticand also about initial reactions from the school community upon their arrival. A discussionof major themes related to each of those issues is presented below.
Professional and linguistic concerns
In terms of professional issues, one of the biggest concerns identified was that of adjustingto a new educational system, as illustrated in statements 1 and 2 below (all emphases inparticipants’ statements were added by the present author):
Statement 1. ‘I was unsure of what the professional standards were before coming to theUSA. That made me feel not only insecure, but also worried about my performance as
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teacher in the American public school system. Often times, I wondered if the process andprocedures were the same; if the practices and workload were similar’. (Participant 1)
Statement 2. ‘I was worried about adjusting to a brand new educational system. I was notfamiliar with the curriculum or with what was expected from me as a teacher. I was notsure how far I could go as far as disciplining the kids, I frequently wondered if I would betoo harsh or too lenient for the American standards’. (Participant 4)
The worry of being able to adjust to a new educational system, especially consideringthat it is in a completely new environment, is in no way a surprise. However, what wasinteresting to observe in the data is that even when asked specifically about professionalconcerns (not linguistic ones), three teachers mentioned that their biggest worry was relatedto language issues, as exemplified in statements 3 and 4 below:
Statement 3. ‘I was wondering if I would be able to fulfill the school’s expecta-tions, especially regarding to the TL itself, since I am not a native English speaker’.(Participant 7)
Statement 4. ‘If the native speakers would respect me as an English teacher’.(Participant 6)
What these statements show is that teachers felt preoccupied that their NNEST identitywould interfere in their ability to ‘fulfill the school’s expectations’ and to be respected intheir profession. This concern is a clear example of the pressure that the native speakerfallacy puts on ELT practitioners worldwide (Phillipson 1992). It is also an illustration ofhow ownership of English is almost exclusively attributed to native speakers, in spite of thegrowing research awareness of English as an international language (Matsuda 2003).
Participants’ answers in relation to their linguistic concerns more specifically (notprofessional ones) were more revealing in terms of what exactly they feared in relationto their nonnative English speaker status. Six of them revealed that their accent, the useof idioms and being corrected by others were their major worries (the other two statedthat they had no linguistic concerns). This is noteworthy because it supports the idea thatnative-speaker identity has long been associated with discrete features (Lee in press, ascited in Kubota and Lin 2009), mainly related to speaking (such as pronunciation andidiomatic language), rather than sociolinguistic or sociocultural issues. It also reveals thatnative-speakerism can be seen and felt not only in terms of employment policy, but also inhow language itself is perceived (Holliday 2006), which may have a big impact in NNESTs’self-images.
Realistic concerns?
When discussing whether their concerns had turned out to be true, all participants statedthat there were some initial issues that needed to be addressed, mainly in terms of gettingacquainted with their new duties and routines, but that they were overcome. Moreover,the participants were more emphatic about their professional issues rather than their initiallinguistic concerns, suggesting that the challenge of adjusting to their new work environmentwas more evident than any issues related to language itself. Statements 5 and 6 are goodillustrations of teachers’ initial professional experiences:
Statement 5. ‘In the beginning it took a while to learn the new curriculum and toget adjusted to the way a teacher is supposed to discipline students in this country’.(Participant 4)
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Statement 6. ‘At first, it took me some time to adjust to the demands and expectations of anESL classroom. Using my previous knowledge of teaching EFL was relevant to the teachingof ESL’. (Participant 8)
As for linguistic adjustment, teachers usually reported that all it really took for them toadapt to the new environment was to ask for clarification or rephrase a previous utterance,and to get used to the ways people said particular things in their new environment. These arecommon strategies in the negotiation of meaning among speakers of different varieties ofthe same language, independent of their native or nonnative status. As Nelson (2008, 303)has explained, ‘[N]egotiation is an integral part of skilled participation in conversations inany language and culture’.
What participants’ answers suggest in terms of their identities, therefore, is that theirNNEST status did pose some challenges to their adaptation in the US schools, but thatthese were not major issues, in spite of the fact that they had anticipated linguistic concerns.Rather, they had to put more effort into overcoming their initial professional issues, suchas adjusting their teaching practices to the new curricula and educational environment.
Reactions from the school community
Most participants (six, to be exact) stated that they felt that the school community as a whole(administrators, coworkers, students and parents) had positive reactions to them upon theirarrival, as shown in the following statements:
Statement 7. ‘Parents were very positive to find out a non-native English speaker wasteaching their children. They felt their children had a role model, whose background wasfrom a Latin American country’. (Participant 2)
Statement 8. ‘When I arrived at school, my principal was so happy to have me there. Hesaid I was really “needed” there. All the teachers were very supportive and didn’t knowhow an ESL program would work. At first, students were not very excited, but since theywere teenagers I didn’t worry a lot. Later on, whey they got to know me, we built a fantasticrelationship, and they would see me as a friend, a mentor’. (Participant 6)
Statement 9. ‘Since I taught ESL and can speak Spanish, the parents were really happysince we could communicate and I would be able to help their kids better’. (Participant 7)
It is interesting to observe that positive reactions such as the ones described in statements7–9 were mostly based on three issues: (1) teachers’ background; (2) their expertise in ESL;and (3) their proficiency in Spanish (the prevalent language among ELLs in many of theschools where participants taught). Thus, it may be argued that teachers’ identities wereinitially perceived more on the basis of what they could add to the school environmentswhere they worked than on the basis of their nonnative English speaker status. In fact, onlyone teacher (participant 3) reported a somewhat negative reaction due to linguistic issues(she stated that one teacher corrected her English when she said something ‘wrong’).
Authority and image(s)
Perceptions of authority and participants’ images were analyzed from two angles: self-perceptions and others’ perceptions. In addition, an analysis of how teachers felt theirrelationships with members of the school community had evolved through time was alsoconsidered. A discussion of these issues is presented below.
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Self-perceptions
Teachers’ self-perceptions varied in interesting ways. While half of them stated that theyhad never questioned their own authority or linguistic ability, others shared that there weremoments when they did feel insecure about these issues. In terms of authority, the teacherswho did question themselves reported reasons related to the little knowledge they had aboutthe school system upon arrival, having to deal with students other than their own and thefear of discrimination from coworkers.
As for language issues, the participants who did question their own abilities at one pointor another did so based on the fear of not knowing specific vocabulary and/or idiomaticexpressions, or not understanding coworkers’ sense of humor. These may seem like minorissues, since they do not pertain to teaching itself; they are probably caused by the fearof being negatively judged by peers and other members of the school community. Asparticipant 1 explained:
Statement 10. ‘That had nothing to do with my expertise in teaching English as a secondlanguage, for teaching in itself goes beyond such subtleties’. (Participant 1)
Still, the fact that some teachers did feel some kind of fear or preoccupation in relation totheir linguistic skills deserves some attention. What seemed evident from the data was thatparticipants’ identities as teachers were rarely questioned by themselves; when questioningdid happen it was more related to participants’ fears of being perceived negatively by othermembers of the school community, mainly their colleagues, due to linguistic issues suchas idioms or vocabulary. This shows that even details (and many times, especially details)may be used to establish boundaries between native and nonnative speakers, and that thesedetails can cause insecurity even to qualified, proficient NNESTs. This is evidence thatessentialized notions of nativeness may exert unnecessary pressure on nonnative speakers,who should be seen as competent bi/multilingual speakers in their own right, rather thanbeing judged based on idealized notions of monolingual native speakers (Cook 1999).
Others’ perceptions
Six out of the eight participants did not feel that their authority was ever questioned orthreatened by anyone else in the school community. Moreover, seven of them did not feelthat their expertise was ever doubted by anybody. In responding to the issue of authority,participant 3 stated that she only felt a threat when the hiring freeze and job cuts in hercounty started to get ‘really bad’, which indicates that her feeling of threat was actuallycaused by factors external to her language or professional expertise, or to the way she wasperceived in the school community.
The only other teacher who discussed a feeling of authority and expertise being ques-tioned was participant 1. However, he described how he was able to overcome this feeling,as shown in the following statement:
Statement 11. ‘Only in the first year because the culture of having foreigners in thatparticular school was not well developed. Once the ESL population and program developedas a county, teachers and other staff members began to accept me in their niche. I was thenable to show my expertise in the field besides feeling hurt from the first impressions I had theyear before. Delivering workshops at the state level, and providing staff with research-basedstrategies made me feel more accepted in the school as a whole’. (Participant 1)
Finally, only two participants stated that they felt that their linguistic ability was everquestioned. One of them stated that the reason was due more to insecurity, rather than
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something that came directly from the other members of the school community. The otherteacher, however, described an occasion when her accent was questioned for the purposesof testing, as shown in statement 12:
Statement 12. ‘The only time I felt that not my authority, but my ability as a teacher waskind of questioned, was by the end of the school year. [State tests] were coming and theprincipal of my school came to me to say that I was not gonna administer the test becauseof my accent. He said that parents could complain about it, so it was better that anotherteacher did it and I was gonna be the proctor’. (Participant 5)
It is clear from this example (and from most of the other answers given by participant 5,who was one of the teachers who reported her experiences as having been very positive inmost cases) that the accent-based boundary which was used to separate her from the otherteachers in this case was caused not only by the principal’s attitude, but also, and perhapsmore importantly, by the fear of accountability that is associated with ‘official’ artifacts,such as state tests. This ‘official’ status of the document itself creates an expectation thatthose who administer it also need to speak with an ‘official’ (i.e. standardized) model;one that is usually associated to the homogeneous, essentialist notion of the native speaker(Pennycook 1994; Doerr 2009), thus rendering the teacher’s nonnative identity a supposedlylower status.
Relationships
The issue of how the participants related to the other members of the school communitywas particularly interesting for two main reasons: (1) all participants reported positiveexperiences overall; (2) the factors that influenced perceptions of positive experience variedaccording to the different groups with whom the participants interacted (i.e. administrators,colleagues, students or parents).
In the case of relationships with administrators and colleagues, for instance, most ofthe answers described good relations based on the assignment of duties, or participation inschool activities, which was an indication of trust and respect, as shown in the followingexamples:
Statement 13. ‘They like my work and have assigned me to several leadership positions atschool from Social Committee Chairperson to LEP/Testing coordinator’. (Participant 3)
Statement 14. ‘I feel more comfortable questioning my fellow teachers and working togetheras a team where everyone contributes with something’. (Participant 4)
Statement 15. ‘They would ask me to perform certain tasks and expected me to acceptcertain jobs (such as in a cultural fair, teacher/parent meetings, book fair, tutoring, ESLclasses for parents, etc)’. (Participant 8)
As for relationships with parents, one of the biggest indications of good relationshipswas the ability to communicate with them in Spanish, a factor that led parents to count onthe international teachers for ‘support and help’ (Participant 4). Finally, the relationshipswith students were described as positive based on an increased approximation, which hasbeen interpreted by teachers as a sign of respect and trust. One particular reason for suchapproximation, according to some teachers, was an increasing awareness of the teachers’cultural backgrounds, and of what they shared with parents and the students themselves, asexemplified below:
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Statement 16. ‘Students became closer over time. They felt more confident asking aboutBrazil as they noticed that their parents and I had similar background’. (Participant 2)
The responses given by participants in terms of relationships with all other membersof the school community (administrators, colleagues, students and parents) showed thatoverall, teachers felt a sense of belonging and importance within the school as a whole. Moreimportantly, this feeling was caused not only by their adaptation to the new environment(in which case they were able to perform certain duties), but also by the uniqueness in howthey were perceived in terms of expertise, language skills and cultural backgrounds. Thesefactors, according to the teachers’ answers, seemed to play a very important role in definingtheir identities as unique members of the school community, in the sense that they couldperform certain activities that their colleagues could not.
The role of language
In this section, I discuss two issues that came up in relation to the role of language otherthan the ones already presented previously: participants’ bi/multilingual skills, and theimportance of (non)nativeness in their previous experience(s) in Brazil.
Bi/multilingualism
The most important language-related issue that teachers discussed was the importance of be-ing bilingual and/or multilingual in their work. All participants felt that their bi/multilingualskills had a very positive impact not only on their daily work with students, but also inbuilding relationships with parents, thus offering a positive image to colleagues and admin-istrators. The following statements are examples of what participants said in this respect:
Statement 17. ‘Being able to know the root of most romance languages provided me withthe ability to convey meaning using cognates. Students would then use their knowledge ofL1 to understand L2’. (Participant 1)
Statement 18. ‘It has helped me a lot with newcomers and kindergarten students. I felt thatthe school really appreciated the fact that they had me as part of their staff ’. (Participant 5)
Statement 19. ‘Sometimes the student didn’t feel comfortable speaking in English or didn’tknow how to do it, I would speak to him in Spanish’. (Participant 6)
Statement 20. ‘Students enjoyed the idea of having a nonnative speaker as they saw me asa capable and successful language learner. Mostly, I could help them with some concernssuch as a way to translate a word, use of cognates and most importantly, understandingtheir cultural and social differences’. (Participant 8)
As shown, teachers’ bi/multilingual skills were used to help students build metalinguisticstrategies (use of cognates, for instance), to assist and build relationships with newcomers,and to build sociocultural understanding. Moreover, the example given by participant 8(statement 20) about having a successful language learner as a model for students is ofcrucial importance, as it is based on the notion of multicompetence, defined by Cook(1999, 190) as ‘the total language knowledge of a person who knows more than onelanguage’, and thus challenges the ideological assumption that native speakers are the onlyor the best models for language learners.
In the case of parents, being able to speak Spanish was considered a very importantfactor, since it allowed teachers to help families in parent–teacher conferences, school
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meetings and other events and to establish positive relations with them, as previouslydiscussed (in the subsection entitled ‘Reactions from the school community’).
As discussed by participant 5 (statement 18), the use of these and other strategies basedon bi/multilingual skills helped teachers create an identity of uniqueness and expertise thatwas appreciated by the school community. It is noteworthy that such expertise was notbased on being a native speaker of the target language, but rather on being proficient inmultiple languages, and knowing how to use them for the benefit of students, families andcolleagues. Therefore, this view of expertise supports Pavlenko’s claim that teachers can‘construe themselves and their future students as legitimate L2 users rather than as failednative speakers’ (Pavlenko 2003, 251), legitimizing new identity options that challengethe native/nonnative dichotomy, such as linguistic diverse. As Edwards (2009, 248) hasexplained, ‘some have argued that increases in linguistic repertoire correlate with heightenedsensitivity, enhanced cultural awareness, perhaps even greater cognitive flexibility and all-round nous’. The examples of the participants in the present study seem to confirm thatbelief, at least to a certain extent.
(Non)nativeness in participants’ home country
One final factor that deserves some attention is the role that (non)nativeness had playedin the participants’ previous experiences. This aspect is important because it may help toexplain at least some of the feelings (e.g. concerns, fears and self-doubt) that the teachershad in relation to their new work context.
When addressing this specific factor, six participants stated that having native-likeproficiency (and/or having lived in an inner circle country) is considered important (forsome, at least) in the Brazilian ELT context. As summarized by participant 1:
Statement 21. ‘Not having native-like proficiency in my country is something that diminishesyou as a professional. No one will respect your educational background if you do nothave native-like proficiency. Not only that, students demand that you as a teacher have tosound like the actors or singers they are accustomed to listen to. Besides, most languageinstitutions in Brazil tend to rely on professionals who have lived or worked abroad. Thatwas the only thing I did not have in my resume back then’. (Participant 1)
As for the participants who did not say that native-like proficiency was an issue inBrazilian ELT, one of them (participant 3) stated that she ‘hoped’ such status was not thebasis of any discrimination. As for the other teacher (participant 4), she only stated thatbeing able to speak ‘great English’ did not depend on whether or not one had ever lived inan inner circle country. In other words, neither of these two participants was emphatic inmaking the claim that native-like proficiency is not important in Brazilian ELT.
The fact that most participants felt the need for native-like proficiency in Brazil isrevealing in two ways. First, it helps to explain why some of them had felt pressure andconcern due to their nonnative status before coming to the US. Considering that suchstatus may ‘diminish’ you as a professional in Brazil, it is not surprising to observe thatESL teachers from that context may be very demanding about their English proficiencies.Second, the stress on sounding like a native speaker (e.g. students ‘demand’ that you ‘sound’native-like) helps to explain why some teachers were concerned about discrete skills, suchas accent, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions.
One interesting comment made by participant 2, on the other hand, was that althoughshe agreed that there was a ‘bias’ against nonnative speakers, she still felt that some peoplein Brazil prefer nonnative teachers due to the fact that they have gone through the process
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of learning another language. Although this may be true, it still does not seem to be thetrend in Brazilian ELT, as some studies have shown (e.g. Friedrich 2000, 2002; Rajagopalan2005).
Conclusion
The data presented in this study give support to previous claims in relation to the pervasivenotion of the native speaker in ELT. First, it certainly aligns with Tang’s (1997) argument thatNNESTs feel at least a certain level of threat and insecurity in relation to their confidenceand authority. Moreover, the present study also confirms that the dichotomy of native vs.nonnative is usually discussed in terms of discrete (speaking) skills, rather than social,ethnic, cultural and racial ones. It is important that teachers be made aware of the impactthat these other factors have on perceptions of the native speaker and the relations of powerestablished by them (see Kubota forthcoming). One particular limitation of the presentstudy is that this issue was not addressed explicitly with teachers, and therefore no claimsabout their experiences in relation to race and ethnicity can be made here.
On the other hand, it was very interesting to see that teachers’ professional identities,especially in relation to authority and expertise, were not solely dependent on their nonnativestatus; quite the contrary, it seemed that having bi/multilingual skills, and the ability torelate to students’ and parents’ cultures played a very positive part in how the participants’identities were constructed in their workplaces. This is particularly informative for placesthat have restrictive language policies, such as Arizona, where discriminatory measuresagainst teachers with ‘heavily accented or ungrammatical English’ are being implementedbased on ideological assumptions, rather than empirical research.
Still, many of the answers given by the participants of the present study showed thatnative-speakerism is still present in one way or another among NNESTs, and that a nativespeaker identity is very much valued in ELT. As explained by Rajagopalan (2005, 286),most NNESTs ‘have been literally brainwashed into believing that their highest goal shouldbe to be so proficient in the language as to be welcomed into the community of nativespeakers as “regular” members’. While this ultimate desire to sound native may not bevery strong among the teachers surveyed in this study, the consequences of the type ofbrainwashing presented by Rajagopalan are certainly evident.
What the data presented here reveal, thus, is that there is a tension between teachers’ per-ceptions of an identity of bilingualism and legitimacy (Pavlenko 2003) and the still prevalentdiscourse of a native/nonnative dichotomy. In other words, the agency and self-assurancethat teachers do have and feel in relation to their linguistic and professional identities arein constant conflict with the still strong discourse in ELT practice of native speaker su-periority. The Brazilian teachers surveyed here certainly show that they experience thesetwo conflicting identities (the one they choose, i.e. bilingual, and the one that is placed onthem, i.e. nonnative) simultaneously. Moreover, their accounts of how (non)nativeness isexperienced in their home country are certainly revealing in that the previous conceptual-izations that teachers and learners bring of language, nation and culture (to name a few)play a very important role in how the native/nonnative dichotomy is experienced, contestedand sometimes even reinforced by them.
Therefore, my view is that in order to address this tension, scholars and educators needto engage in a deep exploration of constructs such as culture, ethnicity, nation, language,nationalism and bilingualism, to cite a few, that are and have been available to each ofus, and how they have shaped our views and understandings of identity, agency, teachingand learning. This view is in alignment with Norton’s claim that: ‘language educators and
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researchers have the primary goal of examining the social, historical, and cultural contexts inwhich language learning and teaching takes place, and how learners and teachers negotiateand sometimes resist the diverse positions those contexts offer them’ (Norton 2010, 351),and with research on how imagined communities relate to English language teaching andlearning (e.g. Pavlenko and Norton 2007). In the particular case of K-12 schools, theseissues need to be understood also in relation to how the school as an institution (includingadministrators, staff and parents) understands and portrays language and culture, and tothe value it gives to (or takes away from) bilingualism, multiculturalism and diversity ingeneral. The understanding of these issues, I believe, may lead to a more informed andempowered resistance of the native speaker fallacy, one that is conscious of how this fallacyis constructed and perpetuated locally and globally, historically and culturally, institutionallyand individually.
In the present study, in particular, the acknowledgement by schools and parents of theimportance of having bi/multilingual, culturally sensitive educators, as well as the self-assurance that the participants surveyed had in relation to their expertise as ESL teachers,are certainly very positive. As Rajagopalan (2005, 287) stated, ‘the figure of the nativespeaker is increasingly being seen today as a concept shot through with ideological, indeedoften racist, connotations’. However, recent measures like the ones adopted in Arizonashow that we certainly have a long way to go.
AcknowledgementsSpecial thanks to Professor Karen Adams from Arizona State University for her valuable commentson this piece. Any errors and omissions that remain in this study are my responsibility.
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