Growing as English Language Teachers: A Case Study of International Graduate Students in Toronto
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This qualitative case study explores how international graduate students (IGSs) who use and intend to teach English as an additional language construct their language teacher identity (LTI) in language teacher education (LTE) or related programs in Toronto. The study examines how intersecting personal and social identities influence IGSs’ LTI development and how they incorporate their own and their students’ identities into their teaching. It aims to illustrate how LTE programs can help IGSs optimize their identities to construct their desired LTIs and design identity-oriented pedagogies that meet diverse student demands.Framed by the frameworks of intersectionality and identity as pedagogy, the study sheds light on how IGSs’ identities are shaped by various social categories and power dynamics. These frameworks reveal the potential of IGSs to challenge marginalizing discourses and transform conventional language teaching practices. I collected data from nine IGSs at different stages of their studies through autobiographical descriptions, semi-structured and focus group interviews, participant-produced artifacts, and observations. The findings highlight the complex impact of IGSs’ diverse experiences across personal, interpersonal, and institutional levels on their LTI construction. Their professional aspirations, pedagogical practices, and perceptions of teacher responsibility are shaped by their personal traits, interactions with key stakeholders, and engagement with institutional policies and power structures. The findings suggest that a range of intersecting identities, beyond linguistic identity, have contributed to LTI development, sometimes aligning harmoniously, but often requiring ongoing negotiation and adaptation. IGSs actively incorporated their own and their students’ diverse identities into teaching through strategies like using authentic materials. However, they faced external (e.g., political narratives) and internal constraints (e.g., limited understanding of diverse student populations). These barriers complicated the implementation of identity-focused pedagogies, yet participants remained committed to leveraging identities as pedagogical resources. Participants selected their programs for their alignment with professional goals and Canada's multicultural environment. While they appreciated program support, they reported academic, professional, and personal challenges encountered during their studies. As a result, they advocated for more resources to help IGSs navigate these challenges and grow as English language teachers. The thesis concludes with methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical implications, with recommendations for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".