Mapping a Language(s) Journey in Science; From Learning Biology to Teaching Biology: An Autoethnography

Abstract

This paper focuses on my experience as an English as an Additional Language (EAL) student in the context of multiple emigrations and investigates the formation of my identity as an EAL science student, science Education researcher, and science teacher. The study was guided by both my innate curiosity and the research question that sought to explore which factors significantly affected my journey of developing my English language and science knowledge based on my experience as an EAL student. The second and third authors acted as critical friends to provide a layer of reliability to the study. Within the autoethnography methodology (Ellis et al., 2011), I used Bourdieu’s cultural capital to frame the thematic analysis (Bourdieu, 1986). In this paper, we show how the range of factors that affected my journey of developing my English language and science knowledge can be ascribed to Bourdieu’s cultural capital and we posit how support can be provided to future EAL students based on this.