Policy Drag & Resiliency: Teachers’ Response to Voluntary Language Policy in Southeastern Estonia

Abstract

How does resilience among teachers shape their appropriation of language policy? Drawing on the history of Estonian schools during both the Soviet occupation and the subsequent period of independence, this chapter investigates how linguistic repression and resilience unfold across space and time. I identify moments of personal and professional resilience across the arc of teachers’ schooled lives, from their time as students to their work as professionals, and the ways these experiences influence the ways they take up language policy in southeastern Estonia. I draw attention to the ways that contexts, in this case, policy environments, shape the lives of teachers and their language policy appropriation. This analysis draws on data from a diachronic, qualitative yearlong, school-based ethnography in southeastern Estonia in 2001–2002, with follow-up research in the same region in 2013–2014. I find individual teachers’ resiliency fosters a sense of purpose for their language-related teaching and activism, and shapes their retention in and role as recruiters for an optional school-based language program. In order to sustain a long-term, non-dominant language program in a context of language shift, the next generation of teachers must be provided with effective pre- (initial) and in-service teacher education.