Demystifying native speaker ideology: The critical role of critical practice in language teacher education

Abstract

This case study demonstrates how the identity of a Korean nonnative English-speaking teacher (NNEST) was continuously negotiated and resituated according to how she positioned herself and how she perceived others positioned her in educational and social contexts. To explore her fluid and multiple identities as a nonnative English speaker (NNES) in English education, data sources included initial and follow-up individual interviews, group conversations, and artifacts (e.g., drawings and reflective memos). Analysis focuses on how a NNES’s self-image as an English language teacher can be transformed by participation in critical practices. This study reveals that critical practices can help demystify the ideology of native speakerism and concludes that language teacher education programs should provide NNESTs with frequent and consistent opportunities to raise their critical awareness of how language and ideology are structured by social and political practices and how those practices are (re)produced by power relations in society.