Through focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires, 15 international TAs discussed fallacies about composition. Using Legitimation Code Theory, we argue that by emphasizing social attributes these fallacies prevent non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) of composition from professional legitimacy. We argue that emphasizing knowledge and skills in composition can help legitimize NNESTs.
The native speaker (NS) remains a robust construct in English language teaching (ELT) and writing instruction. NSs are often regarded as ideal language users and teachers--a belief referred to as native-speakerism (Holliday, 2006)--and as inherently good writers (Kasztalska, 2018). While prior studies highlighted ways in which native-speakerism affects non-native-speaking (NNS) teachers of writing, like International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) (Kasztalska, 2015; Liu, 2005; Rucker, Frazier, & Tseptsura, 2018), our research explores how native-speakerism works by revealing the underlying assumptions about knowers and knowledge in ELT and composition. This study examines 15 ITAs of composition and their experiences of (de)legitimization in teaching writing in the U.S. In our data analysis, we use Maton’s (2014) Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). LCT identifies organizing principles and practices of knowledge, which determine the codes of meaning that legitimize practices within a field. We focus on the dimension of specialization, which reveals whether legitimation is achieved through possessing specialized knowledge and/or social attributes. Our LCT analysis reveals that the NS tends to be framed by ITAs and others as a knower code, meaning that whether one identifies as a NS or NNS is primarily dependent on their personal attributes rather than knowledge of language or writing pedagogy. Moreover, we found that ITAs and other NNS teachers may experience a code clash when attempting to claim legitimacy as teachers of English writing, because their NNS status conflicts with the expectation that writing instructors be NSs. Because of this code clash, NNS teachers may not see themselves as legitimate writing instructors or as an authority in the classroom. We advocate for writing programs to foreground explicit teaching of writing knowledge and to background the reliance on internal attributes. We conclude by offering recommendations for writing programs to help them understand and address knower codes in composition.
