This study investigated the relationships between evolving professional identities and learning-in-practice experiences of novice French language teaching assistants learning multiliteracies pedagogies over two years. Findings reveal complex relationships between professional identities and degrees of appropriation of new pedagogical content knowledge and instructional practices.
Teaching Assistants (TAs) play an important role in the first two years of collegiate foreign language (FL) instruction in the United States (US). Despite a growing body of research on teacher cognition and learning, few studies have examined novice FLTAs' development in this context. Even fewer have focused on their identity development taking a longitudinal approach (c.f. Martel & Wang, 2014). Grounded in socio-constructivist perspectives, this study investigates how novice French TAs at a US university learned to teach through multiliteracies pedagogies and the interrelationship between their evolving professional identities and their learning-in-practice experience over two years. Drawing on theories of identity, positioning and agency (c.f. Kayi Aydar, 2019), this study asked: (1) How does identity-agency develop in the context of in-service professional development program? (2) What I the relationship between identity-agency and appropriation of new concepts and pedagogical tools? Four students in a Masters program in Teaching French as a FL, simultaneously teaching their own classes, participated in this study. Professional development included a methods seminar framed by the concept of multiliteracies, weekly focused discussions, digital social annotated reading (DSAR) activities, and cycles of lesson study. Collected over two years, data included pre- and post-questionnaires, lesson plans, DSAR transcripts, reflective teaching journals, and a final reflective essay. Data sets were analyzed discursively looking for recurring themes related to participants' beliefs, knowledge, emotions, and actions in order to understand their identity development trajectories and their appropriation of new concepts and pedagogical tools. Findings provide insight into the interconnected relationship between novice teachers' positioning, agency, identity development, and their individual differences in appropriating of new conceptual and pedagogical tools despite similar training, underscoring the need for teacher identity development to have a more central role in FLTA education.
