Learner Identity

An introduction to a special issue on race and smartness, this article provides a broad overview of the ways notions of white superiority and smartness are intertwined.  Smartness is framed as something culturally produced and used to reproduce notions of white superiority. Each of the articles for the special issue provide alternatives for how to rethink constructions of ability in schools.

How smartness is defined within schools contributes to low academic achievement by poor and racial/ethnic minority students. Using Holland et al.
s (1998) [Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (Eds.) (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] concept of ‘‘figured worlds,’’ this paper explores the ‘‘figuring’’ of smartness through the perspectives of marginalized youth. The youth made key distinctions between being book smart vs. street smart. This
distinction is a direct challenge by the youth to the dominant discourse of smartness or ‘‘book smarts’’ as it operates in schools. To the youth, ‘‘street smarts’’ are more important because they are connected to being able to maneuver through structures in their lives such as poverty, the police, street culture, and abusive ‘‘others.’’ This distinction is key because street smarts stress agency in countering social structures whereas, for many of the youth, book smarts represented those structures, such as receiving a high school diploma. Implications for schools and pedagogy are discussed.

Apart from Aken (2003), research into using film in language teaching has overlooked the potential of film, streaming video or DVD to encourage sociocultural and ethnolinguistic
learning about speaking, particularly among advanced learners. Flanked by a study of literature on film’s pedagogic applications, this paper examines the sociocultural learning about speaking that can develop from applied study of filmic speech in an advanced English as an Additional Language (EAL) course in and about speaking. In particular, this paper describes a form of pedagogy using film studies presentations as tools for rehearsing,
presenting and assessing students’ speaking. The research uses a grounded methodology to
locate emergent understandings in the transcripts of videotaped presentations and oral reflective logs of 13 second-year students. These understandings articulate aspects of sociocultural learning about speaking which most impact on learners. The data also leads to a consideration of what insights learners can glean about their own voices and identities as speakers of EAL. These understandings and insights corroborate my pedagogy of using films to heighten learners’ awareness of sociocultural aspects of speaking–and our spoken selves.

This study explores learner identity (LI) in digital texts of identity (DTI) produced by college learners in English as a foreign language (EFL). In so doing, it aims to shed light on learners’ connections of their learning experiences across time and settings, and their impact on the various learner identities that form their LI. It also intends to elucidate how
learners construct powerful learner identities in and through their digital discourses. To this end, 51 DTI were collected and scrutinized, following studies on LI, critical and poststructuralist discourse analysis, “thematic” and “dialogic/performative” analysis within
narrative research, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework for the analysis of images. Learners established connections between their family and daily life spaces, school, and the foreign language community that account for, and shape their construction of their
identities as learners in general, and language learners in particular. Students also empowered themselves by identifying with an intercultural speaker, using authority claims, and, in general, enhancing their authoritativeness in and through their texts. These findings underscore the potential of DTI to reinforce learners’ identities, and create more equitable learning spaces.

This layered autoethnography comprises momentary scenes connected to musical pieces for cello that are engraved in my memory and on the calluses of my fingertips by significant physical, emotional, and motivational experiences that have accompanied me since my youth. My artful methodology invokes truthful memory through sound to compose a "methodology of the heart" (Pelias 2004). I thus blend music "epiphonies" and stories with past and present moments to create a thickness of duration, an épaisseur. I purposely used intersubjectivity as an evocative sensitivity when analyzing autobiographical memories to interpret cultural assumptions in the field of music education and classical music performance. These assumptions include the importance of being 'talented', the exposure to external stressors and competitiveness, and the imbalance of power relations between teachers and students. My aim is to expand understandings of forms of arts research, and to highlight certain pedagogical and social practices in the education of classical musicians that can compromise their well-being and identity construction.

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high‐stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working‐class school and a middle‐class school, indicate that the effect of the ‘testing culture’ is much greater in the working‐class school. Using Bernsteinian theory and the concept of the ‘ideal pupil’, it is shown that these pupils’ learner identities are more passive and dominated by issues of discipline and behaviour rather than academic performance, in contrast to those in the middle‐class school. While this study includes only two schools, it indicates a potentially significant issue for neo‐liberal education policy where education is marketised and characterised by high‐stakes testing, and schools are polarised in terms of social class.

This paper focuses on the study of identity in digital identity texts produced by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners within a specific subject of the Teacher in Primary Education (English) degree at a Spanish university. To this end, 51 digital identity texts were analysed following a “positioning perspective”, which views identity in terms of “reflexive” and “interactive” positions (Davies & Harré 1990). Results show that learners constructed non-unitary identities whose subject positions were often contradictory. They also associated certain positions with silencing identities, transition identities and identities of competence within the reflexive and interactive categories (cf. Norton & Toohey 2011, Manyak 2004), while ascribing others to their viewers interactively. In general, students discursively presented themselves as competent actors through diverse semiotic and linguistic resources they deployed in an affective narrative style characteristic of some forms of digital communication (Jones & Hafner 2012, Page 2012).

Norton (2000) argues that investment in L2 acquisition is also an investment in learner identity, which changes in the context of time and space-a notion that also has relevance for heritage learners. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine investment in language learning among HL Spanish speakers and the role of identity in their learning experiences. This study comprises of ten participants enrolled in an HL Spanish course. These participants completed a background questionnaire, interviews and writing prompts detailing their linguistic and cultural background, as well as their reflections on their heritage identity, HL exposure, and their investment, experiences and progress in their HL course. Results show that participants demonstrate varying degrees of investment in the HL, and heritage identity plays a role in this variance.

Learner identity has always been a crucial aspect in shaping learners’ learning process. However, the unprecedented and inevitable shift to online learning increases the need to invest in learners’ digital identities. Virtual classes are a new learning context for many Omani students, including the University of Technology and Applied Sciences-Rustaq (UTAS-Rustaq) students, introducing them to new social norms and relatively new assigned roles. Despite students’ current presence in the virtual classes, they are not new to the virtual world; many are already part of social networks. The present study, therefore, aims to investigate learners’ participation in social media and whether such presence would have an impact on their acceptance and involvement in online learning. There is an urge to examine this area which remains unexplored in UTAS-Rustaq due to its past limited practices. A mixed-method approach was implemented to elicit data; the focus group interviews aimed to seek in-depth insights to illuminate the collected data from the survey. The participants were English language learners who have experienced online learning for almost a year. The results indicated a positive presence in the virtual world in contrast to a negative presence in the virtual classroom. Surprisingly, technical difficulties were not the reason for students’ resentment of online learning; on the contrary, students reported that they elevated their technical skills due to the current situation. Rather, negativity arose from a lack of relational connectedness with the new context, which students kept referring to as a temporary situation and lack of teachers’ support.

The present action-research project in progress deals with the production and evaluation of “identity texts” (Cummins & Early, 2011) from EFL students in the context of a specific subject within the major of English Teacher in Primary Education at the Faculty of Education of the Universitat de València. This project is part of a larger “Innovation in education” project, whose main objective is to promote the use of identity texts as the key strategy of the “teaching for linguistic transfer” approach (Cummins, 2005b). Identity texts foster learners’ cognitive and academic transfer from their first language (L1) to their second or foreign language (L2/FL), and offer students an opportunity to explore their “selves” through the use of written, oral, visual, musical and theatrical texts or a combination of all these into a multimodal whole (i.e., videos, digital stories, etc.). In the present project, learners are encouraged to explore their identities as EFL learners with the aim of a) raising their awareness of who they are as language learners acquiring a L2/FL, i.e., what kinds of learners they are and how they learn, b) helping them develop their cognitive and academic language proficiency skills, and c) helping them develop their digital competence.

The present study focuses on the analysis of identity in digital texts of identity produced by English as a foreign language (EFL) students. The general aim of this study is to promote the use of these texts as a strategy of the teaching for linguistic transfer and academic expertise approach (Cummins, 2001, 2005b, 2006) and the reinforcement of the family-school relationship (Coll & Falsafi, 2010). Identity texts enable students to build and evaluate their identities, so that they become aware of who they are as language learners, consolidating the different positions that shape their identities, establishing relationships with identities of competence they desire, and rejecting negative positions that silence them when communicating in the target language. This promotes the development of their cognitive and academic language proficiency skills (CALPS) and, in the case of digital texts of identity, their digital competence. For this study, a total of 51 digital texts of identity were collected and analyzed following a ‛positioning’ perspective (Davies & Harré, 1990) that was combined with thematic and dialogic/performative analysis (Block, 2010), and a descriptive quantitative approach. Results illustrate a balance in the presence of reflexive and interactive positioning in the texts, with the former emerging through different subject positions that were occasionally opposed, and were enacted through descriptive and justifying acts, and the latter adopting the form of direct and indirect interactions with the viewer.

This article reports on a study of apprentices in England and Germany designed to explore young people’s learner identities over time and in relation to particular learning environments. The research adopts a multi-method ethnographic approach, combining biographical interviews with multi-site participant observation. The article problematises the notion of participant observation and the possibility of obtaining meaningful data in short-term observations as part of a broader research design. It highlights the importance of the researcher role and the opportunities different roles entail for developing shared understanding and co-constructing meaning. It concludes that the observations yield important findings about the construction of identity in different sites and thus complement
the interview data in enabling the researcher to reconstruct the apprentices’ learner biographies.

Resumen. El objetivo de este artículo es proponer el constructo identidad de aprendiz como herramienta analítica de interacciones sociales y académicas, que llevan al joven universitario a reflexionar acerca de experiencias que ha vivido en su universidad y los actos de reconocimiento realizados por profesores y pares universitarios. La propuesta teórica consiste en describir el fenómeno de la permanencia y abandono, discutir acerca de los mecanismos de construcción de la identidad de aprendiz y su vinculación con la integración social y académica. Se proponen algunos lineamientos para el uso de la identidad de aprendiz como herramienta analítica en el campo empírico. Entre las limitaciones, debido a que es un trabajo principalmente teórico, no es posible obtener conclusiones generalizables a la población universitaria; sin embargo, ofrece proyecciones tanto en el ámbito de la intervención como de la investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa.

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to propose the learner identity construct as an analytical tool for social and academic interactions that lead university students to reflect on experiences throughout their university studies and the corresponding acts of recognition by other significant individuals (professor and other students). The theoretical proposal consists of describing the university/college dropout and permanence phenomenon, as well as discussing the construction mechanisms of learner identity and its entailment with social and academic integration.  Some guidelines to use learner identity as an analytical tool in the empirical field are proposed. Among the limitations, because it is mainly theoretical work, it is not possible to obtain generalizable conclusions for university students; however, it offers projections both in the field of intervention and in qualitative and quantitative research.

This study explores smartness as a cultural construct rather than a biological
capacity. The cultural construction of smartness has broad consequences
related to teacher expectations, student academic identity development,
and schooling inequities. This study is based on a 1-year ethnography in
a kindergarten classroom, and the author investigates smartness by first historicizing
the concept of intelligence and then using the theoretical framework
of figured worlds. Through the teachers’ disciplinary and pedagogical practices, students were taught and learned not just whether they were smart themselves, but how other student identities were constructed according to smartness as well. Analysis suggests smartness was used as a mechanism of control and social positioning along racial and class lines. Implications are discussed related to schooling practices and policy.

Recent research in the fields of motivation and learner autonomy in language learning has begun to explore their relationships to the construct of identity. This article builds on this through the voices of a group of six learners of French or German in a secondary school in England, over a two-year period. These young learners initially reveal a clear identity as learners responsible for and able to take control of their own learning. However, this identity is seen as fragile when teacher control is increased in response to the external pressure of examinations, and there are indications of loss of motivation. Secondary school teachers, therefore, need to ensure that the learning environment they create engages, nurtures, and protects their learners‟ identity as learners through sustained opportunities for autonomy. Further research is proposed into aspects of learner identity, as well as ways in which changing pedagogy involves changes in teacher identity.Résumé
Des études récentes dans les domaines de la motivation et de l‟autonomie de l‟apprenant des langues explorent les relations entre ces deux domaines et l‟identité de l‟apprenant. Cet article contribue à ces recherches, en examinant pendant une période de deux ans la voix d'un groupe de six jeunes qui apprennent le français ou l‟allemand dans une école secondaire en Angleterre. Ces jeunes apprenants révèlent au début une identité claire en tant qu‟apprenants responsables pour et capables de contrôler leur propre apprentissage. Cependant on voit que cette identité est fragile quand le contrôle de l‟enseignant est augmenté face à la pression externe des examens, menant potentiellement a une perte de motivation. Les professeurs du secondaire devraient donc créer un milieu d'apprentissage capable d‟engager, de développer et de protéger l‟identité des apprenants en tant qu'apprenants, en assurant qu‟ils peuvent continuer à jouir des opportunités pour l‟autonomie. Des recherches futures sont proposées sur des aspects de l‟identité des apprenants, et aussi sur les implications des changements de pédagogie pour l‟identité des professeurs.

The article reports on a case study detailing a school project at a lower secondary school in Norway, for which students created personal digital stories on the topic of World War II. In contrast to previous research, this study provides a detailed account of how digital storytelling is enacted in an educational practice. A sociocultural and dialogical perspective on learning and meaning-making is employed as an analytical framework. The findings suggest that digital storytelling might contribute to an educational practice that expands students' access to various resources for working on a curricular topic. However, the results show that the potential of digital storytelling has to be considered in light of several issues. Such issues include the degree to which teachers manage to create a balance between institutional demands and student agency, and the manner in which teachers enable students' interpretations of this genre in terms of working on content creation and developing appropriate tools for this purpose. Additional issues include how teachers use student-composed content to expand students reflection upon the topic addressed in the digital story, and how educators develop an understanding of how the diverse interests of the students influence the creation of such a product.

Making sense of musicians’ professional learning pathways is of crucial importance to understanding their career progressions, their routes into creative employment, and the relevance of various policies to their professional lives. However, this is a far cry from understanding how critical reflection catalyzes diverse learning routes, especially when considering evidence originating from postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys into job creation. In this study, we invited five postgraduate classical musicians who were invested in professional learning through performance programs in higher education to contribute these types of personal perspectives. The article explores the value of postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys and illustrates how a more nuanced understanding of them can be arrived at through the use of visual-based tools, for example, Rivers of Musical Experience and Dixit Cards. This constructivist intervention prompted both group and indi...

The history of English Language Teaching (ELT) has shown that this fast growing field is facing unprecedented challenges posed by the recent developments in the status of the English language as a world's leading language and the eventual change in the linguistic landscape. This paper provides an opportunity to examine the impact of the phenomenal spread of English in recent years and its eventual dominance in the international arena as seen in the practice of English Language Teaching (ELT) and learning, particularly in English as a Second Language (ESL)/English as Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. The paper reports the implications of the recent growth of English for crucial ELT practices and areas such as learner identity, code selection in classroom, teaching methods, syllabus design and material development. It draws on issues pertaining to English as a lingua franca theory in an attempt to address this debatable topic and consider the necessity of taking into consideration the emerging trends in ELT classrooms globally. 1. Introduction This paper draws on the implications of the rapid growth of English and its rise at the international arena from an ELT perspective. It attempts to examine the crucial changes brought by the phenomenal spread of English to the practice of teaching English all over the world, particularly in the ESL/EFL settings. It is understood that the rapid proliferation of English in the world in recent years has been accelerated by various factors, including the use of English in education and the eventual speedy growth of internationalization of English and education. Thus, it is imperative to examine the impact of the growth of English on its teaching and learning, and the necessity of revisiting some fundamental concepts, beliefs and practices in the ELT field. With the increasing demand for English by speakers of other languages, together with the strong connection between English and the Internet and its applications, there have emerged new realities that challenge the traditional teaching practices. For instance, learners of English today have become more innovative with diverse learning strategies, opportunities, resources, and objectives (Cook, 2003). Moreover, the proliferation of the accessible new media, including social media, has created better learning and language practice opportunities for individuals who use it in learning language activities, and engage in active communication nationally and internationally, and interact in English with speakers of diverse linguistic backgrounds and experiences around the world (Crystal, 2002). In addition, the situation has further been more complex with the emergence of the phenomenon of varieties of Englishes. Practically speaking, with the pressing issues pertaining to the dominance of English and the world's changing linguistic landscape and the limitations of the traditional definition of 'native speaker' to appeal to the current situation, it is difficult to hold the same traditional language teaching perceptions and practices. This requires reconsidering the views and practices held about ELT, especially what concerns the language learners and the type of language taught to them. Furthermore, another indication of the changing scene relates to the fact that when English is spoken almost everywhere in the world, there is an urgent need for revising our approach to the materials we use in our classes and the way we assess our students as well. Moreover, the English language learners' actual needs must be addressed and taken into consideration when it comes to what variety of English should our students learn today. Because developing an understanding about their actual needs and views about what kind of English they would want to learn will keep teachers more focused and to the point (Gross, 2016; Jenkins, 2014).

• The present qualitative study sought to explore the relationship between English language learning and identity reconstruction from the viewpoints of Iranian language learners. The data were collected by means of focus-group interviews with forty-five male intermediate learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). To define the concept of identity, the participants were found to draw upon notions as diverse as personal and social characteristics, ethnic origins, geographical locations, religious affiliations, national customs and rituals and values, amongst others. Furthermore, the vast majority of the learners held that learning English had a profound impact on how they perceive their identity. Of these, nearly all the interviewees regarded the above impact as highly positive and beneficial to the course of language learning. The inter-viewees also expressed strong inclination to integrate and, therefore, to identify with the target linguistic and cultural norms. Notwithstanding, a number of opposing voices were raised by some learners who resisted identity reconstruction through language learning, claiming that they learned English simply for the sake of instrumental, as opposed to inte-grative, purposes. These participants also levelled criticisms at what they viewed as 'the imposition of Western values on an Islamic country'. The results highlight the vital role of motivation and the status of English as an international language in viewing, redefining and reconstructing identity. In conclusion, the findings confirm the role of discursive practices , power relations, solidarity and otherising with regard to identity reconstruction in the course of second language (L2) learning.

One way learners can transition from previous, lived experiences to the academy is through fostering the formation of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) by embedding reflective writing within courses. Although there is some evidence of reflective writing within the field of English for academic purposes (Granville & Dison, 2005) there is still much room for research into understanding the benefits of reflective writing in EAP regarding learner identity and transition. Reflective writing can be ‘treated as part of the writing process’ (Felix, 2011:46) rather than extraneous, and reflective writing can, over time, evidence to learners and teaching staff the development of the learners’ learner identity from a course’s start to finish while developing their metacognitive abilities (Moon, 2006). Reflective writing can also help learners improve their understanding of who they are as learners by developing a consciousness of their identity through their own voices (Moon, 2006), which in the context of EAP, can empower learners in transitioning from, for example, a learner on a pre-sessional or pre-Masters course to one on an undergraduate or masters-level course. Finally, reflective writing can allow learners to construct a common ground informed by their personal, lived experiences. Some of these are likely shared with their peer ‘novice-learners’ (Wenger, 1998), and other experiences are likely to assist learners in supporting each other’s learning and transitioning. In this process, tutors act as ‘expert-learners’ (Wenger, 1998) who engage with the learners’ narratives to encourage learners to analyse their reflections to approximate a deeper understanding of themselves as learners and their feelings regarding their performance on a course (Felix, 2011:46) in order to engage better within a community of practice (the academy) and become a member thereof.

Social and academic interactions approach stands out among the perspectives that explain retention and dropout of university studies (Tinto, 1975, 1993). The interactional point of view was one of the main pillars for the development of this doctoral thesis since it created the conditions to develop research instruments and methods. In this context, one of the main contributions of this research was to propose the use of Learner Identity as an analytical tool (Coll y Falsafi, 2010a; Falsafi, 2011; Falsafi y Coll, 2011, 2015) to identify and analyze university experiences narrated by a group of students of University of Concepción. Along with the results obtained, properties of Learner Identity as an analytical tool were described, starting with questionnaire and interview design, in addition to a proposal of mechanisms that enabled the analysis of information given by students who participated in the research. Once the experience was defined -through the application and analysis of instruments- it was possible to explore the social and individual dimensions of Learner Identity in university contexts. Through the use of Learner Identity as an analytical tool (Coll y Falsafi, 2010a; Falsafi, 2011) it was possible to obtain evidence to propose its utilization for the study of learning experiences in academic and non-academic contexts, accurately determining characteristics of interactions in different university scenarios, the influence of the student’s experiences on self-perception as a more competent student and on intentions to remain studying. Along with a characterization of interactions that guided a group of students into reflecting about significant experiences they lived at university, instruments were developed as well as a methodology to operationalize the use of Learner Identity as an analytical tool in the context of retention and dropout. It is recommended that university teachers take these findings into consideration to offer acts of recognition that strengthen students’ sense of recognition (Falsafi, 2011; Valdés, 2016); to influence the creation of proposals oriented to make the most of university experiences and to produce institutional mechanisms that can mediate students’ retention until they graduate.

This paper examines the relationship between ‘aspiration’ and identity as rendered within discourses of power. Focusing on the deeply ingrained values of a group of 23 white working-class boys from South London (aged 14–16), the research critically considers the conception of power within a neoliberal era which produces both new subjectivities and new counter-narratives. The research examines a group of boys who fully acknowledge that post-compulsory education would enhance their power in society but who simultaneously articulated how accruing power made them feel uncomfortable. There exists a tension between the working-class values inculcated in the community and the neoliberal prerogatives of the school; as a result, their shared habitus engages in a continual process of reconciling competing and contrasting conceptions of what it is to be powerful.

Making sense of musicians’ professional learning pathways is of crucial importance to understanding their career progressions, their routes into creative employment, and the relevance of various policies to their professional lives. However, this is a far cry from understanding how critical reflection catalyses diverse learning routes, especially when considering evidence originating from postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys into job creation. In this study, we invited 5 postgraduate classical musicians who were invested in professional learning through performance programmes in higher education to contribute these types of personal perspectives. The paper explores the value of postgraduate musicians’ own accounts of their journeys, and illustrates how a more nuanced understanding of them can be arrived at through the use of visual-based tools, e.g., Rivers of Musical Experience and Dixit Cards. This constructivist intervention prompted both group and individual critical reflections, as well as sense-making processes that enabled the participants to become more informed about the (typically overlooked or neglected) critical incidents that differently catalyse professional learning pathways. All of the participants articulated sociocultural influences that were situated along historical, present, and future points of departure and arrival, helping them to create meaning and understanding of themselves and their (at times unsettling) professional learning pathways. From the ensuing thematic analyses, we identified a commonality of themes across life phases with three key influential groups of people (parents, peers, and professionals) that strongly affected their professional learning pathways and learner identity-construction. The results indicate that the relationships between these phases and people are complex. The research illuminates the previously unexplored connection between the meaning-making trajectories that are instantiated through critical reflection, and adds to our understanding of the development of musicians’ professional learning pathways and learner identities.

In the first part of this study, we briefly present different approaches used to define the concept of second language learners’ identity. Then we introduce Butler’s theory of performativity (1988) and we attempt to apply its main concepts as tools for describing L2 learners’ identity. In the second part of the study, we try to answer the following question:
What are typical performative acts of a good and a poor language learner in the language learning classroom? Our research suggests that performing a good language learner identity refers to the learner’s frequent and repetitive participation in utterances whose content is related to the language classroom, regardless of the chosen communicative resources. As for performing a poor language learner identity, it appeared that it refers to the learner’s repetitive and frequent participation in utterances whose content is not related to the language classroom, regardless of the chosen communicative resources.

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 Scope of the review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 Understanding engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 Defining student ...

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to gain knowledge about what it means to be a learner using social media in an educational setting. The article presents an ethnographic study of students in a multiethnic community in Oslo who participate in a social networking site called Space2cre8 (S28). In this article, we set out to explore the kind of space for learning that can be created in a lower secondary classroom by a social networking site. The article provides a detailed study of how two students made use of this social networking site as part of school activities, and it outlines two specific ways in which to be a learner using social media in school. The findings suggest that a social networking site such as S28 can provide different resources for different students with different learner identities, and might represent a space in which everyday knowledge and school knowledge merge to offer a hybrid space for learning.

This chapter summarizes the findings from my PhD thesis with the aim to examine, document and narrate young able children’s constructions of
learning, ability and schooling as a means through which a teacher’s professional identity, pedagogy and practice are unveiled. The focus is on understanding the impact that a teacher and a group of young able learners (who have the potential to reach high levels of performance in one or more areas of endeavour) have on each other’s identities, learning and experiences together with an examination of the kind of inclusive practices that are effective in stimulating the minds of young able children and ultimately meeting their diverse learning needs.

One of the purposes of this research is to contribute to the discussion on how best to acknowledge and provide for the very able learners in mixed-ability classrooms in the Early Years. It also attempts to challenge and extend the educational debate around teachers’ and learners’ identities and how these impinge on one another as well as how such identities impact the learning process. Furthermore, this study strives to understand and expose the implications of listening to children’s voices and using their constructions and interpretations to inform and assist teachers as professional practitioners who constantly reflect critically upon their own pedagogical choices and professional.

This study explores learner identity (LI) in digital texts of identity (DTI) produced by college learners in English as a foreign language (EFL). In so doing, it aims to shed light on learners’ connections of their learning experiences across time and settings, and their impact on the various learner identities that form their LI. It also intends to elucidate how learners construct powerful learner identities in and through their digital discourses. To this end, 51 DTI were collected and scrutinized, following studies on LI, critical and poststructuralist discourse analysis, and “thematic” and “dialogic/performative” analysis within narrative research. Learners established connections between their family and daily life spaces, school, and the foreign language community that account for, and shape their construction of their identities as learners in general, and language learners in particular. Students also empowered themselves by identifying with an intercultural speaker, using a...

This paper presents a qualitative case study that involved three groups of English as a foreign language pre-service teachers at a Colombian private university. Each group attended tutoring sessions during an academic semester. Along these sessions, students were asked to work collaboratively in the editing process of some chapters of their thesis project through a corpus interface. Students wrote journals and participated in interviews about their experiences. Teachers also wrote journal entries to describe and interpret their observations from the meetings. Findings reveal the participants' identities that emerged from their group dynamics and their insights about their collaborative process when editing academic texts.

This paper is theoretically informed by Bernstein’s (1975) earlier work on learner positions and his notion of pedagogic identity (Bernstein, 2000), supplemented by Tyler’s (1999) elaboration of the model. The paper analyses key primary mathematics curriculum policy documents to investigate the official primary mathematics learner identity as constructed by the current South African education curricula. In order to analyse learner identity we need to consider their relationship to the promoted primary mathematics teacher identity. In our earlier study (Pausigere & Graven, 2013) we revealed that the recent South African curriculum policy changes constructs and promotes a “Market” (Bernstein 2000) primary mathematics teacher identity and we argue in this paper that this relates with the “Detachment” (Bernstein, 1975) pupil learner identity position. Drawing on Bernstein’s (1975; 2000) work, I construct a theoretical model, that relates the pedagogic identity classes and the pupil lear...

This study examined the identity construction of queer learners in English language learning and its influences on English language learning. The four participants were male, queer and studied in English majors and English language teaching in a Thai university. Two of the participants were known to the researcher. Semi-structured interviews, field notes, and a digital sound recorder were used for data collection and qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that queer characteristics and marginalized and unequal positions based on gender identity and sexual orientation were two main factors constituting queer learner identity in English language learning. The majority of the participants shared that their queer characteristics were conducive to their speaking skills. Additionally, it was shown that the heteronormative Thai context motivated the participants to pursue English language proficiency. The participants reported that English language proficiency was advantageous for their future success and helped them gain parental and societal acceptance. Moreover, the participants stated that learning the English language would allow them to migrate to English-speaking countries that are welcoming to queer people. The results also indicated that some participants who desire a Western partner viewed English as beneficial to finding a Western man, whom they thought would be more open to gender diversity than Thai men. These findings provide a better understanding of the identity construction of queer learners and its influences on English language learning.

While English conversation (eikaiwa) schools are widespread in Japan, little research exists on learner motivation in these settings. This exploratory study based on one learner's L2 diary entries and reflective comments investigated the motivational factors contributing to her self-directed language learning efforts while studying at an eikaiwa school. In this study, I also sought to evaluate the potential pedagogical applications of learner diary writing in eikaiwa as well as the practical affordances and constraints specific to that context. The data revealed that the learner's motivation was influenced by a variety of interrelated social and personal factors. There was also evidence that suggested that although simple enjoyment was an important factor for her motivation to learn, she also showed signs of significant investment in an imagined community. Furthermore, in contrast to some academic studies portraying eikaiwa as a site for hedonistic "casual leisure" rather than linguistic development (Kubota, 2011), the participant engaged in an extensive amount of self-directed learning along with an impressive degree of metacognitive self-awareness. This, along with several points of crossover between English learning and Hawaiian culture-a central element of her self-identity-suggested that her self-directedness represented an example of "serious leisure" or a "leisure career" (Stebbins, 2007). Regarding the secondary focus of the study, the diary writing process was found to fulfill a number of practical pedagogical functions such as maintaining student-teacher communication and providing opportunities for meaningful production of the L2.

This paper explores Arab postgraduate students' situated experiences and their actual and dynamic use of learning strategies at a UK university. The qualitative data collected from a written narrative and five subsequent rounds of individual semi-structured interviews suggest that most participants initially clung to their 'aschematic' future selves as they articulated relatively distant goals without employing the appropriate learning strategies to get to them. They anticipated achieving native-like proficiency in English and forming meaningful friendships with locals once they were in the host environment. In response to the changes in assessment mode and the practice of some influential actors, however, the participants gradually began to articulate proximal goals until they visualised their ideal self and embraced the appropriate strategies. The findings of the current study underline the significance of introducing pedagogical interventions in all phases of study abroad to avoid student sojourners' maladaptive behaviour, such as the setting of unrealistic or impractical goals, and deepen their language and intercultural learning. Directions for further research are also suggested.