Education Commons^™

Nnests’ Professional Identity In The Linguistically And Culturally Diverse Classrooms, Kim Song, Alla Del Castillo

Educator Preparation & Leadership Faculty Works

This study examines NNESTs’ professional identities as classroom teachers by analyzing NNESTS’ perceptions of their strengths and challenges. The study contributes to NNESTs forming their professional identity by recognizing, developing, and contesting authoritative discourse. A basic qualitative research design is employed to analyze the interview data. Participants are five NNESTs who teach in American classrooms. Three focused themes are identified; linguistic competence, cross-cultural competence, and pedagogical competence. NNEST superiority fallacy is added as the fourth theme. Additionally, the study briefly compares strengths and challenges of U.S. versus foreign graduates. NNESTs’ strengths and challenges are reported in line with other NNEST …