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Teacher Preparation And English Language Learners: The Negotiation Of Teaching Identities In Communities Of Practice, Eleni Giatsou

Dissertations

This dissertation unveils the identity formation and negotiation processes of teacher candidates, through their practice with English Language Learners (ELLs) in a field-based teacher preparation program. Identity, like learning, is socially constructed and continuously negotiated by someone's engagement in a community (Wenger, 1998). Thus, sociocultural theory and specifically the theoretical construct of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), guided the exploration of candidates' teaching identities to reveal the processes of becoming a teacher of ELLs. I conducted a qualitative case study to examine candidates' teaching practices with ELLs at a surface level and the (re)construction of their teaching identities at a …