Acceso usuarios
Much recent research examines how teachers navigate language policy in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) classrooms (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017; Palmer & Martínez, 2013). While previous work has illustrated that teachers’ language use is varied and related to identity, little research has considered the role of emotions in this setting (Benesch, 2020). Drawing on data from a year-long ethnography, this paper tracks emotions produced as three focal teachers made decisions regarding language in their DLBE classrooms. Building on multiple interviews and more than 500 hours of classroom observation, I argue that language policy navigation is a form of emotional labor (Benesch, 2018). Furthermore, I link this emotional labor to the teachers’ raciolinguistic identities, emergent embodied critical consciousness of classroom power dynamics and related pedagogical decisions. Teachers’ emotional labor provided valuable knowledge of existing inequities and offered pathways for resistance and transformation.
“I’ve become what I’m trying to fight…”: Classroom language policy navigation and embodied critical consciousness.
