In an increasingly diverse world, the need for language teachers to enact pedagogies that are responsive, antiracist, and culturally sustaining is more important than ever. Likewise, language teacher education and professional development experiences are called on to develop language teachers' abilities to enact these pedagogies via critical praxis (e.g., Author, XXXX). In our view, part of this work is guiding language teacher candidates and language teachers in understanding their cultural and linguistic diversity through the lens of their linguistic repertoires, which we accomplish using systemic functional linguistics (SFL, Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014; Hasan, 2009; Eggins, 2004).
The use of SFL in teaching, learning, and schooling, in general, can reveal the underlying features of language use in these contexts (e.g., Schleppegrell, 2020; Turkan et al., 2014). Scholarship has demonstrated its pedagogical potential for examining the multilingual repertoires of teachers, as well as students (e.g., Harman, 2018; Harman & Khote, 2018). In addition, other work has described the development of the SFL knowledge base as language teachers learn the theory and begin to appropriate it in their work with multilingual students (e.g., Harman & Khote, 2018; Gebhard, 2019). To this end, we engaged language teachers and language teacher candidates in a space to discuss and deconstruct these functions of language through the analysis of both personal and educational language samples.
This presentation explores how these languages teachers reflected on and changed their understanding of their linguistic diversity through the analysis of their own language use in light of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) concepts. Through the analysis of the candidates' visual representations that they created to illustrate their linguistic repertoires and the contexts in which they enact them, their written reflections on their visuals, and follow-up interviews, we explored their understanding of themselves as language users and the change in their conceptual understanding of linguistic diversity. The findings point to the potential of these examinations of teachers' linguistic repertoires in language teacher education and professional development.
References
Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics. Pinter.
Gebhard, M. (2019). Teaching and researching ELLs' disciplinary literacies: Systemic functional linguistics in the context of U.S. school reform. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315108391
Harman, R. (Ed.). (2018). Bilingual learners and social equity: Critical approaches to systemic functional linguistics. Springer.
Harman, R., & Khote, N. (2018). Critical SFL praxis with bilingual youth: Disciplinary instruction in a space. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 2, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2017.1318663
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. (2014). Halliday's introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). Routledge.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Schleppegrell, M. J. (2020). The knowledge base for language teaching: What is the English to be taught as content? Language Teaching Research, 24, 17-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168818777519
Turkan, S., De Oliveira, L. C., Lee, O., & Phelps, G. (2014). Proposing a knowledge base for teaching academic content to English language learners: Disciplinary linguistic knowledge. Teachers College Record, 116(3), 1–30.
