An English Teacher Struggle to Establish Voice in the Periphery

Abstract

This paper explores my identity formation and the struggle to establish voice as a non-native teacher working in the periphery. While publication on non-native speakers’ struggle into academia has been growing in the West, such publication is rare in the periphery where I have been working as an English language teacher for the last seven years. My personal reflection has shown that similar to their non-native colleagues working in the Center, non-native teachers also experienced marginalization that have fostered a perception that their nono-nativeness is a drawback. This leads to an identity of the non-native teacher s into a producer of errors and second-rate citizens despite years of learning English. From this personal narrative, I learned that it is crucial for teacher education programs to address issues of native/non-natives as an attempt to unfasten destructive identity constructions that non-native speakers are accustomed to.

Keywords

• non-native teachers
• identity fastening
• teachers in the periphery
• critical consciousness