Becoming a Critical ESL Teacher: The Intersection of Historicity, Identity, and Pedagogy

This case study examines how an experienced secondary ESL teacher's personal and professional history is linked to his curricular choices in the classroom and how his enactment of critical educator identity interacts with ideologies within society. The analysis of the focal teacher's experiences that remain prominent in autobiographical memory shows that his lived experiences of (re)learning Spanish and English, studying and teaching abroad and in California, and extensive reading influenced the cultivation of his identity as a critical educator. He designed a curriculum that used historical fiction and that evoked an approach to the mechanisms of ideological control both within the context of the chosen works of historical fiction and within students' lives. Yet, the situatedness of teacher identity exposed his identities to the influence of neoliberal educational policies and students' lack of interest in the curriculum and learning in general, jeopardizing his understanding of what to believe, how to act, and how to be. The findings of this study led us to theorize that the interplay of life histories, identities, practices, and contexts by using the notion of historicity.