(2020) D’apprenant à enseignant : L’identité L2 des enseignants en contexte d’immersion française / From learner to teacher : L2 teacher identity in the context of French Immersion
- Introduction
- Question 1 : How do teachers for whom French is an additional language (L2) perceive themselves as teachers of French?
- Question 2 : How do past experiences of learning French in the Immersion program contribute to the construction of their identity as future teachers of French?
- Question 3: How do some bilingual teachers succeed at finding their sense of legitimacy as teachers of French?
- Question 4: What does identity construction have to do with access to a community?
- Implications for classroom practice
- Conclusion
- Références/References
Introduction
As French Immersion (FI) grows in popularity, an increasing number of teachers in this program are themselves graduates of the same program. While this signals a long term success of the language learning experiment that began in 1965, there are also research studies which point out the issue of attrition in teachers who work in their second language (L2) and the connection with their L2 identity (Masson, Larson, Desgroseilliers, Carr & Lapkin, 2019; Parks, 2017). This current study was conducted as part of a doctoral research and its purpose was to examine the various experiences and dynamics – from childhood to adulthood – that may have contributed to the construction of identity of teachers of French. Three semi-structured group interviews and one individual interview were conducted with a total of 17 teachers, coordinators and administrators involved in French education programs across BC. Although the study was conducted in BC, the findings are likely representative of teachers across Canada. In these interviews, participants discussed their past and present experiences as language learners and language teachers. Here are some of the key findings of this study:
Question 1 : How do teachers for whom French is an additional language (L2) perceive themselves as teachers of French?
Many of the participants’ discourse reveal that they compare themselves to “native speakers” or francophones, and believe the “native speaker myth” wherein speakers for whom French is a dominant/first language (more commonly but misleadingly referred to as “native speakers”) are inherently better language teachers than those for whom French is an additional language (or “non-native” speakers). This myth has long been discredited by researchers (Castellotti, 2011, for example), but still has a firm hold on popular belief.
Because of this comparison between “native” and “non-native” speaker ability, some participants explained they fear being judged for their level of French. However, other participants mentioned that fear was sometimes a source of motivation for them and that they even considered the challenge of working in their second language to be an enjoyable one that they associate as a defining aspect of their French teaching careers.
When asked whether they voluntarily participate in French cultural activities outside of work, the participants answered with some ambivalence. In some cases, they felt as though they had put sufficient effort into learning French. In other cases, they felt somewhat torn in knowing that they could and perhaps should invest more time and effort; however they did not feel strongly compelled to do so. In some other cases, some teachers felt as though it was their duty to be lifelong learners, so that they could be better linguistic role models for their students.
Overall, the degree with which FI teachers in my study invested in their linguistic identity varied widely. Regardless of the reasons, not wanting to invest in one’s linguistic identity as a French teacher can make it harder to continue to grow in their work. Yet, the development of a strong sense of linguistic identity (both for students and teachers) is not often discussed in teacher training or in professional development settings. It is the hope that the topic of linguistic identity can begin to gain more traction in both pre-service and in-service settings.
Question 2 : How do past experiences of learning French in the Immersion program contribute to the construction of their identity as future teachers of French?
During the interviews, participants described their early learning experiences mostly as positive ones, where their knowledge of French was validated by teachers and other French speakers during travel to francophone places like Québec and France. Moreover, simply by being enrolled in the FI program, they had an automatic sense of being part of a group that is distinct from the non-immersion students in their schools. This automatic membership to a French-speaking community placed them in a position of relative power and perhaps even privilege, when compared with non-immersion students since the FI students could describe themselves as having a skill that non-immersion students did not have.
Their sense of belonging and power shifted once they entered a professional training program in French education because they were now comparing themselves with more proficient speakers, which led them to question whether they had the language competency to be successful teachers of French. In this new university setting, their sense of belonging, and also power, were challenged.
For some of teachers who were former FI students, this linguistic insecurity followed them into their career and they describe feeling judged by their colleagues who are more fluent in French. In some cases, these bilingual teachers (and former FI students) perceived that they would be judged and, as a result, did not perform as well as they could have for fear of being called out, for example, when attending French professional development events. In other cases, it was not just an imagined fear of being judged, but rather the reality of having their grammar being corrected by colleagues even though the advice was unsolicited. These experiences made teachers revert back to their student identity, one in which only the “teacher” (ie. the “native” speaker or the francophone) has the correct answer and this further contributed to their linguistic insecurity.
From this perspective, the power dynamics are reversed when bilingual teachers start their career. They feel as though their inclusion into the professional community is certainly not automatic, even after completing their professional training. Their journey as a teacher of French takes on a peripheral trajectory (Wenger, 1998) into the professional community, and some may never quite succeed in feeling like they belong to it.
For French teachers who were former FI students, this linguistic (and by extension, professional) insecurity can be a very solitary and even a shameful experience. Yet, they are not alone. More than half of the French teachers in BC have French as an additional language (Lapkin, MacFarlane & Vandergrift, 2006) and may have similar feelings about their French at some moments, despite having worked hard on their French skills. Despite this reality, many French teachers do find ways to overcome these feelings, and often, with the support of an inclusive community.
Question 3: How do some bilingual teachers succeed at finding their sense of legitimacy as teachers of French?
With time and exposure the hope is to achieve a shift in perspective, wherein FI teachers see themselves not as lesser versions of “native” speakers, but as role models for bilingualism and language learning for their students. As bilingual teachers, their experience with learning a language can help their students relate to them and can give them better insight into the experience of living and working in their second language.
Some participants mentioned that the pursuit of graduate studies in French education helped them feel validated in using plurilingual pedagogies and helped them better understand the implications of being bilingual. Before completing their studies, they had made assumptions that being bilingual required a mastery of both languages, when in fact, the research community has long held that bilingualism is a function of using two languages, and not the degree of mastery (Grosjean, 1982, for example). This assumption made some of the participants second guess their language competency as a French teacher while overlooking their pedagogical and professional skills.
However, it is not clear that every bilingual teacher will develop a sense of legitimacy merely with time. In fact, between the time when data was collected and time of completion of this research project, several of the participants were no longer teaching in immersion. While there may be many reasons for their decision to leave FI, Parks’ (2017) literature review on attrition in teachers working in their L2 point to the unique and complex challenges of an L2 identity, and not merely a question of language competency, as factors in their decision to leave French education.
As a French Immersion community, we need to continue to highlight the achievements of our FI graduates in the media, and hire them into positions of leadership rather than to perpetuate the idea that the only models of good French teaching come from “native” speakers. In the current climate of French teacher shortages, funds should be spent on promoting the image of the bilingual teacher who learned French in school, rather than investing solely in incentives for people from Quebec or France to move to our provinces to teach in FI.
Question 4: What does identity construction have to do with access to a community?
Norton (2000/2013) explains that for a language learner to invest in their continued language development, they must feel that they have access to a certain desired community. In the case of French teachers in BC, they may perceive that this desired community is mostly composed of “native” speakers or francophones, and that people like them, who have learned French at school are not in fact legitimate members of this professional community. In many ways, they may feel excluded and unqualified as members of this group, when in reality, teachers for whom French is a second language in BC form the majority of the French teacher population (Lapkin, MacFarlane et Vandergrift, 2006). This also highlights how teachers for whom French is a dominant language may unwittingly hold a disproportionate amount of power within the professional community.
As a first step towards changing this perspective that only francophones or near-“native speakers” can be legitimate members of the professional French teaching community, it requires that teachers (both francophone and non-francophone ones) engage in self-reflection and question these commonly accepted assumptions, preferably in the context of safe and inclusive professional communities.
While professional communities exist in many forms, such as groups on social media, professional development events, graduate programs, etc., what makes them safe and inclusive is the explicit mention that they allow for its members to choose when they might use English or French. In some professional communities, there can be a very exclusionary, yet unspoken rule, that French is the only legitimate language of communication. And when English is used, those speakers can be marked as outcasts. Yet, they can still be passionate, committed and hardworking French teachers who, because of this dynamic, have less access to the support they need. For now, these are uncomfortable topics that can divide our professional community. But they must be brought out for open dialogue if we value bilingualism.
Implications for classroom practice:
Dislodging the “native speaker myth” is difficult. However, in a plurilingual society such as Canada, it is time to question assumptions about our understanding of languages. In a monolingual perspective of bilingualism (Gajo, 2001), it is seen as the collage of two languages. In contrast, a bi-plurilingual perspective on bilingualism suggests that when someone learns a new language, they create an amalgamation of the two languages in their mind. So when practices in the Immersion setting marginalize any usage of English (or any other language for that matter), it may communicate the message to students that accessing all of their languages in moments of need – which is inherent bi-plurilingual behaviour (Byrd Clarke & Labrie, 2010; Coste, Moore & Zarate, 1997/2009) – is not allowed, thus, limiting their positive identity options. One question this raises is whether the marginalization of English in an Immersion setting is the only way or even the best way to encourage our students to speak French.
In the long term, our students in FI (and future potential teachers) can suffer from a sense of lack of legitimacy if the only legitimate identity option is to be a “non-native” speaker, which defines them as a lesser version of a “native” one and only serves to highlight the deficits they might have when compared to a more skilled user, not their unique competencies as a plurilingual person. In the case of those FI students who choose a career in French teaching, these deficit-based monikers can be the seed of a long struggle with linguistic insecurity. Instead, we need to offer identity options to our students where the languages that they speak are celebrated and not marginalized. This, rather than judgment and criticism, will ultimately lead to the desire to continue to learn the language.
Increasingly, research is encouraging teachers in second language learning programs to explore plurilingual pedagogies (Cummins, 2007; Levasseur, 2019; Prasad, 2014) in such a way that the plurilingual identities of our young learners (and future potential teachers) can be seen as legitimate. By creating classroom environments that celebrate how plurilingual students think and learn French, and how their identity is shaped by all of their languages, students (and future potential teachers) are allowed to blossom as skilled models of language learning. In this vision of an Immersion program, the learning of French becomes a gateway to a diversity of worldviews rather than a training program to create near-“native” speakers of French, where its members are life-long language learners.
Conclusion
Teachers may be reluctant to take on these new perspectives on plurilingual pedagogies in French Immersion, feeling perhaps that it is a slippery slope that may lead to the complete erosion of the FI program. However, in the current situation, if FI graduates do not feel as though they can become legitimate members of a plurilingual professional community, then our beloved program is in even more danger of being unsustainable. The biographical perspective of this study, which examined childhood experiences along with professional experiences and dynamics, allows us to see how unquestioned assumptions have an impact on the development of confident and competent role models for our students. If teachers invest their talent and energy in developing pedagogies that allow our young students to develop positive plurilingual identities, we can pave the way to a strong future for the French Immersion program.
Références/References:
Byrd Clark, J. et Labrie, N. (2010). La voix de jeunes canadiens dans leur processus d’identification : les identités imbriquées dans des espaces multiformes In S. Osu, G. Col, N. Garric et F. Toupin (Eds.), Construction d’identité et processus d’identification (pp. 425-438). Berne: Éditions Peter Lang.
Coste, D., Moore, D. et Zarate, G. (1997/2009). Compétence plurilingue et pluriculturelle : Vers un Cadre Européen Commun de référence pour l’enseignement et l’apprentissage des langues vivantes : études préparatoires. Strasbourg: Conseil de l’Europe.
Cummins, J. (2007). Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual classrooms. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10(2), 221-240.
Gajo, L. (2001). Immersion, bilinguisme et interaction en classe. Paris: Didier.
Lapkin, S., MacFarlane, A. et Vandergrift, L. (2006). L’enseignement du français langue seconde au Canada: points de vue du personnel enseignant. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Teachers’ Federation.
Levasseur, C. (November, 2019). Les approches plurilingues : plaidoyer aux futurs enseignants et enseignantes FLS pour trouver leur marge de manœuvre. Belonging, Identity, Language, Diversity Research Group. http://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/les-approches-plurilingues-plaidoyer-aux-futurs-enseignants-et-enseignantes-fls-pour-trouver-leur-marge-de-manoeuvre-by-dr-catherine-levasseur/
Masson, M., Larson, E. J., Desgroseilliers, P., Carr, W. et Lapkin, S. (2019). Accéder aux possibilités : Étude sur les difficultés liées à l’offre et à la demande d’enseignants en français langue seconde au Canada. Commissariat aux langues officielles/Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. https://www.clo-ocol.gc.ca/fr/apropos/index Retrieved July 11, 2019.
Norton, B. (2000/2013). Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change. Toronto: Pearson Education.
Parks, P. (2017). Understanding the connections between second language teacher identity, efficacy, and attrition: A critical review of recent literature. Journal of Belonging, Identity, Language, and Diversity (J-BILD), 1(1), 75-91.
Prasad, G. (2014). Portraits of Plurilingualism in a French International School in Toronto : Exploring the Role of Visual Methods to Access Students’ Representations of their Linguistically Diverse Identities. The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics. 17(1), 51-77.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pour en savoir plus/ Further information
For original doctoral dissertation in its entirety, see link http://summit.sfu.ca/item/20402
