Conflicting Discourses in Language Teacher Education: Reclaiming Voice in the Struggle (Report‪)‬

Denying the complex, contradictory "hard-to-code" voices makes trouble for creating borders around conclusive arguments. Fine sensitively warns feminist researchers in the social sciences not to romanticize voices but to pay critical attention to what voices we hear and how we hear them. (Jackson, 2003, 5) The warning that Jackson provides is a particularly somber one for any teacher educator concerned about both valuing what teachers bring to the field as well as opening up space to hear and work with "difficult subjects" for teachers (Florio-Ruane, 2001; Gebhard, 2003; Torres-Guzman, 1996; Willett, 2007). The current historical context is one in which many of our teaching candidates, again largely women, are eagerly entering into their first teaching positions. According to the national study conducted by Cochran-Smith & Fries (2005), the majority of teacher candidates in the U.S. are White middle-class women. While those from the U.S. who become TESOL teachers are also primarily White middle-class women, given the global demand for English, there is also a sizable number of TESOL teachers from international backgrounds (Braine, 1999; Lurda, 2005). As the current population entering our profession of language-teacher education is now beginning to differ from those in the past because of this international component, this seems to be a particularly significant moment for us to examine what discourses are currently operational that influence the direction and substance of teacher education programs where this notion of "civic culture voice" is encouraged.