Abstract
With the ongoing French as a second language (FSL) teacher shortage crisis driving multi-million-dollar expenditures from governments, professional associations, and school boards, little attention has turned towards identifying systemic issues, rooted in racial ideologies, which may be impacting FSL teachers' desire to stay (or even enter) into the profession. In this chapter, using visual narratives and arts-based research methods, the authors applied LangCrit and raciolingusitics to examine future FSL teachers' discourses about French as a language/culture and learning French and teaching French. The data collected over a year, showcasing three participants, reveal the vastly different positionalities entrenched in complex interactions with language standard ideologies, native-speakerism, colonialism and racism. The authors ask, then, how stakeholders and teacher education programs might account for these differing lived realities when it comes to recruiting and preparing future FSL teachers for long-term success in the profession.
TopSituating French Within The Canadian Colonial Project
Embarking on an exploration of FSL teacher identity requires imagining possibilities for becoming a professional who teaches language within intersections of language and race in Canada. It also requires an understanding of the socio-historical context of French in Ontario and Canada more broadly. A few pertinent facts stand out.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Arts-Based Research: Research methods that utilize multimodal forms art as a mode of expression, interpretation and/or data collection.
French as a Second Language: A subject taught in Anglophone K-12 schools in Ontario (Canada). French is taught as an additional language either as a subject (Core French) or as a medium of instruction (French Immersion).
Teacher Education: Learning over teachers’ careers that generally begins in a teacher preparation program and continues on throughout a teacher’s career in the form of professional development.
Language teacher identity: The professional identity that language teachers develop over the course of their career. Their professional identity will inform multiple aspects of their job, for instance, how they teach, how they relate to students, colleagues and parents, and how they understand their subject-matter.
Raciolinguistics: A theoretical framework used to examine the interaction of linguistic ideologies with racial ideologies.
LangCrit: A theoretical framework used to examine the interaction of physical and social norms with racializing discourses.