“I DON’T COME AND PRESENT AS A TEACHER:” A POSITIONING ANALYSIS OF REFUGEE TEACHER IDENTITY
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Abstract
This study examined how a female refugee English teacher residing in Bangkok, Thailand, positioned herself in relation to her teacher identity. We collected four conversational interviews, each lasting between 60 and 90 minutes, as the primary data for our study. Drawing on Bamberg’s (2004) three levels of positioning, the analysis of this study involved three main steps. First, the study examined how she positioned herself within her narrative. Subsequently, the analysis explored how she positioned herself in relation to others and how these interactions shaped her positioning. Finally, both positioning analyses were integrated to understand how she positioned herself vis-à-vis refugee and teacher discourses, within which she positioned herself and was positioned by these discourses. Through these positionings, the participant adeptly navigated her roles to construct her teacher identity, addressing the complex realities of the refugee classroom context and developing a teaching approach that met the specific needs of her refugee students, while reclaiming her agency and resisting the dominant narrative that perceives refugees solely through a lens of vulnerability and the traditional educational narrative that prioritizes formal credentials and elitism in academic practices. Our findings extend positioning theory from the context of forced migration.
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