Page 150 - LA ENSEÑANZA APRENDIZAJE DE LENGUAS

LA ENSEÑANZA APRENDIZAJE DE LENGUAS:
150 UNA MIRADA DESDE EL SURESTE MEXICANO

shaped by ‘practical theories’ (Johnson & Freeman, 2001).Language teacher cognition research
conceptualizes teachers as thinking, agentive beings (Burns et al., 2015) who through teacher

cognition and participation in communities of practice dialogically co-construct knowledge as

they develop their understanding of teaching through action.

In addition, situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and sociocultural perspectives

(Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Johnson, 2009) were employed in this study, given that identity is

constructed through participation in ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) (Wenger, 1998) through

interactions between people, discourse and contexts. Furthermore, this is a fluid and dynamic

process, given that individuals will never finish constructing their identity as they seek to deve-

lop their personal theories about teaching.
This paper identifies a thriving identity research culture in SLTE but argues that additional

research is required to identify the extent to which identity formation guides SLTE practice

(Wright, 2010), especially in vulnerable contexts.

2. Context

The context for the study was the Licenciatura en la Enseñanza del Inglés (B. A. in English

Language Teaching) programme at the Tuxtla Language Faculty of the Autonomous University

of Chiapas, Mexico. This is a nine semester study programme, including the480 hour service

learning component, which participants complete in public schools in the state of Chiapas as

part of their social service programme.
The state of Chiapas is located in south-eastern Mexico and is considered the poorest

state in the country (INEGI, 2011).

Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas