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Research on language teacher identity in the field of heritage language (HL) teaching has received little attention, although identity is a central concern in HL education. Our research seeks to address this gap in the research on language teacher identity. Drawing on the Darvin and Norton’s (2015) conceptual framework of identity and investment, w...
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Brussels is an officially French-Dutch bilingual city, yet in reality, it is profoundly and increasingly multilingual. Earlier research on the linguistic situation in Brussels has predominantly focused on the competing dominant languages, resulting in very limited scholarly attention to smaller language communities. This paper addresses this blind...
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... In African settings, scholars have employed this framework to examine how language teachers and learners navigate postcolonial linguistic landscapes, from digital initiatives like the African Storybook in rural Uganda (Stranger-Johannessen & Norton, 2019) to indigenous language learning in post-apartheid South Africa (James, 2022). Asian researchers have applied the model to investigate both digital literacy practices in online language learning, particularly in East Asian contexts where English serves as cultural capital (Liu, 2023;Liu & Darvin, 2024), and identity construction in various contexts, such as heritage language teacher identity in Bangladesh (Afreen & Norton, 2022) and English teacher identity in EFL, EMI, and ESL contexts (Zhang & Huang, 2024), and decolonizing practices through YouTube video production and critical pedagogies in Hong Kong (Darvin & Zhang, 2023;Zhang & Gonzales, 2024). In Europe, studies have focused primarily on immigrant language learners' investment in both majority and heritage language maintenance (Iikkanen, 2022), while research in North America (Crowther, 2020) and Australia (Gilanyi, 2019) has explored how transnational students invest in daily literacy practices while negotiating their multilingual identities. ...
As teachers, researchers, and policymakers across the globe engage more frequently with questions of investment in TESOL and beyond, it remains crucial to critically investigate the constructs of identity, capital, and ideology to ensure their relevance in our evolving social order. In the 2025 special issue of IJTS, we aim to advance this research agenda while simultaneously celebrating the ten years of Darvin and Norton’s (2015) influential model. We highlight that Darvin and Norton’s contributions have not only expanded the theoretical boundaries of language and power but also provided practical insights for educational stakeholders by promoting more inclusive and equitable practices that recognize learners’ diverse identities and experiences. Their work continues to inspire new scholarly investigations into the intersections of language, identity, and power, which are able to deepen our understanding of language learning complexities in the 21st century.
Through this special issue, we seek to showcase innovative applications of the investment model across diverse linguistic/cultural contexts and to examine how recent technological, social, and political changes have shaped investment in language education and communication. We particularly welcome empirical and theoretical contributions from scholars across disciplines that push the boundaries of the model while maintaining its core commitment to understanding the complex relationship between identity, capital, and ideology.
... Finally, Afreen and Norton (2022) investigate the investment and identity of teacher of Bangla as a heritage language in the context of Canada and fi nd out the subject's identity and investment is closely linked with her ideological perception "in the importance of HL maintenance for cultural continuity" between Bangla and English (p.152). The study also reveals that HL teachers may function as cultural collaborators, mentors, community members and innovators. ...
Identity and investment are closely related to second language learning in many contexts. Many studies have been done on how second language learning aff ects the identity and investment of second language learners. Banking on the theory of identity, this article investigates how and why Bangladeshi students, belonging to indigenous communities, invest in second language learning and how their investment in L2 is linked to their agency. The study adopted an interpretative qualitative research paradigm and more precisely, utilized narrative inquiry as a research method to explore the lived experiences situated in a particular time, space and context. The findings exhibit that Bangladeshi ethnic students have made financial, physical, psychological and academic investments to own the linguistic, cultural and symbolic capital of English as a second language and such investment seems to be impacted by factors such as generating new identities (real or imagined), agency, neoliberalism and social justice. The research findings tend to have implications for second language teachers, researchers, SLA curriculum and material designers and other stakeholders in the Bangladeshi context or elsewhere.
... Here, the concept of posture echoes imagined identities, a term which refers to learners' self-identification with an imagined community (e.g., an international/multilingual community) [22,29]. However, the two concepts also come with theoretical differences: "posture" describes a kind of tendency or inclination pertinent to individual learners' target language(s), but "imagined identities", e.g., "transcultural identity", describes the exercise of individual agency in language learning/teaching by mediating two distinct cultures in language teaching/learning practices [30]. ...
... YIN's perception of her "bi-identity" reveals her uncertainty about her cultural identity, while her self-identification as an "in-between" person provides room for her bi-/multicultural posture and inclination to self-identify as a bicultural person, although this does not necessarily lead to stronger investment in Chinese learning [26]. This makes it different from "transcultural identity", as the latter reflects the exercise of agency in facilitating language teaching/learning by deploying multilingual and multicultural resources [30]. ...
This study, drawing on the theoretical model of investment, explores what motivates and encourages international students studying Chinese as a second language (CSL) to invest in their Chinese learning using Q sorting and interview data collected from 15 international undergraduate students studying in mainland China. The results reveal that: (1) CSL students' incentives for investment are intra-personally and inter-personally diverse and can be divided into three categories (multilingual posture and cultural capital-oriented, economic capital-oriented, and cultural capital and experience-oriented); (2) CSL students' Chinese learning investment is dynamic, as they aim to enrich their learning and life experiences after studying Chinese for a period of time; (3) CSL stu-dents' investment is apparently driven by multiple perceived benefits, in that utilitarian objectives (e.g., scholarships, employment opportunities, and educational qualifications) are characteristic of CSL students' investment, but are also interwoven with some non-utilitarian objectives (e.g., enriching one's experience and making friends). The findings have some implications for CSL education and future studies.
Studies informed by poststructuralist theories of language have examined the relationship between language teachers’ emotion labor, identity, and agency. However, research has not yet explored the relationship between emotion labor and volunteer teaching, which is an important practice in language education. Our research seeks to address this gap, drawing on a 2‐year qualitative case study at the community‐based Vancouver Bangla School (VBS). With emotion labor and investment as the conceptual underpinnings, our study investigated how the VBS heritage language (HL) program structured the emotion labor of seven volunteer teachers, what the feeling rules associated with the VBS program were, and the extent to which volunteer teachers’ investment in HL education helped them manage their emotion labor. Data sources included participant classroom observations, field notes, focus group and interview transcripts, questionnaires, and educational resources, which were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings indicate that the emotion labor of volunteer teachers was structured by the following characteristics of the VBS program: lack of funding, poor organizational structure and teacher recognition, challenges of online teaching, insufficient number of teachers, limited parental support, and lack of training. This emotion labor was associated with four feeling rules implicit in the VBS program: (a) be generous and caring, (b) be committed and dedicated, (c) be a good and efficient teacher, and (d) have limited expectations of the community. Findings suggest that teachers’ investment in Bangla as a mother tongue in multicultural Canada, and their investment in promoting the children's transcultural identities, was particularly powerful, and enabled the volunteer teachers to navigate and manage their emotion labor. The study suggests that an enhanced understanding of a language teacher's investment in a program, institution, or community might provide insight into the important relationship among desire, agency, and emotion labor.
Scholarship on novice language teachers has often overlooked how novices comparatively develop personalized trajectories in the initial years. This study views novice-ness through the lens of identity construction and examines how three Iranian English language teachers in the first, second, and third years of teaching comparatively constructed their teacher identities. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, post-class discussions, and reflective journals. Data analyses revealed that the teachersʼ identity construction featured similarities (emotion labor, agency conflicts, and identity standard tensions) and differences (sense of belonging, future selves, and resistance). The study demonstrates that novice teachers' identity construction is influenced by power relations and contextual discourses as well as particularities, which collectively, underscore the importance of reconceptualizing novice-ness in light of teachers' identity-related professional development.
