Translanguaging and transpositioning: digital identity texts as sites of equity-based praxis in teacher education

While the Ontario school curriculum recognises that all Ontario teachers across disciplines are responsible for supporting English language learners, traditional monolingual teacher education programmes are critiqued for inadequately preparing them to provide bi/multilingual students with comprehensive language and literacy education. Grounded in translanguaging and transpositioning theory, this study advocates for equity-based praxis in multilingual classrooms by examining how teacher identity mediates inclusive pedagogy. It explores how the creation of digital identity texts serves as a reflexive tool, enabling language teachers to critically reflect on and reconstruct their professional and linguistic identities. Using narrative inquiry and collaborative autoethnography, it focuses on three language educators’ experiences of creating multilingual and multimodal identity texts and reflecting on their evolving personal and professional identities. Findings demonstrate that the process of creating identity texts empowered participants to affirm their linguistic and cultural heritage, challenge hierarchical language ideologies, and reposition themselves across intersecting roles. Situated in translanguaging spaces, teachers engaged in transpositioning to fluidly shift their roles as educators, individuals, and community members. It underscores the potential of identity texts as a transformative pedagogy that celebrates diverse identities and promote critical language awareness, and thus, potentially support social justice in education.