Language Teacher Identity and Agency in Contexts of Introduction Programs Bureaucracy

This chapter teases out introduction programs for adult migrants as unique sites for language teacher professional identity development. In doing so, I first introduce three perspectives that contribute to the shaping of introduction program teachers’ identities and capacity for agency: 1) educational and political perspectives, 2) bureaucratic and administrative perspectives and 3) emotional perspectives. The next part of the chapter reports on a study on teachers’ professional narratives from the Danish and Norwegian programs. Focusing particularly on the narrative construction of legitimacy, the study shows how the dilemmas teachers face between policy, professional commitment and students lead to – often emotionally strenuous – negotiation of conflicting and contradictory identities. Whereas teachers perform agency in their daily classroom activities and student encounters, they also position themselves as captives of a system with limited autonomy. I suggest 1) recognizing the professional and moral dilemmas teachers are faced with in contemporary introduction programs and 2) acknowledging the unique professional knowledge these language teachers possess as potential ways forward to better support teachers and reconcile the gap between policy and professional expectations.