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Nonnative English-speaking teachers in

the United States: issues of identity
a
Eduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo
a
VP Education Partnerships, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ,
USA
Published online: 03 Jun 2011.
To cite this article: Eduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo (2011) Nonnative English-speaking
teachers in the United States: issues of identity, Language and Education, 25:5, 419-432, DOI:
10.1080/09500782.2011.574702
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2011.574702
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Language and Education
Vol. 25, No. 5, September 2011, 419–432
Nonnative English-speaking teachers in the United States: issues

of identity
Eduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo∗
VP Education Partnerships, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

(Received 13 January 2011; final version received 17 March 2011)
Downloaded by [Eduardo Henrique Diniz de Figueiredo] at 13:43 20 March 2014
The present study investigated how nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs)

working in K-12 schools in the United States perceive their identities in relation to
the school environment and its norms, their coworkers and administrators and the
students and their families. Specific attention was given to the teachers’ concerns prior
to arrival and how initial challenges were overcome, their experiences in establishing
authority and creating a positive self-image in relation to the school community and
the role that language (in particular their status as NNESTs, and their bi/multilingual
skills) played in defining these concerns and experiences. Results showed that teachers’
bi/multilingual skills were crucial in defining their identities as unique professionals
with cultural sensitivity to students’ realities. However, it was also evident that native-
speakerism (Holliday 2006) still affects the ways in which NNESTs are perceived (both
by themselves and by others) in the school environment.
Keywords: ESL; identity; ideology; bilingual teachers; linguistic identity
Introduction
Over the years, the practice of English language teaching (henceforth, ELT) has widely
accepted the native speaker fallacy, which, according to Phillipson (1992, 193), ‘holds
that the ideal teacher is a native speaker, somebody with native speaker proficiency in
English who can serve as a model for the pupils’. Phillipson explained that this belief, ‘has
diverted attention away from the solution of urgent pedagogical questions, and prevented
the flourishing of local pedagogical initiative which could build on local strengths and
linguistic realities’ (199).
The issue of relying on native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) as the best models for
ELT has also been problematized by other scholars. Holliday, for instance, has used the term
native-speakerism, which he defines as: ‘a pervasive ideology within ELT, characterized by
the belief that “native-speaker” teachers represent a “Western culture” from which spring
the ideals both of the English language and of English language teaching methodology’.
This ideology, Holliday explains, ‘can be seen in many aspects of professional life, from
employment policy to the presentation of language’ (Holliday 2006, 385).
In fact, several studies have shown the effects that the native speaker fallacy and/or
native-speakerism can have on institutional policies and practices (e.g. Canagarajah 1999;
Liu 1999; Clark and Paran 2007). One of the most recent examples of these consequences
happened in the state of Arizona, where teachers who are reported to speak English with
∗
Email: eduardo.dinizdefigueiredo@asu.edu
ISSN 0950-0782 print / ISSN 1747-7581 online

C 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2011.574702
http://www.informaworld.com
420 E.H. Diniz de Figueiredo
‘heavy accents’ were required to be removed from classrooms with students who are still
learning English (Oboler 2010).
On the other hand, some states in the United States rely on NNESTs to work with their
English language learners (ELLs). In the school year 2002–2003, it was reported that there
were over 10,000 international teachers in American public K-12 schools teaching several
different subjects (Barber 2003), one of which is English as a second language (ESL).
Given the fact that many of these teachers come from countries where English is not the
primary language (such as Spain and Latin American countries), and the pervasiveness
of native-speakerism in ELT, it is important to understand the linguistic and professional
experiences of these teachers, since such an understanding can shed light into how the
native speaker fallacy is possibly reflected and contested in the public school sphere in an
inner circle country (as defined by Kachru 1992).

Therefore, the objective of the present study was to understand how NNESTs working
in K-12 schools in the United States perceive their identities in relation to the school
environment and its norms, their coworkers and administrators and the students and their
families. While I am fully aware of the political construct behind the terms native speaker as
opposed to nonnative speaker, and of how they have been problematized by many scholars
(e.g. Leung, Harris, and Rampton 1997; Butcher 2005), I have still chosen to use these
terms here as tools of inquiry. I am aware that this choice may be viewed as problematic, in
that it could reinforce the essentialized notions of native and nonnative, yet it was motivated
by the fact that the native/nonnative binary is still strongly present in ELT practice, despite
the growing awareness that scholars have of how problematic this dichotomy is.
For the purposes of this investigation, identity was defined in two ways: (1) ‘self-
definition by groups or individuals’ (Edwards 2009, 258); and (2) ‘[B]eing recognized as a
certain “kind of person”, in a given context’ (Gee 2001, 99). By using these two definitions
concurrently, it is possible to address not only self-perception, but also how one’s image(s)
is (are) observed and defined by others.
According to Gee, the importance of understanding issues of identity in public schools
lies in the fact that this particular construct is ‘an important analytic tool for understanding
schools and society’. As Gee explained, ‘[A] focus on the contextually specific ways in
which people act out and recognize identities allows a more dynamic approach than the
sometimes overtly general and static trio of “race, class and gender”’ (Gee 2001, 99). In
the specific case of NNESTs (particularly those working in inner circle institutions), their
nonnative (and foreign) status may play a significant part in the understanding of the roles
of language and sociocultural relations within the dynamics of public schools.
More specifically, I focused on the following three issues related to NNESTs identities:
r Teachers’ concerns prior to arrival and how initial challenges were overcome;
r Experiences in establishing authority and creating a positive self-image in relation
to the school community;
r The role that language (in particular their status as NNESTSs, and their
bi/multilingual skills) played in defining these concerns and experiences.
The first of these three factors is important to understand how NNESTs positioned
themselves in relation to their future environment (personal and professional), where En-
glish is used as a primary language. This relates to the way in which Norton (2010, 355),
drawing from the work of Wenger (1998) and Anderson (1991), defined imagined commu-
nity: ‘A reconstruction of past communities and historically constituted relationships, but
also a community of the imagination – a desired community that offers possibilities for
Language and Education 421
an enhanced range of identity options in the future’. The second factor is directly related
to Zimmerman’s (1998) notion of situated identity (in this case the identity being that
of a teacher). It also relates to what Gee (2001) called institution-identity (I-identity), in
that it deals with power relations within an institution. Finally, the third aspect addresses
the overall importance of language for the construction and perception of the teachers’
identities. This particular aspect was considered across the other two issues (concerns and
experiences), and also individually, since language is the main factor of consideration in
the present study.
Native and nonnative speaker identities: some relevant literature

It is important to understand that the notions of native vs. nonnative speaker, and their
implications for identity issues in particular, have been considered problematic by several
scholars. One issue of concern is the use of the term native speaker itself. Butcher (2005,
20), for instance, argues that the term is used to ‘create and sustain a national identity’,
thus creating divisions between groups. Leung, Harris, and Rampton (1997) also see the
term as problematic, due to its inappropriateness to the realities of teachers and students.
By drawing from the work of Hall (1988), they defend that: ‘members of minority groups
are not simple inheritors of fixed identities, ethnicities, cultures, and languages but are
instead engaged in a continual collective and individual process of making, remaking,
and negotiating these elements’ (547). Thus, they propose that instead of using the term
native speaker, professionals ‘should be concerned with questions about language expertise,
language inheritance, and language affiliation’ (543).
In fact, some studies have shown how relative the notion of the native speaker actually is.
Liu (1999), for example, showed how seven NNESTs differed in their understandings and
acceptance of this label, and how some of them actually navigated through native speaker
and nonnative speaker identities depending on their contexts. As Liu defends, ‘people can
have multiple social identities. These identities can change with new experiences and new
social interactions, according to people’s needs and their readiness to accept how they are
perceived by others’ (95). Liu goes on to explain that the labeling of NEST vs. NNEST
has several professional effects for teachers, one of which is the change of name by many
teachers, in an attempt to hide their nonnativeness.
Other studies have also addressed the consequences that the (non)native speaker labels
may have on the professional realities and identities of teachers. In one of these studies,
Tang (1997, 578) shows how NNESTs may feel a certain degree of ‘threatened confidence
and authority’, in spite of their advantages in possibly sharing a mother tongue with students
and being able to relate to their experiences as learners. Amin (1997, 580) also discusses
the issues of authority and confidence, especially when it is considered that there is an
assumption that ‘only native speakers know “real”, “proper”’ English. For Amin:
When the students give the message that they consider their teacher to be a nonnative speaker
of English and therefore one who cannot teach them the English they want or feel they need,
minority teachers are unable to effectively negotiate a teacher identity. (581)
In addition, Amin addressed the issue of race and its relation to the construct of being a
native speaker of English. For her, there is a connection between being White and being
perceived as a native speaker of English. She argues that this connection influences the
attitudes of students to non-White teachers, as well as their investment in learning English.
The issue of race in relation to (non)native status has also been discussed by Kubota
and Lin (2009, 8) (see also Chacón 2009). According to them, equating NESTs with White
and NNESTs with non-White is a tendency that has blinded us ‘to the discrimination
experienced by teachers who do not fit this formula’, including Asian and black native
speakers of English and white native speakers with a southern US accent. Indeed, the
association between language and ethnicity is not exclusive to relations between nativeness
and nonnativeness, as other scholars have shown (e.g. Giles and Johnson 1987; Giles and
Coupland 1991).
Another important relation that needs to be taken into account is that between language
and nation-state (Edwards 2009). Doerr (2009), based on Pennycook (1994), discusses three
main ideological assumptions usually made in this sense: (1) that being a native speaker
of a language is strictly connected to citizenship; (2) that language is homogeneous, and
spoken by homogeneous communities; and (3) that native speakers of a language are
usually associated with a high level of proficiency. Doerr relates these three concepts to
Irvine and Gal’s (2000) ideological processes of iconization (indexing particular groups
as representations of a whole society), erasure (making other groups invisible) and fractal
recursivity (projecting an opposing group), respectively. In fact, Pennycook also presents
another ideology that is prevalent in relation to the notion of a native speaker: ‘that there
is a rigid and clear distinction between being a native speaker and not being so’. This
difference, Pennycook argues, helps to perpetuate ‘language standards derived from the
central English-dominant nations’ (Pennycook 1994, 176).
Finally, the issue of teachers’ perception has been considered directly by some studies.
A good example is Inbar-Lourie’s (2005) quantitative investigation of the gap between self
and perceived identities of 102 EFL teachers. Inbar-Lourie’s results confirm ‘the existence
of an assumed gap between self and perceived identities’ among her participants (277).
These results were interpreted as evidence that: ‘perceived native speaker identity is not
a generalizable phenomenon but rather the product of the interaction between the judge
and the person being judged and the relevant knowledge both parties bring to the joint
encounter’ (279). What Inbar-Lourie’s study seems to demonstrate is that (non)nativeness
is not necessarily a ‘transportable’ identity (Zimmerman 1998) or a ‘nature-identity’ (Gee
2001), as it may be believed by some; instead, perceptions of (non)nativeness may vary
depending on context and other sociocultural factors.
Method
An anonymous survey with 19 open-ended questions was devised for the purposes of
the present investigation. Eighteen of those questions directly addressed the three specific
issues that were chosen as the basis of the study (teachers’ concerns prior to coming to
the US, their experiences in the schools and the role of language). One question (‘Do you
feel that having (or not having) native-like proficiency makes a difference in terms of how
you are perceived in your work environment in your own country? Please explain and/or
provide examples’) was used as a basis for understanding how participants’ answers about
their new work environment reflected beliefs from the old one. Recurrent themes related
to the objectives of this investigation were identified. The responses to each question were
analyzed individually based on these themes, and then categorized accordingly.
The choice to use direct questions in a survey format is interesting for at least two
reasons. First, it allows teachers to discuss their self-perceptions, which is a very important
factor when considering identity. Second, it also allows teachers to reflect on how they were
perceived by others, based on issues that they consider important.
I also acknowledge, on the other hand, that there are limitations with this survey-based
approach. First, a survey may be seen as a simple method to elicit one’s understandings of
identity, which is a notion that involves emotion, reflection, negotiation and engagement
with the questions asked. Another limitation is the fact that others’ perceptions of the
teachers are filtered through the eyes of the teachers themselves, which may be somewhat
biased. Finally, the questions were devised with a specific kind of identity in mind (NNEST),
which may have led teachers to think of the issues presented in a particular way only. None
of these limitations, however, invalidates the importance of understanding how teachers
perceive themselves, how they think they are perceived, the role that their NNEST identities
play in their identities and the richness of the data collected.
Participants
Fifteen Brazilian teachers of ESL working in public elementary and middle schools in the
Southeast of the United States were contacted by email and asked to participate in the
present study. All of them were at least 25 years old, and had at least one year of experience
teaching in the US at the time of the study. Seven of those teachers had already ended their
work in American schools, and had either returned to their country of origin or started
teaching in another country. The other eight participants were still working in US public
schools when the study was conducted. The choice to contact teachers from the same
country was motivated by the intent to have a more homogeneous group of participants,
even though it is acknowledged that homogeneity is difficult, even among people from
similar backgrounds.
Eight teachers (out of the 15 who were contacted) responded to the call to participate
and answered the survey questions. Of those, seven were female and one was male. Due
to the small number of participants, no further demographic questions were asked, in order
to make sure that their anonymity was protected. Participants were labeled with numbers
(one through eight), for reference purposes.
Analysis and discussion

The responses to the questions were grouped based on the three specific categories related
to the objective of the study: (1) concerns prior to arrival; (2) experiences in establishing
authority and a positive self-image; and (3) the role of language. Each of these categories
was subdivided based on recurrent themes that were present in the participants’ answers.
In what follows, I present an analysis of each of the three categories individually.
Concerns prior to arrival

The participants were specifically asked about their professional and linguistic concerns
prior to arriving in the US, about whether any of these concerns turned out to be realistic
and also about initial reactions from the school community upon their arrival. A discussion
of major themes related to each of those issues is presented below.
Professional and linguistic concerns

In terms of professional issues, one of the biggest concerns identified was that of adjusting
to a new educational system, as illustrated in statements 1 and 2 below (all emphases in
participants’ statements were added by the present author):
Statement 1. ‘I was unsure of what the professional standards were before coming to the
USA. That made me feel not only insecure, but also worried about my performance as
teacher in the American public school system. Often times, I wondered if the process and
procedures were the same; if the practices and workload were similar’. (Participant 1)
Statement 2. ‘I was worried about adjusting to a brand new educational system. I was not
familiar with the curriculum or with what was expected from me as a teacher. I was not
sure how far I could go as far as disciplining the kids, I frequently wondered if I would be
too harsh or too lenient for the American standards’. (Participant 4)
The worry of being able to adjust to a new educational system, especially considering
that it is in a completely new environment, is in no way a surprise. However, what was
interesting to observe in the data is that even when asked specifically about professional
concerns (not linguistic ones), three teachers mentioned that their biggest worry was related
to language issues, as exemplified in statements 3 and 4 below:

Statement 3. ‘I was wondering if I would be able to fulfill the school’s expecta-
tions, especially regarding to the TL itself, since I am not a native English speaker’.
(Participant 7)
Statement 4. ‘If the native speakers would respect me as an English teacher’.
(Participant 6)
What these statements show is that teachers felt preoccupied that their NNEST identity
would interfere in their ability to ‘fulfill the school’s expectations’ and to be respected in
their profession. This concern is a clear example of the pressure that the native speaker
fallacy puts on ELT practitioners worldwide (Phillipson 1992). It is also an illustration of
how ownership of English is almost exclusively attributed to native speakers, in spite of the
growing research awareness of English as an international language (Matsuda 2003).
Participants’ answers in relation to their linguistic concerns more specifically (not
professional ones) were more revealing in terms of what exactly they feared in relation
to their nonnative English speaker status. Six of them revealed that their accent, the use
of idioms and being corrected by others were their major worries (the other two stated
that they had no linguistic concerns). This is noteworthy because it supports the idea that
native-speaker identity has long been associated with discrete features (Lee in press, as
cited in Kubota and Lin 2009), mainly related to speaking (such as pronunciation and
idiomatic language), rather than sociolinguistic or sociocultural issues. It also reveals that
native-speakerism can be seen and felt not only in terms of employment policy, but also in
how language itself is perceived (Holliday 2006), which may have a big impact in NNESTs’
self-images.
Realistic concerns?
When discussing whether their concerns had turned out to be true, all participants stated
that there were some initial issues that needed to be addressed, mainly in terms of getting
acquainted with their new duties and routines, but that they were overcome. Moreover,
the participants were more emphatic about their professional issues rather than their initial
linguistic concerns, suggesting that the challenge of adjusting to their new work environment
was more evident than any issues related to language itself. Statements 5 and 6 are good
illustrations of teachers’ initial professional experiences:
Statement 5. ‘In the beginning it took a while to learn the new curriculum and to
get adjusted to the way a teacher is supposed to discipline students in this country’.
(Participant 4)
Statement 6. ‘At first, it took me some time to adjust to the demands and expectations of an
ESL classroom. Using my previous knowledge of teaching EFL was relevant to the teaching
of ESL’. (Participant 8)
As for linguistic adjustment, teachers usually reported that all it really took for them to
adapt to the new environment was to ask for clarification or rephrase a previous utterance,
and to get used to the ways people said particular things in their new environment. These are
common strategies in the negotiation of meaning among speakers of different varieties of
the same language, independent of their native or nonnative status. As Nelson (2008, 303)
has explained, ‘[N]egotiation is an integral part of skilled participation in conversations in
any language and culture’.
What participants’ answers suggest in terms of their identities, therefore, is that their
NNEST status did pose some challenges to their adaptation in the US schools, but that
these were not major issues, in spite of the fact that they had anticipated linguistic concerns.
Rather, they had to put more effort into overcoming their initial professional issues, such
as adjusting their teaching practices to the new curricula and educational environment.
Reactions from the school community

Most participants (six, to be exact) stated that they felt that the school community as a whole
(administrators, coworkers, students and parents) had positive reactions to them upon their
arrival, as shown in the following statements:
Statement 7. ‘Parents were very positive to find out a non-native English speaker was
teaching their children. They felt their children had a role model, whose background was
from a Latin American country’. (Participant 2)
Statement 8. ‘When I arrived at school, my principal was so happy to have me there. He
said I was really “needed” there. All the teachers were very supportive and didn’t know
how an ESL program would work. At first, students were not very excited, but since they
were teenagers I didn’t worry a lot. Later on, whey they got to know me, we built a fantastic
relationship, and they would see me as a friend, a mentor’. (Participant 6)
Statement 9. ‘Since I taught ESL and can speak Spanish, the parents were really happy
since we could communicate and I would be able to help their kids better’. (Participant 7)
It is interesting to observe that positive reactions such as the ones described in statements
7–9 were mostly based on three issues: (1) teachers’ background; (2) their expertise in ESL;
and (3) their proficiency in Spanish (the prevalent language among ELLs in many of the
schools where participants taught). Thus, it may be argued that teachers’ identities were
initially perceived more on the basis of what they could add to the school environments
where they worked than on the basis of their nonnative English speaker status. In fact, only
one teacher (participant 3) reported a somewhat negative reaction due to linguistic issues
(she stated that one teacher corrected her English when she said something ‘wrong’).
Authority and image(s)

Perceptions of authority and participants’ images were analyzed from two angles: self-
perceptions and others’ perceptions. In addition, an analysis of how teachers felt their
relationships with members of the school community had evolved through time was also
considered. A discussion of these issues is presented below.
Self-perceptions
Teachers’ self-perceptions varied in interesting ways. While half of them stated that they
had never questioned their own authority or linguistic ability, others shared that there were
moments when they did feel insecure about these issues. In terms of authority, the teachers
who did question themselves reported reasons related to the little knowledge they had about
the school system upon arrival, having to deal with students other than their own and the
fear of discrimination from coworkers.
As for language issues, the participants who did question their own abilities at one point
or another did so based on the fear of not knowing specific vocabulary and/or idiomatic
expressions, or not understanding coworkers’ sense of humor. These may seem like minor
issues, since they do not pertain to teaching itself; they are probably caused by the fear
of being negatively judged by peers and other members of the school community. As
participant 1 explained:
Statement 10. ‘That had nothing to do with my expertise in teaching English as a second
language, for teaching in itself goes beyond such subtleties’. (Participant 1)
Still, the fact that some teachers did feel some kind of fear or preoccupation in relation to
their linguistic skills deserves some attention. What seemed evident from the data was that
participants’ identities as teachers were rarely questioned by themselves; when questioning
did happen it was more related to participants’ fears of being perceived negatively by other
members of the school community, mainly their colleagues, due to linguistic issues such
as idioms or vocabulary. This shows that even details (and many times, especially details)
may be used to establish boundaries between native and nonnative speakers, and that these
details can cause insecurity even to qualified, proficient NNESTs. This is evidence that
essentialized notions of nativeness may exert unnecessary pressure on nonnative speakers,
who should be seen as competent bi/multilingual speakers in their own right, rather than
being judged based on idealized notions of monolingual native speakers (Cook 1999).
Others’ perceptions
Six out of the eight participants did not feel that their authority was ever questioned or
threatened by anyone else in the school community. Moreover, seven of them did not feel
that their expertise was ever doubted by anybody. In responding to the issue of authority,
participant 3 stated that she only felt a threat when the hiring freeze and job cuts in her
county started to get ‘really bad’, which indicates that her feeling of threat was actually
caused by factors external to her language or professional expertise, or to the way she was
perceived in the school community.
The only other teacher who discussed a feeling of authority and expertise being ques-
tioned was participant 1. However, he described how he was able to overcome this feeling,
as shown in the following statement:
Statement 11. ‘Only in the first year because the culture of having foreigners in that
particular school was not well developed. Once the ESL population and program developed
as a county, teachers and other staff members began to accept me in their niche. I was then
able to show my expertise in the field besides feeling hurt from the first impressions I had the
year before. Delivering workshops at the state level, and providing staff with research-based
strategies made me feel more accepted in the school as a whole’. (Participant 1)
Finally, only two participants stated that they felt that their linguistic ability was ever
questioned. One of them stated that the reason was due more to insecurity, rather than
something that came directly from the other members of the school community. The other
teacher, however, described an occasion when her accent was questioned for the purposes
of testing, as shown in statement 12:
Statement 12. ‘The only time I felt that not my authority, but my ability as a teacher was
kind of questioned, was by the end of the school year. [State tests] were coming and the
principal of my school came to me to say that I was not gonna administer the test because
of my accent. He said that parents could complain about it, so it was better that another
teacher did it and I was gonna be the proctor’. (Participant 5)
It is clear from this example (and from most of the other answers given by participant 5,
who was one of the teachers who reported her experiences as having been very positive in
most cases) that the accent-based boundary which was used to separate her from the other
teachers in this case was caused not only by the principal’s attitude, but also, and perhaps
more importantly, by the fear of accountability that is associated with ‘official’ artifacts,
such as state tests. This ‘official’ status of the document itself creates an expectation that
those who administer it also need to speak with an ‘official’ (i.e. standardized) model;
one that is usually associated to the homogeneous, essentialist notion of the native speaker
(Pennycook 1994; Doerr 2009), thus rendering the teacher’s nonnative identity a supposedly
lower status.
Relationships
The issue of how the participants related to the other members of the school community
was particularly interesting for two main reasons: (1) all participants reported positive
experiences overall; (2) the factors that influenced perceptions of positive experience varied
according to the different groups with whom the participants interacted (i.e. administrators,
colleagues, students or parents).
In the case of relationships with administrators and colleagues, for instance, most of
the answers described good relations based on the assignment of duties, or participation in
school activities, which was an indication of trust and respect, as shown in the following
examples:
Statement 13. ‘They like my work and have assigned me to several leadership positions at
school from Social Committee Chairperson to LEP/Testing coordinator’. (Participant 3)
Statement 14. ‘I feel more comfortable questioning my fellow teachers and working together
as a team where everyone contributes with something’. (Participant 4)
Statement 15. ‘They would ask me to perform certain tasks and expected me to accept
certain jobs (such as in a cultural fair, teacher/parent meetings, book fair, tutoring, ESL
classes for parents, etc)’. (Participant 8)
As for relationships with parents, one of the biggest indications of good relationships
was the ability to communicate with them in Spanish, a factor that led parents to count on
the international teachers for ‘support and help’ (Participant 4). Finally, the relationships
with students were described as positive based on an increased approximation, which has
been interpreted by teachers as a sign of respect and trust. One particular reason for such
approximation, according to some teachers, was an increasing awareness of the teachers’
cultural backgrounds, and of what they shared with parents and the students themselves, as
exemplified below:
Statement 16. ‘Students became closer over time. They felt more confident asking about
Brazil as they noticed that their parents and I had similar background’. (Participant 2)
The responses given by participants in terms of relationships with all other members
of the school community (administrators, colleagues, students and parents) showed that
overall, teachers felt a sense of belonging and importance within the school as a whole. More
importantly, this feeling was caused not only by their adaptation to the new environment
(in which case they were able to perform certain duties), but also by the uniqueness in how
they were perceived in terms of expertise, language skills and cultural backgrounds. These
factors, according to the teachers’ answers, seemed to play a very important role in defining
their identities as unique members of the school community, in the sense that they could
perform certain activities that their colleagues could not.
The role of language

In this section, I discuss two issues that came up in relation to the role of language other
than the ones already presented previously: participants’ bi/multilingual skills, and the
importance of (non)nativeness in their previous experience(s) in Brazil.
Bi/multilingualism
The most important language-related issue that teachers discussed was the importance of be-
ing bilingual and/or multilingual in their work. All participants felt that their bi/multilingual
skills had a very positive impact not only on their daily work with students, but also in
building relationships with parents, thus offering a positive image to colleagues and admin-
istrators. The following statements are examples of what participants said in this respect:
Statement 17. ‘Being able to know the root of most romance languages provided me with
the ability to convey meaning using cognates. Students would then use their knowledge of
L1 to understand L2’. (Participant 1)
Statement 18. ‘It has helped me a lot with newcomers and kindergarten students. I felt that
the school really appreciated the fact that they had me as part of their staff ’. (Participant 5)
Statement 19. ‘Sometimes the student didn’t feel comfortable speaking in English or didn’t
know how to do it, I would speak to him in Spanish’. (Participant 6)
Statement 20. ‘Students enjoyed the idea of having a nonnative speaker as they saw me as
a capable and successful language learner. Mostly, I could help them with some concerns
such as a way to translate a word, use of cognates and most importantly, understanding
their cultural and social differences’. (Participant 8)
As shown, teachers’ bi/multilingual skills were used to help students build metalinguistic
strategies (use of cognates, for instance), to assist and build relationships with newcomers,
and to build sociocultural understanding. Moreover, the example given by participant 8
(statement 20) about having a successful language learner as a model for students is of
crucial importance, as it is based on the notion of multicompetence, defined by Cook
(1999, 190) as ‘the total language knowledge of a person who knows more than one
language’, and thus challenges the ideological assumption that native speakers are the only
or the best models for language learners.
In the case of parents, being able to speak Spanish was considered a very important
factor, since it allowed teachers to help families in parent–teacher conferences, school
meetings and other events and to establish positive relations with them, as previously
discussed (in the subsection entitled ‘Reactions from the school community’).
As discussed by participant 5 (statement 18), the use of these and other strategies based
on bi/multilingual skills helped teachers create an identity of uniqueness and expertise that
was appreciated by the school community. It is noteworthy that such expertise was not
based on being a native speaker of the target language, but rather on being proficient in
multiple languages, and knowing how to use them for the benefit of students, families and
colleagues. Therefore, this view of expertise supports Pavlenko’s claim that teachers can
‘construe themselves and their future students as legitimate L2 users rather than as failed
native speakers’ (Pavlenko 2003, 251), legitimizing new identity options that challenge
the native/nonnative dichotomy, such as linguistic diverse. As Edwards (2009, 248) has
explained, ‘some have argued that increases in linguistic repertoire correlate with heightened
sensitivity, enhanced cultural awareness, perhaps even greater cognitive flexibility and all-
round nous’. The examples of the participants in the present study seem to confirm that
belief, at least to a certain extent.
(Non)nativeness in participants’ home country

One final factor that deserves some attention is the role that (non)nativeness had played
in the participants’ previous experiences. This aspect is important because it may help to
explain at least some of the feelings (e.g. concerns, fears and self-doubt) that the teachers
had in relation to their new work context.
When addressing this specific factor, six participants stated that having native-like
proficiency (and/or having lived in an inner circle country) is considered important (for
some, at least) in the Brazilian ELT context. As summarized by participant 1:
Statement 21. ‘Not having native-like proficiency in my country is something that diminishes
you as a professional. No one will respect your educational background if you do not
have native-like proficiency. Not only that, students demand that you as a teacher have to
sound like the actors or singers they are accustomed to listen to. Besides, most language
institutions in Brazil tend to rely on professionals who have lived or worked abroad. That
was the only thing I did not have in my resumé back then’. (Participant 1)
As for the participants who did not say that native-like proficiency was an issue in
Brazilian ELT, one of them (participant 3) stated that she ‘hoped’ such status was not the
basis of any discrimination. As for the other teacher (participant 4), she only stated that
being able to speak ‘great English’ did not depend on whether or not one had ever lived in
an inner circle country. In other words, neither of these two participants was emphatic in
making the claim that native-like proficiency is not important in Brazilian ELT.
The fact that most participants felt the need for native-like proficiency in Brazil is
revealing in two ways. First, it helps to explain why some of them had felt pressure and
concern due to their nonnative status before coming to the US. Considering that such
status may ‘diminish’ you as a professional in Brazil, it is not surprising to observe that
ESL teachers from that context may be very demanding about their English proficiencies.
Second, the stress on sounding like a native speaker (e.g. students ‘demand’ that you ‘sound’
native-like) helps to explain why some teachers were concerned about discrete skills, such
as accent, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions.
One interesting comment made by participant 2, on the other hand, was that although
she agreed that there was a ‘bias’ against nonnative speakers, she still felt that some people
in Brazil prefer nonnative teachers due to the fact that they have gone through the process
of learning another language. Although this may be true, it still does not seem to be the
trend in Brazilian ELT, as some studies have shown (e.g. Friedrich 2000, 2002; Rajagopalan
2005).
Conclusion
The data presented in this study give support to previous claims in relation to the pervasive
notion of the native speaker in ELT. First, it certainly aligns with Tang’s (1997) argument that
NNESTs feel at least a certain level of threat and insecurity in relation to their confidence
and authority. Moreover, the present study also confirms that the dichotomy of native vs.
nonnative is usually discussed in terms of discrete (speaking) skills, rather than social,
ethnic, cultural and racial ones. It is important that teachers be made aware of the impact
that these other factors have on perceptions of the native speaker and the relations of power
established by them (see Kubota forthcoming). One particular limitation of the present
study is that this issue was not addressed explicitly with teachers, and therefore no claims
about their experiences in relation to race and ethnicity can be made here.
On the other hand, it was very interesting to see that teachers’ professional identities,
especially in relation to authority and expertise, were not solely dependent on their nonnative
status; quite the contrary, it seemed that having bi/multilingual skills, and the ability to
relate to students’ and parents’ cultures played a very positive part in how the participants’
identities were constructed in their workplaces. This is particularly informative for places
that have restrictive language policies, such as Arizona, where discriminatory measures
against teachers with ‘heavily accented or ungrammatical English’ are being implemented
based on ideological assumptions, rather than empirical research.
Still, many of the answers given by the participants of the present study showed that
native-speakerism is still present in one way or another among NNESTs, and that a native
speaker identity is very much valued in ELT. As explained by Rajagopalan (2005, 286),
most NNESTs ‘have been literally brainwashed into believing that their highest goal should
be to be so proficient in the language as to be welcomed into the community of native
speakers as “regular” members’. While this ultimate desire to sound native may not be
very strong among the teachers surveyed in this study, the consequences of the type of
brainwashing presented by Rajagopalan are certainly evident.
What the data presented here reveal, thus, is that there is a tension between teachers’ per-
ceptions of an identity of bilingualism and legitimacy (Pavlenko 2003) and the still prevalent
discourse of a native/nonnative dichotomy. In other words, the agency and self-assurance
that teachers do have and feel in relation to their linguistic and professional identities are
in constant conflict with the still strong discourse in ELT practice of native speaker su-
periority. The Brazilian teachers surveyed here certainly show that they experience these
two conflicting identities (the one they choose, i.e. bilingual, and the one that is placed on
them, i.e. nonnative) simultaneously. Moreover, their accounts of how (non)nativeness is
experienced in their home country are certainly revealing in that the previous conceptual-
izations that teachers and learners bring of language, nation and culture (to name a few)
play a very important role in how the native/nonnative dichotomy is experienced, contested
and sometimes even reinforced by them.
Therefore, my view is that in order to address this tension, scholars and educators need
to engage in a deep exploration of constructs such as culture, ethnicity, nation, language,
nationalism and bilingualism, to cite a few, that are and have been available to each of
us, and how they have shaped our views and understandings of identity, agency, teaching
and learning. This view is in alignment with Norton’s claim that: ‘language educators and
researchers have the primary goal of examining the social, historical, and cultural contexts in
which language learning and teaching takes place, and how learners and teachers negotiate
and sometimes resist the diverse positions those contexts offer them’ (Norton 2010, 351),
and with research on how imagined communities relate to English language teaching and
learning (e.g. Pavlenko and Norton 2007). In the particular case of K-12 schools, these
issues need to be understood also in relation to how the school as an institution (including
administrators, staff and parents) understands and portrays language and culture, and to
the value it gives to (or takes away from) bilingualism, multiculturalism and diversity in
general. The understanding of these issues, I believe, may lead to a more informed and
empowered resistance of the native speaker fallacy, one that is conscious of how this fallacy
is constructed and perpetuated locally and globally, historically and culturally, institutionally
and individually.
In the present study, in particular, the acknowledgement by schools and parents of the
importance of having bi/multilingual, culturally sensitive educators, as well as the self-
assurance that the participants surveyed had in relation to their expertise as ESL teachers,
are certainly very positive. As Rajagopalan (2005, 287) stated, ‘the figure of the native
speaker is increasingly being seen today as a concept shot through with ideological, indeed
often racist, connotations’. However, recent measures like the ones adopted in Arizona
show that we certainly have a long way to go.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Professor Karen Adams from Arizona State University for her valuable comments
on this piece. Any errors and omissions that remain in this study are my responsibility.
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Language and Education

Nonnative English-speaking teachers in

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2011.574702

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Nonnative English-speaking teachers in the United States: issues

VP Education Partnerships, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

The present study investigated how nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs)

ISSN 0950-0782 print / ISSN 1747-7581 online

inner circle country (as defined by Kachru 1992).

Native and nonnative speaker identities: some relevant literature

Analysis and discussion

Concerns prior to arrival

Professional and linguistic concerns

to language issues, as exemplified in statements 3 and 4 below:

Reactions from the school community

Authority and image(s)

perform certain activities that their colleagues could not.

The role of language

(Non)nativeness in participants’ home country

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