“I Felt Valued”: Multilingual Microteachings and the Development of Teacher Agency in a Teacher Education Classroom

Existing research has explored the value of multilingual pedagogies that focus on utilizing the linguistic / cultural resources of students (e.g., García & Kleyn 2016, Turner 2017); however, there is still a need to examine how the kinds of teacher agency that can lead to multilingual pedagogies actually being implemented can best be developed in teacher education classrooms. The present study incorporates collaborative auto-ethnography to examine microteaching activities / reflections of three researcher-participants in a teacher education course on schooling and multilingualism. The authors found that playing the role of students in the microteachings enabled them to reflect on their own multilingual practices, and that they felt valued as multilingual subjects themselves in the process, which led them to have more empathy for their own multilingual students. In addition, the connection of theory to practice was strengthened through the microteachings, and they gained great insights on the value of multilingual pedagogies through trying them out in a low-stakes environment. Moreover, the development of teacher agency empowered them to try similar approaches in their own classrooms, and advocate for their multilingual students in a variety of contexts