East Asian and non-East Asian non-native English-speaking teachers’ navigation of identity and experiences as ESL teachers in the U.S. public school system

Prior research has shown that professional identity formation is more difficult for NNESTs than NESTs because they face challenges in the form of the native speaker fallacy, microaggressions, and self-doubt. This paper shares the results of a qualitative analysis of three East Asian and three non-East Asian non-native English-speaking ESL teachers to understand how appearance, culture, language, and ethnicity impacted their experience of navigating their professional identities within the U.S. school system.U of I OnlyAuthor requested UIUC-only access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste