Teacher Identity under a Micropolitical Lens: Multiple Readings of the Chilean EFL Teacher Education Cartography

Teacher identity is a critical term that has gathered a significant amount of attention in teacher education. And within a neoliberalist system characterized by standardization and accountability, teacher educators are tasked with the responsibility of developing cohorts of new teachers who can respond to the effective teacher being outlined in teacher evaluation rubrics. Positioned with a poststructuralist lens, this collection of rhizomatic inquiries perceives teacher education as an entangled assemblage of actors and semiotics and therefore questions the influence that macro and micropolitics have on the identity work that teacher educators and preservice teachers engage in. Set in the Chilean EFL initial teacher education, each inquiry works on exploring multiple readings of this teacher education assemblage that is characterized by a socio-political history deeply engrained in neoliberalism. The first inquiry utilizes scenario planning through a casual layered analysis approach to interpret how the current litany, social causes, worldviews, and metaphors can creatively inspire various future scenarios and therefore help deconstruct the dominant vision of the teacher education future. Moving from a more systematic perspective, the second narrative inquiry focuses in on the relational experiences between teacher education and preservice teachers, looking to understand how the micropolitical behaviors shape the identity work that each actor reads within the classroom. With these rhizoanalytical studies in hand, the author moves to discuss the potential of an imaginative teacher education curriculum, considering the importance of opening up creative spaces in the classroom discussion for multiple and evolving readings of who teachers are.