Ideological clarity as discursive accomplishment: teacher candidates’ linguistic landscape analyses in CMLA-oriented teacher education

Abstract Scholarship on ideological clarity and critical multilingual language awareness highlights their situated nature and connection to advocacy in preparing teachers to recognize and challenge inequities shaping multilingual students’ educational experiences. Teacher educators must prepare candidates for such work, yet little is known about how teacher candidates (TCs) discursively formulate analyses, negotiate responsibility, and articulate contextually responsive advocacy. Drawing on a critical discursive perspective, we conceptualize ideological clarity as an accomplishment produced as TCs account for linguistic evidence, evaluate its social consequences, and position themselves toward possible responses. We traced how 81 TCs across three teacher education settings (two in the U.S., one in Türkiye) curated evidence, drew on available discourses, positioned themselves toward inequity, and articulated implications for practice in a linguistic landscape assignment. Across contexts, TCs’ analytic language discursively enacted ideological clarity, imagining, and projections for action recursively, making context-sensitive advocacy orientations available. Findings suggest teacher education can support advocacy by creating structured opportunities for TCs to work through noticing, critique, responsibility, and possible action rather than presuming advocacy follows from an achieved ideological position. They also support examining ideological clarity not as something TCs possess or develop, but as made recognizable, accountable, and actionable through situated pedagogical activity.