Teaching Multilingual Learners in Rural Communities: Negotiating Ethics of Teacher Identity

Abstract

Abstract Immigration, economic, and demographic changes have brought about rich cultural and linguistic diversity in rural communities. With rural schools receiving increasing numbers of multilingual learners, providing equitable educational opportunities for multilingual learners in rural schools is a pressing issue facing educators and scholars today. However, there is limited research on how to best prepare teachers and educators to meet multilingual learners' linguistic, academic, and socioemotional needs. Drawing from a Foucauldian perspective on ethics and teacher identity, this narrative inquiry study presents data from interviews and observations with one rural teacher and ethnographic observations in a rural school in southeastern United States. Findings reveal that the teacher engaged in culturally sustaining practices for multilingual learners, defied established educational policies and prescribed community norms to advocate for multilingual students and families, and achieved ethical self‐formation to meet the telos, or end goals, of her teacher identity. The compelling stories from one rural teacher in this study shed light on the status quo of rural multilingual learner education and offer implications for teachers, education leaders, and teacher educators to positively influence the educative experiences of rural multilingual learners and promote educational equity in rural schools.

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