| This qualitative research study analyzes the impact of bilingual career ladder training programs on the professional identity and cultural productions of linguistically and culturally diverse teachers in a diverse metropolitan area. Previous literature has focused on studies of career ladder program from a program effectiveness perspective, or on the resistance-generating impact of barriers in traditional teacher education programs. No studies have yet focused on the meaning that participants make of teacher training in a program that seeks to offset educational, cultural, and financial barriers to minority group participants in teacher education (Sleeter, 2002). Combining interview, observation, and document analysis, the project analyzes areas impacting individual program participants' professional identity, including educational experiences, the effects of the program in offsetting barriers that have often generated resistance in other sites, beliefs about the teaching profession, and the impact of local school culture on individual agency of the participants during their early in-service experience. Theoretical models from cultural production and post-modern identity approaches to educational anthropology, and previous studies in teacher education reform ground this study. Both are also used to frame patterns and individual experiences in order to contribute to current work in teacher education and school reform. |
