Satellite baby students’ lived experiences, TESOL teacher candidates’ positioning, agency, and pedagogy

ABSTRACT This study investigated two TESOL teacher candidates’ positioning, agency, and pedagogy through a narrative analysis of their journal entries about their satellite baby students’ lived experiences. Using narrative analysis, TESOL teacher candidates revealed their satellite baby students’ difficult adjustment to the new environment, mainly their classroom culture. Positioning their satellite baby students as human beings and special individuals who required extra attention, care, and patience and themselves as responsible, supportive, understanding, and empathetic teachers, their agency – informed and promoted by their emotions and feeling for the students – emerged from their narrations of the satellite baby students’ life stories, which became the inspiration for their positive positioning and agentic pedagogical decisions. The TESOL teacher candidates reported that they tried to transform their pedagogical practices to ease satellite baby students’ struggles as they transitioned into US schools. I argue that satellite baby students’ life stories can become a source for the teachers’ agentic positioning and culturally relevant pedagogy if the teachers give the students time and space to share their complicated and difficult realities. I thus suggest that satellite baby students’ life stories have the value to be included into curriculum and instruction.