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A discursive approach to understanding the role of educators’ possible selves in widening students’ participation in classroom interaction

This chapter takes a small-lens approach to widening participation by focusing on opportunities for student participation in classroom discourse and on the role of language educators’ possible selves in creating such opportunities. Research into additional language (L2) learning motivation has firmly embraced the construct of possible selves (Markus and Nurius, 1986) – that is, L2 learners’ vivid and realistic images of their successful L2 speaking future selves – as one of the most powerful forces that shape their engagement in the language learning process and in intercultural interaction more generally (Dornyei and Kubanyiova, 2014; Dornyei and Ushioda, 2009). Parallel to this research, however, is a growing awareness of the crucial role that the possible selves of educators play in creating learning spaces in which meaningful intercultural encounters are facilitated (Kubanyiova, 2016; Ogawa, 2017). In this chapter, I examine empirical data from a grounded theory ethnographic study of language educators’ lives as a basis for building a theoretical and methodological case for a new approach to conceptualizing and researching the concept of possible selves in language education research.