Writing Our Identities as Teacher Educators and Self-Study Researchers in Two Languages

The international discourse of education as a discipline is in English, which presents interesting challenges for the many scholars from other languages and cultures. For us as teacher educators from Iceland writing in English is both a pathway into the educational discourse and somewhat of a barrier. As Icelandic academics, we must be able to read and write in both Icelandic and English, at a minimum. Additionally, we need to write in a way that not only engages academics and bureaucrats, but also student teachers, teachers, and parents. In this chapter, we – two Icelandic teacher educators and former primary school teachers – describe how our journey of writing as an inquiry in self-study has helped us develop our professional selves as teacher educators and researchers and as participants in the international educational discourse. We analyse and describe how navigating between Icelandic and English has come with challenges and affordances that have expanded and enriched our space for professional development. Translanguaging practices increased our agency as participants in an international discourse of education. A third space for development opened with self-study and translanguaging, catalysing our thinking, and pushing us to investigate our practices. We hope our stories will resonate with those of others that have to write in a second language and give an insight into the challenges and resources that come with working in, with and between two languages.