Teacher agency, positioning, and English language learners: Voices of pre-service classroom teachers

• This study explores narrative positioning and agency of teachers of ELLs.
• Relational and oppositional positionings contribute to the teachers' identity (re)formation.
• Pre-service teachers can construct contradictory positions, which shapes their agency.
• Teacher identity and agency are affected by the micro-politics of the educational setting.

This study explores the identity (re)negotiations and agency of three pre-service classroom teachers who received their ESL (English as a Second Language) endorsement at a research university in the United States. An analysis of interview data and teachers' journal entries, from a narrative positioning perspective, indicates that the teachers took on various, and sometimes conflicting, positional identities in relation to their social context (e.g., mentor teachers, ELLs, etc.). The findings further indicate that those positional identities have shaped teachers' agency and self-reported classroom practices. The analysis presented provides implications for teachers of ELLs and teacher educators.