Shaping a Borderland Professional Identity: Funds of Knowledge of a Bilingual Education Teacher

This study is an attempt to tell the story of a Mexican American bilingual education teacher whose professional and personal life spans the beginning of modern bilingual education to the present atmosphere of "accountability." Her voice connects the macro and micro aspects of being a minority educator in the contested context of bilingual education in the public school system. Through examination of identity and agency formed through and in these multiple discourses, I attempt to analyze a bilingual educator's "ways of knowing," to understand resistance and transformation in the liminal space of "borderlands." Through the investigation of the epistemology of a bilingual educator, I believe that there is the possibility of gaining insight into the shaping of a professional identity and the process of teacher transformation. (Contains 5 notes.)