ABSTRACT

Names are used every day in classrooms across the world as an important marker of personal and social identity but educators will, from time to time, encounter names that are unfamiliar or perceived as difficult to pronounce. The present study explores teachers’ and students’ language dispositions towards names and how naming practices impact learners and the social space of the classroom. It presents a collection of vignettes collected in an Australian primary school through critical ethnography. The vignettes illustrate the significance of naming for teacher and learner identities. Using analytical insights from Pierre Bourdieu and Jim Cummins, the discussion identifies naming as a pedagogical practice for empowering learners and it challenges the currently held notion of teachers as non-agential in naming practices. The study urges teachers to learn how to properly pronounce their students’ real names and it offers recommendations for future research on naming practices and learner identities.

摘要

世界各地的教室每天都使用名字作为个人和社会身份的重要标志，但教育工作者会不时遇到不熟悉的或难以发音的名字。本研究探讨了教师和学生对姓名的语言倾向，以及命名习惯如何影响学习者和课堂的社会空间。它展示了通过批判人种志在澳大利亚小学收集的小插图集。插图说明了命名对于教师和学习者身份的重要性。讨论使用Pierre Bourdieu和Jim Cummins的分析见解，将命名确定为一种赋权学习者的教学实践，并且挑战了当前持有的在命名实践中不重要的教师观念。