Identity, Investment, andTESOL

This chapter discusses how the constructs of identity and investment highlight language learning as a social practice implicated in relations of power. In an increasingly mobile world, English language learners navigate more complex, multiple spaces, where they need to continually reframe their identities and develop wider linguistic and non‐linguistic repertoires. Designed as a critical lens that can capture the dynamics of power in this new communicative order, an expanded model of language learning locates investment at the intersection of identity, capital and ideology. It challenges educators to reflect on their pedagogical practices, and to formulate a more critical approach to affirming and empowering language learner identities in the 21st century.