Richard S. Pinner

Abstract This article describes the professional identity formation of a group of pre‐service English as a foreign language student‐teachers at an initial English language teacher education program in Argentina. To this effect, a four‐year longitudinal study was designed drawing on the concept of funds of identity. Participants’ drawing of significant circles and interviews were used to document the main components of their funds of professional identity and the factors which informed their construction. In this paper, we specifically describe three student‐teachers’ funds of professional identity to exemplify three trends identified across the participants: (1) knowledge as a constant fund, (2) a shift from past to present and future funds, and (3) a shift from external to internal funds. Drawing on Esteban‐Guitart’s (2014) typology of funds of identity, this study puts forward a typology of funds of professional identity which incorporates three new funds, valuative, disciplinary, and anticipatory, to understand student‐teachers’ trajectories in language teacher education.

Humanizing complexity research is already strongly advocated by much of the literature on complexity (Kramsch, 2011; Larsen‐Freeman, 2011; Sampson, 2016) and yet there is a recent trend towards a potentially alienating approach, which could confound readers, utilising a dense vocabulary and overly technical methods. We advocate a more practical approach to complexity thinking, which continues on from McKinley’s (2019) paper on the teaching‐research nexus by advocating more practitioner‐based research which can provide emic and contextually situated insights into the language classroom.