Early teacher socialization research in the 1980s examined student-teachers during their transition from pre-service to in-service contexts, and argued for a limited effect of teacher education programs compared to students' initial socialization into the profession of teaching as past-students or apprentices of observation. Although teachers' transition from pre-service to in-service contexts is well-studied in the literature, to date, there is still a paucity of research investigating teachers' socialization at an intercultural level. Parallel to the increasing rate of globalization, language teachers find themselves working in diverse contexts where they teach students from different backgrounds. This trend has been most common for English teachers going to other countries, but it is becoming more common for teachers of Chinese, Arabic, and other critical languages, who come to the U.S. to teach their first language. In order to respond to the growing interest in foreign languages, many large U.S. universities have recruited or imported international teaching assistants (ITAs) and faculty to teach foreign language courses. However, introducing foreign teachers into the American educational context is not always a straightforward process and has its own complexities. In multilingual classrooms, the cultural differences between teachers and students might create potential breakdowns in teacher-student relationships. Students may become distracted by their teacher's cultural ways of being, the ways they communicate, and the ways they teach, none of which are purely linguistic or pedagogic. In order to create a cohesive classroom community and respond to the expectations of their students, it is important for teachers to adapt to their new teaching environment. The present study focuses on Fulbright Language Teaching Assistants (FLTA) who come to the U.S. to teach their native language for a year. FLTAs constitute a representative example of teachers who go through a professional socialization process in which their beliefs and practices are transformed in order to meet the expectations and requirements of their new workplace. Using a language socialization theoretical framework and a qualitative multiple case study design, I address these research questions: a) how are novice Turkish and Uzbek language teachers' pedagogical beliefs and practices negotiated and transformed over time? and b) what factors are associated with these changes? The analysis focuses on teachers' beliefs and practices regarding: (a) teaching and learning; (b) teacher role; (c) teaching methods; (d) corrective feedback; (e) classroom interactions; and (f) teaching culture. For purposes of triangulation, data are drawn from multiple sources such as interviews, video-recorded classroom observations, and classroom materials. The findings indicate that biographical factors (e.g., teachers' personal history, experience as learners and EFL teachers), contextual factors (e.g., interactions with students and institutional resources), and dialogic factors (e.g., teachers' use of theory in classroom practice, theory-practice interplay) guide the process of teacher socialization. Through these factors, teachers are able to reconstruct their beliefs about language teaching and gradually rework their classroom practices. The study will contribute to the knowledge base of language teacher education exploring the "process" of teacher socialization, and the findings can be implemented in language-teacher-education programs.
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