Caminos de convivencia: A comparative case study of bilingual pre-service teachers’ biliteracies development

Abstract

ABSTRACT In a bilingual teacher preparation milieu fraught with high stakes and little time to develop biliteracies in humanizing ways, the researchers engaged in a comparative case study of two types of bilingual pre-service teachers, a heritage bilingual and an initially Spanish-dominant bilingual, to explore how they grew in their biliteracies after the redesign of three bilingual teacher preparation courses. Focused on holistic biliteracies and a Latina/Chicana embodied pedagogies of care, the data collection including discussion posts, papers, lesson plans, surveys, and interviews over three years. Findings reveal the biliteracies development process (the many ways of making meaning in and between languages) for both students followed a camino of convivencia, a journey with incisive stages with guides that encouraged their biliteracies and bilingual identities. They were further marked by highs and lows in confidence, as they contrasted their own biliteracies with others. Importantly, they each connected their biliteracies journeys to those of their future students, which they envisioned as a legacy of courage. Taken together, this study adds nuance to how holistic biliteracies a can be intentionally and comprehensively developed for two typologies of language minoritized students in bilingual teacher preparation programs while also preparing them for bilingual teacher certification.