Chapter 1 “A veces encuentro más palabras en español”: Taking a stance towards translanguaging as a socially just pedagogy for bilingual teacher preparation

Abstract

Informed by recent explorations on translanguaging practices in higher education and teacher education, this self-case study explores how a bilingual teacher educator, teaching bilingual teacher preparation courses in Spanish at a Hispanic-serving institution on the US-Mexico border embraces a translanguaging stance to leverage teacher candidates’ bilingualism while preparing them to produce and use academic and professional forms of Spanish discourse for teaching. Findings illustrate how a bilingual teacher educator purposefully embeds translanguaging moves to leverage bilingual teacher candidates’ bilingualism to develop a linguistically inclusive bilingual teacher candidates’ repertoire of practice. In addition, the study shows how candidates’ evolving understanding of linguistic inclusiveness situates them in a continuum from a monolingual to a more dynamic vision of bilingualism and language use in the classroom. Implications of a translanguaging practice-based approach for a socially just pedagogy in bilingual teacher preparation are identified.