Developing preservice bilingual teachers’ transformative agency

Abstract

U.S. bilingual educators struggle with English hegemonic ideology and inadequate ethnolinguistic resources. Using the theoretical framework of transformative agency by double stimulation, this qualitative case study investigated how preservice Chinese and Spanish bilingual teachers actively confronted such struggles during their practicum experiences to improve their culturally responsive pedagogies. Four types of warping actions were found: amplifying bilingual instruction, formulating support for bilingual learning, generating new bilingual pedagogical knowledge, and taking charge of their own professional growth as bilingual teachers. The study concludes that preservice teachers’ transformative agency can be pedagogically facilitated with mediational tools offered through formative intervention research methods. (100 words).