Lessons learned from exploring the potential of California's mini-corps tutors as future bilingual teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Currently, there are 1.3 million English Learners (EL) in California public schools (CDE 2018). The passage of Proposition 58, which presented multilingual education as key to students’ future economic success without every using the word bilingual, lifted the previous restrictions on bilingual education programs and increased the demand for programs and bilingual teachers. Recent studies have examined knowledge related to increasing the number of bilingual teachers (e.g. Martínez-Alvarez, P., I. Cuevas, and M. Torrez-Guzmán. 2017. “Preparing Bilingual Teachers: Mediating Belonging with Multimodal Explorations in Language, Identity, and Culture.” Journal of Teacher Education 68 (2): 155–178). A state-wide study of California school districts in 2017 showed that 58% intend to begin or expand bilingual education programs (Harris, V., and A. Sandoval-González. 2017. “Unveiling California’s Growing Bilingual Teacher Shortage: Addressing the Urgent Shortage, and Aligning the Workforce to Advances in Pedagogy and Practice in Bilingual Education.” Californians Together. 4–8). The research questions guiding this work were (1) Does the California Mini-Corps (CMC) program serve as a potential pool for today’s bilingual programs?, (2) If so, what cultural community wealth do tutors bring to teaching?, and (3) What support do tutors identify as critical in a teacher education credential program? In this quantitative study (n = 179), we examine how CMC tutors can address the critical teacher – shortage and identify the assets that graduates of the program bring to teacher education programs. We also explore the needed supports identified by the tutors as critical to their success in teacher credential programs.