Teacher Education Students’ Perceptions About Bilingualism and Emergent Bilingual Students

Abstract

ABSTRACT Teachers’ perceptions guide their instructional decisions and interactions with their students. Given the increasing number of Emergent Bilingual (EB) students and the more acceptance of multilingual language ideologies in the social and political contexts, there is an urgency to examine teachers’ beliefs about EB students and to train teachers to teach students from the pluralist perspective. This paper examines the language ideologies of teacher education students and how their language ideologies are related to their backgrounds, their attitudes about the engagement of the EB students and their families, and their perceived responsibility to teach EB students. The survey responses of 235 teacher education students were analyzed using descriptive statistics, regression, and correlation. The participants held more multilingual and heteroglossic beliefs about bilingualism. Their language ideologies were significantly related to their attitudes toward EBs and their families and their perceived teacher responsibility. Race was the only variable that demonstrated a statistically significant relationship with monoglossic or heteroglossic beliefs. We discuss how teacher educators address heteroglossic language ideologies in their programs to help teacher education students create inclusive and asset-oriented learning environments.