To switch or not to switch: Bilingual preservice teachers and translanguaging in teaching and learning

Abstract

This ethnographic study examines the language ideology shifts among a group of 20 Mexican American/Latinx preservice bilingual teachers within a translanguaging space (Wei, 2011). This article explores how understanding different language ideological approaches to bilingualism and bilingual education through the use of translanguaging as the language of instruction push participants to examine their bilingual identities, linguistic trajectories and ideologies, and their own future approach to language and content teaching. Findings show that all the participants agreed they would use translanguaging as a language policy in their future classrooms as they experienced its benefits first‐hand during this study. At the same time, the participants proposed a combination of approaches depending on students' linguistic needs, placing more emphasis on the language that requires more development. This quest for ideological coexistence stemmed from the participants' reflections of the socio‐cultural‐historical‐political contexts of the schooling of emergent bilinguals in the United States combined with their own linguistic and educational trajectories, which promoted a new awareness and commitment to avoid a new cycle of language marginalization in their future classrooms.