Bilingual Education Teachers Research Articles

Testimonios de los unicornios: Learning from Latina Bilingual Education Teachers Testimonios in an Educator Preparation Program

ABSTRACT This study explores the experiences of bilingual education teachers (los unicornios) while in their educator preparation program (EPP) to gain insight as to how to create more supportive structures and environments for bilingual education pre-service teachers. The themes that emerged from the participants’ responses were concerns, types of support, and recommendations for bilingual education EPPs. The main concerns identified by the participants were regarding their English and Spanish language proficiency and their preparedness to meet the academic needs of students. In the face of challenges during their EPP experience, the participants were championed by caring mentor teachers, professors, clinical supervisors, family, and friends. This support was identified as the most impactful element to the bilingual education teachers’ success. These champions of bilingual education pre-service teachers were essential in cultivating the systemic support necessary for successful completion of their EPP and teacher certification, and the eventual launching their careers as bilingual education teachers (unicornios).

Empowering Future Bilingual Educators: Integrating Trauma-Informed Approaches in Bilingual Teacher Education

The impact of trauma on children's social, emotional, and academic growth is profound, yet teacher preparation programs, particularly in bilingual and multicultural contexts, often lack comprehensive training in trauma-informed practices. This qualitative study investigates the integration of trauma-informed approaches into a bilingual teacher education course at a university in West Texas. The study included 59 undergraduate pre-service teachers enrolled in a course on bilingual and multicultural education. Data were collected through preliminary and concluding written interviews, alongside ongoing instructional interventions, including discussions, case analyses, and trauma-informed strategies. Initially, participants demonstrated a limited understanding of trauma, associating it primarily with extreme events such as accidents or death. Post-course assessments, however, revealed a broadened understanding, recognizing everyday traumas like poverty, bullying, and family instability. Findings suggest that integrating trauma-informed approaches significantly enhances pre-service teachers' ability to identify and apply practical strategies to support trauma-affected students. The study introduces the Trauma-Informed Bilingual Teacher Preparation Model, focusing on key components such as foundational trauma knowledge, recognizing trauma symptoms, culturally responsive teaching, creating supportive environments, and fostering teacher resilience. By embedding trauma-informed practices in teacher education, this model prepares future educators to cultivate compassionate, inclusive classrooms, particularly in bilingual and multicultural settings. The study emphasizes the importance of curriculum reform to equip teachers with the necessary skills to support both students' emotional well-being and academic success.

“A lot for one human to handle”: the experiences of two dual language bilingual education teachers in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT While the challenges that educators have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic are widely acknowledged, there is little scholarship that provides opportunities for teachers to share their stories. This article documents the journeys of two dual language bilingual education elementary teachers, one in Georgia and one in Texas, which were a part of a narrative inquiry into the experiences of United States educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grounded in a conceptual framework that centers humanity as a key dimension of teaching bilingual learners, we found that the teachers enacted humanizing pedagogy to counteract a range of dehumanizing experiences that they, as well as their students and families, faced during the early days of the pandemic. We attend to the ways in which the teachers’ stories inform the field of dual language bilingual education moving forward.

Beyond Lau: Envisioning humanizing and culturally sustaining workspaces for teachers in dual-language bilingual education schools

ABSTRACT Fifty years after the Lau decision, dual-language programs face critical challenges, particularly a national teacher shortage, especially in bilingual programs representing less commonly taught languages like Mandarin Chinese. This study explores the workplace environments of 13 Mandarin Dual Language Bilingual Education (MDLBE) teachers in a diverse urban school district. Drawing on Freire’s concept of humanization, Paris’s cultural sustainment framework, and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, qualitative interviews reveal themes of outsiderness, coupled with a need for humanizing relationships with colleagues and leadership. Findings highlight the importance of culturally sustaining practices and systemic changes to foster inclusive, supportive environments, advocating for a transformation “Beyond Lau” to sustain dual-language programs.

Exploring the effects of intelligent personal assistants on bilingual education teachers’ L2 speaking proficiency

ABSTRACT Communication in a second and foreign language (L2) is regarded as the most challenging and anxiety-inducing language skill for L2 learners and teachers. The emergence of artificial intelligence and automatic speech recognition (ASR) has opened new avenues for enhancing L2 interaction, with intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) showing significant potential. While prior research has predominantly focused on learners, using IPAs for bilingual education (BE) teachers has received relatively little attention. The study investigated the effects of IPAs (i.e. Google Assistant) on BE teachers’ L2 speaking proficiency and their perceptions of IPA-assisted L2 speaking. Thirty Taiwanese BE teachers who were L2 English speakers participated in a semester-long IPA-mediated interaction program. These teachers interacted with Google Assistant in their daily lives. Both quantitative (English speaking proficiency tests) and qualitative data (semi-structured interviews) were collected and analyzed. The results revealed that Google Assistant significantly promoted BE teachers’ English-speaking proficiency. Most teachers confirmed that Google Assistant could establish an authentic environment that facilitates communication, increases English-speaking opportunities, enhances practice frequency, and provides scaffolding and immediate feedback, which contribute to their English speaking proficiency. Integrating Google Assistant into lesson preparation proved valuable, enabling teachers to access curriculum-related information efficiently and increasing their motivation to engage with IPAs.

Pedagogies of Resistance and Healing: Latinx Dual Language Bilingual Education Teachers Battling Racialized Ideologies of Languagelessness in Arizona

ABSTRACT Language ideologies of Latinx dual language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers have been increasingly examined, but few studies have chosen a race-based analytical approach. This study examines the language ideologies of six Latinx K-5 DLBE teachers in Arizona through the lens of “racialized ideologies of languagelessness.” At the time of the study, all six teachers considered themselves bilingual. Yet, they shared experiences with linguistic violence during their upbringing and K-12 schooling and identified areas of vulnerabilities that had undermined their self-perception of bilingualism. We report the complexities of these teachers’ racialized language ideologies, shaped by their experiences with linguistic violence as well as positive reinforcement during their upbringing and teaching careers. As DLBE teachers, our participants reflect on their complex experiences with language to stop the cycle of linguistic violence and racialized ideologies of languagelessness for the next generation of bi/multilingual children in their classrooms. We call their critically conscious practices “pedagogies of resistance and healing.”

‘Somos bilingües’: translanguaging socialization of DLBE teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT After the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the disruption of in-person schooling has significantly affected many students including emergent bilingual students. Designed as an ethnographic study, this research study examines two Spanish-English dual language bilingual education teachers’ implementation of translanguaging pedagogies and language socialization during the pandemic through the following research questions: (1) What adjustments did the teachers make to their teaching and curriculum to support the students as they navigated the pandemic times? (2) How did the teachers and students use languages in their interaction in blended learning environments? Findings from the 2nd grade Spanish Language Arts and 4th grade Social Studies classes demonstrate that both teachers reported an increased awareness of the importance to integrate translanguaging pedagogies and reflected a translanguaging stance. They also intentionally integrated translanguaging strategies into their teaching through translanguaging design. The 2nd grade teacher invited the students to draw upon their full linguistic repertoires for Spanish literacy development, whereas the 4th grade teacher adopted translanguaging design to make content materials more accessible. Through translanguaging socialization, both teachers socialized the students into and through flexible language use and created a learning environment where students’ linguistic repertoires were valued as a resource for learning.

Challenges and Strategies in Elementary Bilingual Teacher Education

Challenges and Strategies in Elementary Bilingual Teacher Education

Raciolinguistic chronotopes in bilingual teacher candidates’ language portraits: A call for centering race in bilingual teacher education

ABSTRACT This study explored 17 bilingual teacher candidates’ (bilingual TCs) representations of their lived experience of language via linguistic portraits. Specifically, attention was paid to the semiotic elements (space, place, time, and the body) these bilingual TCs employed and the ways this assemblage of elements formed raciolinguistic chronotopes. Analysis demonstrates that raciolinguistic chronotopes enabled bilingual TCs to portray their experiences of racialization as Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States. Analysis also shows the ways these TCs often vacillate between adhering to and challenging raciolinguistic ideologies. Findings have implications for how language portraits are utilized as a teacher learning tool in teacher education programs serving bilingual TCs of Latina/o descent. Keywords: language portraits, raciolinguistic chronotopes, racialization, teacher candidates, teacher education.

Building a bilingual teacher pathway

New Jersey’s Vineland Public Schools formed a partnership with Rowan University’s College of Education, in Glassboro, New Jersey, to create a dual-enrollment program in teacher education specifically designed for students in the bilingual program. This program provides Spanish-speaking students with coursework in their native language that leads to a teaching degree with a specialization in bilingual education. It has twin goals of offering a pathway to a college degree for multilingual learners (MLs) and producing future bilingual education teachers. Authors JoAnne Negrin, Catherine Michener, and Brooke Hoffman write about the pilot program’s first year and its goals for the future.

‘I found comfort in Spanglish:’ translanguaging and the linguistic experiences of bilingual teacher candidates in rural California

A new bilingual/plurilingual education renaissance in California was ushered in with the passage of state Proposition 58 in 2016. Program planners, however, have struggled to meet the need for bilingual/plurilingual teachers within a linguistic context ravaged by two decades of restrictive policies. This restrictionism has resulted in an entire generation of would-be bilingual teacher candidates growing up without formal academic support for bilingualism and biliteracy in their k-12 education. Although plurilingualism has been stymied in formal spaces, emerging research on translanguaging indicates that ‘bilinguals’ by definition creatively language within their various social and political milieu such that syntheses or hybrid forms of language emerge that reflect their full linguistic repertoire. This study examines the linguistic experiences of those who have overcome the odds to pursue their bilingual teacher certification. Through analysis of participant case studies of Latinx candidates studying for their bilingual teacher certification in California’s southern San Joaquín Valley, we find translanguaging to be a critical tool of identity expression, interethnic solidarity, and plurilingual/bilingual sustenance within a decidedly conservative and subtractive sociocultural and sociolinguistic context. We discuss the implications of these findings for the centering of translanguaging in bilingual teacher education and the cultivation of future bilingual/plurilingual educators in California.

Uncovering Teachers’ Needs in the Quest for Quality Bilingual Education

This article identifies the training needs of primary school teachers within the area of bilingual education related to their daily work, viewed through the lens of effective professional practice. Using a mixed methods research design, a self-assessment questionnaire was constructed based on comparative document analysis, a discussion group, and expert opinion. The purpose of this questionnaire was to determine the existing discrepancy between what is perceived as the reality of classroom performance and how it should be in order to ensure the delivery of quality bilingual education, supported by the parameters of school effectiveness. The questionnaire was completed by teachers from the Spanish region of Andalusia. The priority training demands detected pertain to the creation and maintenance of a local and external network of contacts for the purposes of collaboration, the promotion of intercultural communication, and the evaluation, selection, adaptation, and use of existing CLIL materials. On the basis of such demands, several considerations are proposed in the development of ongoing training that will enable bilingual education teachers to carry out their work effectively.

Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates’ meaning-making of space and place: Attending to raciolinguistic landscapes in bilingual teacher education

In this article, we examine the ways 17 Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates (TCs) employed spatial rationales to make meaning of why they mostly leverage English within their bilingual teacher education classes at their Hispanic-Serving Institution. We asked: (1) How do TCs interpret the predominance of English on campus and the bilingual teacher education program? (2) What do TCs’ understandings reveal about the nature of the structures sustaining the hegemony of English? To answer these questions, we drew upon the raciolinguistic perspective and critical notions of space and place. Findings reveal that despite the University’s mission to serve Latina/o students, TCs still experience English as connected to the United States and the predominantly white community where campus is located, and Spanish as belonging in Mexico and the heavily Mexican and Mexican American neighborhoods south of the city. Our analysis suggests that this mapping of language and race ideologies onto particular spaces/places—or what we have termed raciolinguistic landscapes—reflects and reproduces boundaries that uphold institutionalized systems of exclusion. Findings have implications for bilingual teacher education, with regards to ways to help TCs critically engage raciolinguistic landscapes.

Centering Latina/o Bilingual Teacher Candidates’ Experiences with Marginalizing Figures of Personhood

ABSTRACT This article examines 17 Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates’ experiences with ideologies conflating racialized bodies with linguistic deficiency: raciolinguistic ideologies. Drawing on data from a one-year critical ethnography conducted at a Hispanic-serving institution in Southwest Texas, this article analyzes these teacher candidates’ encounters with spontaneous, implicit/explicit ideological comments—what I call raciolinguistic metacommentary—that draw negative attention to their linguistic repertoires and practices in connection to their ethnoracial positioning. Findings show that instances of raciolinguistic metacommentary not only signal linguistic difference at the individual/interactional level but also mobilize indexical images of U.S. Latina/o bilinguals that reproduce their marginalization, particularly stereotypes of U.S. bilingual Latinas/os as pochas/os, gringas/os, and fresas. Analysis illustrates how these indexical images become ascribed to participating teacher candidates, what these images mean to these participants, and how they inform their sense of linguistic proficiency and identity. Findings have implications for bilingual teacher education, specifically regarding ways to help Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates critically engage these racially charged ideological commentary.

“Se me sale el Español y se me pega el Spanglish!”: Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates’ racialized notions of bilingualism

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways Latino/a bilingual teacher candidates (TCs) talk about their own and others’ language practices and the ways this talk reflects and reproduces racialized notions of bilingualism. Drawing on data from a one-year critical ethnography at a Hispanic-serving institution in Southwest Texas, this article demonstrates that TCs have been socialized into raciolinguistic ideologies of Spanish as language to be contained and Spanglish/code-switching as disease or bad habit. TCs’ unconscious adoption of raciolinguistic ideologies was evident in their use of the phrases ‘se me sale’ and ‘se me pega’ to characterize fluid and dynamic languaging in a variety of settings. Findings have implications for bilingual teacher education research and practice, as regards bringing attention to the ways TCs depict the language practices of racialized individuals and encouraging TCs to critically engage marginalizing notions of bilingualism that might be in circulation in Latinx homes and communities.

(Re)constructing a Border Pedagogy: Centering the Borderlands in Latinx Teacher Education

ABSTRACT As teacher educators on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, our goal is to (re)conceptualize a pedagogical approach for bilingual teacher development informed by teacher education research in the borderlands and anchored in the myriad of historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic realities of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands – a border pedagogy. Our (re)conceptualization is based on a metasynthesis of bilingual teacher education research from the four U.S.-Mexico border states and additionally draws from critical race theory in education and border theory scholarship to examine the geopolitical context of the borderlands as impacted by colonization and whiteness. Principles for (bilingual) teacher development and design are discussed.

Bilingual education teachers and learners in a preschool context: Instructional and interactional translanguaging spaces

This study explores how bilingual education teachers' flexible delivery of instructional translanguaging within a bilingual preschool in the predominately monolingual context of Turkey could provide children with a space for bilingual interaction. The research aim is to analyse the children's use of translanguaging in relation to translanguaging pedagogy of the teachers. These flexible practices involved two levels of translanguaging. One was teachers' design of the teaching materials, assigning either Turkish or English to each task as the instructional and interactional languages. The other was the facilitation of children's unenforced flexibility to alternate and shuttle between Turkish and English. Six co-teachers were interviewed online about their bilingual teaching experiences and their journals containing children's translanguaging utterances were obtained. Implications for teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers in bilingual education contexts are discussed.

A Collective Journey: Coalitional Critical Consciousness and Collaborative Methodologies in Bilingual Teacher Education

This article analyzes critical reflection groups held over the course of a year‐long collaborative ethnography between me as researcher and five novice bilingual teachers. Drawing on feminist theories of emotion as knowledge, I argue that coalitional critical consciousness developed in our meetings through emotional expression and acknowledgment of identity in connection to systems of power. I also explore the affordances of collaborative methods in the formation of collective critique for practicing teachers.

Translanguaging Views and Practices of Indiana Dual-Language Bilingual Education Teachers

As of fall 2018, the United States had 5 million English language learners (ELLs) in the public K–12 education system (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Within this population, ELL students in Indiana number over 50,000, or 5.9% of all public K–12 students in the state. Dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) programs often neglect the strategy of translanguaging in the classroom, disadvantaging ELLs. Translanguaging is defined as drawing “on all the linguistic resources of the child to maximize understanding and achievement” and is demonstrated in the natural switching of languages in bilinguals (Lewis et al., 2012). Further, translanguaging attempts to correct past English-only ideals for the equity of ELL students. Th is case study aims to answer two questions: (1) What are the translanguaging views and practices of elementary school teachers in DLBE classrooms? (2) Are there differences in translanguaging views and practices between bilingual native Spanish speakers, bilingual native English speakers, and nonbilingual native English speakers? Data was collected from the course data of seven elementary school teachers who are part of DLBE programs in two schools in Indiana to better determine the correlation between DLBE teachers’ linguistic backgrounds and their views and practices of translanguaging in their classrooms. Results found a connection between teachers’ own bilingualism and an increased use of translanguaging practices in their classrooms, which can help off set decades of inequity between English language learning students and their monolingual peers.

Meeting the bilingual learning needs of Tibetan minority students in Qinghai Province: A multiple perspective investigation into problems and solutions.

Using student and teacher open-ended questionnaires, and interviews with teachers and school principals and administrators, this study examined the bilingual learning difficulties faced by the Tibetan minority students in Qinghai Province, China, the challenges in meeting their needs, and the suggestions for coping with these challenges. The participants included 200 Tibetan minority students, 20 classroom teachers, and 10 school principals and administrators randomly selected from eight secondary schools located in eight different counties, where there are the most Tibetan minority students in Qinghai Province. The results showed that they experienced considerable difficulties in both spoken and written Chinese, which had prevented them from understanding the lectures, answering questions, interacting with peers in the classroom, and communicating with friends and classmates outside of classroom. The challenges in meeting their bilingual learning needs include: (a) a language choice dilemma for parents, (b) insufficient training of bilingual education teachers, (c) lack of bilingual education resources; (d) short of qualified teachers; (e) lack of parent-school communication; and (f) insufficient training of principals and administrators. Suggestions for coping with these challenges and educational implications are discussed.