Bilingual Preservice Teachers Research Articles

Persisting, Coping, and Advocating: Online Trauma of Latina Bilingual Pre-service Teachers

This study examines the online traumatic experiences of bilingual Latina pre-service teachers. Tasked with developing content for their students, while also being students themselves, positions them in a very particular and stressful situation imbued with multiple forms of trauma. This qualitative study considers the lived experiences of eight bilingual pre-service teachers in California and Texas. Utilizing narrative inquiry, from a grounded theory perspective, this study examines how Latina pre-service teachers worked through the online challenges of the pandemic and other traumas such as isolation, lack of academic engagement, vicarious trauma, and sense of powerlessness. Despite these challenges, participants were able to persevere in empowering ways and advocate for their students. Findings suggest the need for reimagining teacher education programs addressing the challenges faced by future teachers as they navigate the online space in their dual roles of both student and educator. Implications for practice, policy, and research are presented.

Developing preservice bilingual teachers’ transformative agency

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).

Pre-service Teachers' Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Teaching Refugee Background Students at Turkish Public Schools

<p style="text-align: justify;">The number of school-aged refugee background children on Turkish soil was estimated to be over 2 million in 2022. Acknowledging the importance of quality education for these children to achieve equity in Turkish-only public schools, this study examined pre-service teachers' self-efficacies in teaching refugee-background students (RBS). Data were collected from 437 pre-service teachers studying at eight different teacher education programs via the adopted Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) and analyzed with the Tukey multiple comparison test. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers rated low self-efficacies in teaching the RBSs. A comparison of mean scores based on the programs indicated that pre-service teachers in the early education programs scored the lowest self-efficacy while the pre-service teachers in Physical Education programs scored the highest. Moreover, the self-efficacies of bilingual pre-service teachers differed significantly from monolingual Turkish proficient pre-service teachers implying a positive correlation between pre-service teachers’ self-efficacies and bi/multilingualism. Lastly, senior pre-service teachers rated higher self-efficacies than freshmen, junior, or sophomore pre-service teachers. The study implied a need for culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies and differentiated instruction in the teacher education curriculum to prepare pre-service teachers better for the RBSs in Turkish public schools.</p>

Bilingual teacher candidates and their professors: Efforts to pass a Spanish proficiency certification exam

ABSTRACT Heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) in the U.S. who seek certification as bilingual teachers must show Spanish language proficiency. The state of Texas requires candidates to pass the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) a test seen as a gatekeeping mechanism (Clark & Flores, 2002) in a field that presents chronic shortage of certified teachers (Arroyo-Romano, 2016). This case study of a bilingual education preparation program (BEPP) in Texas reveals the efforts by both professors to help and students to pass the BTLPT. Findings report on faculty and candidate narrative accounts of pedagogical practices. Recommendations emerged from faculty and students’ suggestions for improving test-preparation and Spanish development of HSSs teacher candidates. The authors respond to Guerrero’s (2013) recommendation for “more concrete measures to help pre-service bilingual teachers improve their language skills” (p. 2) and accepts Zúñiga’s (2021) invitation for teacher educators to find venues to share how we “go about supporting bilingual TCs [teacher candidates] in their professional development” (p. 228). The study offers directions for action within BEPPs, universities with HSSs students, and the PK-20 school system. Heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) in the U.S. who seek certification as bilingual teachers must show Spanish language proficiency. The state of Texas requires candidates to pass the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) a test seen as a gatekeeping mechanism (Clark & Flores, 2002) in a field that presents chronic shortage of certified teachers (Arroyo-Romano, 2016). This case study of a bilingual education preparation program (BEPP) in Texas reveals the efforts by both professors to help and students to pass the BTLPT. Findings report on faculty and candidate narrative accounts of pedagogical practices. Recommendations emerged from faculty and students’ suggestions for improving test-preparation and Spanish development of HSSs teacher candidates. The authors respond to Guerrero’s (2013) recommendation for “more concrete measures to help pre-service bilingual teachers improve their language skills” (p. 2) and accepts Zúñiga’s (2021) invitation for teacher educators to find venues to share how we “go about supporting bilingual TCs [teacher candidates] in their professional development” (p. 228). The study offers directions for action within BEPPs, universities with HSSs students, and the PK-20 school system. Heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) in the U.S. who seek certification as bilingual teachers must show Spanish language proficiency. The state of Texas requires candidates to pass the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) a test seen as a gatekeeping mechanism (Clark & Flores, 2002) in a field that presents chronic shortage of certified teachers (Arroyo-Romano, 2016). This case study of a bilingual education preparation program (BEPP) in Texas reveals the efforts by both professors to help and students to pass the BTLPT. Findings report on faculty and candidate narrative accounts of pedagogical practices. Recommendations emerged from faculty and students’ suggestions for improving test-preparation and Spanish development of HSSs teacher candidates. The authors respond to Guerrero’s (2013) recommendation for “more concrete measures to help pre-service bilingual teachers improve their language skills” (p. 2) and accepts Zúñiga’s (2021) invitation for teacher educators to find venues to share how we “go about supporting bilingual TCs [teacher candidates] in their professional development” (p. 228). The study offers directions for action within BEPPs, universities with HSSs students, and the PK-20 school system.

Caminos de convivencia: A comparative case study of bilingual pre-service teachers’ biliteracies development

ABSTRACT In a bilingual teacher preparation milieu fraught with high stakes and little time to develop biliteracies in humanizing ways, the researchers engaged in a comparative case study of two types of bilingual pre-service teachers, a heritage bilingual and an initially Spanish-dominant bilingual, to explore how they grew in their biliteracies after the redesign of three bilingual teacher preparation courses. Focused on holistic biliteracies and a Latina/Chicana embodied pedagogies of care, the data collection including discussion posts, papers, lesson plans, surveys, and interviews over three years. Findings reveal the biliteracies development process (the many ways of making meaning in and between languages) for both students followed a camino of convivencia, a journey with incisive stages with guides that encouraged their biliteracies and bilingual identities. They were further marked by highs and lows in confidence, as they contrasted their own biliteracies with others. Importantly, they each connected their biliteracies journeys to those of their future students, which they envisioned as a legacy of courage. Taken together, this study adds nuance to how holistic biliteracies a can be intentionally and comprehensively developed for two typologies of language minoritized students in bilingual teacher preparation programs while also preparing them for bilingual teacher certification.

Translenguaje y El Arte en Unión: fostering pre-service teachers’ languaging and multiliteracies through bilingual community art gallery lessons

We present an analysis of bilingual pre-service teachers’ translanguaging practices when co-teaching bilingual art gallery lessons as a field experience in a Spanish/English bilingual/bicultural teacher education program. Using a critical bilingual literacies approach, we posed an opportunity for bilingual/bicultural pre-service teachers to be positioned as cultural and linguistic experts. We found how using art objects as mediators of translanguaging in bilingual art gallery lessons has the potential to promote cross-linguistic metalinguistic awareness, develop a sense of identity investment and positionality, and encourage interrogation of linguistic inequality. We offer implications for the inclusion of arts and translanguaging in multiple disciplinary areas.

Un Día De Lo Padre: a multigenerational Plática with bilingual pre-service teachers and their elders, sharing perspectivas about translanguaging and bilingual education

In university bilingual educator preparation programs, we frequently discuss issues across and around language, culture, and teaching. Topics inevitably emerge regarding the dialogue first generation college students have with their family members about maintaining the ‘purity’ of a language vis-à-vis navigating the waters of a translanguaging corriente [current]. In this article, we examine these perspectives after having witnessed a snapshot of this dialogue. In fall 2018, a group of Latin@ undergraduate bilingual pre-service teachers in our university Second Language Acquisition course invited their elders to class. Amidst food, music, tears, and risas, we were honored to enter into this robust conversation about the tension between the potential of translanguaging and the power of the idea of language ‘purity.’ While the professional field and course content offered students grounding in theory and pedagogy, parents offered personal and deeply felt convictions; both aimed to support and sustain Latin@ bilingual and immigrant identities. After sharing our thematic analysis of recordings of class conversations on that day and others, student reflections, and follow-up student interviews with elders, we discuss what these critical conversations mean to bilingual pre-service teachers and bilingual preparation programs in the university.

“My Spanish Feels Like My Second Language”: Addressing the Challenges of the Academic Language of Bilingual Teachers

ABSTRACT Many bilingual preservice teachers in Texas are not able to get certified because of language limitations. Although they have grown up listening and speaking their native language at home, with family and friends, many face challenges when using academic language in a formal setting. There is a mismatch between their language level and their actual performance. This qualitative study explored Latina preservice bilingual teachers’ language proficiency levels in oral and written academic language skills during a bilingual methods course as part of the requirements for teaching certification. The participants learned about their language strengths and areas of needed improvement through diagnostic assessments; they worked on improving their language before taking a high-stakes test for bilingual teaching certification. Then data from the assessments was used to plan and tailor instruction to meet the linguistic needs of the participants. The study found participants had increased awareness of language strengths and needs; gained confidence in their language ability to speak and write using academic language. A strong recommendation for all bilingual educator preparation programs is to set minimum language entry requirements of early advanced in the target language, identify language strengths and needs as early as possible; tailor instruction targeting academic oral and writing skills, and provide opportunity for the bilingual candidates to learn about their language ability at early stages in the program.

Chinese bilingual preservice teachers' reflections on translanguaging pedagogy: The need for critical language curricularization

The ChallengeTranslanguaging, as a sociolinguistic practice, has been curricularized as a pedagogical tool for bilingual teachers. Despite its essential principle regarding the fluidity and dynamic nature of language use, translanguaging is inadvertently used by bilingual teachers as a proxy for translation and racialization rather than cultivating culturally and linguistically sustaining practices.

“I did not realize that my teacher had taken away part of my identity”: bilingual preservice teachers’ virtual libraries project

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate how participating in a multicultural education course impacted bilingual preservice teachers' (BPSTs) conceptions of identity and how they were able to use their experiential knowledge to create a virtual library based on a variety of topics related to multicultural education. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative case study examines the experiences of three BPST candidates within a multicultural education course during the fall 2020 semester. The authors focused on three preservice teachers’ written reflections, interviews and work samples based on a virtual library project. Findings The authors describe the critical role BPST preparation programs have in developing coursework that provides opportunities for building a positive self-identity that values life experiences. Such opportunities foster BPSTs’ ability to create lessons that are reflective of identity and diversity inclusive of culture, language, immigration and LGBTQ+. Originality/value For some time now, researchers have examined how teacher education programs should include opportunities to interrogate preservice teachers' own experiences in K-12. However, few researchers have directly documented how to connect these experiences to preservice teacher coursework and create classroom resources based on these critical reflections.

“Subestimamos las habilidades de los estudiantes:” Bilingual teacher candidates building on multilingual assets

ABSTRACT Teaching for equity with bilingual learners means building on students’ linguistic strengths. This critical qualitative self-study explored how pre-service bilingual teachers developed ideology and pedagogy through a structured, holistic approach to writing instruction. Seven bilingual teacher candidates implemented a strategic Transliteracy approach to writing instruction, observing student assets and teaching cross-linguistically. Data includes semi-structured interviews and coursework. Findings showed teachers’ ideological and pedagogical clarity co-developed as they implemented a holistic biliteracy practice. Implications for bilingual teacher education include (1) providing opportunities for teacher candidates to practice assets-based formative assessment and instruction; (2) employing a holistic biliteracy orientation; and (3) creating spaces to develop ideology and pedagogy that dismantles harmful monolingual paradigms, practices, and norms.

The Problem of Words: Learning to Teach Mathematics When Numbers and Languages Mix

In this piece I propose a perspective shift, from a simplified view of mathematics story problems to a more academically rigorous perspective that integrates mathematical proficiency and language practices crucial for educating bilingual students. The data presented in this article provide a window into what preparing bilingual pre-service teachers to teach mathematics might involve. I discuss issues that arise in the context of preparing Spanish-English bilingual pre-service teachers in a way that can inform their practice in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms.

Pre-service teachers' understanding of culture in multicultural education: A qualitative content analysis

As culture is the core concept in multicultural education, this paper focuses on teachers' understanding of culture, which is a factor in implementing multicultural education successfully. The present study investigates 231 generalist and bilingual pre-service teachers’ definitions of culture and whether or not there is a difference in the number of descriptors used by the groups. To analyze the data collected through a survey, I conducted a qualitative content analysis and then ran a 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA. Although there is no statistical difference between the groups, bilingual pre-service teachers showed a deeper understanding of culture.

Negotiating the limits of teacher agency: constructed constraints vs. capacity to act in preservice teachers’ descriptions of teaching emergent bilingual learners

ABSTRACT This study analyzes discussions from online language teacher education to understand how conversations between monolingual and bilingual preservice teachers (PSTs) in the US create and delimit structural constraints on teachers’ agency, (re)positioning teachers’ capacity to act in the instruction of emergent bilingual students (EBs). Employing positioning theory within a critical discursive psychology approach, findings demonstrate how bilingual PSTs pushed back on structural constraints introduced as potential barriers to achieving linguistic pluralism in monolingual teachers’ posts, asserting teachers’ agency by simultaneously positioning themselves and others as capable and responsible for education of EBs. These findings inform theoretical understandings of agency as a discursive construct and offer insights for teacher educators as they conceptualize the role of discursive exchanges in developing PSTs’ understanding of structures and agentive possibilities regarding the equitable education of EBs.

Impact of virtual vs. face-to-face learning on 21st-century skills among pre-service bilingual teachers

The so-called ‘twenty-first century skills’ (Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum, 2014) have been identified as essential literacies for the young generation, who must use creativity and innovation, collaboration and teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving, autonomy, flexibility and lifelong learning to function effectively. Bilingual pre-service teachers are entitled to develop these skills for both their own education and that of their future students (Savage and Barnett, 2015). This research will analyse the opinions of 45 bilingual pre-service teachers on the development of their twenty-first century skills through either online or face-to-face teaching. Quantitative and qualitative data will be scrutinized under a mixed-methods research, which will throw light on how participants think such skills are better developed. Findings will show that teacher students think that some of these skills are better developed under a face-to-face modality of learning (e.g. teamwork and collaboration), whereas others (e.g. autonomy and innovation) evolve better under an online framework of learning. Twenty-first century literacies push the educational boundaries of bilingual teachers as they are entitled to have a repertoire of communication skills that make us, teacher educators, pursue academic rigour regarding our own teaching and updated training.

“I Felt Powerful”: Imagining Re-existence Through an Embodied Fugitive Pedagogy for Mexican American/Latinx Teachers

ABSTRACT This study shows how a cohort of 22 bilingual preservice teachers imagined re-existence through fugitivity by using embodiment as a decolonial pedagogy to contest linguistic, xenophobic, racist, and classist oppression at micro levels at schools. The participants dramatized their future selves in specific situations they feared to encounter, and conjured their desire to become agents of change and to escape from feelings of being overwhelmed and disempowermed. The purposeful pedagogical shifts during the course (through the use of counterstories as legitimate texts, the centrality of the body through drama-based pedagogies, and the use of translanguaging as the language of instruction) facilitated the students’ imagining and transforming traditional scripts and producing their own skits, which tackled compelling issues they might encounter, at schools pertaining to bilingual education. The four self-generated scripts created and performed in class portrayed the teacher advocate-protagonist in dialogue with peers, parents, and administrators defending the language rights of the students. The participants enacted their scripts, highlighting the role of the advocate teacher in action and supporting the use of multiple language practices, the implementation of additive bilingual programs, the increase of resources for better materials in Spanish, and the training of mainstream teachers to be linguistically and culturally responsive. The scripts showcased are examples of the crafting of participants’ tactics to engage in re-existence to subvert dominant discourses and ideologies to provide equitable education for culturally and linguistically minoritized students and families and imagine other ways of being, feeling, teaching, and learning for excellence on their terms.

Supporting expansive learning in preservice bilingual teachers’ zone of proximal development of the activity system: an analysis of a four-field model trajectory

ABSTRACT The Change Laboratory methodology offers the potential to support expansive learning in preservice bilingual teacher education. This qualitative case study examines how ten preservice Chinese and Korean bilingual teachers, who participated in a Change Laboratory intervention, engaged one of the major Change Laboratory instruments, the four-field model, to make changes in their lesson implementation. By recognising the structural barriers in their bilingual teacher learning and praxis, they were able to take future-oriented actions. Findings from the thematic analysis illustrate how, as the preservice bilingual teachers embraced ambiguity in their teaching, they became increasingly cognisant of the non-linear and complex nature of teaching and learning. In doing so, they explored their collective reflective practices and gained confidence in using their judgement to generate expressions of transformative agency that have the potential to disrupt the status quo in US bilingual education.

The manifestation of chinese preservice bilingual teachers’ relational agency in a change laboratory intervention

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study is an examination of the relational agency manifested by three Chinese preservice bilingual teachers as they participated in a semester-long Change Laboratory (CL) intervention, during which they were placed in bilingual classrooms to work with their cooperating teachers. The bilingual teacher educators (i.e., the authors in this article) adapted and applied the CL methodology in the student teaching seminar course to support preservice bilingual teachers’ learning. Provoked by double stimulation, four different types of relational agency were manifested while the preservice teachers worked toward the goal of promoting equitable learning for bilingual children in the classroom with their cooperating teachers’ guidance. Implications for using CL methods in teacher education and new possibilities for bilingual education are also discussed.

“This is What My Kids See Every Day”: Bilingual Pre-service Teachers Embracing Funds of Knowledge through Border Thinking Pedagogy

ABSTRACT The present qualitative case study examines how community-based lessons impacted the practices, perspectives, and internship placement experiences of 16 bilingual pre-service teachers. Grounded in the concepts of funds of knowledge and border thinking pedagogy, the findings revealed that bilingual pre-service teachers drew on local knowledge to create community-based lessons; these lessons supported student engagement and participation, and they helped pre-service teachers develop a sense of belonging and connection. We end with important implications for the field of teacher education regarding the (re)framing of teacher preparation programs so that they center on learning with and from students’ and communities’ funds of knowledge.

Spanish Language Development and Support in a Bilingual Teacher Preparation Program

ABSTRACT This is a case study of supplementary support sessions for Spanish proficiency offered in a bilingual teacher preparation program in Texas throughout an academic year. The support sessions were created to assist pre-service bilingual teachers in further developing their command of Spanish through extra practice, feedback, and test preparation in Spanish. The tutorial sessions stimulated pre-service bilingual teachers to make sense of their own bilingualism in connection to their emergent professional identity, as well as their perceptions of their own preparation/preparedness to teach bilingually. The case study analyzes the effectiveness of the support sessions as evidenced in written and oral samples excerpted from the recorded sessions. This research calls for rethinking how bilingual teacher preparation programs can provide explicit and systematic language support to meet the needs of bilingual educators preparing for their future professional practice.