Bilingual Teacher Candidates Research Articles

Becoming Linguistically and Culturally Responsive Educators: Teacher Candidates’ Perspective Shifts in an Introductory Linguistics Course

ABSTRACT Many teacher education programs aim to address the acute need for culturally and linguistically responsive educators by fostering linguistic consciousness and awareness of language learner populations. This mixed-methods study explores how elementary education teacher candidates’ perspectives shift through critical reflection and dialogue about English learners’ education and equitable classroom practices. Using a transformative learning framework, our findings illustrate that collaborative learning tasks as well as peers’ and multilingual graduate teaching assistants’ experiences play a disorienting role in challenging monolingual and bilingual teacher candidates’ beliefs about language acquisition, bilingualism, and English learners’ education. We discuss implications for teacher language awareness and instructional practices in ESL endorsement courses.

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.

‘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.

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.

Raciolinguistic metacommentary: Examining Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates’ everyday experiences with raciolinguistic ideologies

ABSTRACT This article documents the spontaneous, implicit, and explicit ideological commentary – what I have termed raciolinguistic metacommentary – that 17 Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates (TCs) reported encountering in their everyday lives on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Analysis of data from a one-year critical ethnography shows that these ideological comments not only point to perceived (non)linguistic difference at the individual level but also mobilize marginalizing indexical images of U.S. Latinas/os that reinscribe existing racial hierarchies. In light of these findings, this article underscores the need for more scholarly attention to be paid to the raciolinguistics of the everyday or how raciolinguistic ideologies creep into social spaces such as Latina/o homes and communities to shape Latina/o bilinguals’ lived experiences of language and identity possibilities. The concept of raciolinguistic metacommentary is proposed as an analytical tool for this endeavor.

“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.

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.

Bilingual teacher candidates as policy appropriators in a previously anti-bilingual state

ABSTRACT This multiple case study explores the conceptualisations of bilingual education within the Massachusetts state policy, An Act Relative to Language Opportunity for Our Kids (LOOK Act), and teacher candidates’ experiences from a bilingual teacher preparation programme in Massachusetts. Data consisted of policy documents, semi-structured interviews, and memos. Overall, the LOOK Act primarily framed bilingual education as a remedial and commodifiable educational model. Specifically, the law referred to bilingual programmes as programmes that focus on promoting the acquisition of English language proficiency. At the same time, it distinguishes bilingual programme models from each other by referring to one model, dual language education, as an academically rigorous programme and to transitional bilingual education as a temporary programme solely for English Learners. Teacher candidates described how the above orientations toward bilingual education were present in their coursework and teaching experiences. They also critiqued the rigid communicative approaches that the LOOK Act established for families and bilingual programmes. This study’s implications include (a) further investigation of teacher candidates’ negotiation of governmental educational policies throughout their transition as practicing teachers, and (b) teacher education programmes’ integration of opportunities for teacher candidates to examine and make sense of educational policies.

Developing Academic Spanish in Bilingual Teacher Candidates

Policy makers and education researchers emphasize the need for English learners to develop academic language in order to improve school achievement. However, little work has been done to understand how academic language, conceptualized in English-only environments, is pedagogically relevant for prospective bilingual teachers who have experienced subtractive schooling (Valenzuela, 1996). This article presents a critical interpretive review of studies that explore Spanish development in bilingual teacher candidates who are Heritage Spanish Speakers (HSS). Our analysis of 36 studies found two main obstacles and three types of solutions towards Spanish development in bilingual teacher preparation programs. Obstacles coalesced around structural and ideological dimensions. Solutions pointed to three pathways for Spanish academic language development: content-based instruction, sociolinguistic approaches, and socio-symbolic transformations. Of the 36 articles, 20 aligned with solutions and 16 with obstacles. Our conclusions point to linguistic and cultural factors specific to Spanish-speaking communities in the United States that deserve more careful attention as part of policy-driven pedagogical improvement efforts. Based on our findings, we discuss the ambivalent experiences impinging on bilingual teacher candidates who are HSS, the implications of prevailing decontextualized approaches, and the need to further theorize the construct of academic Spanish.

“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.

Where the Translingual Rubber Hits the Road: Ideological Frictions, Mixtificaciones y Potentialities in Bilingual Teacher Preparation Programs


 
 
 Translanguaging has become a particularly relevant (and controversial) concept for the field of bilingual education, with concrete implications for teacher preparation programs serving teacher candidates (TCs) who may identify as heritage speakers of Spanish. However, the regard and understanding of translanguaging, its pedagogical potential, and the positionality to implement it are not evenly distributed among stakeholders involved in the teacher preparation process. This article explores the relationship among California public teacher preparation programs, their bilingual teacher candidates, and the districts that host their field placements that ultimately hire them. Building on the metaphorical concepts of ideological and implementational spaces (Flores & Schissel, 2014), the space between and encompassing the overlap between credentialing programs and school districts is characterized as a friction space beset by tensions between monoglossic and heteroglossic stances and the pragmatism of “entering the workforce.” The dynamics of this space are illustrated in five retratos constructed on qualitative data obtained through semistructured interviews. Based on the author's localized experiences, the article concludes by proposing approaches to navigate the friction space, reinforce the bilingual candidates' counterideological stances, and advance a much-needed productive dialogue in the teacher preparation ecology.
 
 

Translingual Practices for the Development of Latinx Teacher Candidates: A Pedagogy for the Border


 
 
 This article explores the application of translingual pedagogies within a course on the development of bilingualism for Latinx bilingual teacher candidates (BTCs) in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Using a self-study methodology, it examines the application of translanguaging pedagogies for Latinx BTCs, and their evolving language ideologies. The participants were mostly emergent bilinguals (EBs) whose native Spanish language development was negatively impacted by hegemonic educational practices in the local K-12 schools. Therefore, while the first aim of my pedagogical practices was to promote learning of the content of the course, a second aim was to promote the development of academic Spanish language abilities, required for bilingual teacher certification. Findings include how the use of a translingual dialogic teaching approach led to the emergence of 1) a critical stance with an awareness of bilingualism as an advantageous resource in learning, and 2) the development of initial principles for their future practices that value translanguaging.
 
 

Research: “Writing is so much more than just writing in English”: Teacher Candidates Taking Up Translanguaging in a Teacher-as-Writer Experience

Teacher-as-writer experiences, in which teacher candidates engage deeply in their own writing and consider its implications for their pedagogies, are common features of writing methods courses. However, most existing research on these assignments has focused on the experiences of educators who write and will teach exclusively in English. We explore the experiences of bilingual teacher candidates who engaged in a teacher-as-writer assignment in our writing methods course, which we redesigned through the lens of translanguaging pedagogies (García et al., 2016). Drawing on theories of translanguaging (García, 2009) and raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015), we describe how two teacher candidates experienced invitations to compose across languages in ways that were simultaneously empowering and complicated. Ultimately, through this article, we seek to bring needed recognition of linguistic and racial diversity to discussions of teacher-as-writer experiences and to highlight the pedagogical potential of translanguaging in writing teacher education.

Two Latina bilingual teacher candidates’ perceptions of language proficiency and language choice options: Ideological encounters with listening and speaking others

ABSTRACT In this interview-based study, we examine two Latina bilingual teacher candidates’ accounts of their experiences as Spanish-dominant, Mexican-national bilingual speakers in social and institutional spaces. We analyze their accounts of grappling with circulating language ideologies from a raciolinguistic perspective, using tenets of critical discourse analysis. Our analysis illuminates the ways these Latina bilingual teacher candidates’ encounters with an array of interlocutors—listening and speaking others—have shaped their experiences as racialized bilinguals. Findings suggest that these ideologically laden encounters, characterized by power imbalances, play a hefty and often unexamined role in shaping bilingual teacher candidates’ perceptions of their language proficiency and institutionally sanctioned language choice options.

Identifying barriers impeding bilingual and ESL teacher candidates’ success on state licensure exams

ABSTRACT The need for highly qualified bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers continues to rapidly increase. In this article, we share the results of a multi-year study that has aimed to determine what factors affect the performance of teacher candidates seeking bilingual education and ESL in a teacher preparation program in the Southwest. In this article, we focus on 89 teacher candidates’ performance on the Core Subject (TExES 291) test, as it represents one of the most important testing attempts these teacher candidates must pass in order to be on track toward certification. For this manuscript we explored both internal (e.g., gender, age group, ethnicity) as well as external factors (e.g., good test taker) to determine the extent to which these had a role (or otherwise) in their test performance. While our data confirm previous studies findings regarding the impact of internal factors such as gender, age, marital status, among others, teacher preparation can help mitigate some barriers for ESL and bilingual certification.

Sociocultural approaches to mobile learning in bilingual teacher preparation: The benefits of SAML as both a strategy and belief

ABSTRACT This article presents a cooperative inquiry into how teacher educators prepare bilingual teacher candidates to adopt sociocultural approaches to mobile learning in their field-based courses as a platform for engaging their culturally and linguistically diverse learner populations. A sociocultural approach to mobile learning (SAML) uses mobile devices to bridge students’ home and school lives in meaningful and relevant learning experiences. This study provides insight into how and why teacher educators should prepare bilingual preservice teachers to use mobile learning to address the cultural and linguistic needs of diverse learner populations. The authors posit that adopting sociocultural approaches to mobile learning is not just a strategy but a belief that teaching is about empowering students, being responsive to their cultural and linguistic needs, valuing their diversity, creating equitable access to technology, and making learning relevant and authentic – all of which can be facilitated through mobile learning. These beliefs that are facilitated by SAML are extended to the bilingual teacher candidates and ultimately onto their future students.

Naming and confronting the challenges of bilingual teacher preparation: A dilemma for dual language education in California – lessons learned

ABSTRACTAt a time when Dual Language programs are growing exponentially, educators’ conversations revolve around the challenges to identify, name, and confront the pressing issues in effective preparation and continued professional development for bilingual teachers. Currently, the preparation for candidates varies across university programs despite state and national academic standards for the profession. Differences and emphasis in curriculum, field experiences, and state certification provide a myriad of program alternatives. However, one common thread amongst teacher preparation programs is the wide diversity in the candidates’ bilingual competencies. This research examines the multi-dimensional aspects of bilingual teacher preparation slated to meet the demands of dual language programs. The importance of this research is not only to identify and name the current challenges in preparing highly qualified bilingual teacher candidates in California, but to also discuss implications and recommendations in the careful preparation of culturally and linguistically competent teachers and the faculty that prepare them.

An investigation into the linguistic landscape of translingual storybooks for Arabic-English bilingual children

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the linguistic landscape of eight culturally-responsive, translingual picture storybooks written by bilingual Arabic-English teacher candidates for young emergent bilingual children. Drawing on linguistic content analysis methodology, the study analyses the cross-linguistic challenges teacher candidates faced in creating translingual children’s story books for young Emirati children wherein Arabic and English are meshed, and examines the strategies they used to integrate the two linguistic systems. The study also examines what the storybooks convey, explicitly or implicitly, about culture and language in the UAE where the storybooks were created. The findings of the paper indicate that meshing Arabic and English is not a simple undertaking and that directionality, linguistic balance, page layout, name selections, environmental print and cultural content are impacted by this process of meshing. As prototypes, however, these storybooks have yielded valuable educational lessons.

Debemos escuchar a los maestros: Perspectives of bilingual teacher candidates in teacher education partnerships

ABSTRACTWe investigated the experiences of 12 bilingual teacher candidates as they participated in a non-traditional teacher education program implemented in the context of a partnership between a university, a non-profit organization, and an urban school district. Using the lens of Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Latinx Critical Race Theory, we analyzed participating teachers’ interviews, reflection logs, and partnership artifacts. Findings showed that teacher candidates identified positive and negative affordances from participating in the teacher education partnership. Bilingual teacher candidates reported that urban schools were challenging settings to develop their practice and that they had less access to instructional resources and mentors than general education (English-only) teachers. Additional negative affordances included inconsistent expectations between the partnership members with respect to high-quality bilingual education and a mismatch between candidates’ educational backgrounds and the subjects they were assigned to teach. Positive affordances of the partnership were being part of a cohort of teachers, having access to specialized bilingual mentors, and getting training relevant to their practices. Bilingual teacher candidates reported that these positive affordances allowed them to discuss issues of equity in their schools and identify ways to advocate for their students. Factors regarding equity in the allocation of educational resources and ways to bridge the gap between research and practice in designing programs that prepare bilingual teachers in urban settings via non-traditional programs are discussed.