Where the Wild Things Aren't: A Teacher's Struggle to Understand Her Notorious Bilingual Student

• In Event: 46.085 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 46.085-8 - Disrupting Deficit Views About Difference

Abstract

This design research took place within an 8-week professional development course and represents results from the first cycle of the design research. It examines the mediation provided to the teacher, Lucy, and her understanding of the strategies, methods, and concepts taught by the researcher instructor. It notes Lucy’s application of this understanding to her bilingual students as a whole, and the extent to which she denied this same understanding to Alma, her notorious student.

Lucy’s thinking and attitudes were also meditated by others within the school. Her belief that Alma was uneducable was mediated towards that end by her principal, the other teacher participants, and Alma’s elementary-grades ESL specialist. Across the school she was ability profiled as a “wild animal.”

Author

• Alaska Black Hults, Brigham Young University