Proyecto Bilingüe: Constructing a Figured World of Bilingual Education for Latina/o Bilingual Teachers

• In Event: The Figured World of Bilingual Education: Proyecto Bilingüe as Context for Teacher Self-Authoring

Abstract

Purpose: This paper focuses on how Latina/o bilingual teachers from one cohort (2013-2014) produced identities and agency in Proyecto Bilingüe, a master’s degree program in Curriculum and Instruction designed to retain and foster leadership among bilingual teachers who taught in bilingual classrooms for at least five years. Proyecto Bilingüe counters the largely monolingual, monocultural thrust that characterizes teacher education and professional development (Sleeter, 2001).

Theoretical framework: Holland et al.’s (1998) work on figured worlds is used to examine teachers’ identities and agency that are embedded in larger cultural worlds. Figured worlds both shape and are shaped by practices, discourses, and artifacts. Conflicts can exist between a “master” figured world and other worlds that counter it (Gee, 2014). Holland et al. illuminate ways identities are formed in interaction as people participate in activities organized by the figured worlds in which they participate. Additionally, identity production and agency are possible in spaces that foster self-authoring.

Methods and data sources: This qualitative study focused on one cohort of Proyecto Bilingüe Latina/o teachers to address the research questions: How was Proyecto Bilingüe a figured world that opened up spaces for Latina/o bilingual teachers’ identity production? What identities did the Latina/o bilingual teachers produce? Data included transcripts of interviews with the bilingual teachers and their written autobiographies and reflections. The author conducted thematic analysis of the corpus of data (Erickson, 2004). Key to the analysis was Gee’s (2014) tool of inquiry for figured worlds. Data was chunked and coded to generate themes based on groupings of codes.

Findings: The figured world of Proyecto Bilingüe was a space for (re)making bilingual-bicultural identities that validated the lived realities of the Latina/o teachers, including codeswitching (Zentella, 1997) and translanguaging (Garcia, 2009). Proyecto Bilingüe countered negative ideologies of varieties of Spanish as teachers used their full linguistic repertoires in their talk and writings. Furthermore, these language ideologies became conceptual artifacts that shaped and were shaped by participants in the Proyecto Bilingüe figured world. Another finding was that Proyecto Bilingüe provided a space for the teachers to author themselves as Latina/o bilingual teacher agents and thus integrated their personal and professional identities with their bilingual-bicultural selves. A significant value that shaped the bilingual teachers’ agency was that of community. The teachers enacted their commitment to the collective to advocate for themselves, their students, and their families—both in the master figured worlds of their schools and in professional development.

Scientific or scholarly significance: Professional development is marked by whiteness as its practices and discourses promote monolingualism in English and ethnocentric monoculturalism (Sue 2004). Consequently, the need for spaces like Proyecto Bilingüe is dire for retention of Latina/o teachers. Scholars and teacher educators must take up the challenge posed by Téllez and Varghese (2013) and create professional development programs where Latina/o bilingual teachers can author themselves as leaders, advocates, and agents who are inextricably connected to the working-class, immigrant communities where their students live.

Author

• Lucila D. Ek, University of Texas at San Antonio