Promoting Bilingual/Bicultural Teacher Dispositions Through Community-Centered Cultural and Language Revitalization Programs

• In Event: 30.080 - Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: 30.080-18 - Policy, Equity, and Bilingual Students

Abstract

In this presentation, we describe the results of a study of a cultural and language revitalization program for 4th and 5th grade bilingual students in a large, urban district. Based on participant ethnographic observation and bilingual teacher interviews, we found that teachers articulated developing community-centered dispositions which privileged a growing sense of bilingual curricular and instructional expertise, pedagogic agency and connection to their bilingual teacher identities and the students’ community. They also describe pedagogic structures within the program which helped develop these dispositions, including nourishing teaching communities, instruction that values and highlights local cultural ways of knowing and institutional networks that connect community elders, administration, community members, students and teachers to the curriculum.

Authors

• Christopher Milk Bonilla, Texas State University - San Marcos

• Brenda Rubio, The University of Texas - Austin

• Randy Clinton Bell, The University of Texas - Austin

• Anthony Martinez, The University of Texas - Austin