A Bilingual Classroom Teacher's Encounters With Curricularization Across Subject Areas

• In Event: Turning Languages Into Curriculum: Studies of Curricularization Across Contexts

Abstract

Objectives

Curricularization renders language assessable as comprised of discrete forms and skills (Kibler & Valdés, 2016; Valdés, 2015). Even beyond the context of language teaching, curricularization is crucial to generating and maintaining language ideologies that propose models of disciplinary language and of desired student behavior. This paper seeks to expand understanding of curricularization to encompass assumptions about language that may not be explicitly tied to language instruction but nevertheless are deeply embedded in classroom life for teachers and students.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

This paper draws on a year-long linguistic ethnographic study of a second grade bilingual classroom in a large city in the United States. Using evidence from interviews, policy analysis, and observation in classrooms and planning meetings, I describe how the teacher’s planning for instruction recontextualized curricularized products rooted in school policies, state and national standards, and unofficial sources like Pinterest. I traced the language ideologies (Rosa & Burdick, 2016; Woolard, 1998) expressed in these sources as well as the intertextual paths along which they were recontextualized (Johnson, 2015; Rymes, 2012).

Results

This paper presents two cases of how a bilingual teacher negotiated and recontextualized products of curricularization, which originated from diverse sources of planning materials both official and unofficial. In the first case, concerning explicitly language instruction, a pair of standardized monolingual reading assessments enforced an emphasis on monolingual practices. In the second case, concerning language arts content considered distinct from language instruction, loosely defined writing standards became recontextualized (and more strongly curricularized) through combination with unofficial Pinterest networks, resulting in a strict categorization of genre for elementary writing. Together, these cases reveal how curricularization unfolds through specific acts of recontextualization and restricts opportunities for teachers to recognize student language practices as successful or even legitimate. Furthermore, the restrictions created by curricularization closely align with widespread deficit discourses about the linguistic capacities of poor, racialized students, suggesting that such raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015) are deeply embedded in the logic of existing language curricula.

Significance of the study

The paper makes several contributions to the literature on curricularization. First, it shows that unofficial sources like Pinterest are important sites for this process. Second, it illustrates the impact of curricularization whether or not the instruction it influences is officially designated as language instruction. Third, by examining curricularization ethnographically in terms of specific acts of recontextualization, it extends methodological frameworks for understanding its impact on teachers and students. Ultimately, by tracing more of the language ideological work done by diversely situated educational actors (teachers, curriculum directors, students, etc.) this application of curricularization frameworks helps us recognize multiple potential sites of change toward more just schooling.

Author

• Mark Christopher Lewis, School District of Philadelphia