"¡Pregunta a Brisa, Ana!...Ask Her Very Very Nicely": Preservice Bilingual Teachers' Languaging and Ideologies

• In Event: Decentering Whiteness and Monolingual/Monoglossic Ideologies, Practices, and Identities in an Elementary Teacher Education Program

Abstract

Objectives
Scholars concerned with the gentrification of dual language programs (Valdez, Freire, & Delavan, 2016) have highlighted the need to bring back some of the initial intent of Dual Language Bilingual programs, where teachers and students can become critical of social arrangements that use language normativity to deny social capital to some. In light of this call, this paper explores the intentional use of multilingual pedagogies, which aim at modeling bilingual practices for bilingual teacher development, and developing biliteracy across educational contexts. We examined the following questions:
How do bilingual pre-service teachers understand their biliteracy development within the context of multilingual pedagogies?
How does this understanding relate to their language ideologies both in their teacher education program and/or field placement?

Theoretical Framework
In this study we drew on Hornberger’s (2003) Continua of Biliteracy to deconstruct the complexities of behaviors, competencies, relations and products of the teacher candidates (TCs) as individuals and members of different linguistic communities within a teaching education program that has embraced a multilingual pedagogies approach. This framework allows us to examine the layers of behaviors and purposes inherent in these TCs’ practices and linguistic communities, what Baquedano-Lopez & Kattan (2008) refer to as a "set of relationships between individuals who shape symbolic and material resources" (p. 90). We also drew from Rosa & Burdick’s (2016) argumentation that any view of language is ideological “because it reflects a specific perspective and emerges within a particular context” (p. 2). This means that ideas about language are not only about language, but also reflect specific sociocultural, historical and political-economic contexts. Together these lenses allow us to situate TCs’ bilingual development and ideologies within diverse contexts.

Methods and Data Sources
This ethnographic qualitative research study included three female participants from a cohort of 13 TCs: a non-US born Spanish speaker for whom English was her second language, and two U.S English speakers for whom Spanish was their second language. Data sources included participants’ interviews, course assignments and observations in the TCs’ elementary classroom placements.

Results and Scholarly Significance
Initial findings suggest that the option to use the TCs’ full linguistic repertoires raised the candidates’ awareness about the limited opportunities offered by a program that promoted biliteracy to develop candidates’ academic and linguistic repertoires in Spanish. In addition, when the TCs entered in contact with their placements, the hegemonic presence of English continued to permeate aspects of the culture of the classrooms, which resulted in a loss of opportunities to use Spanish and their full bilingual repertoires during Spanish-designated spaces. Nevertheless, later TCs’ gradual application of their bilingual linguistic resources through lesson planning and full-time student teaching allowed them to attempt to decenter the English hegemony and center the linguistic and cultural resources of their emergent bilingual students, instead.

Relevance
These findings point towards developing teacher education programs that foster more dynamic bilingual practices for bilingual teachers across linguistically contested contexts, and include opportunities for TCs to continue to develop their language skills in both languages.

Authors

• Patricia M Ferreyra, University of Washington - Seattle

• Patricia E. Venegas-Weber, University of Washington