Working Toward Equity for Emergent Bilinguals Through Developing Teachers' Critical Language Ideologies

• In Event: Parent Language Perceptions and Ideologies in Bilingual/Dual-Language Contexts

Abstract

Teachers of emerging bilinguals (EBs) rarely get the opportunity to critically reflect on the inextricable links between language, race, and power that shape teaching and learning. This mixed-method study examined how teachers (n = 24) have – or have not –cultivated critical inquiry about the intersectionality of power, race, and language through participation in one year of a National Professional Development grant program. We assessed change via t-test analyses from survey responses and grounded theory (Charmaz, 2010) analysis of teacher reflections on raciolinguistics and personal language ideologies. Results showed that teachers had increased confidence in enacting culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies in their classrooms, but many persisted—albeit with more hesitance—in their own racialized language ideologies.

Authors

• Kim Hyunsook Song, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Lyndsie Marie Schultz, Washington University in St. Louis

• Gregory Scott Child, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Sujin Kim, George Mason University

• Lisa M. Dorner, University of Missouri - Columbia