Breaking Down Barriers: Hearing From Children to Learn to Teach Inclusively in Bilingual Education

• In Event: Sustaining Disability in Teacher Education Programs: A Symposium on Disability Studies Cross-Pollination With Asset Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose
Children carrying multiple educational labels, such as emergent bilingual (EB) children with disabilities, carry rich knowledge that can help us understand how to design inclusive spaces. However, educational approaches center in remediating EBs with disabilities to fit within “culturally normative ways” (Greenstein, 2014, p. 382). Integrating children’s knowledge/practices in learning can lead to agentive respectful learning opportunities (Author, 2020). Building on the legacies of bilingual/bicultural education and critical disability frameworks, this study explores the extent to which the volitional actions and voices of EBs and EBs with disabilities influenced the collective reflection of educators as they were asked to speak about their experience in lessons taught by student teachers (STs).
Theoretical Framework
Children learning at the intersection of differences might be relegated to taking on an identity of needing help and “care”, rather than being empowered to enact agency (Tronto, 1993). This contradicts the documented germaneness of learning from children and their families in bilingual and bicultural education research. Within such standpoint, Disability Studies in Education (DSE), which understands disability as socially constructed (Baglieri, Valle, Connor, & Gallagher, 2011) and intersectionality frameworks (Crenshaw, 1991), can develop and sustain the asset pedagogies championed in bilingual education (i.e., funds of knowledge; Moll, Velez-Ibañez, & Greenberg, 1989).
Methods and Data Sources
This qualitative study documented an effort to include children in reflective collective conversations after STs taught lessons. Twenty-three EBs and EBs with disabilities, participated in eleven such conversations. The lessons were situated in Chinese or Spanish inclusive bilingual public schools in a highly urban context in the U.S. The authors developed a codebook and analyzed the transcribed audio-taped conversations to gain insights about three questions: (RQ1) How do educators involved in the preparation of STs for the inclusive bilingual classroom use the opportunity to hear directly from children about the lesson they just experienced? (RQ2) What manifestations of children’s agency surface during the conversations? (RQ3) How does the children’s participation influence the rest of the collective reflection?
Results
The analyses showed, first, how, while children took some volitional actions, STs were not always willing to accept their efforts to critically reflect on their own lessons; Second, the children’s participation did not radically influence the collective discussion. For example, while children often focused on the emotional connections they experienced during lessons, the educators did not continue with this direction. During the conversations, children were rather forced onto the identity of novice, less knowledgeable participants. In this way, as the volitional actions of EBs and EBs with disabilities were ignored or distorted, opportunities to learn from their experiences in the lessons was lost. Dismissing children’s efforts to communicate suggest that disability continued to be situated within children’s “individual and inherent deficits” (Beratan, 2006, p. 2-3).
Scholarly Significance
Assuming educational responsibility involves a transformative process, where children, teachers, and STs learn alongside each other. Implications include the need for teacher preparation programs to nurture teachers and STs onto more radical inclusive pedagogical approaches where the social context, rather than children with disabilities is remediated.

Authors

• Patricia Martínez-Álvarez, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Minhye Son, California State University - Dominguez Hills