Not Bilingual Enough: Latinx Dual Language Teachers' Racialized Language Ideologies

• In Event: Engaging and Reimagining Racialized Notions of Citizenship, Participation, and Leadership in Bilingual Educational Settings

Abstract

The purpose of this proposal is to examine the language ideologies of six Latinx K-5 dual language (DL) teachers in Arizona. We focus on understanding language journeys, affirmations, and challenges that contribute to the language ideologies of these teachers as bilingual speakers. Arizona is the only state that has maintained a strict English-only educational policy in the U.S. for two decades. Thus, this proposal also seeks to unpack the influences of restrictive policies shaping the teachers’ ideologies.

Language ideologies are belief systems that are tied to sociohistorical contexts and impositions of power that inherently impact choices of language speakers (Irvine & Gal, 2009; McGroarty, 2010; Silverstein, 1998). Race is a key determiner of language ideologies and shapes the ways language users are perceived as proficient or non-proficient by society and their speech communities (Alim, Rickford, & Ball, 2016; Flores & Rosa, 2015).

This proposal uses “racialized ideologies of languagelessness” (Rosa, 2016) as a theoretical framework to unveil power structures influencing DL teachers’ ideologies. As Rosa (2016) posits: “racialized ideologies of languagelessness call into question linguistic competence— and, by extension, legitimate personhood—altogether” (p.163). A growing body of research has examined teachers’ language ideologies as it relates to their teaching (See Bacon, 2018). However, studying language ideologies of bilingual teachers of color as bilingual people and teachers who teach in restrictive contexts through the lens of race is highly significant, yet understudied. The goal of this study is to examine the ways these Latinx teachers perceive themselves as legitimate bilingual speakers of English and Spanish and also as capable DL teachers.

The participating school is an urban K-8 public school in a working-class and racially diverse neighborhood in Arizona. All six participants are bilingual Latinx women who teach in K-5 classrooms. All but one of the teachers was born and raised in the U.S., one teacher was born in Mexico. The participants included both veteran and new teachers. This study was designed as qualitative research on DL teachers’ language ideologies. The data sources include interview transcriptions, field notes, and memos from the dual-language department meetings. We used critical ethnographic methods (Carspecken, 1996; Madison, 2011) to observe the meetings for one year. At the end of the year, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with each teacher. The data were uploaded are being analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Preliminary results show that the teachers’ perception of themselves as bilingual speakers was fluid and varied based on the context and their unique experiences in their families, communities, schooling, and employment. The findings showed that when teachers found themselves in predominantly White English monolingual contexts, they were less confident about their English language proficiency. Additionally, teachers’ legitimacy as Spanish speakers was questioned in Spanish-dominant communities. These experiences strongly shaped their identity as capable dual language teachers. Thus, the teachers were not only evaluated as linguistically subhuman by the White listening subject (Rosa, 2016), but also by internalized ideologies of languagelessness in themselves and their communities.

Authors

• Yalda M. Kaveh, Arizona State University

• Alexandria Estrella, Arizona State University