Bilingual and Dual Language Teachers: Collaborative and Tool-Mediated Professionalization Activities

• In Event: Sociocultural Perspectives on Teaching Science and Engineering in Bilingual and Dual-Language Programs: Professional Development Issues

Abstract

There are glaring inequities in opportunities to learn science and engineering (S&E) through inquiry for working-class Latinx (WCL) students classified as English learners (ELs). Our research team collaborated with bilingual and dual-language (BDL) middle-school teachers at a Title 1, US-Mexico border school that serves a population of WCL students (91% free and reduced lunch) where 55% of students are classified as EL. The project sought to create S&E learning opportunities that explicitly drew on students’ funds of knowledge (FoK), specifically their home language practices (including translanguaging) and border-crossing experiences. The purpose of this paper is to inform about the project in the interest of creating sustained and equitable change in the educational experiences of WCL in S&E learning.

We drew on the sociocultural theorical concept of mediation (Vygotsky, 1978), particularly in culturally and historically situated activity (Engerstrom, 2015). As part of an asset-based approach, we center experiences of “nondominant communities” (Gutierrez et al., 2009), in this case bilingual teachers of WCL.

This paper is part of a larger, three-year, ethnographic study. It is case study of an interdisciplinary study group consisting of three dual-language teachers. We collected various data including fieldnotes (from team meetings and online observations during the Covid-19 pandemic), online artifacts, interviews, audio- and video-recordings. With the unit of analysis being the activity around the co-creation of S&E learning units, we asked: What tools mediated the creation of the learning units? What did participants learn?

Our case centers on an interdisciplinary faculty group consisting of a female Spanish teacher, a female English teacher, and a male science teacher (“Mr. Mendez”), all of whom were bilingual-bicultural Latinx and grew up in the border community. The group was formed to design learning units in summer 2020 and continued for a year. The group used various tools to mediate activities, including the engineering design cycle (EDC), a repository of existing S&E lessons, and the guiding concept of FoK.

Due to space constraints, our findings center on the group’s re-design of an engineering-focused lesson on creating and testing the effectiveness of facemasks during Covid-19. Mendez chose an existing lesson from the repository, and received feedback from peer and researchers mediated by FoK and the EDC. Mendez expanded opportunities for students to create masks, but also collect, record and share data and to interpret findings on mask effectiveness. A peer teacher helped Mendez to create individual mask-making kits with 3 types of fabric. Others helped to translate the material into Spanish, the language of instruction.

Mendez’s learning reflection suggested he learned about S&E, but also the value of drawing on FoK saying that he valued student “interactions with their family members on science or environmental problems.”

This paper shows suggests that BDL teachers benefitted from collaborative professionalization activities. The collaboration created the space for tool-mediated activity to foment meaningful S&E learning for WCL students in BDL. Thus, the paper connects to the conference theme of creating equitable educational systems for the 21st century.

Authors

• Alberto Esquinca, San Diego State University

• Joel Alejandro Mejia, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Vitaliy Popov, University of Michigan