Rejuvenated Praxis: Bilingual Teachers' Pedagogical Transformation Through Critical Professional Development

• In Event: Trenzas para un Nuevo Sol: Critical Bilingual Professional Development for Solidarity, Transformation, and Equity

Abstract

Objective
Understanding bilingual teachers’ learning experiences, development of ideological clarity, and pedagogical evolution within CPD requires detailed portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005) that documents complex processes of professional learning and growth. This paper tells the story of two elementary bilingual teachers in Los Angeles who participated in El Instituto and offers insight to how their critical praxis was informed by the CPD experience.
Theoretical Framework
Traditional professional development for bilingual teachers is antidialogical, focuses on techniques that support multilingual students acquiring English quickly at the expense of home languages (García & Kleifgen, 2018), and frames teachers as empty vessels needing to learn technical skills to be transactionally replicated with students (Kohli et al., 2015). Identifying these practices as “effective” dehumanizes students’ and teachers’ social identities and justifies deficit approaches (Reyes III, 2016). To disrupt inequity, bilingual teachers must experience humanizing, critical professional development. In CPD, participating teachers and professional development facilitators are co-generators of knowledge, coming together in praxis toward liberatory transformation (Kohli et al., 2015).
Methodology
We paint portraits of two teacher participants in El Instituto, addressing the research question, how has participation in CPD influenced classroom pedagogies/practices? Portraiture highlights the nuances of human experiences through concentrated focus on context (Reyes-McGovern, 2019) and by its explicitly humanistic impulse of storytelling (Featherstone, 1989). Understood as “a people’s scholarship”, portraitists document detailed complexity of a unique experience or place, hoping that the audience will see themselves reflected, trusting that the readers will feel identified (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005). Drawing from observations, interviews, and pedagogical artifacts, these portraits tell the story of teachers’ journey to develop ideological clarity (Alfaro & Hernández, 2016) and enact critical pedagogies.

Findings
Two focal teachers’ (who ethnically identify as Mexicana) ideological clarity was strengthened during CPD. The immersive experience permitted deep reflection about intersections of languages and identities and their situation within hegemony. Continuous discussion in Spanish in círculos, modeling and practice of critical pedagogies, opportunities to translanguage, and multimodal reflections contributed to their digestion of theory, reflection of practice, and imagining of new pedagogies. Teachers carried this into the school year and utilized critical approaches to co-generate learning experiences with students and families in Spanish. Teacher A drew upon her students’ interest in leyendas and scary stories to generatively develop a multimodal unit around families’ leyendas. Students integrated multigenerational voices and used their entire linguistic repertoires to write and video record leyendas specific to their heritage and cultural practices. Families gathered for a virtual movie night in convivencia and shared funds of knowledge. Teacher B designed phonological awareness activities based on home knowledges, such as cooking quesadillas and searching for gusanos while documenting learning through videos as a way to learn /qu/ and /gu/ sílabas in Spanish. A unit emerged around children’s and families’ interest in local paleteros and culturally sustaining literacies.
Significance
Findings from these bilingual teachers’ experiences confirm that when teachers are positioned as knowledgeable beings whose lived cultural and linguistic realities drive generative learning in CPD, a rejuvenated praxis emerges to effect equitable changes in bilingual education.

Authors

• Cynthia Y. Lozano Correa, Los Angeles Unified School District

• Natalie Núñez, Lynwood Unified School District