Bilingual Teacher Candidates Answering the Call to Social Justice Through Dual Language Bilingual Education

• In Event: "Hasta La Raíz": Rooting Justice-Centered Dual Language Bilingual Education in Illinois

Abstract

While on the journey toward becoming a licensed teacher, bilingual pre-service candidates in teacher education programs are introduced to different educational contexts as options for their careers. Bilingual teachers continue to be in high demand (Mitchell, 2019) but the landscape of bilingual education is rapidly changing. Transitional bilingual programs (TBE) are often being replaced with dual language bilingual education (DLBE) (Richards & Lam, 2020). Bilingual teacher candidates were, in effect, told to convert academic functionality from Spanish to English and are now being recruited to leverage their Spanish to fulfill the promises made by school districts to expand DLBE. Often, they were students in a linguistically subtractive program and often feel inadequate about their own Spanish-language proficiency (Briceño, 2018; Guerrero, 2003) and lack the time or opportunity to invest in developing their Spanish classroom professional register (Aquino-Sterling & Rodriguez-Valls, 2016; Caldas, 2021) thus inhibiting their draw toward DLBE. Through deeper understanding of the experiences and identities of incoming DLBE professionals, the field of bilingual education can support them in constructing educational settings that break damaging cycles of linguistic terrorism (Anzaldúa, 1987).

This phenomenological study, utilizing an interpretive framework and informed by Borderlands identity theory (Anzaldúa, 1987), explored reflections from bilingual pre-service teachers about their personal, school-based experiences as bilingual individuals as well as their outlooks toward a prospective career in DLBE. Six Spanish-speaking LatinX women enrolled in a sixteen-week, bilingual education methods course engaged in a series of free-writing exercises that probed their motivation and identity connections to bilingual education. Free-writing exercises were selected for data collection to mitigate perceived expectations about responses from the researcher (Ochoa & Pineda, 2008). Participant responses to these artifacts were coded through open, descriptive methods (Saldaña, 2011).

Although, as extant literature indicates, they do feel intimidated by their own perceived limitations in Spanish proficiency or by unfamiliar pedagogy, these bilingual pre-service educators who were subjected to linguistic terrorism as students, respond to DLBE as a calling rooted in social justice. Examination of the interplay between participants’ own cultural and linguistic histories and exposure to DLBE theory and pedagogy elicited a strong desire to engage with its transformational potential. As one participant stated, “my parents were usually left out of school and classroom events due to language.” They look toward DLBE as Spanish language maintenance and development as a tool for full inclusion of minoritized families, social-emotional support for emerging bilingual students, and a means to openly challenge language ideologies of assimilation. Participants in this study are electing to gain bilingual teaching endorsement for their prospective career choices because of their interest in reframing experiences for the emergent bilingual students they will serve.

Focusing on the reasons bilingual, pre-service teachers are attracted to DLBE as a career-path serves the purpose of informing teacher education programs and school districts utilizing or considering DLBE about ways to support their entry and persistence in DLBE. Supporting bilingual teachers, by extension, ensures the success of DLBE and creates culturally and linguistically responsive educational opportunities for emergent bilinguals.

Author

• Melizabeth Santos, Dominican University