Making Sense of Biliteracy Instruction in DLBE (Dual Language Bilingual Education) Programs Embedded in a Monolingual Literacy Context

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 3:35 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Centering Multilingual Literacies and Practices (Table 6)

Abstract

With increasing mandates for teachers to follow narrow interpretations of the ‘Science-of-Reading’ (SOR), research is needed to understand how bilingual educators resist or perpetuate monolingual views of literacies as they strive to develop biliteracy. This qualitative case study draws from theories of holistic biliteracy and teacher sense-making to examine: How do Spanish and English language arts teachers in a DLBE school enact and make sense of their (bi)literacy instructional practices within a district promoting monolingual understandings of SOR-based literacy instruction? Our findings shed light on teachers’ sense making and illustrate how teachers are reproducing and resisting monolingual conceptualizations of literacy, and offer implications for how to leverage the transformative power of DLBE to value multilingual students’ wider linguistic repertoire.

Authors

• Melinda E. Martin-Beltran, University of Maryland

• Mariana L. Sánchez, University of Maryland

• Amanda D. Cataneo, University of Maryland

• Astrid Sierra, Metropolitan State University of Denver