Linguistic Community Walks: Promoting Pre-Service Teachers’ Critical Multilingual Language Awareness in Community Spaces

• In Event: Addressing Issues of Equity Through Critical (Multilingual) Language Awareness in Teacher Education

Abstract

With schools becoming more diverse in the US, there have been calls to teacher preparation programs across the nation that are in dire need of inclusive and innovative approaches to teaching and learning to provide equitable learning opportunities for all learners. Teachers are expected to teach a diverse student population, and teacher educators need to prepare future teachers to understand, critically analyze, comprehend, and challenge inequities in school settings (Nieto, 2000; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2019). However, mainstream teacher preparation programs have not paid enough attention to preparing teacher candidates to engage in a “multilingually oriented approach” to teach emergent multilingual learners (EMLs) (de Jong & Gao, 2023, p. 473). Given this reality, scholars (e.g., Valdés, 2022) have discussed the imperative for teachers and teacher educators to take on an agentive role in achieving equity and excellence in education for diverse communities by encouraging emancipatory practices that honor students’ cultural and linguistic practices.
In this paper, we extend previous work on pre-service teachers visiting community spaces in linguistic community walks and investigate the impact of PSTs’ critical multilingual language awareness in a redesigned English as a second language methodology course. We aimed to understand the impact of a new curriculum in newly designed course and the ways in which this linguistic community walk project shows PSTs understanding of existing disparities in access to community resources for people from different linguistic backgrounds, and how this experience impacts their pedagogical orientations to support the teaching and learning of emergent multilingual learners. Drawing on the theory of critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) (García, 2017), we discuss how the linguistic community walk project influenced PSTs’ language ideologies and envisioned pedagogy.
CMLA provides a comprehensive lens for PSTs to understand how language, power, and identity intersect within educational and community contexts (García, 2017). It discusses the critical role of educators in recognizing and addressing linguistic inequalities, promoting multilingualism, and fostering inclusive learning environments that respect and value diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In the previous course, findings suggest that PSTs’ involvement in the project heightened their awareness of the importance of utilization of authentic and culturally relevant materials and resources in their classrooms. Additionally, the project helped PSTs move away from monolingual ideologies by critically reflecting on the marginalization of minoritized communities in community spaces, indicating a wider potential of the approach for teacher education programs. Preliminary findings from PSTs’ assignments in the redesigned course sections showed similar results, with in-person discussions reflecting a deeper engagement in understanding how historical policy, race, and multimodal resources are key to developing PSTs' critical multilingual language awareness. In addition, PSTs not only gained a better understanding in terms of resources that support multilingual learners but also effectively applied these resources. Based on the analysis of the course final project, where PSTs designed lesson plans for actual multilingual learners, we found that the PSTs demonstrated improvement from envisioning pedagogy to implementing it in real instructional contexts, thereby highlighting their growing critical multilingual language awareness.

Authors

• Lucia Cardenas Curiel, Michigan State University

• Laxmi Prasad Ojha, Michigan State University

• Luqing Zang, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

• Meiheng Chen, Michigan State University