Above and Beyond Standards: Optimizing Criticality in Preservice Bilingual Teachers Through an Online Dialogic Community

• In Event: Critical and Humanizing Teacher Education for Multilingual Learners: Developing Multilingual Teacher Knowledge Across Contexts

Abstract

This presentation examines how a university´s bilingual authorization program developed critical language awareness and advocacy dispositions among bilingual teacher candidates through innovative online coursework. Responding to California's teacher shortage and evolving multilingual education policies, the program created two consecutive semester-long online courses grounded in critical pedagogy, raciolinguistics, and translanguaging theory. Using mixed methods data from 101 surveys and focus groups with program graduates, findings demonstrate that synchronous online sessions successfully fostered heteroglossic learning communities where candidates examined power dynamics, challenged deficit perspectives, and developed transformative agency. Participants showed enhanced critical language awareness, improved navigation of ideological tensions in schools, and strengthened commitment to advocacy for emergent bilingual students, transcending minimal compliance standards to prepare transformative educators.

Authors

• Eduardo Rafael Munoz-Munoz, San José State University

• ash busby, San Jose State University