Linguistic Responsiveness and Teacher Education Futurities: A Context-based Case Study in Curricular and Programmatic Transformation

• In Event: Unforgetting our Language Inheritance: Imagining Multilingual Teacher Education Futures in the Midwest

Abstract

This paper presents theoretical and practitioner advancements in a teacher education program design, situated at the intersection of urban teacher education and heritage language fields. With invitations to construct language-centric content curricula (Valenzuela, 2016) within practice-based language-centered professional practice (Dominguez, 2021), my colleagues and I construct “linguistic servingness” within teacher education and with specific attention to bilingual teacher education pathways in Spanish-language contexts (Austin, 2019). We offer an instructional design that transcends long-standing post-colonial models in language policies across the global north (Macedo, 2019; Meighan, 2024). We propose a multi-tiered teacher education design: systemic resistance at the curricular design level, community reciprocity (Dale et al., 2018; Garcia, 2017) models at the pre-professional level, and individual servingness that includes complex identity-centered instruction with reparative opportunities (Palmer, 2011; Philip, 2011) to heal identity-related and linguistic harms wrought in the weaponization of deculturalization in US urban educational settings (Caldas & Heiman, 2021).

We respond to these calls in ways that recenter the socio-cultural and politically historical purposes of bilingual education (Meighan, 2024). As resistance to historical policy implementation, we establish a pathway and framework for bilingual teacher candidates beyond state standards for teacher licensure and for students in P-12 educational institutions (Nieto, 2013). Using frameworks of reclaiming community cultural wealth (Yosso & Burciaga, 2016) in our attending to students in politically- and historically-responsive ways, this case study demonstrates expansive learning opportunities through teacher education courses, apprenticeships, and reciprocal models of community partnership. Meta-reflexivity (Cramer et al, 2023) throughout the program supports mutual development of educators, students, and communities in content knowledge, linguistic competence, and meta-linguistic awareness.

Inquiry into sustaining pedagogies of language and culture build on the iterative dynamics of bilingual teacher education (Collins & España, 2023). The dynamism of bilingual teacher education is illuminated in this case study of urban teacher education at our urban Research 1 and Hispanic Serving Institution. This case study builds on decolonizing methodologies (Smith, 2021) to examine the reparation in preparation for bilingual teachers and a decolonizing framework throughout its undergraduate Spanish-language curriculum and practice (Garcia et al, 2018). Through re-membering practices (Dillard, 2008) and the implementation of indigenous epistemologies of repair and attention as decolonial work (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) for all heritage language learners, this study examines the meta-linguilism and meta-awareness of bilingual educators, and establishes linguistic servingness as a template design and stance for teacher educators supporting linguistic and intellectual development of all students in diverse language-rich communities and move into the futures of authentic unforgetting and servingness.

This work advances critical notions of unforgetting both meta-linguistic assets and the persistent curricular combat required to reverse deculturalization and linguistic hegemonies in public education (Austin, 2019). By theorizing the layered learning of Spanish-speaking teacher candidates, and bringing to life the anti-hegemonic principles that comprise the decolonial framework of the program and paint the futurisms/cartographies of reparative teaching and learning, we paint geographic, theoretical, and historical futures for teacher educators and candidates from the rubble of teacher education whiteness (Leonardo, 2020; Matias, 2014).

Author

• Victoria F. Trinder, University of Illinois at Chicago