Labor of Love: Exploring Spanish-Language Professional Learning as a Site for Healing, Advocacy, and Bilingual Educator Resilience

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT045 (Wednesday)

Abstract

This qualitative case study investigates how Spanish-language professional learning might foster healing, advocacy, and resilience among native Spanish-speaking bilingual educators. Drawing on the Ecological Systems Framework of Bilingualism, Relational Pedagogy, Communities of Practice, and Community Cultural Wealth, the study frames bilingual teachers as knowledge holders who navigate inadequate institutional support, marginalization, and sociopolitical pressures. Data sources include: recorded professional development sessions, teacher interviews, and a virtual focus group. Anticipated findings include: how affinity-based professional development supports identity, encourages agency, and reduces isolation while also revealing tensions within professional learning frameworks. Future contributions include reimagining professional development as a relational, culturally, and linguistically grounded that supports bilingual educators’ well-being and cultivates leadership to advance more humanizing models of bilingual education.

Author

• Ivette Marlenne Alvarez, Erikson Institute