The Power of the Word: Reimagining DLL Teacher Identity Within Ideological and Political Struggle

• In Event: Trenzas para un Nuevo Sol: Critical Bilingual Professional Development for Solidarity, Transformation, and Equity

Abstract

Objective:
Marking a clear departure from proposition 227, which enforced English only education, Dual Language (DLL) programs have grown exponentially in California. What once was clearly a terrain of power and politics, cultural citizenship and sovereignty debates, and long-standing struggles for self-determination, linguistic justice, and language as a means of cultural sustenance (Morales and Maravilla, 2019; Anderson, 2009; Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006); is now quickly gentrifying (Valdez et al., 2016). As a result, the interests, values, and politics of students of color are being replaced, or displaced by, those of the powerful Whites (Bell, 1980; Valdes, 1997). As these programs become “mainstream”, DLL educators stand at an important juncture where they will have to negotiate broader political interests, the power dynamics of increasingly “diverse” classrooms, and the changing landscape of language education.

Grounded on the experiences and reflections of current and future educators that were a part of el instituto –a weeklong counter-hegemonic critical professional development–, this study documents the ‘power of the word’ in unsettling and opening space to reimagine language education and teacher identity within a broader terrain of ideological and political struggle. Furthermore, it explores how teachers' perceptions of their work, their identities as educators, and their perceived agency over broader processes of cultural sustenance and youth identity development change as they engage in spaces of collective praxis.

Theoretical Frameworks/Methodology:
This study uses critical theory, sociocultural theory, and the critical anthropology of language for both its theoretical and its empirical lens. Additionally, it draws from Raciolinguistics and Indigenous scholarship to further situate this work in relationship to settler-colonialism and racial capitalism, and to ensure that language education practices and policies are understood and interrogated as political and as ongoing sociocultural processes (Levinson & Sutton, 2001). This ethnographic case study draws its data from platicas, artifacts, group conversations, and interviews that took place during el instituto.

Findings
This study found that centering “el poder de la palabra” to interrogate and dissect language ideologies and their influence over teachers’ classrooms deeply changed teacher beliefs around their role and identity as language educators. This study also found that “the power of the word” had additional implications for how teachers understand their agency over the development and learning of students as they ‘name/ worlds. Lastly, we observed that through authentic dialogue, vulnerability and the critical interrogation of educators’ own educational histories, collective pedagogies were nurtured, making space for the emergence of a collective subject (Callahan, 2012).

Significance
As the struggle for linguistic justice, decolonization, and social-justice education continues, efforts to co-opt and marginalize these visions into “safe zones” (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006) will grow. While much has been learned about the power dynamics, practices, and policies currently shaping DLL, there are still important gaps for us to explore collectively. This study hopes to address these gaps, document the transformative work being led by communities of critical educators, and inspire a praxis that will have a bearing on the future of either the reproduction, or the interruption of language injustices in education.

Author

• Miguel Casar, University of California - Los Angeles