"This Is My Spanish. That's Part of Who I Am": Sociocultural Languaging in Professional Development

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

Abstract

Objective
Conducting professional development in Spanish is anti-hegemonic and counters neoliberal ideologies embedded in bilingual education (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017; Phyak & Sharma, 2021). It also addresses teachers’ and districts’ expressed need to develop target-language competence (Aquino-Sterling, 2016). This paper examines how sociocultural languaging was centered in El Instituto a) as a topic of study and b) through facilitators’ modeling of critical pedagogies (e.g. círculos y pláticas) to teach sociocultural dynamics of Spanish language. It documents how sociocultural languaging in CPD supported bilingual teachers’ development of critical praxis.

Theoretical Framework
Language codifies and signifies culture, social context, and hegemony (Kramsch, 1998; Gee, 2012; Fairclough,1989) and it follows that language teaching proliferates embedded ideologies. Bilingual educators’ ideological clarity (Alfaro & Hernández, 2016) in their understanding and teaching of language is essential to decenter dominant ideologies and suggest equitable pedagogical frameworks. CPD demands that languaging within the professional learning experience, including language instruction, reflects participants’ linguistic capital (Yosso, 2005), draws on entire linguistic repertoires (Otheguy et al., 2015), and situates language learning within a critical sociocultural lens.

Methodology
Qualitative data collection spanned six years with more than 150 bilingual teachers and included observations of sessions (in person and online), daily participant feedback, participant-generated artifacts, and formal and informal interviews. Data were coded and analyzed thematically (Emerson, et al., 2011; Spradley, 1979), triangulated, and interpreted through a LatCrit theoretical lens (Delgado Bernal, 2002) to identify sociocultural language dynamics.

Findings
Leaders modeled co-generative, critical pedagogies that captured epistemological pluralities to “provoke cooperative dialogue, build unity, provide shared leadership, and meet the critical needs of educators” (Kohli, et al., 2015, p. 11) regarding both learning language and teaching languages. This paper analyzes the sociocultural language dynamics that emerged within three focal topics (Spanish varieties, Black Lives Matters, family-school relations) and across daily pláticas, círculos, and application activities in El Instituto. Leaders organized pláticas about sociocultural characteristics of Spanish and modeled how to center identity and culture in language-learning pedagogy. Daily círculos provided a participant-centered and supportive context for authentic language use during discussions about intersections of language, culture, identity, and power. Iteratively, linguistic elements and themes that emerged from círculo informed topics of pláticas and pedagogical application activities. Findings showcase how participants analyzed how and by whom “good” Spanish is defined in bilingual schools, identified the stronghold of the Mexican variety of Spanish in Los Angeles bilingual schools, and pushed back to honor Central American varieties and identities. Participants unraveled the meaning of the word and world, particularly around Black Lives Matter, its manifestation in their communities, and contemplated how to take action through praxis. Finally, participants grappled with language ideologies and considered additive and/or deficit ideologies in their understanding of and relationships with families through language use and pedagogy.

Significance
Findings suggest that centering sociocultural languaging both as subject matter and pedagogy in critical professional development supported teachers in seeing how bilingual education was social, cultural, and political, facilitated nuanced professional and personal growth, and reified commitment to humanizing praxis in bilingual education.

Author

• Jennifer Stacy, California State University - Dominguez Hills