Talking the Talk: Language Ideological Positioning in Teachers' Advocacy for Multilingual Learners

• In Event: Connecting the Dots: Language Ideologies, Educational (In)Equities, and Multilingual Realities in North America

Abstract

Objectives
Advocacy is critical to providing equitable experiences for multilingual learners (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2007; Linville, 2019). However, little is known about the social processes by which teachers develop and communicate an “advocate identity.” The purpose of this presentation, therefore, is to explore the discursive process by which teachers communicate an advocate identity, and the language ideological implications of this discourse. We ask (1) What narrative resources do English as a second language (ESL) endorsement candidates (ECs) draw on to reflect on advocacy experiences and (2) What language ideological dynamics are revealed through these narratives?

Theoretical Framework
Our theoretical framework builds on this symposium’s overarching language ideological frame. We specifically draw on theories of idealized language ideologies (Author, 2021) to “connect the dots” between educational views of what language use, and advocacy for language learners, “should” look like in an equitable classroom. These idealized notions of advocacy provide evidence about individuals’ underlying beliefs for conceptualizing advocacy, and thus provide key insight into how advocacy might be enacted based on these beliefs.

Data Sources & Methods
Participants (n=60) were students enrolled in six sections of an ESL methods class at a Southeastern U.S. university. All ECs participated in a mixed-reality simulator in which they played the role of an ESL teacher engaged in an impromptu one-on-one interaction with Ms. Laing, an avatar of a general education teacher who spoke negatively about a students’ bilingualism and his work in class. We recorded participant’s post-simulation debriefs videos for analysis, drawing on grounded content analysis (Cho & Lee, 2014) to explore what themes and patterns emerged in the types of narratives ECs evoked to make sense of advocacy. In the first cycle of coding, we identified key topics that ECs brought up in conversation (e.g., past students, life experiences, experiences through coursework). In the second cycle of coding, we grouped these experiences into larger categories to create language ideological vignettes, as described below.

Results & Scholarly Significance
Results indicated that participants primarily drew on narrative resources from their own lives and experiences to inform their interpretations of advocacy. These resources included experiences as teachers, personal anecdotes, and knowledge from coursework. However, the ways in which these experiences were taken up and processed within the group differed in key ways. For example, moments of questioning and push back from fellow participants appeared to facilitate a growing awareness of participants’ own assumptions. Conversely, there were also moments of discursive “groupthink” where meanings of advocacy could become truncated. For example, if a group defined advocacy as simply providing a teacher with pedagogical information, the group did not tend to probe more deeply into broader structural and equity concerns that are usually a core component of advocacy (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2007). These results suggest a social component to the discursive construction of advocacy, with important implications for teacher education as well as the broader language ideological social processes by which advocacy is defined and understood in the field.

Authors

• Maria Guzman Antelo, University of Virginia
  Presenting Author

• Chris K. Chang-Bacon, University of Virginia
  Presenting Author