Critical Language Awareness in Teacher Education for Preservice Teachers of Color

• In Event: Addressing Issues of Equity Through Critical (Multilingual) Language Awareness in Teacher Education

Abstract

It is crucial that teachers hold asset-based perspectives and ideologies (Lucas et al., 2015) about language, including knowledge of the sociopolitical positioning of language, sociolinguistic consciousness, a value for linguistic diversity, and willingness to advocate for their students (Lucas & Villegas, 2013) in order to provide equitable access to education for students from marginalized groups. Many teachers in the U.S., however, enter the teaching profession with deficit views about minoritized languages and varieties, which can lead to the promotion of dominant-language ideologies that de-emphasize the importance of supporting all the languages, identities, and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) that students bring with them to the classroom (Catalano et al., 2018; Iversen, 2021). Teacher education programs have thus been tasked with addressing these deficit views (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016). The limited research on beliefs and ideologies of teachers of color suggest that they are generally more aligned with multilingual perspectives, and thus are more willing to support diverse student populations in their classrooms (Athanases et al., 2015; Lopes-Murphy & Murphy, 2016); however, given that these perspectives are based on their life and educational histories, they also have mixed views about language and education (Athanases et al., 2015; Chávez-Moreno et al., 2022; Varghese, 2006; Zúñiga, 2016). For example, their teaching practices may contradict their personal multilingual use and principles due to external forces such as school environment and monolingual ideological discourses in society.
This study examines the effects of critical language awareness (CLA) (Fairclough, 1992) coursework on the development of preservice teachers’ critical consciousness (Freire, 1973) related to language and identity, language ideologies, language in instruction, and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2017). The study took place in a course on language development in an undergraduate elementary teacher education program at a large, Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southern U.S. CLA coursework included activities that developed asset-based language ideologies, supported multilingualism, and engaged with critical perspectives in the classroom such as critical literacy autobiographies, critical media literacy assignments and critical discourse analysis assignments, and advocacy projects. The research question that guided this study was: What are some effects of the CLA coursework on multilingual preservice teachers’ perceptions about the following measures: language ideologies, supporting students’ multiple languages outside the classroom, advocating for students’ multiple languages in the classroom, and critical perspectives? Data, which included pre- and post-survey data from 48 preservice teachers, included 23 items related to four measures of perspectives related to critical consciousness: language ideology, supporting students’ first language(s) outside of school, advocating for students’ first language(s) in the classroom, and critical perspectives. ANOVA analyses suggest that CLA coursework had a significant impact on three of four critical consciousness measures, at varying levels of significance. This study shows that critical content delivered through well-designed pedagogical treatments can raise the critical consciousness of preservice teachers of color and help improve preservice teachers’ understanding of the language use in their future classrooms, empower them through reflection on their language, identities, and ideologies, and guide them toward more asset-based approaches to teaching and learning.

Author

• Laura J. Mahalingappa, University of Maryland