Recontextualizing Teachers' Resistance to Challenges to Academic/Social Language Dichotomies

• In Event: Dismantling Language Dichotomies in Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
In order to challenge dichotomous thinking around language, particularly for multilingual students, it is critical to understand how teachers respond to new conceptualizations of language, and what might hinder their uptake of these ideas. This study explores: How do teachers in an online graduate-level linguistic course respond to critiques of the well-known BICS/CALP dichotomy?

Framework
Our understanding of language centers on Aukerman’s (2007) notion of “recontextualization,” which draws upon Dyson (2003) to argue that “each child continually recreates her or his own unique context-embedded academic language” (p. 633), thereby undermining the BICS/CALPS idea that there can be language without context. Aukerman argues that teachers’ work involves honoring students’ sense-making about ideas (and language) as students bring knowledge/context to classrooms.

From a situated learning theory perspective, we argue (like Peresinni et al., 2004) that teachers themselves undergo recontextualization processes, as they use background experiences and knowledge to make sense of new learning. In this study, we understand that teachers are not “tabula rasae” (AUTHORS, XXXX) but instead are informed by previous learning, personal experiences, and current professional situations and communities, among other factors.

Methods
We utilized a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014) to analyze students’ online posts, using the notion of teachers’ recontextualization as a “sensitizing concept” to understand the nature of teachers’ responses to challenges of the BICS/CALP distinction.

Data
Participants were 19 in-service teachers from one school district, mostly secondary teachers who were pursuing an ESL endorsement. In a semantics module of the linguistics course, they read Aukerman’s (2007) challenge to the BICS/CALP dichotomy (Cummins, 1979). Students responded to the following: “What is your opinion on the BICS/CALP debate, and why? Did this week’s materials make you think differently about language and why?” Primary data included the module’s discussion posts as well as any other mentions of BICS/CALP during the course.

Results
We identified three interconnected processes in teachers’ responses. First, the BICS/CALP construct was deeply embedded in teachers’ notions of what it means to be language teachers. Second, teachers consistently either misread Aukerman’s (2007) critique as supporting the BICS/CALP dichotomy or directly refuted her argument (with one exception, which we will discuss as disconfirming evidence). When interpreting Aukerman’s problematization of BICS/CALP, they identified the problem as students’ lack of CALP, not that instruction is based on an artificial dichotomization of language. Third, we found teachers recontextualized CALP in various ways aligning with their professional contexts: content teachers equated CALP with their subject’s vocabulary, which they understood as cognitively challenging; a literacy specialist saw CALP in “decontextualized” reading assessments; and others viewed Aukerman’s CALP critique as disconnected from their own secondary-level classroom realities.

Significance
These findings demonstrate how deeply held BICS/CALP distinctions are for many teachers, and how fundamental they are to framing instruction in their professional contexts. Shifting teacher conceptualizations is challenging; these findings suggest scholars and teacher educators must work with teachers to help them productively recontextualize challenges to BICS/CALP in practical ways.

Authors

• April Simun Salerno, University of Virginia

• Elena Andrei, Cleveland State University

• Amanda Kibler, Oregon State University