Abstract
Bilingual students and teachers in the U.S. live in a context where linguistic and ethnic minorities are associated with inferiority. Preparing bilingual teachers of color without explicit attention to issues of race, language, and power would maintain and feed the vicious cycle of linguistic hegemony. With the goal of preparing critically conscious future bilingual teachers equipped to enact culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), the authors centered issues of race, language, and power alongside bilingual instructional methodology and theories of bilingualism in their respective bilingual teacher preparation programs. Drawing on bilingual teacher preparation course material, student reflections, and bilingual teacher candidate interviews, they illustrate how two bilingual teacher preparation programs take two distinct approaches to developing bilingual teachers' critical consciousness and CSP practices. In this way, they outline how bilingual teacher educators can prepare and support bilingual teachers to enact CSP with their K-12 students.
TopIntroduction
Bilingual students and teachers in the U.S. live in a context where linguistic minorities are associated with inferiority (Flores & Rosa, 2016; Suarez, 2002). Derogatory beliefs about bilingualism, and Spanish-English bilingualism in particular, can have a negative influence on bilingual education in a variety of ways (Flores, 2016). After repeated messages that their ways of speaking are deficient, bilinguals have reported fear of speaking either language (Winstead & Wang, 2017), decreased confidence, and negative attitudes towards their own language (Arce, 2004; Briceño, Rodriguez-Mojica, Muñoz-Muñoz, 2018; Ek, Sánchez, & Quijada Cerecer, 2013; Fitts, Winstead, Weisman, Flores, & Valenciana, 2008). Some of the negative messages bilingual students receive come from school, where heritage Spanish speakers encounter English hegemony that devalues the Spanish language. We have shown that heritage Spanish speakers faced linguistic purism and elitism in their educational experiences, in their early schooling, in secondary settings like their Spanish World Language methods classes and in higher education (Briceño, Rodriguez-Mojica, Muñoz-Muñoz, 2018). Such ideological pressures undermined their home variety of Spanish and their communicative confidence. These experiences denigrated students’ home register of Spanish to the extent that, in their opinions, their Spanish was so incorrect that it prohibited them from becoming bilingual teachers (Briceño et. al, 2018).
In California, where we prepare bilingual teachers, Proposition 227 significantly limited bilingual education opportunities in 1997. Since then, most students have been educated in English-only contexts (Ochoa, 2016), leaving heritage Spanish speakers1 insecure with their academic usage of their home language (Briceño et. al, 2018). The resulting bilingual teacher shortage is currently preventing an expansion of bilingual programs even after the 2016 passage of Proposition 58, which supports multilingual education in California schools (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017). This ongoing, vicious cycle of linguistic hegemony must be interrupted to ensure culturally and linguistically appropriate instruction for all students (Guerrero & Guerrero, 2008).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Raciolinguistics: Explores the ways bilingual practices and people are valued or devalued depending upon the racialized identity of the language user rather than the user’s actual linguistic practices falling short of a particular—and arbitrary—standard ( Flores & Rosa, 2015 AU127: The citation "Flores & Rosa, 2015" matches multiple references. Please add letters (e.g. "Smith 2000a"), or additional authors to the citation, to uniquely match references and citations. ).
Heritage Spanish Speaker: Refers to teacher candidates who grew up in a home or community where Spanish was spoken, and who may have varying levels of Spanish/English bilingualism ( Valdés, 2001 ). For heritage speakers, the home/community language is often a minority language ( Suarez, 2002 AU126: The citation "Suarez, 2002" matches multiple references. Please add letters (e.g. "Smith 2000a"), or additional authors to the citation, to uniquely match references and citations. ) spoken by a minoritized group. Although some of the participants in this study were born in Spanish-speaking countries, we include them in this term because they now live in the U.S., where Spanish is a minoritized language.
Critical Consciousness: Is the development of sociopolitical and historical understandings that recognize that the legacies of colonialism continue to subjugate People of Color. Individuals learn to reflect on oppressions and discern the differences in power and privilege in order to develop ideological clarity about the purpose of schooling, question power and privilege, disrupt deficit thinking, and consider alternative understandings of the “underachievement” of particular student groups ( Palmer et al., 2019 AU124: The citation "Palmer et al., 2019" matches multiple references. Please add letters (e.g. "Smith 2000a"), or additional authors to the citation, to uniquely match references and citations. ).
Linguistically Minoritized: Refers to speakers of home or community languages other than English to emphasize that their home or community language resources are often not valued by institutions such as schools ( Kibler, 2017 ) and may be considered “non-standard” varieties of a language.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP): Is based on Ladson-Billings (1995) theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. CSP seeks to deepen the school’s orientation toward valuing and maintaining languages and cultures that tend to be minoritized by systemic inequalities. The goal of CSP is to foster linguistic and cultural diversity with the goal of democratizing schooling. CSP requires educators to sustain students’ and communities’ cultural and linguistic competence while simultaneously offering access to academic achievement as defined by the dominant culture ( Paris, 2012 AU125: The citation "Paris, 2012" matches multiple references. Please add letters (e.g. "Smith 2000a"), or additional authors to the citation, to uniquely match references and citations. ).
Theatre of the Oppressed: Is a Freirean inspired theatre developed by Brazilian activist Augusto Boal ( Boal & McBride, 1979 ). Theatre of the Oppressed aims to show, explore, analyze and transform social inequities.
Bilingual Teacher Candidates (BTCs): Are pre-service students in bilingual authorization pathways in a teacher preparation program.