Content area teachers´ knowledge co-construction about bilingual education: An opportunity for professional development

This interpretative and descriptive study describes the insights of eight content area teachers about bilingual education while participating in a Teachers’ Study Group designed as an informal space for teachers’ professional development. The main objectives of this research were to uncover ways by which teachers constructed their understanding of bilingual education and to understand teachers´ reflections about their bilingual practices through pedagogical discussions. Audio recordings from the study group discussions held in nine pedagogical meetings with the teachers, were the main source of data collection. Findings suggest that spaces for teachers’ knowledge co-construction and for reflection on pedagogical issues serve as a platform for professional growth. They are necessary within schools´ agendas and should be planned based on teaching and learning goals. Results indicate that collaborative work among teachers is fundamental to ensure the success of bilingual programs. The results also inform us that informal teachers’ professional development programs can be spaces where teachers can learn about the bilingual underpinnings of a program, share pedagogical experiences and learn from colleagues to enrich their personal teaching repertoire.This interpretative and descriptive study describes the insights of eight content area teachers about bilingual education while participating in a Teachers’ Study Group designed as an informal space for teachers’ professional development. The main objectives of this research were to uncover ways by which teachers constructed their understanding of bilingual education and to understand teachers´ reflections about their bilingual practices through pedagogical discussions. Audio recordings from the study group discussions held in nine pedagogical meetings with the teachers, were the main source of data collection. Findings suggest that spaces for teachers’ knowledge co-construction and for reflection on pedagogical issues serve as a platform for professional growth. They are necessary within schools´ agendas and should be planned based on teaching and learning goals. Results indicate that collaborative work among teachers is fundamental to ensure the success of bilingual programs. The results also inform us that informal teachers’ professional development programs can be spaces where teachers can learn about the bilingual underpinnings of a program, share pedagogical experiences and learn from colleagues to enrich their personal teaching repertoire

The Case of La Escuela SMART Academy: How Legislation and Incentives Can Aid the Transition from Bicultural to Bilingual Education

As the Latinx population in the United States continues to rise, La Escuela SMART Academy — a bicultural school in Toledo, Ohio — serves as just one example of how educational systems are seeking to cater to their respective needs. Previous research provides us with information explaining why bilingual education is valuable and worthy of promotion — including cognitive, cultural, linguistic, and economic benefits — as well as best practices. Using this information, I create a set of conditions that, when met, have the best potential of yielding an effective bilingual institution. In order to determine where La Escuela SMART sits in terms of its fulfillment of these conditions, I use academic reflections based on classroom observations recorded in blog posts alongside publicly available information from sites such as Facebook to determine which conditions were met, partially met, or not met. I then use the results of this assessment to argue that, when implemented, certain governmental measures and incentives can be used to aid La Escuela SMART’s transition from a bicultural to a bilingual school. The findings made from this study will not only serve as a resource for La Escuela SMART, but other current and future bilingual institutions nationwide

Response: An Invitation to a Too-Long Postponed Conversation: Race and Composition by Octavio Pimentel

Octavio Pimentel’s “Racism and Composition: Redesigning the Composition Classroom to be more Culturally Inclusive” critically provokes pedagogical and programmatic questions by focusing on pressing issues of race and language within a historical context relevant to the field of rhetoric and composition

When caring hurts: “Foreign” teachers in Texas bilingual classrooms

As the U.S. teacher shortage continues to worsen, large, urban districts have turned to hiring teachers from abroad, including countries like Spain, Mexico, and the incorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. However, several researchers in the field of have pointed out to the unexamined complexities of hiring Latin American and Spanish teachers to fill in vacancies in U.S. bilingual classrooms. Although these teachers are often what some deem a linguistic match, differences in class, culture, and migratory experiences should send, in the least, a cautionary message to school districts, oversea recruiters, and school administrators. In this essay I discuss and problematize these complexities and offer recommendations for researchers, district personnel, and teachers.Educatio

Actions speak louder than words! The tension between stated beliefs and practices of a student-teacher during primary school English lessons

At times there seems to be a lack of consistency between what teachers state they do and what they actually do in classrooms. This mismatch between practice and beliefs may also be evident in the perception of language use of teachers or student teachers in a bilingual and multilingual setting. This departure from practice in line with stated intentions or beliefs might be undertaken consciously in order to respond to the situation in a responsible manner. In class teachers may engage in practices that do not support their beliefs or intentions about language teaching or learning due to various reasons. In this paper I delve into the experiences of a student-teacher during English lessons in Maltese Primary Schools to explore whether her practices tally with her stated beliefs. Reasons for tensions between stated beliefs and classroom practices will be studied through qualitative data collected through classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews with the student-teacher.peer-reviewe

Describing the effect of cultura hispanoamericana course on the Licenciatura en Bilingüismo con Énfasis en Inglés students in terms of interculturality and professional development

Progresivamente, la interculturalidad ha tomado un papel protagónico en la educación bilingüe ya que se ha reconocido que en este tipo procesos, el desarrollo lingüístico va acompañado de una dimensión intercultural. Sin embargo, en la práctica, se ha encontrado cómo varios docentes de lengua no incluyen aspectos culturales en sus clases o, en caso de hacerlo, los incorporan desde una perspectiva superficial y congratulatoria que imposibilita la comprensión crítica de una cultura. Además, una vez se abordan los contenidos culturales, estos tienden a centrarse en la segunda cultura, dejando de lado la oportunidad de los estudiantes de explorar y comprender su cultura profunda, perpetuando así realidades y estructuras injustas del contexto. Esta investigación describe los procesos pedagógicos e interculturales de un contexto educativo caracterizado por su énfasis en la cultura nativa desde una perspectiva descentralizada y profunda. Este estudio, enmarcado en un paradigma descriptivo-cualitativo, se realizó en el curso de una Licenciatura en Bilingüismo con Énfasis en Inglés. Los datos fueron recopilados de observaciones en el aula, cuestionarios al principio y al final del proceso pedagógico y entrevistas semiestructuradas, todo lo cual se analizó utilizando un enfoque de análisis de contenido

Engineering a \u2018contact zone\u2019 through translanguaging

This paper presents a pilot project which uses a translanguaging approach in order to subvert the power dynamics whereby language learners, refugees and migrants are positioned as defective or ineffective communicators of a target language. The project seeks to create a space, an engineered \u2018contact zone\u2019 in which the negative, mainstream media discourses of migration can be countered through dialogue and encounter. Through translanguaging we foster creative, communicative practices in which interactants can bring into play their linguistic and cultural repertoires in order to support mutual understanding

Teachers of Emergent Bilinguals: Professional Growth in the Age of Compliance

There are differing views of what constitutes teacher learning in the field of education. The case studies presented herein provide a glimpse into the professional learning lives of two elementary school teachers of emergent bilingual students in order to gain a greater understanding of how professional learning links to instructional practices. Set in a suburban public school setting in the southwest, the study incorporated the use of narrative inquiry with data consisting of interviews, observations, reflections logs, and artifacts. Data were analyzed through the lenses of the adult learning theory of andragogy and critical constructivism. The findings of this study heavily support the andragogical framework and question the value of heavy compliance demands placed on teachers. The study also sheds light on the sociocultural reality of educating emergent bilingual students and the professionalization, or lack thereof, of their teachers. Participants in this study were found to not only value the concepts espoused by the theory of andragogy as adult learners, but to also learn personally by these concepts and scaffold and sustain their own professional learning for the benefit of their students. The study concludes with ways that educational leaders can create more opportunities for teachers to sustain themselves

Translanguaging for bilingual educational theorising in higher degree researcher education : a case study of using Chinese funds of theorectical knowledge for research

This thesis reports on a preliminary investigation into the potentials of using Chinese funds of theoretical knowledge in educational research. The aim is to provide an approach to addressing, developing and maximising bilingual higher degree researchers’ (HDRs) theorising capabilities using translanguaging pedagogies. New forms of intellectual inequality and oppression have emerged with the internationalisation of doctoral education including academic dominance and dependency within the postcolonial world. This dependency is reflected in the academic dependence on Euro-American theories and in the use of the standardised academic English across the world. Further, beginning researchers, in particular HDRs, may have to learn and develop the capabilities for educational theorising to become good educational researchers. Nevertheless, teaching of educational theorising in HDR education seems to remain marginal compared to the emphases on theories. One of the results of the linguistic-theoretical dependency and theorising negligence is a lack of innovative educational researchers and research in non-Euro-American countries. Therefore, this PhD research project is conducted to probe into the possibilities of bilingual theorising in educational practices and research. The major research question to be answered is: How do bilingual Chinese HDRs perceive and use their Chinese-English bilingual and inter-cultural capabilities for theorising in educational research? This research question, complemented by five contributory questions, is contextualised within the broad social sciences and educational research literature in Chapter 2 from three dimensions, namely, the Euro-American theoretical dominance, the monolingual English tendency and the educational theorising process. Accordingly, a three dimensional theoretical framework is formulated and debated for the possibilities of Chinese educational theorising in in Chapter 3. First, advocates offering different perspectives on multi-linguistic-theoretical knowledge and intellectual equality provide premises for mitigating the oppressive Euro-American uniformisation. Then the debate over translanguaging pedagogy provides a focus for considering the linguistic-theoretical potentials of bilingual HDRs. Further, a pedagogical framework for bilingual HDR supervision is formulated with the capability approach and the implications from ignorant schoolmaster. To collect and analyse evidence, methodology and methods for the research are explained and justified in Chapter 4. With a flexible research design, evidence was collected from (1) individual interviews with fourteen bilingual Chinese HDRs and nine academics (two with non-Chinese background) from universities in Australia and China, and (2) thirteen pieces of published works authored or co-authored (as the first author) by bilingual Chinese researchers from the ResearchDirect Database through Western Sydney University online library. Premised on the analyses of evidence and guided by the sensitised theoretical framework, the findings in this research are presented and discussed in the evidentiary chapters from Chapter 5 to Chapter 9. In Chapter 5 dominance and uniformisation of Euro-American theories in educational research are debated based on reflections by the interviewees. Further, in Chapter 6 the concept “Chinese funds of theoretical knowledge” is debated and defined taking into consideration its complexity and controversy. Chapter 7 investigates the potentials of using translanguaging for educational practices and research. Chapter 8 focuses on the possibilities and scenarios for Chinese educational theorising using Chinese funds of theoretical knowledge and translanguaging. Chapter 9 explains an explorative conceptual-theoretical attempt of the researcher’s Chinese educational theorising by exploring the potentials of the jiāo/jiào xué xiāng zhǎng教学相长bilingual HDRs supervision pedagogy. In the concluding Chapter 10, the main findings and answers for the research questions are then presented. Together these findings point to a series of key concepts that might be useful for pursuing doctoral pedagogies that are more worldly in orientation than is currently the case. Bilingual educational theorising with a duì huà对话approach is argued to be able to provide an alternative path to interrupt the monolingual and hierarchical bilingual HDRs’ education and educational research. In summary, bilingual educational theorising emphasises the processes of asking questions and seeking for answers concerning educational policies, practices and/or research issues that are taken-for-granted. Through bilingual educational theorising, bilingual and HDRs researchers may make use of their knowledge of two or more languages to extend the potentials for theorising educational phenomena and problems

Professional Development Principles for Teachers of English Language Learners

Since effective professional development is logically embedded in the reality of schools and teachers‘ work, it stands to reason that the principal would consider that reality for teachers of English language learners (ELL). Certainly, in general, professional development would incorporate principles of adult learning as reported by Knowles (1980): (1) adult learners need to be self-directed; (2) they display readiness to learn when they have a perceived need; and (3) they desire immediate application of new skills and knowledge. Based on adult learning theory, then, principals would provide teachers of ELLs professional development that addresses a need for self-direction, that addresses their particular needs, and that addresses the desire to apply what is learned. Time and created situations whereby teachers can dialogue with other teachers and principals can dialogue with other principals is critical for the effective application of the knowledge gained in professional development sessions and afterward as well