\nFlorida International University, USA
\n<rpontier
![\"atmark\"](\"http:\/\/www.tesl-ej.org\/atmark.png\")
fiu.edu><\/p>\nAbstract<\/h3>\n
The population of emergent bilingual students in the United States is growing rapidly, requiring that teachers be prepared to provide them with an effective education. Inadequate preparation of teachers to work with these students indicates the need to revise the ways that teacher education programs address this issue (Palmer & Mart\u00ednez, 2013), including investigation of teacher candidates\u2019 (TCs) beliefs and experiences. Drawing on translanguaging theory, this qualitative study used written responses to two key questions at two time points to investigate TCs\u2019 beliefs about and knowledge of bilingualism and bilingual education. Even after experiencing a semester in a teacher education course focused on dynamic bilingualism, findings highlight TCs\u2019 general maintenance of monolingual beliefs about bilingualism and bilingual education with some expansion into a dynamic, strengths-based perspective. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.<\/p>\n
Keywords<\/em><\/strong>: bilingual, translanguaging, teacher education, teacher beliefs<\/p>\n As the population of emergent bilingual (EB) students continues to rise in the U.S. (Garc\u00eda & Kleifgen, 2018; OELA, 2018), it is imperative that teacher candidates (TCs) be prepared to provide an effective and appropriate education for these students (de Jong & Harper, 2005; Palmer & Mart\u00ednez, 2013; Vald\u00e9s et al., 2005). This process involves several steps, including challenging popular assumptions about language, bilingualism, and bilingual education; developing a strong understanding and awareness of bilingualism and its associated behaviors in the classroom; and, often, adopting an ideological shift in the way(s) that bilingual language practices have been conceptualized (Palmer & Mart\u00ednez, 2013). This study investigated TCs\u2019 beliefs about and knowledge of bilingualism and bilingual education, or their \u201cstance\u201d (Garc\u00eda et al., 2017), during one of two ESOL-focused courses designed to address the steps Palmer & Mart\u00ednez (2013) laid out. I begin with the theoretical framework that guided my approach to the focal classes and my data analysis and interpretation of findings. I follow with a historical overview of educating EB students in the U.S. generally\u2014and Florida specifically\u2014to situate the study within its ecological context. I then provide a literature review that highlights the importance of language ideologies and their often-conflicting nature.<\/p>\n A challenge in teacher education is that knowledge of bilinguals\u2019 languaging practices is not commonplace, but it may be necessary for TCs to work effectively and respectfully with EB students (Palmer & Mart\u00ednez, 2013). Thus, in teaching the ESOL-focused teacher education courses as part of a teacher education program, I drew on Garc\u00eda et al. (2017) and Henderson\u2019s (2017, 2020) notion of stance. A philosophical, ideological, or belief system that guides teachers\u2019 pedagogy, a translanguaging stance posits that (a) \u201cbilingual students\u2019 many different language practices work juntos\/together, not separately, as if they belonged to different realms\u201d and (b) \u201cthe bilingual child\u2019s complex language repertoire [is] a resource, never\u2026a deficit\u201d (Garc\u00eda et al., 2017, pp. xii-xiii). This stance reflects a flexible understanding of bilingualism, or translanguaging (Garc\u00eda & Wei, 2014). It differs from a second language acquisition orientation in that it is believed that bi\/multilinguals engage in a creative and critical process in which they \u201cuse language and other resources in dynamic, flexible, multimodal, semiotic, and purposeful ways\u201d (Espinosa & Ascenzi-Moreno, 2021, p. 12). As such, it goes beyond traditional understandings of bilingualism \u201cby bringing together different dimensions of [multilinguals\u2019] personal histories, experiences, and environments; their attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies; and their cognitive and physical capacities into one coordinated and meaningful performance\u201d (Li Wei, 2011, p. 1223). Teachers who embody a translanguaging stance can design effective and equitable instruction (Garc\u00eda & S\u00e1nchez, 2018) by recognizing the ways their students blend, combine, and create new uses of language, encouraging them to use all of their language resources in school (Espinosa & Asenzi-Moreno, 2021).<\/p>\n Language education, including TESOL and ESOL-focused teacher education courses, has historically been a field that trained educators with monolingual bias (Ortega, 2019) propping up English in a hegemonic stronghold on a global scale (Pratt, 1999). However, translanguaging disrupts monolingual norms and pushes educators to work toward social justice through validating and humanizing their bilingual students\u2019 learning processes (Garc\u00eda & Leiva, 2014). Translanguaging challenges the idea that \u201cnamed\u201d languages helped to construct nation-states. A translanguaging stance calls educators to transgress the superficial boundaries that these \u201clanguages\u201d have imposed, to recognize bilingual students\u2019 strengths, and to leverage the constant currency of bilingualism that is always present (Espa\u00f1a & Yadira Herrera, 2021; Garc\u00eda et al., 2017). Tian et al. (2020) describe this practice \u201clike an emerging perspective or lens that could provide new insights to understand and examine language and language (in) education\u201d (p. 4). They, therefore, adopt the term \u201ctranslanguaging lens\u201d to show the descriptive, theoretical, and pedagogical facets of students\u2019 dynamic languaging practices. These always-evolving stances, or lenses, are the focus of this study.<\/p>\n Teachers\u2019 attitudes toward EB students and what they believe about bilingualism and bilingual education influence their expectations of EBs as well as the quality of instruction provided to them (Brisk, 1998; Karabenick & Clemons Noda, 2004). This is good news if teachers exhibit positive beliefs about bilingualism and bilingual education. For example, Karabenick and Clemons Noda (2004) found that teachers who were more accepting of EBs in their classes believed in a strengths-based approach including non-target language use in the classroom, saw bilingualism and bilingual education as beneficial, thought EBs should have the opportunity to be tested in languages other than English and believed that knowledge was spread across all of a student\u2019s languages. However, the opposite may also hold true. The role of teacher education programs, then, becomes especially important in supporting TCs in learning about EBs and facilitating experiences with EB students (de Jong & Harper, 2005; Garc\u00eda & Kleifgen, 2018; Harper & de Jong, 2004) so that TCs develop positive beliefs about bilingualism and bilingual education. Naturally, though, this process is more complicated due to multiple factors influencing TCs\u2019 beliefs.<\/p>\n Support for, attitudes toward, and beliefs about bilingual education in the U.S. have been inconsistent. In considering legislation, court cases, and policies, Ovando (2003) identified four periods that show a pendulum swing between favoritism and prohibition: permissive, restrictive, opportunist, and dismissive. During the permissive period, stretching from the 1700s to the 1880s, \u201ca fair amount of tolerance or benign neglect existed toward the many languages represented in the new society\u201d (Ovando, 2003, p. 4). The restrictive period, from the 1880s to the 1960s, saw the continued cultural genocide of Native Americans, the Spanish-American War, and two World Wars. White, English-speaking ethnocentricity reigned, and an English-only submersion approach was used to \u201cAmericanize\u201d students. The opportunist period, from the 1960s to the 1980s, housed a nationalized call for learning foreign languages, the Civil Rights Movement, and a large influx of Cubans due to political strife. Support for EB students and bilingual programs arose, building on students\u2019 home cultures and languages, thus precluding the need to first learn and use English. It was during this period that landmark Supreme Court cases like Casta\u00f1eda v. Pickard (1981) required that schools and districts focus on equity, not equality. Policies called for research-based programs, available and appropriate resources, and regular audits of those programs. However, in the dismissive period, from the 1980s to the present, policies have never been published as official regulations. Rather, movements to homogenize learning, ban bilingual education, and force high-stakes standardized testing have curtailed the efforts from the opportunist period. Although language ideologies have shifted over time with historical events, these periods are characterized by changing political, social, and economic forces and not by one uniting language ideology. The result has been a lack of equitable treatment for EB students (Ovando, 2003).<\/p>\n Although EBs gained attention in Florida in 1990 when the Florida League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) sued the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) for not providing equitable support for students learning English to successfully navigate public school academic content, that attention has eroded in the past three decades. Through the Florida Consent Decree (Florida Department of Education, 1990), teachers were initially required to take five stand-alone ESOL-focused courses to prepare them to work with EBs (Artecona-Pel\u00e1ez, 2018). Courses included training across five domains: applied linguistics, cross-cultural studies, methods of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), curriculum development, and assessment (Florida Department of Education, 2017). As a result, both universities and school districts designed courses in an effort to assist in-service and TCs in achieving the required endorsement. However, in the early 2000s, a provision was made such that the Department of Education allowed for teacher education programs to offer an ESOL infused<\/em> approach, thus allowing for alternative delivery methods of ESOL instruction in teacher education programs (Florida Department of Education, 2015). As such, only two stand-alone ESOL-focused courses taught by those with degrees in a TESOL-related field were\u2014and are still\u2014required, while all other Florida\u2019s ESOL Standards and competencies may be taught in other courses by other instructors who demonstrate at least 60 hours of ESOL professional development. Since there is no metric for determining when instructors of these core classes experienced their ESOL professional development, what their views of bilingual development and bilingual education are, or whether the infused competencies are actually included in syllabi, taught, and learned. This move deprioritized teacher education specifically geared at serving EBs and may have reinforced an already-present belief that effective teaching for EBs was just good teaching (de Jong & Harper, 2005).<\/p>\n Compounding such little attention to preparing TCs to work with EBs is the state\u2019s insistence on English learning. For example, there are no teaching certificates for bilingual education; rather, all focus is on ESOL. Moreover, all high-stakes standardized tests are only offered in English (Florida Department of Education ESSA Waiver Request), students in dual language programs have their language other than English (LOTE) monitored only if the school\/program chooses to do so, and the awarding of the Seal of Biliteracy inequitably favors English speakers proving proficiency in another language (Subtirelu et al., 2019). As such, students, teachers, and TCs in Florida are likely to be exposed to\u2014and adopt\u2014an English monolingual mindset (Dwyer & O\u2019Gorman-Fazzolari, forthcoming).<\/p>\n Even beyond academic contexts, despite being known as multilingual and multicultural, there are deep-seated linguistic and cultural hierarchies in South Florida (Carter & Lynch, 2015). These hierarchies, which skew toward English and monolingual varieties of individually conceived languages and are represented both in the community and the research that highlights the community, reveal a deficit perspective related to semilingualism (MacSwan, 2000) and a monolingual perspective of bilingualism (Grosjean, 1989). Specifically, it has been reported that among Cuban Americans the \u201cintergenerational maintenance of productive ability in Spanish, especially of full Spanish literacy, is difficult to achieve\u201d (Otheguy et al., 2000, p. 184), and there has been a \u201cclear pattern of transitional bilingualism in Miami Cubans\u201d (Porcel, 2006, p. 107). As such, Carter and Lynch (2015) observed a:<\/p>\n highly complex ideological and sociological configuration of variables related to intergenerational language transmission (i.e., language shift to English by the third generation), Spanish language as an imagined criterion for considering oneself \u2018Hispanic\u2019 or \u2018Latino\u2019 in Miami, and prevailing language ideologies which fully favor English in the U.S. national context and, at the same time, construct both Spanish and English as economically and culturally vital languages at the local level (South Florida) and in the more macro-level discourse of globalization. (p. 373)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This focus on monolingualism has been historically compounded in the TESOL context by drawing on theories of second language acquisition (SLA) as a way to understand bilingualism and bilingual development (Kleyn & Garc\u00eda, 2019). SLA views languages as static sets of discrete features to be mastered and expects that a speaker acquires a high level of proficiency in each language that rivals that of a monolingual speaker (Garc\u00eda & Wei, 2014). As a result, several studies have documented teachers\u2019 articulation of deficit perspectives based on their reliance on the tenets of SLA (Deroo & Ponzio, 2019; Pontier & Ortega, 2021; Pontier & Tian, in press). Moreover, students, having been educated in contexts of monolingual domination, often become the very teachers that then reproduce both the deficit perspectives they experienced as well as the promulgation of oppressive linguistic contexts for their own students (Pontier & Ortega, 2021).<\/p>\n In summary, on multiple levels, students have been exposed to and educated in a context that favors monolingualism.<\/p>\n Still, even though there is some agreement about negative attitudes toward specific ways of languaging, as Kroskrity (2004) and Henderson (2020) noted, language ideologies are often not dichotomous (e.g., positive or negative). Rather, language ideological multiplicity, or the notion that an individual could express multiple language ideologies simultaneously, is typically observed. This especially makes sense in the learning context of teacher education, which brings together experiences and knowledge from the societal, community, and individual levels. Moreover, the development of beliefs is not usually in lockstep (Menken & S\u00e1nchez, 2019), and language ideologies can be multiple and often contradictory both within and across levels (Henderson, 2017, 2020). This could include one stance not aligned with a community-level ideology but other stances that do align with known community ideologies (Henderson, 2017, 2020). For example, in a forthcoming study of graduate students in a TESOL program, Pontier & Deroo found that although general favoritism for bilingualism was expressed in responsive journals throughout a semester-long multilingual approach to TESOL methods, a monolingual mindset dominated students\u2019 developing understanding of dynamic bilingualism. Pontier & Tian (in press) found that a different set of graduate students in the same TESOL program who all identified as bi\/multilingual had difficulty understanding translanguaging as a form of social justice despite listing several advantages of bilingualism. Pontier & Ortega (2021) found that two groups of dual language teachers who identified as bilingual and Latinx shared numerous experiences of students successfully becoming bilingual, but that the expectation was to be \u201cfully bilingual,\u201d or able to perform the same tasks equally in each target language. Finally, educators who have experience working in dual language bilingual education\/two-way immersion contexts are now being pushed to exercise an additional programmatic goal: critical consciousness (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017), which may be at odds with messages about bilingualism at the individual, community, and societal levels (Henderson, 2017, 2020; Mart\u00ednez et al., 2015). Because language \u201cideology creates and acts in a social world while it masquerades as a description of that world\u201d (Eagleton, 1991, p. 19), and teachers\u2019 often multiple and conflicting beliefs make up the institutional and social building blocks of culture (Kroskrity, 2010), even most bilingual educators, or those working toward equitable education conditions, still create spaces that devalue minoritized students\u2019 languaging practices (Palmer et al., 2019).<\/p>\n The research demonstrates that teacher education programs often devote only a marginalized focus to growing TCs\u2019 knowledge around bilingualism and pedagogies for supporting EBs. The contextual nature of South Florida bi\/multilingual communities also points to little attention to understanding bilingualism dynamically. What effect then\u2014if any\u2014does a stand-alone ESOL-focused course have on TCs\u2019 beliefs about and knowledge of bilingualism and bilingual education? This interest grew since teacher educators who work with TCs can more effectively support the preparation of future teachers if they are aware of TCs\u2019 beliefs about bilingualism and bilingual education. Moreover, although research for in-service<\/em> teachers exists (Coady et al., 2011), there is a dearth of research that has investigated whether TCs<\/em> experience any changes in beliefs or knowledge related to bilingualism and bilingual education.<\/p>\n The current study, therefore, investigated the following research question:<\/p>\n To increase the transferability and trustworthiness of the study, below I provide a detailed description of the research setting, data collection, analysis, and interpretation (Gall et al., 2007).<\/p>\n The study took place over the course of three academic years as part of a teacher education program in the School of Education (SOE) at a large urban state college in the Southeastern United States. The surrounding community is linguistically and culturally diverse, which is represented within the SOE. Although the College has historically functioned as a community college, the SOE is part of a 4-year baccalaureate degree program in which students earn several teaching endorsements, including English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Most students first complete either an Associates of Arts (AA) or Associates of Science (AS) degree before enrolling in the Bachelor of Science (BS) as part of either Early Childhood Education (ECE; birth-8 years) or the Teacher Education Program (TEP; K-12 focus). Both programs offer two stand-alone courses dedicated to issues in ESOL\/bilingual education (i.e., ESOL 1: Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, Culture and Communication; ESOL 2: Curriculum, Methods, and Assessment) and focus on similar state-mandated competencies, but were designed by different professors in each program.<\/a><\/p>\n The focal courses focused heavily on TCs\u2019 experiences with language and language education. Since the overarching goal of the two-course sequence was to prepare TCs to work effectively with EB students, this first and primary step was important because actions are affected by beliefs and attitudes (Richardson, 1996). In revising the two-course sequence that TCs are required to take as part of their ESOL endorsement, I purposefully presented both courses from a dynamic bilingual perspective (i.e., bilingual as normal, not two monolinguals in one, with a focus on the typical languaging practices of bilinguals), a departure from what many students were accustomed to hearing in their daily interactions with both monolingual and bilingual acquaintances (Carter & Lynch, 2015). In particular, the two classes in the ECE program were designed with assignments that asked students to critically reflect on the practices that they observed in real K-3[1<\/a>]<\/sup> classrooms. Classes in the TEP program were taught from a bilingual perspective, but students still completed predetermined assignments (that did not align with a critical perspective of types of instructional strategies used when working with classes that included EBs). Although professors were expected to follow a designated syllabus, the instructor of record had the academic freedom to teach each topic as they saw most appropriate. For me, this meant adopting a bilingual perspective, thus constantly challenging the monolingual mindset from which these courses are typically taught.<\/p>\n My teaching approach was based on Latinx Critical (LatCrit) Theory, \u201ca scholarly movement responding to the long historical presence and enduring invisibility of Latinas\/os in the lands now known as the United States\u201d (Valdes, 2005, p. 148). Most recently, LatCrit theory and praxis are recognized for moving beyond the United States to investigate the bonded ways that comparative and transnational patterns of subordination are reflected in local and global contexts (Valdes, 2005). Conversations in class were constantly framed by asking, \u201cWhat does this mean for children who are bilingual?\u201d For example, when engaged in an applied linguistics unit with a focus on phonology, questions did not center solely on phonemes in English, but also intentionally included typical strengths and challenges producing various phonemes in English and other languages based on the developing bi\/multilingual phonemic repertoire of all students. Assignments in the ECE sections asked TCs to enter in dialogue with in-service teachers, asking about their experiences working with EBs, their views on how to best learn and use language, the type of program that served EBs in the school, the type and amount of professional development that teachers received regarding their work with EB students; analyze a student writing sample for morphological, syntactic, and semantic strengths and \u201cerrors,\u201d with a research-based analysis of the most probable linguistic reason for those \u201cerrors;\u201d provide a contextualized description of the language(s) and dialect(s) present in the school with a critique of the privilege of each language and dialect; and authentically assess EBs\u2019 oral and written language using observation-based rubrics designed for bilingual children (see O\u2019Malley & Valdez Pierce, 1996); and create lesson plans that demonstrated a bilingual approach to working with and appropriately supporting EBs. Classes typically met once per week for 2.5 hours over the course of a 16-week semester and included 20 hours of required observation in public school classrooms.<\/p>\n After I presented the details of the study, allowed for questions and comments, and collected the informed consent of teacher candidates, the 156 participants (see Table 1) came from 14 different classes over the course of three years. They were enrolled in one of two required courses (for which I served as the instructor) as part of the requirement for becoming ESOL-endorsed. In addition to signing an informed consent, for their responses to be considered in this study, participants had to complete the set of questions at both pre- and post- time points, which is why only approximately 50% of all TCs\u2019 responses became part of the data corpus. TCs reported speaking two languages (n<\/em>=134), three languages (n=<\/em>7), or only English (n<\/em>=15), although only 80% (n=<\/em>129) identified as bilingual (5 students who reported speaking English and Spanish or English and Jamaican Patois did not report being bilingual). They included both U.S.-born (n<\/em>=90, 58%) and foreign-born (n<\/em>=67) residents, experienced a range of 0-17 years in the field of education (any education experience = 104, 67%), aged from 20-49 (76% were 34 or under; 61 were 18-24, 58 were 25-34), and were all in the equivalent of their junior or senior year of undergraduate education.<\/p>\n Table 1. Participant Characteristics<\/strong><\/p>\nTheoretical Framework<\/h3>\n
Literature Review<\/h3>\n
Vacillating Support for Bilingual Education in the U.S.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Influences on Beliefs about Bilingualism and Bilingual Education in Florida<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Language Ideological Multiplicity in the Education of Emergent Bilingual Students<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
Methodology<\/h3>\n
Setting<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Focal ESOL-Focused Classes and Assignments<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Participants<\/strong><\/h4>\n