Examining Bilingual Teacher Candidates' Use of Digital Media

Digital media has transformed how we interact with each other, how we stay connected, and how we learn about the world around us. Digital media has also changed the teacher's role from knowledge provider to facilitator (Lee, 2006). Teachers however, continue to struggle with technology and curricula integration as a vehicle for engaging young learners with academics (Chen, 2010; Wachira & Keengwe, 2011). This chapter underscores the need to provide bilingual teacher candidates with specific instructional uses for digital media to increase their capacity with technology integration, pedagogy, and content knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). This chapter explores the use of digital media within an after-school technology project. This research lends additional support for teacher preparation programs to integrate the use of technology if they are to serve teachers who work with a growing culturally and linguistically diverse school-age population.

Preparing Bilingual Teachers to Enact Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

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.

Roadblocks to Bilingualism

Most teacher candidates have little experience with learning other languages. They therefore become cogs in the assimilationist machine that causes immigrants to lose native languages and become monolingual in English (Rumbaut, Massey, & Bean, 2006). In a time of devaluing immigrants (and their languages) and failure on the part of most Americans to learn other languages, educators need to focus on the role of other languages in promoting multicultural understanding and to increase language learning in the US. This chapter examines bilingual teacher candidates' experiences with language learning. For four years, students studying for ESL/bilingual licensure were asked to rate their language abilities, finding that 30% rated themselves as bilingual, with 70.43% of bilinguals describing themselves as heritage speakers. The authors report the overall findings as well as the bilingual heritage speaker candidates' own words on their experiences with language learning and maintaining their bilingualism.

Factors Influencing Primary Teachers' Conceptualisations of Literacy

This chapter tries to discover how primary school teachers understand what literacy is and to what extent this conceptualisation is influenced by factors indicated by previous literature, such as training, previous experiences, or beliefs (see Korthagen, 2001; and Pozo et al., 2006), while also considering whether working in a bilingual context or being a bilingual teacher may be influential to produce certain types of definitions. Data was gathered using an online questionnaire directed to teachers in Years 3 and 4 in the Madrid Autonomous Community. The responses from the participants (n=115) were categorised and analysed using SPSS. The findings indicate that most definitions rarely fulfil the requirements to be considered complete or entirely accurate. Results also show that only age is a significant variable in producing better definitions. Finally, the study recommends reshaping and offering appropriate teacher training on literacy to update teachers' knowledge and ultimately boost leads to better learning in the classrooms.

Where the Translingual Rubber Hits the Road: Ideological Frictions, Mixtificaciones y Potentialities in Bilingual Teacher Preparation Programs

Translanguaging has become a particularly relevant (and controversial) concept for the field of bilingual education, with concrete implications for teacher preparation programs serving teacher candidates (TCs) who may identify as heritage speakers of Spanish. However, the regard and understanding of translanguaging, its pedagogical potential, and the positionality to implement it are not evenly distributed among stakeholders involved in the teacher preparation process. This article explores the relationship among California public teacher preparation programs, their bilingual teacher candidates, and the districts that host their field placements that ultimately hire them. Building on the metaphorical concepts of ideological and implementational spaces (Flores & Schissel, 2014), the space between and encompassing the overlap between credentialing programs and school districts is characterized as a friction space beset by tensions between monoglossic and heteroglossic stances and the pragmatism of “entering the workforce.” The dynamics of this space are illustrated in five retratos constructed on qualitative data obtained through semistructured interviews. Based on the author's localized experiences, the article concludes by proposing approaches to navigate the friction space, reinforce the bilingual candidates' counterideological stances, and advance a much-needed productive dialogue in the teacher preparation ecology.

Translingual Practices for the Development of Latinx Teacher Candidates: A Pedagogy for the Border

This article explores the application of translingual pedagogies within a course on the development of bilingualism for Latinx bilingual teacher candidates (BTCs) in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Using a self-study methodology, it examines the application of translanguaging pedagogies for Latinx BTCs, and their evolving language ideologies. The participants were mostly emergent bilinguals (EBs) whose native Spanish language development was negatively impacted by hegemonic educational practices in the local K-12 schools. Therefore, while the first aim of my pedagogical practices was to promote learning of the content of the course, a second aim was to promote the development of academic Spanish language abilities, required for bilingual teacher certification. Findings include how the use of a translingual dialogic teaching approach led to the emergence of 1) a critical stance with an awareness of bilingualism as an advantageous resource in learning, and 2) the development of initial principles for their future practices that value translanguaging.

Model of training bilingual teachers for the Eastern part of the Russian Empire (experience of historical analysis)

Актуальность статьи заключается в исследовании исторического потенциала системы билингвального образования, сложившейся в России в 80-е гг. XIX- нач. XX вв. в восточной части Российской империи. Цель статьи – выявить основные факторы, повлиявшие на формирование концепции двуязычного образования, создать теоретическую модель подготовки учителей-билингвалов; выявить социокультурное и социолингвистическое значение этой системы. Выявлены основные элементы этой модели; проведена их классификация. Определена роль видного педагога и миссионера Н.И. Ильминского в формировании концепции билингвального образования учителей нового типа. Предложена компетентностная характеристика учителя-билингвала; раскрыто значение учителей этого типа в развитии начального образования для нерусского населения восточных окраин России и в формировании этнокультурных процессов в регионе. The relevance of the article lies in the analysis of the historical potential of the system of bilingual education that developed in Russia in the 80-s of the XIX-beginning. XX centuries in the Eastern part of the Russian Empire. The purpose of the article is to identify the main factors that influenced the formation of the concept of bilingual education, to create a theoretical model for the training of bilingual teachers; to identify the socio-cultural and socio-linguistic significance of this system. The main elements of this model are identified and their classification is carried out. The role of a prominent teacher and missionary N.I. Ilminsky in the formation of the concept of bilingual education of teachers of a new type is determined. A competence characteristic of a bilingual teacher is proposed, and the importance of this type of teacher in the development of primary education for the non-Russian population of the Eastern suburbs of Russia and in the formation of ethno-cultural processes in the region is revealed.