Critical Bilingual Leadership for Emergent Bilingual Students

The overarching goal of this chapter is to examine and understand the role that school leadership plays in fostering the educational space where language and literacy development are central to the vision of a school community for emergent bilingual students. With this in mind, traditional school leadership theory and practice are insufficient to truly foster the culturally and linguistically responsive schools that are needed for emergent bilingual students. Therefore, this chapter presents critical bilingual leadership theory as an innovative conceptual framework aimed at answering this challenge. Drawing from transformative leadership and Latin@ critical race theory, this framework situates the role of equity-oriented leadership in the context of fostering language and literacy development for emergent bilingual students.

Sociolinguistic and Educational Perspectives on Code Switching in Classrooms

In educational contexts, codeswitching (CS) is deployed in a binary fashion. Either CS is a productive strategy (a translanguaging, revisionists' claim), or CS is a “bad habit” signaling linguistic deficits. Some of the variance in understanding CS results from specific contexts. When a second language is used in a content classroom, the productive use of CS as a viable strategy for explication, management, and community building may also suffer from confusion. Yet, CS in language classrooms is a concern for teachers. Confusion emanates from two theoretical accounts for CS (structural and functional). For educational uses, CS suffers from this “split personality,” with resolution found in a “contact zone” account. I draw from the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contexts of South Africa to explain notions of CS, and specifically as CS relates to literacy in some cases. The cross-cultural components play a role in explaining CS as it relates to literacy.

Using Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Electronic Storybooks in ESL Teacher Education

In this chapter, a qualitative approach used to investigate the experiences and learning of 110 preservice teachers in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses when they read electronic storybooks for their school projects. During their online class, participants were asked to read one culturally and linguistically familiar electronic storybook (e-storybook), develop a reading lesson plan, and participate in two online discussions after reading four culturally and linguistically familiar or unfamiliar e-storybooks. After these discussions, the participants revised their lesson plans. The findings provide insight into what ESOL preservice teachers learn and the strategies they use in reading e-storybooks. The participants revised the original lesson plan based on these reading experiences and learned about their future students who will study English as a second language. The article concludes by discussing the influence of this online task-based instruction on ESOL preservice teachers' learning and technology use in teacher education courses.

Leveled Literacy Intervention

In this chapter, the qualitative study will investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of the Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) framework with English Language Learners (ELL) newcomers and their literacy achievement using the case study method and cross case analysis. Student case studies will consist of LLI pre and post assessment data, guided reading data, and information gathered from student interviews. The triangulation of student interviews, teacher surveys, and extant literature provide the foundation for answering questions regarding the effectiveness of LLI with the ELL newcomers. Findings are presented through student case studies, resulting from cross case analysis that identified themes, patterns, and commonalities in student reading achievement data and teacher survey results. Results show that ELL newcomers needed to develop social, academic, and content-related language. Findings from the study show that the students made progress while participating during the intervention but have not maintained or increased their reading levels after the intervention that provides opportunities for future research. Recommendation for future studies and conclusion are discussed.

Constructing a Third Space

Burgeoning technologies are changing the global practices of youth to embrace a form of literacy which encompasses both skills and multimodal forms. In Barbados this has been perceived as disengagement from conventional literate practices and has caused concern in the wider Barbadian community. This view is reinforced by the seemingly ubiquitous engagement of youth with various forms of communications technology rather than traditional text. This chapter presents some insight, in the context of a Barbadian secondary school, into an action research project which sought to bridge the existing divide between traditional and semiotic literacies. This investigation confirmed that students were engaged in literate acts in diverse ways. The creation of third space required revised assumptions about the nature of literacy and redefined roles for teachers and students. This chapter concludes with recommendations for increased dialogue, collaboration and professional development among Barbadian secondary English teachers on issues related to literacy.

Transnational Immigrant Youth Literacies

This chapter examines transnationalism, social-literacy practices theory, the history of immigrant literacy in the United States, and an examination of central Mexican literacy practices. We then review and examine what is known concerning the literacy practices of immigrant youth living in the U.S. We define transnationals as individuals who participate in flows of people, ideas, capital and goods between regions. These flows are bi-directional, span national boundaries and are sustained over time. After examining historical and cultural influences on the ways that literacy is conceptualized and actualized in Mexico, we argue that all immigrant students, regardless of their ethno-linguistic backgrounds, bring to their host nations assemblages of information, ideology, and specific practices that we believe are full of either potential resources or possible damaging effects. Deeper understanding of these practices by educators provides a potential mechanism for bringing about desirable change or for maintaining oppressive racial and linguistic hierarchies.

Becoming Teacher Researchers

Drawing on three years of data, we show how an embedded university research team and eleven K-8 educators reorganized learning and negotiated innovative curricular activities for English learners (ELs) in spite of restrictive curricular mandates in an urban Midwestern district. We analyze how participating teachers appropriated theoretical constructs such as cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), third space, funds of knowledge, as well as using discourse analysis to design curriculum aimed at improving language learning through mathematics, science, and community-based problem solving. The learning of teachers was purposefully designed to develop new professional identities. The learning was also designed to move teachers from deficit views of multilingualism to dynamic stances grounded in polyglot language ideologies. We examine the challenges and opportunities of participants' movement from resistant, procedural, and ethnographic identities towards teacher researcher identities.

Pedagogical Challenges in Cross-Cultural Chinese Language Teaching

In this chapter, a qualitative approach was used to enlist Chinese immersion practitioners in the identification and elaboration of issues and challenges in Chinese immersion language teaching. Through extensive individual interviews and reflection writings, six pre--1 Chinese immersion teachers recruited from China in five school settings served as informants. Data analyses revealed that the Chinese immersion teachers encountered significant challenges in six major areas of their immersion teaching: curriculum development, use of the target language, classroom management, subject area teaching, teaching style, and working with American partners and parents. These varied challenges suggest that professional development for Chinese immersion teachers needs to include training in cross-cultural classroom management skills, curriculum development, content-based Chinese language teaching, and host country school culture education.

Learning Arabic through Language of Journalism

Second language learning requires more than memorizing rules and vocabulary detached from contexts. Language teachers have to encourage the exposure to real context to enable their students to ‘acquire' the language in the same way they acquire their first language. This could entail an unconscious induction called ‘analogy'. Analogy may enable language learners to create neologisms for the purpose of communicating. This could also enable them to obtain a better understanding of lexical items in context. This chapter highlights the benefits of direct exposure to neologisms in journalistic texts, which influences learners' morphological choice. Mass media in general and journalism in particular are thought to be a perfect means of learning any language in its natural context.

Exploring the Interstices of Literate, Linguistic, and Cultural Diversity

In this chapter, we examine an English-speaking Caribbean multilingual teacher's response to linguistic diversity by exploring his linguistic and literate experiences and responses to language in various geographical and social contexts. Through in-depth semi-structured topical interviews, we identified three distinct recursive “pathways” representative of the teacher's experiences. These pathways constituted his processes of attitude transformation, strategy use, and identity formation. The findings highlight the need for further exploration of multilingual teachers' linguistic diversity and indicate the need to examine teachers' capacity to respond to linguistic and cultural diversity based on their personal experiences.