Teacher Preparation for Bilingual Student Populations

Educar para Transformar

Belinda Bustos Flores, Rosa Hernández Sheets, Ellen Riojas Clark, Belinda Bustos Flores, Rosa Hernández Sheets, Ellen Riojas Clark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780415877398
• eBook ISBN: 9781136966101
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The growing number of bilingual students in public schools coupled with a critical shortage of teachers specially prepared to serve this population calls for a critical examination of policies and practices in bilingual and ESL teacher preparation. This volume focuses on understanding the structural, substantive, and contextual elements of preparation programs, and provides transformative guidelines for creating Educar signature programs. Designed to improve the practice of teacher preparation by promoting dialogic conversations and applications of praxis in the preparation of bilingual/ESL teacher candidates, it emphasizes that exemplary teacher preparation requires transformative teacher educators.

Simultaneously organizing the scholarship in the field and advancing new understandings, this book is must-have resource for current and future teacher educators. Contributors include Maria Brisk, Sylvia Celédon-Pattichis, Lourdes Diaz-Soto, Eugene García, Virginia Gonzáles, Guillermo Solano-Flores, Maria Torres-Guzman, Carmen Mercado, Bertha Pérez, Mari Riojas-Cortez, Francisco Rios, Concepción Valadez, and Angela Valenzuela.

Part I
Transformación

Let us breathe through the cracks of our open hearts.
And may our collective breath be the vision
of a transformative dream of education
that speaks the language of heart and mind
and the truth of wholeness, harmony,
social justice, and liberation.

Laura Rendón. (2010). Sentipendante pedagogy: Educating for wholeness, social justice, and liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC, p. 151.

1
Dar Luz

Visionary Teaching about Teaching

Belinda Bustos Flores, Ellen Riojas Clark, and Rosa Hernández Sheets

Our vision for the Educar model, Dar luz illuminates transformative ways of thinking, knowing, and being in exemplary bilingual education teacher programs. Dar luz—as a transformational framework—provides constructs representing who we are as bicultural bilingual beings and promotes our desire to prepare bilingual education teacher aspirantes/candidates, who are bien educados. In this text, the term aspirante refers to bilingual education teacher candidates, unless otherwise specified. Transformación and revolución are the impetus driving the conceptualization of teacher preparation through the dimensions of iluminación, praxis, and concientización.

Foremost, for transformación to occur, it is important to recognize that issues of power are central in distinguishing schooling from educación. While the purpose of schooling is socialization and control, educación results in learning and empowerment within multiple arenas including school, home, and community. “It is evident that school serves the purpose of the society for which they have been constructed and that social and political forces shape the practice and purpose of schooling” (Hollins, 2008, p. 17).

In proclaiming freedom from hegemonic discourses that approach schooling from monolithic lenses, in this text we use Latin@s to refer to pan-ethnic groups who share similar languages, cultures, and genotypes. However, beyond genetic makeup, it is important to recognize that Latin@s are a heterogeneous group, whose languages, literacies, rituals, and practices vary based on diverse sociocultural contexts. While Latin@s represent the emerging majority ethnic group in the US, our connections extend beyond boundaries and borders. Latin@s’ multilinguality and multiculturality as intuitive cultural knowledge provides conduits to cognitive shifts and helps us critically analyze appropriate cultural behaviors in different contexts (Clark & Flores, 2007). Thus, in this text, this knowledge is brought to the forefront.

In resistance to hegemonic discourse giving English monolingualism and monoculturalism prominence, we counter by assuming a sociocultural transformative position. Erroneously labeling bilingual learners (BLs) acquiring English as a second language as English language learners (ELLs) fails to recognize that:

1 monolingual English speakers are learning and developing their English proficiency as English learners, and as such are the true ELLs, and

2 bilinguals who speak another language possess linguistic, lexical, grammatical, and cultural knowledge and are simultaneously acquiring dual languages.

Consequently, we demand BLs be labeled accurately by programs and institutions. We recognize that within their speech communities, BLs are simultaneously constructing and developing their native language, while acquiring English. They possess both languages along a continuum of proficiencies (Hornberger, 2003). Moreover, there is an acknowledgement that bicultural practices, values, and norms are also being learned and shared in varying sociocultural contexts. We also maintain that multilingualism and multiculturalism are recognized as the norm throughout the world, not the exception.

The purpose of this chapter is to organize the overall content of the volume and to elucidate our vision—dar luz—to guide the practice of teaching about teaching with optimal potential for the preparation of transformative, knowledgeable, skilled, and empowered aspirantes for BLs. We begin with the current demographic trends, followed by the text’s organizational components.

Demographic Trends

We assume the country was not shocked when Latin@s were proclaimed the largest and the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the US. In fact, demographers concluded that numbers were probably underreported, since undocumented immigrants, with estimates as high as 11.5 to 12 million, were not included in official counts (PEW, 2006). While the current growth is stimulated by immigration; the future projected distribution will be expressed through increased birth rates (Verdugo, 2006). Nearly two-thirds of Latin@s are US born and one fourth of US newborns are Latin@s (PEW, 2009). To illustrate, between the years of 1990–2005, two-thirds of newborns in Georgia were Latin@ and in Arkansas the percentage of new babies rose from 14.3% to 23.7% due to Latin@ births (National Task Force on Early Education for Hispanics, 2007). Undoubtedly, this projected demographic shift tests political, health, and economic structures; and, there is no question this shift requires changes to educational institutions.

The Latin@ populace was estimated at 42.7 million, 15% of the total population (US Census Bureau, 2005). This figure did not include Puerto Rico’s 3.9 million residents. Demographers project that within 40 years, one in four individuals living in the US will be Latin@ (US Census Bureau, 2005). Presently, the US ranks as the fourth largest Latin@ population in the world, trailing behind Mexico, Spain, and Colombia. The Latino Diaspora establishes Latin@ as the minority-majority in 19 states; however, almost half (49%) call California and Texas home, and approximately, 74% live in five states—California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. Though, between 1990–2004, states with largest Latin@ growth rates were North Carolina, 575%, Arkansas, 508%, Georgia, 449%, Tennessee, 410%, and Nevada, 328% (Verdugo, 2006).

In the US, the Mexican ethnic group is not only the largest (66%), but it is also the least formally schooled; while, Cubans, the smallest (4%), are the most skilled and schooled. Mexicans, especially undocumented workers with low-levels of formal schooling, visibly sift into the bottom of the labor market, contributing to the stereotype of Latin@s as an impoverished, uneducated group of menial workers (Portes, 2004). However, as a pan-ethnic group, Latin@s have the least formal schooling (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2007); only 77% of all Latin@s, as compared to all other groups, complete high school (PEW, 2009). Latinas are even less likely to pursue post-secondary education (González, Stoner, & Jovel, 2003). As a group, Latin@s, age 16–25 value education; educational attainment is dependent on various factors including generational status (native versus foreign-born), income, familial obligations, and language proficiency (PEW, 2009). Several reasons were identified for low schooling outcomes, 44% of the Latin@ students reported being taught by teachers unprepared to work with them (PEW, 2009). While there are commonalities among Latin@s such as familialism, there are generational, linguistic, and acculturation differences.

Currently, Latin@ children (under age 18) are the fastest growing and the second largest student population, after White students; and, Latin@ children account for more than half (58%) of all immigrant youth in the US (Kohler & Lazarín, 2007). Trends indicate that 19% speak a language other than English at home; and, 62% in this group speak Spanish (US Census, 2005). Student public school population patterns for the past 32 years (1972–2004) show significant changes in the ethnic backgrounds and linguistic heritage of students. Numbers show that linguistically diverse, ethnic minority children are increasing, while the monolingual White student enrollment is decreasing. Between 1979 and 2004, the number of children “who spoke a language other than English at home and who spoke English with difficulty increased by 114%” with Spanish “being most frequently spoken at home by both those who spoke a language other than English at home and by those who spoke English with difficulty” (Condition of Education, 2006, p. 1). In 2004, 37% of 5–9 year-olds and 24% of 10–17 year-olds spoke Spanish at home and 67% of school-age children came from homes where Spanish was spoken (Condition of Education, 2006). Latin@s, ages 16 to 25, language proficiency ranges with the majority being (41%) being bilingual, 36% English dominant, and 23% Spanish dominant (PEW, 2009).

Proportionately, more Latin@s live in poverty than any other racial and ethnic group. In 2004, the national poverty rate was 12.7% and 8.6% for White; however, for Latin@s it was substantially higher, 21.9% (National Poverty Center, 2005). Nearly one-fourth of Latin@s live in poverty with 53% living in households with less than $50,000 mean income (PEW, 2009). Most Latin@s earn less, suffer recurring unemployment, and work in unskilled occupations (Valenzuela, 2001).

Given the lack of educational access and attainment for Latin@s, we should not be astounded that nationally the teaching population is predominately White, 83.5% (NCES, 2008), yet nearly 47% of the student population is classified as ethnic minorities with Latin@s accounting for 20% of the total US student population. Other trends show a critical shortage of bilingual education teachers (see Chapter 2) and data showing that BLs do not have access to teachers with knowledge and skill to support BLs’ schooling needs (NCES, 2000).

An overview o...

Table of contents

• Dedicación
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Transformación
• Part II Iluminación
• Part III Praxis
• Part IV Concientización
• Part V Revolución
• Contributors
• Index