Session Information
31 SES 08 A, Preparing Pre-service Teachers for Multilingual Classrooms – Differing Approaches from Europe and Beyond
Symposium
Contribution
In the United States, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965), the Bilingual Education Act (BEA, 1968), and school models for bilingual education were outcomes of community movements for civil and cultural rights (Bale, 2011; Menken, 2017; Valdés, 2017). In the current context of globalization and migration to and within the U.S., multilingual education has similarly emerged as a democratic and social justice imperative. At a time when one third of U.S. children have grown up with more than one home language, national education policy has become restrictive. While 10% of public-school students have been designated “English learners” – 4.9 million, “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB, 2000), the subsequent reauthorization of ESEA, erased bilingualism from federal educational policy. According to available sources, half of “English learners” (also called “emergent bilingual” or “dual language learners”) were born in the United States, and for most, their primary home language is Spanish. However, U.S. demographics are diversifying Arabic-speaking families comprised 21% of refugee arrivals in 2017-2018 (Park et al., 2018). Preparation of new teachers calls for developing the capacity to interact with linguistic and cultural diversity. The current reauthorization of ESEA, “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA, 2015) allows states room to set local funding priorities and leaves teacher preparation requirements to state discretion. Research (e.g., Menken, 2017) has confirmed what previous studies (e.g., National Research Council, 2010) have found: from state to state, teacher preparation is uneven; the majority of states “do not require any preparation for general education teachers, principals, or school administrators about how to educate their emergent bilinguals” (2017, p. 9). This paper describes a program at a public university in the state of New Jersey that requires such preparation for general education teachers. New Jersey is a top migration destination in the U.S., and linguistic diversity in urban areas is increasingly the norm. This program utilizes a community-based learning model, grounded in community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), through which pre-service teachers can be educated about multilingual practices of families in diverse school districts. Although the program focus is English conversation, parents and pre-service teachers are invited into a multilingual environment that encourages multiple flows of learning. The model affords pre-service teachers with opportunities for multilingual, multicultural learning. This paper draws from program documents, field notes, and interviews to provide an overview of the five-year program, its requirements, challenges, and promising directions for research.
References
Bale, J. (2011). Tongue-tied: Imperialism and second language education in the United States. Critical Education, 2(8), 1-25, ISSN 1920-4125. Menken, K. (2017). Leadership in dual language bilingual education: A national dual language forum white paper. Center for Applied Linguistics. National Research Council (2010). Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/12882. Park, M., Jie Z., & Batalova, J. (2018). Growing superdiversity among young U.S. dual language learners and its implications. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Valdés, G. (2017). Entry Visa denied: The construction of symbolic language borders in educational settings. In O. García, N. Flores, M. Spotti (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society, pp.321-348. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
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