Abstract
This review poses an increasingly common—and increasingly urgent—question in the field of teacher education: How can teachers best be prepared to educate Latina/o bilingual learners? The answers that we offer here challenge some of the prevailing assumptions about language and bilingualism that inform current approaches to teacher preparation. To work effectively with bilingual learners, we argue, teachers need to develop a robust understanding of bilingualism and of the interactional dynamics of bilingual classroom contexts. Unfortunately, the conceptions of language and bilingualism portrayed in much of the teacher-directed literature fall short of offering teachers access to such understandings. In this review, we will make the case for developing materials for teachers that reflect both more up-to-date theoretical understandings of language practices in bilingual communities and a more critically contextualized understanding of the power dynamics that operate in bilingual classroom contexts. We recognize that helping teachers come to these more robust understandings of bilingual language practices and the interactional dynamics of bilingual contexts implies an ideological shift for educators—and teacher educators—in the United States.
Having made the case for rethinking how we talk to teachers about bilingualism in classroom contexts, we will venture to explore why this matters: What will teachers be better positioned to do once equipped with these understandings? It is our contention that such understandings will better position teachers to manage their classrooms for equity and learning for all students. Indeed, these more robust understandings of language and interaction are necessary if teachers are to capitalize on the flexibility and intelligence displayed by bilingual students as they engage in hybrid language practices in order to guide them in the development of bilingual/bicultural academic identities that would support their continuing success in school. In fact, we believe that teachers are the professionals best positioned to capitalize on such understandings. As arbiters of their own classrooms’ language policies (Menken & Garcia, 2010; Palmer, 2011), they hold one of the most important keys to educational opportunity for bilingual children.
In what follows, we will explore the power and limitations of teacher agency in opening up spaces for rich, authentic learning for bilingual children in school. It has been argued that no matter how intense the constraints placed on us, human beings seem to manage to find spaces in which to assert agency (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). However, within the very real constraints of today’s public schools, those spaces might be quite restricted (Mills & Gale, 2007). Indeed, teachers in many school contexts are under intense scrutiny, must follow highly scripted curricula and regimented schedules, and must dedicate a great deal of time and effort to preparing children for what are often educationally inappropriate high-stakes standardized assessments. Thus, in exploring the spaces in which teachers can assert agency on behalf of bilingual children, we acknowledge these constraints and honor the tremendous efforts sometimes required of teachers to provide authentic learning opportunities to bilingual children in school.
A Word About Terminology
Throughout this review, we will refer to “bilingual” children and “bilingual” classrooms. Occasionally, when referring specifically to students who are actively engaged in learning a second/additional language, we will use the term emergent bilingual (García, 2009; García & Kleifgen, 2010). Following Hopper (1998) and García (2009), we emphasize the emergent nature of bilingualism among these students to highlight both the ongoing process of language acquisition and the tremendous potential of this group of students. It is difficult to locate appropriate terms for the specific community of learners we are discussing; terms, in general, are slippery and value-laden. So we think it is appropriate to take a moment now to explain the terms that we have chosen.
For the past 40 years, there has been a category of children in the education policy documents of the United States called “Limited English Proficient.” Defined mainly through their scores on standardized language proficiency assessments, these are often children whose initial proficiency in English is significantly less developed than monolingual “mainstream” English-speaking children, and who at least in some aspect of their lives speak a language other than English.
More recently, educators have begun to favor the terms English Language Learner or English Learner in an effort to frame these children in a more positive light (i.e., to focus on them as “learners” rather than as “limited” individuals). Unfortunately, these terms are ambiguous: Are we not all learners of the English language throughout our lives, given that language accompanies us as we learn about new ideas and engage with new people? Like Limited English Proficient, English (Language) Learner also assumes a monolingual English-speaking norm, implying that the children who are more competent in another language than they are in English are problematic to their schools (García & Kleifgen, 2010). Moreover, referring to bilingual children as “English (Language) Learners,” or as “Limited English Proficient,” overlooks the children’s primary language skills and their academic learning goals, framing them entirely based on their capacities in English. A child could be a competent speaker of another language, a strong mathematics and science student, a curious reader, a caring older sibling, a leader, yet in so much of the teaching literature, she is framed exclusively as a learner of English. This, in turn, has a profound impact on the ways in which she will experience school, because so often the labels placed on us in school serve to delimit the types of opportunities for which we are considered eligible (Varenne & McDermott, 1998).
According to Garcia (2005, p. 4), “The one attribute of these students that distinguishes them from others is bilingualism.” In our effort to both clearly delineate the community of learners that we are referring to and emphasize the kinds of conceptions of language and language practices about which we are writing, we have chosen to refer to “bilingual” or “emergent bilingual” children (García & Kleifgen, 2010). Although we acknowledge the imperfection of these terms, we believe they come closest to reflecting the population we are most concerned with for this review: children along the continua of biliteracy (Hornberger, 2003), engaging in at least two languages in their home, school, and/or community.
We will also generally limit our discussion to the Latina/o community, partly because we need to set reasonable limits, partly because Latino/a bilinguals make up the vast majority of bilinguals in the United States, and partly because our own work has centered on this particular community. Of course, not all Latina/o children are bilingual. Some are monolingual speakers of a language other than English (such as Spanish or Portuguese) who are living in the United States, most likely just about to begin on their path toward bilingualism. Others speak mainly or exclusively English, perhaps with bilingual parents, grandparents, or great grandparents. A great many are “emergent” bilinguals (García & Kleifgen, 2010) who are learning their second language (be it English or Spanish or some other language) as they engage in schooling. Still other children are multilingual—speakers of several languages, perhaps including an indigenous language from their community of origin—and their capacities in all their languages may vary considerably. Although it is beyond the scope of this review to focus on students outside the Latina/o community, we wish to point out that a more robust understanding of language, bilingualism, and classroom interaction can help teachers better meet the needs of all bilingual and multidialectal students.
In any event, if a child is a Latina/o student in the United States, anywhere on the continuum of biliteracy (Hornberger, 2003), she is likely to experience marginalization and her language resources are likely to be underutilized and misunderstood in school. As Rosa (2010) observes, Latina/o bilingual students are all too often “expected to speak two languages but understood to speak neither correctly” (p. 38). Dominant ideologies of “monoglot standard” (Silverstein, 1996) and “languagelessness” (Rosa, 2010) inform teachers’ perceptions of these students, obscuring potentially fruitful opportunities for leveraging their dynamic and varied linguistic repertoires.
Finally, bilingual and emergent bilingual students axiomatically populate classrooms in which more than one language comes into contact, thus creating bilingual classrooms. These are the students and classrooms about whom this review is concerned. There is also ambiguity with regard to terminology in referring to these classrooms. Whereas some researchers refer to “multilingual” classrooms, in which speakers of multiple languages are present regardless of systematic use of multiple languages in instruction, we will refer primarily to Spanish/English “bilingual” classrooms as those that intentionally serve the needs of Spanish-speaking Latina/o bilingual learners (García & Sylvan, 2011; Martin-Jones, 2000).
The Current State of Teacher-Oriented Literature
Much of the literature aimed at monolingual English-speaking teachers about educating bilingual students focuses on the particular “needs” of these learners and seeks to offer teachers the methods and strategies necessary to “deal with” these needs. A perusal of recent titles reveals the needs-and-strategies orientation of much of the material: Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners (Herrell & Jordan, 2000), Meeting the Needs of Second Language Learners: An Educator’s Guide (Lessow-Hurley, 2003), and “Closing the Gap: Addressing the Vocabulary Needs of English-Language Learners in Bilingual and Mainstream Classrooms” (Carlo et al., 2004). These materials have, by and large, been thoughtfully produced by engaged teacher educators concerned about the large number of teachers who are underprepared to teach bilingual students. We acknowledge the general need for materials that will appeal to monolingual teachers, help them open up to the new challenges of reaching and teaching bilingual children, and engage them in the difficult work of learning new skills. We also acknowledge the value of many of the strategies and ideas presented in these materials, designed to help teachers “look at rather than through the language demands of the classroom” and begin to include second language development in their curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment practices (de Jong & Harper, 2011, p. 87; see also Gibbons, 2002).
However, to a great extent, this literature continues to suffer from what Bartolomé (1994) described as “the methods fetish.” Offering a monoglossic perspective on language (García & Sylvan, 2011), this body of literature generally does not ask teachers to question the common American assumption that monolingualism is the norm and that bilingual students must be accommodated until they can achieve a level of English comparable to their monolingual peers. The premise of most of these materials is that teachers can modify their instruction with specific “strategies” and thereby smoothly facilitate learning of both content and language for “English Language Learners” in the “regular” classroom alongside monolingual peers who presumably do not suffer the lack of English that they suffer. Learning is often equated with learning in English; primary language and literacy skills are rarely acknowledged and even more rarely used to facilitate learning; and teachers’ monolingualism is not generally problematized, only students’ bilingualism. The language of schooling is often narrowly defined as academic English, a term that is far too often left undefined or defined in divergent (Valdés, 2004) or monoglossic (Scarcella, 2003) ways. This allows little space for “academic” registers of other world languages in the classroom and even less space for the often low-status registers or dialects children bring from home or the rich hybrid language practices that emerge in bilingual contexts.
One widely used example is the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP; Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008), produced by the Center for Applied Linguistics. School districts can purchase SIOP as a professional development package that can include teacher trainings, videos, and follow-up classroom visits. It is a comprehensive protocol for ensuring that teachers have incorporated into their instruction a range of important strategies for effective teaching of “English Language Learners.” SIOP has been shown to improve bilingual students’ academic performance (Echevarria, Short, & Powers, 2006), and teachers who embrace the systematic set of strategies they provide express feeling improved efficacy with bilingual students. Yet SIOP does not adequately characterize bilingual students’ everyday language practices and makes no effort to encourage teachers to find ways to develop students’ primary language skills. Furthermore, aside from encouraging teachers to engage bilingual students in frequent opportunities to talk and work together, SIOP spends no time helping teachers unpack the dynamics of interaction in bilingual classrooms. As such, it is ultimately limited in its ability to accomplish the stated goal of “closing achievement gaps” between bilingual and “mainstream” (middle-class) English speaking students.
It is our contention that an exclusive focus on bilingual students’ needs (and related methods and strategies for addressing them) normalizes monolingualism and diverts attention from some of the more pressing challenges in educating these learners—challenges that lie not in the learners themselves but in the language ideologies and normative discourses that permeate classrooms, schools, and the surrounding society. Overall, bilingual learners have much the same needs and strengths as monolingual learners; they simply have a greater potential to work and learn in two (or more) languages—a situation that, although still the exception in the United States—is far closer to the norm worldwide. Developing more robust understandings of bilingualism and the interactional dynamics of bilingual contexts will help teachers learn to better engage bilingual learners.
It has been argued by many that teachers need specialized knowledge about language and the language acquisition process to effectively teach children who are learning English in school (August & Hakuta, 1997; Cummins, 1979; Echevarria et al., 2008; Harper & de Jong, 2004; Lucas, 2011; Lucas & Grinberg, 2008; Scarcella, 2003; Valdés, 2001; Valdés, Bunch, Snow, Lee, & Matos, 2005; Wong Fillmore & Snow, 2000). Although we agree that such knowledge is necessary for teachers to work effectively with bilingual students, we contend that it is not enough. Teachers need to rethink their notions of language and bilingualism. Our arguments build on others in teacher education for bilingual students who have attempted to encourage a more critical orientation toward the challenge of educating bilingual students in the United States (Aukerman, 2007; Bartolomé, 2004; Cummins, 2000; Harper & de Jong, 2004; Lucas & Grinberg, 2008; Nieto, 2002; Pavlenko, 2003; Trueba, Bartolomé, & Macedo, 2000). Cummins (2000), for example, suggests that teachers must move beyond specific language features to consider students’ identities, to interrogate structures of power, and to build more sophisticated notions of language acquisition. Bartolomé (2004) similarly argues that teachers working in multilingual and multicultural contexts need “political and ideological clarity” so that they can be prepared to “aggressively name and interrogate potentially harmful ideologies and practices in the schools and classrooms where they work” (p. 98). Nieto (2002), too, calls for teacher educators to engage preservice teachers in critical conversations to help them confront the inequities of multicultural and multilingual classrooms. Lucas and Grinberg (2008), in their very thorough review of the literature on preparing all teachers to teach bilingual students, argue that teachers specifically need to experience—or at least dabble in—multilingualism, by studying a language other than English and by having contact with people who speak languages other than English, in order to be better prepared to work with bilingual students. They argue that such an experience can serve as a foundation for teachers’ development of “affirming views of linguistic diversity” and “an awareness of the sociopolitical dimension of language use and language education,” both of which are fundamental to support bilingual students in their classrooms (Lucas & Grinberg, 2008, pp. 612–613). We wish to take these critical arguments even further, pushing teachers to reenvision bilingualism as a normal process and to view children’s actual classroom language practices as tools for social and academic learning and worthy of attention and promotion.
A recent trend in U.S. bilingual education to encourage “dual language education” appears to break from the monolingual norm, pushing teachers to work within a framework of bilingualism and biliteracy (Cloud, Genesee, & Hamayan, 2000; Howard & Sugarman, 2007; Howard, Sugarman, & Christian, 2003; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). The growth of dual language programs throughout the United States represents the potential for an exciting shift in language ideologies from “language as a problem” toward “language as a resource” (Ruiz, 1984), from “subtractive” toward “additive” bilingualism (Lambert, 1975). 1 More and more teachers are pushed to consider bilingualism as an asset to be developed in school. Yet even among dual language educators, the practice of bilingualism and the complexity of interaction in bilingual spaces are in some ways underestimated. Almost without exception, the materials produced for teachers within the dual language contexts encourage teachers to build students’ bilingualism and biliteracy through language separation, focusing separately (either by using two separate teachers or classrooms or separate segments of the school day/week) on academic registers of “both” of their students’ languages and “balancing” language populations such that classrooms have approximately equal numbers of “English-dominant” and “Spanish-dominant” speakers (Y. S. Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2005; Gomez, Freeman, & Freeman, 2005; Howard & Sugarman, 2007; Lindholm-Leary, 2005). García and Sylvan (2011) describe this shift—and it is indeed a shift in U.S. language ideology in schools—as one from monolingualism to linear bilingualism. This model for bilingual instruction is perhaps best termed dual monolingualism (Fitts, 2006) or parallel monolingualism (Heller, 1999). Within dual language teacher preparation, there appears to be a goal of producing students who function similarly to monolingual speakers of two distinct languages. In fact, teachers in dual language programs have sometimes proven quite invested in academic registers of their two languages of instruction, leaving little room for the dynamic everyday language practices of bilingual students (Fitts, 2006; McCollum, 1999).
Some have critiqued the strict policies of language separation that characterize most dual language programs, arguing that such separation is artificial and does not allow for the natural development of bilingualism (Lee, Hill-Bonnet, & Gillespie, 2008; M. Reyes, 2001), or that it has unintended consequences and, if examined honestly, does not carry out the intended purpose (Fitts, 2006; Palmer, 2009b). Yet the practice is still widely accepted and defended as necessary to protect “minority” languages (Cloud et al., 2000; Gomez et al., 2005).
We acknowledge the need for protected spaces for languages other than English in U.S. classrooms. Dual language programs certainly make a more concerted and articulated effort at creating these spaces than do other program models, such as transitional bilingual education, where students’ primary language is used only until their English develops sufficiently for academic use, or multilingual ESL classrooms, where languages other than English are rarely heard. However, strict language separation, grounded in a linear model of bilingualism, will not achieve the goal of protected spaces for bilingualism in the United States. We need more sophisticated ways to manage interactional dynamics in bilingual classrooms to interrupt English dominance—ways that take into account not only academic language registers but the everyday language practices of bilingual children. What would it look like for teachers in schools to embrace “dynamic bilingualism,” whether they are working in a classroom or program that incorporates only one or multiple languages of instruction (García & Sylvan, 2011)? How can we help teachers build a more robust understanding of bilingualism and the power struggles frequently involved in classroom interaction to better prepare them to work with bilingual students?
Rethinking Language: How Bilingual Children Do Being Bilingual
This section reviews literature that can help teachers better understand the everyday language practices of bilingual children—in other words, how bilingual children do being bilingual (Auer, 1984). We begin with the premise that teachers need to develop an understanding of bilingualism that is grounded in actual bilingual talk and that what bilingual children actually do in their everyday talk is not necessarily reflective of the abstract notions of bilingualism that underlie many current approaches to teaching emergent bilinguals. We focus here on two critical insights that have emerged from recent theory and research on language and bilingualism: (a) an understanding of language as practice and (b) an understanding of hybridity as a normal expression of bilingualism.
Language as Practice
As mentioned above, much of the literature on preparing teachers to work with bilingual students is grounded in monolingual views of language development that emphasize the systematicity of linguistic structure. Here we argue for a different perspective on language—one that normalizes bilingualism and that frames language as a social and cultural practice. Recent scholarship in applied linguistics and related fields has challenged the view that languages are bounded systems of communication, reframing language as practice—in other words, as a form of action that emerges within particular social and cultural contexts (García, 2009; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Makoni & Pennycook, 2005; Pennycook, 2010). Calling into question the prevailing perspective within mainstream linguistics since de Saussure, this growing body of scholarship has shifted attention “away from language as a system and towards language as something we do” (Pennycook, 2010, p. 8). Pennycook (2010) situates this scholarly trend within what has been called the “practice turn” (Schatzki, 2001) in contemporary social theory. Over the past 40 years, scholars across multiple disciplines have drawn attention to the role of practice in constituting social structures and formations (Bourdieu, 1977; de Certeau, 1984; Giddens, 1979). This emphasis on practice as a theoretical construct is not new to the study of language. Almost three decades ago, for example, Urciuoli (1985) argued against privileging the systematicity of linguistic structure, suggesting that we might better understand language as practice—or social action within meaningful local contexts. In recent years, language scholars have increasingly echoed this perspective, fundamentally rethinking the notion of language as a preexisting entity (Blommaert, 2010; Blommaert & Backus, 2012; Jorgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen, & Moller, 2011; Makoni & Pennycook, 2005; Pennycook, 2010). As Pennycook (2010) asserts, framing language as practice “moves the focus from language as an autonomous system that preexists its use . . . towards an understanding of language as the product of the embodied social practices that bring it about” (p. 9).
This radical reframing of language has important implications for understanding bilingualism. Foremost among these implications is the need to view bilingualism as more than simply the “pluralization of monolingualism” (Makoni & Pennycook, 2005, p. 147). As mentioned above, one of the prevailing assumptions in earlier scholarship on bilingualism was that a bilingual speaker’s two languages functioned as two autonomous systems. Cummins (2008) refers to this as the “two solitudes” assumption, whereas Heller (1999) calls it the notion of “parallel monolingualism.” More recent scholarship on bi/multilingualism has moved away from this perspective (Franceschini, 2011; García, 2009; García & Sylvan, 2011). If languages themselves are not bounded entities, these scholars argue, it follows that bilingualism is more than simply the combination of two separate linguistic systems. In contrast to monolingual frameworks for understanding bilingualism, García and Kleifgen (2010) propose the notion of dynamic bilingualism as a way of highlighting “the development of different language practices to varying degrees in order to interact with increasingly multilingual communities” (p. 42). Rather than view bilingualism as the combination of two separate, bounded languages, she argues, it is more profitably understood as a repertoire of related language practices. Similarly, Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) introduce the notion of repertoires of practice, which they define as “ways of engaging in activities stemming from observing and otherwise participating in cultural practices” (p. 22). Included in this definition are ways of using language within particular sociocultural contexts. This focus on repertoires of practice extends Gumperz’s (1972) foundational notion of linguistic repertoires by emphasizing the dynamic nature of the language practices that comprise such repertoires. The notion of repertoires of practice thus opens up possibilities for recognizing the multiplicity of varied and dynamic ways in which bilingual children practice language on a daily basis both in and out of school. Moving away from a focus on languages as bounded systems and toward language in action allows us to better explore everyday language practices such as translating or interpreting (Orellana, 2009; Orellana & Reynolds, 2008; Valdés, 2002), crossing (Rampton, 1995, 2009), language sharing (Paris, 2009), and hybrid language practices such as Spanish-English code-switching.
Hybridity as a Normal Expression of Bilingualism
In classrooms throughout the nation, bilingual Latina/o students use language in complex and dynamic ways to communicate and make meaning, often switching from one language to another and/or mixing languages within a single interaction or utterance. In linguistics and related fields, this phenomenon has historically been referred to as code-switching or, less frequently, code-mixing (Alvarez-Cáccamo, 1998; Auer, 1998; Gumperz, 1970; Heller, 1988; Lipski, 1978; Muysken, 1995; Sankoff & Poplack, 1981). Much of the research on code-switching has focused specifically on the Spanish–English variety (Gumperz, 1982; Lance, 1975; Poplack, 1980; Valdés, 1981; Zentella, 1997), including some studies that have focused on classroom settings (Genishi, 1981; Valdés, 1981). Over the past four decades, this body of scholarship has helped us understand code-switching as a normal, intelligent, and socially meaningful linguistic phenomenon (Blom & Gumperz, 1972; Jaffe, 1999, 2007; MacSwan, 1999, 2000; Poplack, 1980; Woolard, 2004; Zentella, 1997). Nonetheless, in some research and in most popular representations, this everyday language practice continues to be framed primarily from a monolingual perspective—in other words, as the combination of two distinct codes. As García (2009, 2010) has argued, such a framing misrepresents how bilinguals actually use language in everyday communicative interactions. As part of a broader paradigmatic shift associated with the practice turn discussed above, scholarship on Spanish–English code-switching has moved away from this monolingual perspective and embraced a view that normalizes hybridity.
Again, this paradigm shift is not new to the study of language, dating at least as far back as Urciuoli’s (1985) ethnographic work in a New York Puerto Rican community. Urciuoli proposed abandoning the word code in favor of the word practice, noting that English and Spanish were “pragmatically unified” (Urciuoli, 1985, p. 383) in the bilingual speech of her participants. Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, and Tejeda (1999) used the term hybrid language practices to describe the use of multiple language varieties in a single setting. Building on earlier theoretical discussions of hybridity (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bhabha, 1994), they studied an urban elementary school classroom in which “no single language or register is privileged, and the larger linguistic repertoires of participants become tools for participating and making meaning” (p. 293). Following Gutiérrez et al. (1999), we use the term hybrid language practices to include the combination of English and Spanish in conversation. We recognize, however, that there is little consensus about how to label this practice—even among scholars who agree on framing code-switching as a unified language practice rather than as a combination of two separate codes. Recently, García (2009, 2010)has used the term translanguaging to refer to bilingual students’ hybrid language practices. Extending a term originally used by Williams (1996), she uses translanguaging to refer to the “complex languaging practices of bilinguals in actual communicative settings” (García, 2009, p. 45). Some scholars have begun to adopt this term to explore hybrid language practices in classroom settings (Canagarajah, 2011; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Li, 2011). At the same time, language scholars have used various other terms to attempt to capture linguistic hybridity in its spoken and written forms (Canagarajah, 2011), including transidiomatic practices (Jacquemet, 2005), polylingual languaging (Jorgensen, 2008), polylanguaging (Jorgensen et al., 2011), and code-meshing (Canagarajah, 2006). Referring specifically to Spanish–English code-switching, Zentella (1997) has highlighted the use of the term Spanglish. She notes that, although the term has historically had a pejorative connotation, bilinguals are increasingly using the term to describe their everyday mixture of Spanish and English in a positive light. Some linguists vehemently reject the term Spanglish because it is often used to refer inaccurately and pejoratively to the varieties of Spanish spoken by Latinos in the United States (Lipski, 2008; Otheguy & Stern, 2010). They argue convincingly that such a use of the term mischaracterizes local dialects of Spanish and thus perpetuates deficit views of Latina/o bilinguals. These concerns notwithstanding, some researchers studying hybrid language practices in school settings have begun to use Spanglish to refer to Spanish–English code-switching and related linguistic phenomena in ways that challenge deficit perspectives (Martínez, 2010; Martínez-Roldán & Sayer, 2006; Rosa, 2010; Sayer, 2008).
Although there is little consensus on what to call the hybrid combination of Spanish and English in conversation, there is almost universal consensus among language scholars that this everyday language practice is a normal and intelligent expression of bilingualism (Lance, 1975; MacSwan, 1999; Poplack, 1981; Woolard, 2004; Zentella, 1997). Indeed, in language contact situations across the globe, translanguaging/hybrid language practices/code-switching/language mixing is the norm (Auer, 1998; Menken & Garcia, 2010; Milroy & Muysken, 1995; Zentella, 1997). What does it mean, then, for educators to understand hybridity as a normative expression of bilingualism—as a legitimate and acceptable way of doing being bilingual? What pedagogical implications stem from this understanding that might help inform how we organize teaching and learning for bilingual Latina/o students in today’s schools?
In recent years, scholars in education and related fields have helped us begin to explore these questions, highlighting the complexity of bilingual students’ hybrid language practices and suggesting some related pedagogical implications (Fránquiz & de la Luz Reyes, 1998; García, 2011; García, Flores, & Chu, 2011; Gort, 2006, 2012; Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Martínez, 2010; Martínez-Roldán & Sayer, 2006; Zentella, 1997, 2005). Zentella (1997), for example, identified multiple functions of Spanish–English code-switching among bilingual children in a New York Puerto Rican community. Debunking deficit views that frame Spanglish as resulting from a lack of linguistic competence, she illustrated how bilingual children mixed languages to make meaning, establish social identity, and affirm ties with their local community. In later work, Zentella (2005) has argued that teachers can and should build on students’ bilingualism as a resource for language and literacy learning in schools. Similarly, García and Kleifgen (2010) note that teachers “meaningfully educate when they draw upon the full linguistic repertoire of all students, including language practices that are multiple and hybrid” (p. 43). Other scholars have documented bilingual students engaging in hybrid language practices within school contexts, including bilingual and dual language classrooms (Fitts, 2009; García, 2011; Gort, 2006, 2012; Martínez-Roldán & Sayer, 2006; I. Reyes, 2004; Sayer, 2008), as well as “English-only” classrooms that more explicitly discourage Spanish and language mixing (Heller & Martin-Jones, 2001; Martínez, 2010). Martínez-Roldán and Sayer (2006), for example, describe how bilingual students at an elementary school in Arizona mixed English and Spanish during classroom reading activities. Defining Spanglish as inclusive of code-switching, the authors illustrate how these students used Spanglish as a tool to mediate their interactions with texts. García (2011) describes a case study of a dual language elementary school program in New York where Latina/o kindergartners engaged in dynamic translanguaging practices despite administrative mandates aimed at strictly separating languages. Similarly, Gort (2012) explores code-switching patterns in the writing-related talk of bilingual first-graders at a school in the northeastern United States. Her findings reveal how these students mixed Spanish and English during writing workshop in a two-way immersion program, underscoring the potential of code-switching to serve as a resource for writing. In a similar vein, Martínez (2010) documents how bilingual middle school students in a Los Angeles classroom used Spanglish as a semiotic tool to make meaning in social interaction and to mediate their engagement in academic literacy tasks. Identifying specific ways in which these students’ uses of Spanglish overlapped with skills articulated in the California English Language Arts Standards, Martínez argues that students’ hybrid language practices could be effectively leveraged as resources for cultivating both academic and critical literacies. Across these and other contexts, researchers have highlighted the potential for drawing on bilingual students’ hybrid language practices as resources for teaching and learning. Commenting on this pedagogical potential, Hornberger (2003) asserts that bilingual students’ learning is “maximized when they are allowed and enabled to draw from across all their existing language skills (in two+ languages), rather than being constrained and inhibited from doing so by monolingual instructional assumptions and practices” (p. 607).
Although bilingual students’ hybrid language practices have largely gone untapped as pedagogical resources, some researchers have documented powerful examples of teachers recognizing and leveraging these practices as tools for teaching and learning in the classroom. Gutiérrez et al. (1999), for example, described how one teacher’s purposeful use of hybrid language practices helped transform classroom activities into “robust contexts of development” (p. 287). Focusing on a dual immersion classroom in Southern California, the authors illustrated how the teacher “facilitated movement across languages and registers toward particular learning goals” (p. 301). More recently, Gutiérrez (2008) has drawn on empirical data from a case study of the Migrant Student Leadership Institute at UCLA to highlight the role of hybrid language practices in helping nondominant youth cultivate what she calls sociocritical literacy. Gutiérrez notes that instructors in this summer program for youth from migrant farmworker backgrounds deliberately privileged the unmarked use of hybrid language practices in their instructional interactions as part of a broader effort to “incite, support, and extend students’ repertoires of practice” (Gutiérrez, 2008, p. 160). Describing research on the informal learning context of an innovative after-school program, Gutiérrez, Bien, Selland, and Pierce (2011) highlight the affordances of “polylingual and polycultural learning ecologies” (p. 232) that are deliberately designed to leverage hybridity as a pedagogical resource. They advocate syncretic approaches to literacy that “challenge the divide between everyday and school-based literacies and instead exploit the ways school-based and everyday knowledge can grow into one another” (Gutiérrez et al., 2011, p. 258). García and Sylvan (2011) describe a network of high schools for newcomer immigrant students located in New York and California. One of the distinguishing features of these schools, they suggest, is how students’ multilingual abilities are cultivated through “plurilingual” instructional practices—incorporating students’ full linguistic repertoires as resources for teaching. In related work, García et al. (2011) report on case studies of two high schools in New York City that successfully incorporated students’ hybrid language practices as part of their efforts at promoting bilingualism and biliteracy. Michael-Luna and Canagarajah (2007) present results from an ethnographic study of language use in a first-grade bilingual classroom in the Midwestern United States. They document how a first-grade teacher actively supported their students’ code-meshing, suggesting that his pedagogical approach might serve as a model for practitioners and researchers in higher education who seek to support students’ multilingual development.
This growing body of scholarship suggests that researchers in education and related fields are becoming increasingly attentive to the tremendous potential for leveraging linguistic hybridity as a pedagogical resource. Further research in this direction can illuminate this pedagogical potential by documenting additional cases of such leveraging and by exploring connections across multiple contexts. It is our contention, however, that the potential for building on bilingual students’ everyday language practices is not simply contingent on rethinking prevailing assumptions about language. To create rich and equitable learning contexts for Latina/o bilingual learners, we argue, teachers need to think beyond language and develop an understanding of the interactional dynamics in bilingual classrooms.
Thinking Beyond Language: Interactional Dynamics in Bilingual Contexts
The classroom contexts in which Latina/o bilingual students practice bilingualism are contested spaces. Pratt (1999) referred to them as “contact zones,” places for creativity, agency, and resistance. These contexts are also spaces where social relations of power are reflected and reproduced given the status differential between the languages and cultures involved (Bourdieu, 1977). Across multiple educational contexts, Latina/o bilingual students and their everyday language practices are racialized and stigmatized (Martínez, 2009; Pimentel, 2011; Rosa, 2010). In English-only classrooms, racist and xenophobic ideologies of monglot purism are explicitly embodied in restrictive language policies and their attendant instructional practices (Martínez, 2009). In transitional bilingual education classrooms, teachers’ and students’ ideologies of English dominance have a tendency to invade the spaces for bilingualism and eliminate Spanish from classroom interaction over time (Palmer, 2011). Even in dual language classrooms, however, these same dominant language ideologies have been documented to inform teachers’ and students’ perceptions of Latina/o bilingual students, contributing to often unequal interactional dynamics. What can we learn, then, from the interactional dynamics of bilingual spaces that might help teachers create more equitable learning contexts and support the achievement of Latina/o bilingual learners?
The study of bilingual classroom interaction draws guidance from classroom discourse analysis work (Cazden, 2001; Erickson, 2004; Mehan, 1982), exploring patterns inherent in classroom linguistic exchanges, efforts to break away from these deeply ingrained patterns, and their relationship to learning experiences. Martin-Jones (2000), in a review of the literature on bilingual classroom interaction, argued that future research would move in two broad directions. Some research would “perhaps throw more light on the way in which codeswitching contributes to the scaffolding of joint knowledge construction,” whereas other research would
take a more critical turn, grounding micro-analyses of bilingual discourse practices within wider social and historical accounts . . . aiming to reveal links between bilingual discourse practices, ideologies about legitimate forms of bilingualism or monolingualism and the reproduction of asymmetrical relations of power between groups with different languages and different forms of cultural capital. (p. 7)
To a great extent, Martin-Jones’s predictions are coming true, although these “two broad directions” are far from separate. On the contrary, they have proven to be integrally related. As we reviewed above, research has begun to explore the role of hybrid language practices in the collaborative construction of knowledge and selves. But this has further reinforced the need for attention to issues of power and ideology in discourse and has informed and enhanced work in classroom discourse analysis. Much of the classroom discourse research taking place in bilingual settings has begun to build a more critical and contextualized account of the micro-analysis of discourse, drawing on aspects of ethnography of communication (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) and linguistic anthropology (Wortham, 2008) to conduct what some have termed ethnographic discourse analysis (Heller & Martin-Jones, 2001), ethnography and discourse analysis (Palmer, 2008), or multilevel analysis (Saxena, 2009). Links have been formed and interrogated between discourse practices and language ideologies, particularly in terms of the reproduction of asymmetrical relations of power.
Classroom interactional studies in bilingual settings, particularly in intentionally diverse and enrichment-oriented two-way bilingual settings, have in recent years clearly established and reinforced what social theory has been asserting about classrooms for decades (Apple, 1990; Bernstein, 1964; Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Oakes, 1982; Willis, 1977): that they are sites where society’s inequities are reproduced daily through classroom discourse (Fitts, 2006; R. Freeman, 1998; Hadi-Tabassum, 2006; Heller & Martin-Jones, 2001; Juarez, 2008; Lowther Pereira, 2010; McCollum, 1999; Palmer, 2009a). Yet because children and teachers always have agency (Holland et al., 1998), albeit within the constraints of structure (Mills & Gale, 2007), it is possible for them to actively recognize and disrupt inequitable relations of power in classroom interaction and create spaces for at least momentary equity, spaces where bilingual students can have a fair shot at learning. Some have characterized these spaces in terms of their hybridity as “contact zones” (Palmer, 2007; Pratt, 1999) or “Third Space” (Hadi-Tabassum, 2006). The following two sections will review this research and then propose two types of moves, two tools, teachers and students can (and appear to) use to defend their hybrid learning selves as they disrupt the status quo, drawing on “positioning theory” and the construct of “investment” in bilingual identities.
Asymmetries of Power in Bilingual Classroom Interaction: The Case of Two-Way Bilingual Education
As Heller and Martin-Jones (2001) point out, “Education is a key site of struggle over social inequality” (p. 5). Their volume demonstrates this with a collection of cases from around the world that examines educational inequality in the interactional discourse of multilingual school settings. They assert that close analysis of educational interactions in an ethnographic context “allows us to see ways in which social boundaries in local community contexts intersect with institutional categorization processes and ways in which social structure is articulated with human agency” (p. 5). Similarly, we will present a number of examples of research that together make the case for an ongoing tension between the inevitable presence of inequity in children’s classroom interaction and the powerful interventions available to teachers and children to counteract inequity. For this purpose, we will specifically look at research that has been conducted in elementary two-way bilingual programs in the United States.
Two-way bilingual programs are a relatively recent phenomenon in American bilingual education in which English-dominant children are intentionally integrated with speakers of another language (usually Spanish) in bilingual classrooms with the goal of bilingualism and biliteracy for all children. Children from both language groups are integrated for at least 50% of the school day, with language and content taught together (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2008). We choose to examine the research in this particular context because among their stated goals, two-way bilingual programs aim to develop students’ cross-cultural awareness and to enhance the status of the minority language and its speakers within their programs in order to offer empowering academic achievement for all (Collier & Thomas, 2004; Howard et al., 2003; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). In other words, these are settings that not only inherently produce “contact zones” through intentional integration but are also designed intentionally to disrupt the status quo and to offer “extraordinary pedagogies” to bilingual children in U.S. schools. As Fitts (2006) explains, two-way bilingual programs
provide students with spaces within which to explore the power and efficacy of their multiple languages and dialects, as well as test the sociopolitical boundaries associated with particular linguistic forms. As such, it is important to examine the opportunities that DL programs may offer students to re-structure, or at the very least, to question inequitable social relations. (p. 338)
These settings have much to teach us about the challenges we face even in the best of circumstances; at the same time, they can show us what is possible when teachers and students are working together explicitly toward equitable learning opportunities.
Although dual language programs aim to promote equitable educational outcomes, some research suggests that these contexts may benefit White and English-dominant students more than they benefit Latina/o bilingual students (López & Fránquiz, 2009; Pimentel, Soto, Pimentel, & Urrieta, 2008). An increasing body of research calls for two-way bilingual settings to acknowledge the complexity of interaction in linguistically diverse classroom communities in order to more honestly promote the equity they promise (R. Freeman, 1998; Juarez, 2008; Palmer, 2009a; Valdés, 1997). A number of empirical studies have drawn on a mix of ethnography and discourse analysis to specifically demonstrate and strive to understand the reification of larger societal discourses of inequity within these classrooms (Delgado-Larocco, 1998; DePalma, 2010; Fitts, 2006; R. Freeman, 1998; Hadi-Tabassum, 2006; Lee, Hill-Bonnet, & Raley, 2011; McCollum, 1999; Palmer, 2009a; Pérez, 2004; Potowski, 2004). By closely examining the mechanisms at work in these classrooms, these studies also offer a window into possible strategies for overcoming inequitable discourses in all kinds of linguistically diverse classroom settings.
R. Freeman’s (1998) ethnographic discourse analysis of Oyster Bilingual School in Washington, D.C. drew on both classroom interaction data and interview data with teachers to describe the ways that critically aware and engaged teachers appeared to employ “surface linguistic features (e.g. story structure, metaphor, lexical choice, participant role, modality, etc.)” to disrupt negative positionings of bilingual students (p. 101). She characterized their collective efforts as an “alternative educational discourse,” arguing that over time, this type of deliberate disruption of hegemony could have powerful implications for equity (p. 101).
R. Freeman’s (1998) descriptions of teachers’ struggles in the classroom to counter prevailing hegemonic discourses are noted elsewhere as well. Discourses of English dominance are particularly noted in several studies (Delgado-Larocco, 1998; DePalma, 2010; Palmer, 2009a; Potowski, 2004). Delgado-Larocco (1998) revealed, for instance, that although both English- and Spanish-speaking children participated equally in teacher-led lessons, English-speaking children (and with them the English language) dominated playtime in a two-way bilingual kindergarten. DePalma (2010) noted similar patterns, asserting that even the teacher’s strong efforts at enforcing Spanish use during “Spanish time” resulted in little movement from her kindergartners, who insisted on engaging mainly in English—particularly for open-ended centers and playtime.
Palmer (2009a) examined the role of English-dominant middle-class students in two-way dual language classrooms, arguing that their very presence, and the cultural and linguistic capital they wield, asserts symbolic dominance in the classroom and turns the classroom into a “site of struggle.” Palmer was able to demonstrate the power of teachers’ critical awareness of these power dynamics in counteracting their negative impact on equity. She argued, “If a teacher is aware and proactive in confronting English dominance head-on and teaching children to interact appropriately in diverse multilingual multicultural academic settings, this can help tip the balance toward more positive and less negative impacts” (Palmer, 2009a, p. 199).
As she tracked and explored children’s language choices in a fifth-grade two-way bilingual classroom, Potowski (2004) demonstrated that children chose English for nearly all social interaction and used English in a wider range of functions, mostly reserving Spanish merely for “on-task topics” related to their schoolwork. Analyzing both extensive recording of their classroom interactions and interviews of children, parents, and teachers, she argued that the context engendered less investment in Spanish-speaking identities than in English-speaking identities. Pressures from larger district and state assessment policies (which were only in English), accompanied by a lack of opportunities beyond school in which to use Spanish, led to what Potowski refers to as “‘leakage’ (R. Freeman, 1998) into the classroom of the dominant language patterns in the larger community” (p. 96). Potowski concluded, “True L2 acquisition undoubtedly involves some degree of second identity acquisition” (p. 96), suggesting perhaps that if teachers can be made aware of the power of investment in language and literacy acquisition, they might learn to exploit this power in deliberate ways for powerful language learning for their students. Palmer (2009b) concluded similarly that investment in bilingual identities rather than often-ineffective enforcement of a language separation policy was the key to helping children develop bilingualism.
A language purism focused on standard registers of Spanish and English and a rejection of children’s home registers and/or hybrid language practices were noted in several studies (Fitts, 2006; Lee et al., 2011; McCollum, 1999; Palmer, 2010; Pérez, 2004). Fitts (2006) described an “ideology of equality” in the two-way dual language program she studied, in which teachers and children invoked a kind of color-blindness, asserting that all languages and cultures are “basically the same” and thereby “implicitly reinforcing ethnocentrism and assimilation” by “denying important sociohistorical differences” (Fitts, 2006, p. 356). This ideology came through not only in interviews but also in classroom discourse, where in an effort to enforce language equality and “protect” Spanish practice time, children’s natural mixing of English words in their Spanish (i.e., their vernacular Spanish) was discouraged in the classroom. Lee et al. (2011) similarly concluded that a two-way bilingual program’s policy of language separation led young students to engage in language brokering, trading their own language skills with others in order to succeed across the curriculum and school day. Young children’s interactions, according to Lee et al., appeared to support emergent bilingual students’ language learning needs, but at the same time to position language brokers as more “able” than students receiving brokering services. Access to “able” student identities, according to Lee et al., was frequently restricted.
Pérez (2004) tracked the implementation of two-way bilingual programs at two elementary schools in San Antonio, Texas, over several years. Teachers in this borderlands context almost universally chose to make spaces for the hybrid language practices that were most natural to the children they served. Although they also intentionally maintained language separation in certain spaces and times, they negotiated these boundaries intentionally and reflectively.
McCollum (1999), applying Bourdieu’s construct of linguistic capital to the exchanges in a dual language middle school classroom, found that students of Mexican background learned to value English over Spanish when “Spanish language arts became a battleground where political confrontations regarding the value of a vernacular versus a ‘high’ academic variety of Spanish regularly occurred” (p. 120). Similarly, looking at teachers’ discourses regarding nonstandard registers of English, Palmer (2010) identified the powerful role of racism in teachers’ rejection of African American Vernacular English in two-way bilingual contexts.
As she explored the ways that fifth-grade students in a two-way bilingual classroom negotiate language, gender, and race in metalinguistic discussions, Hadi-Tabassum (2006) investigated when, how, and in what ways the children reach a “transgressive third space” where they “arrive at a transcendental understanding of the two languages that subsequently allows for hybridization and fluidity” (p. 3). She concluded that this was a constant, ongoing, tension-ridden process; in several contexts, Hadi-Tabassum depicted students “tapp[ing] into their student agency in order to confront, speak about and interactively redefine the relationship between the two languages” represented in the dual language program (p. 272).
It seems clear throughout these studies that even in a context such as two-way bilingual education in which equity is explicitly one of the goals of the program, teachers struggle to engage students in equitable learning opportunities in spite of powerful hegemonic discourses. Yet this body of research also suggests that teacher and student agency can have tremendous positive influence on this process. We will next elaborate on two constructs that appear to have proven fruitful to teachers and students in the above studies.
Teachers and Students Disrupting Inequity: Agency and Identity in Bilingual Classroom Interaction
The nexus of language and identity has garnered tremendous attention, and it is beyond the scope of this review to fully elucidate it (Cortazzi & Jin, 2002; Holland et al., 1998; Lee & Anderson, 2009; Norton, 1997). However, the two-way bilingual studies described above suggest that there are some powerful constructs that have been theorized and scrutinized under the broad umbrella of identity and language learning that, if teachers could embrace them, might help them develop better awareness of inequity and stronger skills in creating equitable learning spaces. More specifically, we wish to propose that teachers would do well to understand how positioning works, and what investment is, and to begin to intentionally embrace the potential of these ideas as pedagogical tools.
According to Davies and Harré (1990), positioning is “the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines” (p. 48). People are positioned both interactively and reflexively (i.e., by oneself). Davies and Harré make clear that positioning is not necessarily intentional or conscious but that it is ongoing and powerful in terms of the way it can shape our lives and choices. Students and teachers are positioned and assert their own positions through the narrative of classroom talk (Wortham, 2006). Positioning has the potential to marginalize students, for example, by identifying them as incapable of performing certain academic tasks or as an inadequate speaker of the language of instruction. Similarly, positioning can move initially marginalized individuals such as emergent bilingual Latina/o students into empowering spaces where they are invited to create for themselves academic bicultural identities (Palmer, 2008), to serve as “language brokers” to learners of their primary language (Lee et al., 2011), or to model for others the narrative forms and ways of talking and knowing that they know best (Fitts, 2009). Although Davies and Harré (1990) describe positioning as largely occurring in the background as we communicate, that is, as something of which we are largely unaware, we ignore the power of negative positioning at our peril in classrooms. It would behoove us, rather, as teacher educators to bring this powerful dynamic to teachers’ attention. Lee et al. (2011) assert that teachers need to
strategically construct opportunities for different students to take up the role of brokers because these repeated positionings have the potential to lead to restricted opportunities for brokees to display and take up an “able” student identity. (p. 323)
It should be noted that although several have asserted the need for teachers to develop awareness of the dynamics of positioning (Fitts, 2009; Lee et al., 2011; Palmer, 2008; Wortham, 2006), none has yet elaborated on how to help teachers develop this awareness. There is certainly a need for further research exploring the ways that teacher educators might develop current and future teachers’ awareness of positioning dynamics and examining how such awareness might ultimately influence their practice.
Informed by Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of cultural capital, Norton (2000) developed her conception of investment in response to phenomena she was noticing in her research with immigrant women that were not accounted for in Second Language Acquisition theory. In contrast to the long-standing concept of motivation, which does not account for learners’ sociopolitical contexts, investment allows for a language learner to have a complex social identity and multiple desires, and it takes into account the power inequities inherent in social contexts. Learners will invest in things (including the learning of languages) that they feel will give them an adequate return on their efforts, but there are many other factors that could intervene, and learners are constantly engaged in the process of negotiating these different factors to maximize return. Norton (2000) explains, “A learner’s motivation to speak is mediated by other investments that may conflict with the desire to speak—investments that are intimately connected to the ongoing production of the learners’ identities and their desires for the future” (p. 120). Potowski (2004) applies this construct to the choices of fifth-grade students in a two-way bilingual context, explaining that it “takes into account the factors influencing a learner’s decisions to speak—or to remain silent—and in which language” (p. 77). Potowski’s work demonstrates the explanatory power of the concept of investment for helping us understand why some children are able to become highly bilingual and biliterate in two-way dual language education programs whereas others are not.
Learners’ choices are clearly complex, and choices about language learning implicate power and identity. If teachers understand that multiple and sometimes conflicting factors enter into learners’ decisions about whether and how to invest in learning to speak, read, write, or understand a new language, they can first of all approach these learners with greater patience and sympathy. They can learn to notice and reverse their own negative judgments toward learners’ marginalized language practices. Even more important, it is possible that they could develop strategies to support learners in negotiating positive outcomes for themselves. Where students can be convinced to invest in specific bilingual and academic identities, they can learn to make claims for themselves to join multiple communities of practice (Fitts, 2009; Palmer, 2008). Again, as with positioning theory, there is a need for further research that explores ways to help teachers understand investment and works with teachers to begin to translate these understandings into actual classroom practices with potential to positively impact student learning and engagement.
Conclusion
Our discussion of teaching in bilingual contexts shifts the focus away from methods and strategies and draws attention to the need for “extraordinary pedagogies” that are informed by robust understandings of language and bilingualism. We have argued that many of the current approaches to teaching bilingual Latina/o students are inadequate because they are informed by monolingual perspectives on language that overemphasize linguistic structure. By making this point, we do not mean to imply that it is unimportant for teachers to cultivate a basic understanding of linguistic structure. Rather, we argue that teachers—and the teacher educators who prepare them to work with Latina/o bilingual students—need to rethink prevailing assumptions about language that reify linguistic structure and that normalize monolingualism. Following a growing trend among language researchers and theorists, we argue that linguistic structure is best understood as the emergent product of the everyday practice of language (Blommaert & Backus, 2012; Pennycook, 2010; Urciuoli, 1985). Such an understanding of language, we suggest, leads to a more complex and dynamic view of bilingualism, one that normalizes hybridity and that acknowledges the creativity, flexibility, and skill embedded in bilingual students’ everyday language practices. Viewing language as practice and hybridity as a normal dimension of bilingualism will enable educators to cultivate a more robust understanding of how bilingual students practice language, better equipping them to leverage students’ full linguistic repertoires as resources for teaching and learning. As we have noted, research in this area has documented some promising examples of how teachers can do this. Further research in this direction can also inform how teacher educators help current and prospective teachers learn to maximize the potential embedded in Latina/o bilingual students’ everyday language practices.
It is also our contention, however, that even this more robust understanding of language is inadequate without an understanding of the broader contexts of bilingual classrooms as sites of discursive and ideological contestation. Not only do teachers and teacher educators need to rethink language, they also need to think beyond language to account for the interactional dynamics of bilingual classrooms in relation to broader social relations of power. As we have discussed above, bilingual classrooms both reflect and reproduce asymmetrical power relations that obtain between Spanish-dominant students and English-dominant students, between students of color and White students, between formal/academic registers and everyday language practices. Absent an understanding of how power manifests itself in the interactional dynamics of bilingual classrooms, teachers risk contributing to the reproduction of broader social inequalities. In contrast, if teachers develop an understanding of how power operates at the interactional level, they will be better equipped to disrupt the hegemonic discourses and ideologies embodied in classroom interaction. Understanding the force of English-only discourses and ideologies within classroom settings will help teachers attend to the ways that bilingual Latina/o students construct bilingual identities in relation to broader issues of power and inequality. This is not to say, of course, that such understandings will necessarily translate directly into effective pedagogical practices for working with bilingual Latina/o students in these contexts. To be sure, we have much to learn still about how to best help current and prospective teachers build on their understandings to inform generative teaching practices (Grossman, McDonald, Hammerness, & Ronfeldt, 2008; Lucas, 2011). Nonetheless, we maintain that such understandings are a necessary starting point for efforts to build on students’ linguistic repertoires in ways that promote equity in bilingual settings.
All of this matters for teachers, we argue, because they are uniquely situated as powerful social actors within bilingual classroom contexts. As some of the research has shown, teachers can and do assert their agency despite structural constraints, embracing bilingualism and hybridity as resources for learning while also disrupting dominant discourses and ideologies that discourage dynamic bilingualism. A more conscious identification of opportunities for such disruption, combined with an understanding of some of the mechanisms by which identities are constructed, would offer teachers powerful tools for promoting dynamic bilingualism, biculturalism, and academic achievement in classrooms. This type of informed teacher agency is sorely needed in today’s climate of restrictive language policies and reductive literacy practices. Even in dual language programs, where bilingualism is the stated goal, much work still needs to be done in this regard, as Latina/o bilingual students’ full linguistic repertoires are often constrained by ideologies and practices of strict language separation. Teachers in such contexts need to actively and deliberately build syncretic (Gutiérrez, 2008) spaces where students’ hybrid language practices are incorporated, privileged, and leveraged to promote learning. Indeed, by deliberately promoting students’ everyday translanguaging (García, 2009) practices, teachers can intervene to actively disrupt the inequitable interactional patterns that often characterize dual language settings. Again, the necessary starting point for this type of pedagogical shift is a revised understanding of the practice of bilingualism in bilingual contexts. If teachers first rethink language and then think beyond language, they can begin to develop the kinds of robust understandings of language and bilingualism that will better position them to construct rich and equitable learning spaces for Latina/o bilingual students.