Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts

Collective Reflection to Support Emergent Bilinguals with and without Disabilities

Patricia Martínez-Álvarez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000519815
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This text demonstrates how collective reflection can function as a central part of effective teacher preparation for work in inclusive bilingual environments.

Through analysis of rich qualitative data, Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts shows how group reflection supports pre-service educators to recognize the intersectional circumstances faced by students and understand their identities beyond the possible confines of disability. This, in turn, engenders reconceptualization of standardized expectations and implicates the educator in developing student agency through individualized use of routine, language, and materials. The author offers cultural historical activity theory and disability studies in education as a basis for dialectal interactions to unearth contradictions and misunderstandings surrounding language acquisition and the learning of emergent bilinguals and highlight the ways in which educators can disrupt oppressive practices through expansive learning opportunities.

This insightful volume will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students in the fields of inclusive education and disability studies, bilingual and language education, and teacher education.

1 Historical Contradictions in Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112259-1

Introduction

Out of the 10% emergent bilingual children in the United States, 14.3% have also been labeled with a disability (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2020). This constitutes 715,000 students in our classrooms who carry both, the label of English language learner (ELL) and of a disability. Emergent bilingual children with a disability experience layers of difference related to their language and their disability characteristics. Moreover, they are “exposed to the intersecting consequences of several patterns of oppression” (Martínez-Álvarez, 2018, p. 3). However, educational systems are not prepared for attending to these different layers of difference simultaneously. In fact, educational institutions have historically attended to only one of these labels to provide services for either children’s emergent bilingual or their disability-related aspects (Cioè-Peña, 2017).

Teacher education programs can prepare candidates to comprehend and respond to the multilayered responses children might offer to their teaching and address the complex ways in which the intersectionality of differences in (dis)ability, culture, and language impact learning (Martínez-Álvarez & Chiang, 2020). Nevertheless, there are very few research efforts and preparation programs working to elucidate the complexity of diverse classrooms and prepare educators for inclusive bilingual education contexts (Wang & Woolf, 2015). Furthermore, there is a need to clarify the processes (i.e., abilities, coursework, and field experiences) that can assist the largely White and monolingual body of teachers entering the classroom in the United States (79% of public school teachers are White; Hussar et al., 2020), cultivate multilingual and multicultural instructional approaches (Gay, 2010; Wang & Woolf, 2015).

Researchers have enumerated a series of possible competencies teachers might need in inclusive classrooms (Wang & Woolf, 2015). The complexity of intersectional contexts inclusive of multiple layers of difference, withal, demands transformative approaches in which collective teacher reflection and analysis based on daily classroom exchanges are centered (Daniels & Varghese, 2020; Martínez-Álvarez et al., 2020). Teachers must understand the consequences of their moment-to-moment decision-making when, for instance, attending to what children fluently favor while learning or to the varied learning exchanges occurring in spaces where multiple educators serve the same children. That is, rather than portraying teacher preparation as a simple process of “giving” teacher candidates a discrete set of competencies and assuming they will then be “ready” to teach in complex contexts, this book offers a professional and dynamic view of teaching. This stance of teacher preparation embraces a view of learning to teach, which develops over time through collective reflection (Martínez-Álvarez, 2021).

Given these varied circumstances about inclusive bilingual education, achieving a more just public education system requires thoughtful theory and practice-based teacher education approaches. It is important that those working within intersectional spaces take action to design quality research and teacher preparation programs engaging in transdisciplinary exploration (i.e., special, inclusive, and bilingual education). Furthermore, there is a need to achieve clarity in the processes needed for preparing educators to address the learning inequities emergent bilingual children with a disability currently experience. This book is an effort to contribute to teacher education for inclusive bilingual contexts, in which bilingual children with and without a disability learn together. The book chapters shape a theoretical and practical framework for preparing inclusive bilingual teacher candidates, which is informed by findings from a three-year research project. Given the focus of this book, this chapter begins with the following notes about the selected terminology.

Explaining the Terminology

Throughout the chapters in this volume, the phrase “emergent bilingual” refers to children of immigrant background, who speak a language other than English at home, and have been labeled as ELLs in school systems. This term focuses on the assets of bilingual children and emphasizes the linguistic resources they bring rather than what they might lack (García et al., 2008). Bilingual children include both bilingual children labeled as ELLs and bilingual children who are not labeled as such.

Additionally, the phrase “children with a disability” (i.e., using “person-first” language) is used instead of the “identity-first” language form “disabled children” (Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy [HIE] Help Center, 2017). Identity-first language is more broadly accepted in critical disability theoretical contexts. However, “children with a disability” is instead used in the specific context of this book to center the bilingual child who might not identify as a disabled person for multiple reasons (e.g., lack of awareness, secrecy surrounding disability labels in schools, misconceptions related to children’s ability to understand their disability characteristics, etc.). Similarly, family members might not accept the child’s disability category either. In fact, given the historical deficit perspectives on the learning of emergent bilinguals (Greenfield, 2013) and the negative consequences disability labels might have for these children (Martínez-Álvarez, 2018), family members and/or educators might critically question a child’s disability label.

In today’s educational contexts in the United States, as many as 77% of emergent bilingual children labeled with a specific learning disability (SLD) might, as a matter of fact, be misdiagnosed (Ortiz et al., 2011). That is, they might have been identified with the wrong disability label or their ways of learning might not conform with the characteristics of an assigned disability. Nevertheless, the caveat is that this terminology, particularly in connection to identity, is fluid along the life span of a child with a disability. Disability culture awareness can be mediated in classrooms by discussing disability and centering the, oftentimes missing, stories of people with disabilities in the curriculum (Bacon & Lalvani, 2019). Thus, I recognize that while labels tend to be fixed, identity evolves over the life span and that enabling processes of conscientization for bilingual children with a disability should be part of the process of fostering inclusive spaces (Freire, 1972).

Historical Contradictions in Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts

The need for this book arises from historical contradictions (i.e., tensions), still prevailing today in teaching and learning efforts with emergent bilingual children, and in teacher education for multiply diverse classrooms (i.e., intersectional classrooms). The main historical contradictions invading the teaching and learning with bilingual children with a disability are (1) the intersectional deficit perspectives invading the learning of bilingual children with a disability and (2) the lack of inclusive bilingual education opportunities and of agreement on what processes are needed to prepare teachers for such contexts.

Intersectional Deficit Perspectives on Bilingual Children With a Disability

There are multiple indicators currently used to describe academic performance (i.e., graduation rate, educational achievement measured by test scores, etc.) that depict emergent bilingual children with a disability as performing poorly in schools. For instance, in New York State, only 39% of emergent bilinguals with a disability successfully finished high school in 2019, while there was a much higher rate of 86% for nonemergent bilinguals (New York State Education Department [NYSED], 2019). These disparities indicate that schools have failed to understand the complexities of children with multiple potential learning identities or the forms of oppression they experience (Crenshaw, 1991; Liasidou, 2013).

The intersection of emergent bilingual and disability categories, in relation to disproportionality, has been amply explored in the literature and noticed by educators. I was an inclusive bilingual teacher for more than ten years before entering higher education. During those years, my students that were identified with disabilities under the federal law guiding special education services (i.e., Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act [IDEIA], 2004) were mostly Latinx children of color and labeled as emergent bilinguals. Disproportionality was very visible then, and still is nowadays, throughout classes in the United States. Issues of over- and underrepresentation have also been well documented in a number of studies, in which wide discrepancies across states have been reported (Artiles et al., 2011; Harry & Klingner, 2014). In essence, when looking at the data by state, research suggests an overrepresentation of emergent bilingual children in, what are often referred to as, the “soft” disability categories (Donovan & Cross, 2002; Sullivan, 2011). Soft is a term used to refer to disability labels that are of “a less tangible nature—perhaps because of their apparent ‘invisibility’—in comparison to physical or sensory disabilities” (Connor & Ferri, 2005, p. 110, emphasis in original). These disabilities include, for example, the categories of SLD and speech and language impairment (SLI). The identification of soft disabilities typically begins when children start school and is rife with vague definitions and subjective processes often guided by biased assessments (Connor & Ferri, 2005).

The issue of misidentification of emergent bilingual children with fixed disability labels is particularly problematic because this population is most susceptible to educational inequities situated at the intersection of differences. For example, emergent bilinguals with a disability have fewer opportunities to learn in high-quality bilingual programs (Martínez-Álvarez, 2018), receive less support for English-language development (Kangas, 2018), and are exposed to lower expectations for their learning (Kangas, 2020) than those without an ELL label. In a sense, the disability label results in fewer inclusive opportunities for emergent bilingual children.

Deficit perspectives invading the learning of bilingual children is connected to the historical resistance to bilingual education in the United States. For decades, a sociopolitical antagonism to having children of immigrant background learn in their home languages has been extant in the United States. Such opposition is rooted in the country’s enduring legacy of racism (MacMillan & Hendrick, 1993). The resistance to bilingual education for immigrant communities sharply contrasts with existing research documenting the manifold benefits that growing as bilingual and biliterate individuals pose for children. For example, when children learn bilingually, they present favorable attitudes toward learning, develop strong bilingual identities, and display several cognitive strengths (e.g., Bialystok, 2010; Kabuto, 2010; Umansky & Reardon, 2014).

Even within bilingual education, there are issues related to language hierarchies. These most often manifest through a strict separation of languages and the unfavorable ways in which translanguaging practices have been historically understood within and beyond bilingual programs (Martínez, 2013). Only recently, bilingual research efforts are beginning to recognize the latent possibilities in the hybrid use of languages and of multiple modes for learning (García, 2009). The misconceptions that bilingual children lack basic skills for learning and that only those children considered to be “able” can learn in two languages accentuate restrictive access to dual-language bilingual education (e.g., Espinosa, 2008; Genesee, 2007; Greenfield, 2013).

These populist ideas prevail as a result of the imagined view of the “normal” or “average” child. The so-perceived normal child learns using recognizable processes that are valued in schools, while all others are excluded as they are considered to be out...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Author
• List of Appendices
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Historical Contradictions in Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts
• 2 Theorizing Collective Conversations Among Educators for Learning: Defining the Project
• 3 Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts: Theoretical Codes and Collective Reflection
• 4 Attending to All Children: Transforming the Learning Space for Sustained Development
• 5 Rules and the Preparation of Teachers: Structures, Time, and Language Hybridity
• 6 Toward Multidimensional Hybrid Spaces of Learning
• 7 Ableism as a Lens: Interdependence, Flexible Time, and Transformation of Contexts
• 8 Inclusive Bilingual Education: Communities of Educators and Knowledgeable and Resourceful Children
• 9 A Theoretical and Practical Framework for Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts
• Index