An equitable approach to leveraging multilingual paraprofessional learning

Abstract

This conceptual article focuses on how a National Professional Development grant through the Office of English Language Acquisition in the U.S. Department of Education supported multilingual paraprofessionals' equitable access to and participation in high‐quality, ongoing professional development aimed at supporting young multilingual learners, and how they leveraged both prior and newfound knowledge and experiences during their participation. We understood that paraprofessionals had been positioned as less white, less English‐speaking, and less knowledgeable than their teacher counterparts and knew that their engagement needed to be utilized as a resource. Thus, we broadly draw on the concept of equity but specifically on the notions of funds of knowledge, translanguaging, and raciolinguistics as we document our process of working with Pre‐K–second grade paraprofessionals.