“It’s Not Really My Job”: A Mixed Methods Framework for Language Ideologies, Monolingualism, and Teaching Emergent Bilingual Learners

Abstract

Teacher education has redoubled efforts to prepare a predominantly monolingual teaching force for linguistic diversity in U.S. schools. Some jurisdictions are requiring specific teacher preparation, such as mandated Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) endorsement in Massachusetts, the context of this study. Previous research has explored the intersections of language ideologies and practice through such coursework. However, few studies have accounted for the underlying monolingual ideologies that inform U.S education. Therefore, this study employs a mixed methods approach to analyze language ideologies among 127 preservice and beginning teachers engaged in SEI methods coursework. Drawing on written reflections, survey data, and reported practices, this study offers a framework for exploring teacher language ideologies. This framework highlights a trajectory of lived ontologies, pedagogical orientations, and key contextual “filters” that may distort language ideologies in practice. The framework is operationalized through an analysis of monolingual ideologies across educational policy, practice, and teacher preparation.

Developing a Complex Portrait of Content Teaching for Multilingual Learners via Nonlinear Theoretical Understandings

“…Pass and Mantero (2009), for example, found a disconnect between teachers’ stated beliefs and their actual classroom practices with multilingual students. Bacon (2018) also found a complex relationship between teacher ideologies and practices, and suggests the benefit of contextualizing ideologies broadly beyond individual dispositions and in relationship to practice.…”

“…They reported that even teachers from the same cultural and linguistic background are capable of holding deficit ideologies toward multilingual students, likely due to generational shifts that make teachers perceive of students as less like them. Five studies provide direct evidence for the complex relationship between teacher beliefs and practice (Bacon, 2018; Gleeson & Davison, 2016; Huerta, 2011; Pass & Mantero, 2009; Pease-Alvarez et al, 2010). Pass and Mantero (2009), for example, found a disconnect between teachers’ stated beliefs and their actual classroom practices with multilingual students.…”

A philosophy, a methodology, and a gender identity

“…Linguists across subdisciplines have called for mixed method research (MMR) in sociolinguistics (Angouri 2010;Blaxter and Kinn 2018), applied linguistics (Hashemi and Babaii 2013;Riazi 2016;Mirhosseini 2018;Bacon 2020) and voice therapy research (Azul and Neuschaefer-Rube 2019). Angouri (2010: 30) notes that "[i]t is still quite common however for the two paradigms [qualitative and quantitative] to be directly contrasted".…”

“…It is especially important to explore MMR because the phenomena of interest, the research questions, the data sets accessed/generated, and the analyses conducted in sociolinguistics are often complex. MMR is particularly well suited to deal with multiple levels of complexity (Hashemi and Babaii 2013;Riazi 2016;Blaxter and Kinn 2018), capture underlying ideologies (Bacon 2020), and to result in more robust research outcomes including increased ecological validity (Blaxter and Kinn 2018;Azul and Neuschaefer-Rube 2019;Bacon 2020). These are important aspects for language researchers focusing on non-binary populations and whose goals are to generate authentic and transformative research (detailed in Section 2) with positive real-world applications (e.g., Zimman 2020).…”

Shared identities through translanguaging practices in the multilingual mariachi classroom

“…On the other hand, 81.9% of the teacher population remains predominantly White, non‐Hispanic compared to Hispanic teachers, who make up only 7.8% across the United States’ public schools (NCES, ). This same teaching force is also known to be predominantly monolingual (Bacon, ).…”