The Continua of Biliteracy and the Bilingual Educator: Educational Linguistics in Practice

Abstract

The continua model of biliteracy offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings; bilingual teacher education represents a conjunction of all three of these and hence, a good candidate for applying the continua model. This paper uses selected experiences in language teacher education as practised at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education to illustrate the potential of the continua model as heuristic in continually (re)writing the bilingual or language educator's knowledge base in response to the demands of educational policy and practice. A series of vignettes serves as a means for exploring dilemmas confronting bilingual (and language) educators and ways in which the continua model might shape a response: the global/local dilemma -global social, cultural, and political trends as contexts for biliteracy; the standard/nonstandard dilemma -media of biliteracy as reflected in evolving views of language and literacy in the world; the language/content dilemma -enquirybased teacher education as an approach to the development of biliteracy; and the language/culture/identity dilemmateachers' and learners' identities and cultures as they relate to biliteracy content. The paper concludes with a few comments on bilingual educators as researchers, teachers, and language planners and on the need, now more than ever, for bilingual educators to be advocates. Nancy H. Hornberger Graduate School of Education, University of PennsylvaniaThe continua model of biliteracy offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings; bilingual teacher education represents a conjunction of all three of these and hence, a good candidate for applying the continua model. This paper uses selected experiences in language teacher education as practised at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education to illustrate the potential of the continua model as heuristic in continually (re)writing the bilingual or language educator's knowledge base in response to the demands of educational policy and practice. A series of vignettes serves as a means for exploring dilemmas confronting bilingual (and language) educators and ways in which the continua model might shape a response: the global/local dilemmaglobal social, cultural, and political trends as contexts for biliteracy; the standard/nonstandard dilemma -media of biliteracy as re ected in evolving views of language and literacy in the world; the language/content dilemma -enquirybased teacher education as an approach to the development of biliteracy; and the language/culture/identity dilemma -teachers' and learners' identities and cultures as they relate to biliteracy content. The paper concludes with a few comments on bilingual educators as researchers, teachers, and language planners and on the need, now more than ever, for bilingual educators to be advocates.

Sociolinguistics in a languagised world: Introduction

“…Canagarajah (2013:12) likewise advocates a pedagogy that draws on speakers' entire repertoires, one "that teachers may find useful to help students communicate along, against and beyond the dominant norms without disregarding them". Hornberger (2004) proposes "continua of biliteracy" through which learners develop literacy in what are regarded as separate languages through a set of practices that defy first language-second language, oral-written, receptiveproductive categorisations. Using translanguaging practices in the classroom is held up as ensuring flexibility, efficiency, and maximal communication with different audiences at the same time.…”

Epistemological access through lecture materials in multiple modes and language varieties: the role of ideologies and multilingual literacy practices in student evaluations of such materials at a South African University

“…This point is clearly underscored in Hornberger's continua of biliteracy model (Hornberger 2004). In this model, language and literacy as means and goals in education are seen as developing within a space constituted by four intersecting axes of context, content, media and development.…”

English Language Learning in the Margins: Toward a Movement to Help Service-industry Workers in Thailand

“…Most prominent researchers stemming from these old (established) and new (emerging) traditions, to a more or lesser degree, emphasize the interplay between a country's state language and indigenous languages (Coronel-Molina &Rodrı´guez-Mondon˜edo, 2012; Fishman, 1991Fishman, , 2001Hornberger, 1989Hornberger, , 2003Hornberger, , 2004Romaine, 2009;Sallabank, 2013). Some explore the interplay between a country's state language and immigrant languages (Blommaert, 2010;Cohen, 1987;Fishman, 1991Fishman, , 2001Hornberger, 1989Hornberger, , 2003 There is by now sufficient knowledge (generated by scholars currently informing the analysis in language learning studies) to understand the extent to which indigenous-and diasporic communities, and classroom students, cope with challenges in foreign/second language learning.…”

“…immigrants. Thus, considerable pieces of fabric of studies consist in efforts to develop a body of work within the mainstream applied linguistics (e.g., Wei and Cook, 2009), educational linguistics (e.g., Hornberger, 1989Hornberger, , 2003Hornberger, , 2004 and sociolinguisitcs (e.g., Blommaert, 2010;Fishman, 1991Fishman, , 2001). …”

“…Informed by the two parallel theoretical frames ( figure 1 and 2), the study also adopted an approach to data which combined and coordinated field methods and perspectives derived from traditions of ethnography of communication, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics (Blommaert, 2010;Schilling, 2013), educational linguistics (Hornberger, 1989(Hornberger, , 2002(Hornberger, , 2003(Hornberger, , 2004, language education/learning. More specifically, this research adopted the qualitative approach in data gathering and data analysis (Merriam, 2009), due to the fact that the study did not obtain a large sample size and it will not be statistically representative and the results will not be generalizable to the target population of millions of Thai working class in the service industry and in the labor market as a whole.…”