Preparing teacher candidates for bilingual practices: toward a multilingual stance in mainstream teacher education

ABSTRACT

Teacher preparation programs throughout the United States have begun to include issues of second language teaching and learning in their curriculum in an effort to better prepare their teacher candidates to meet the needs of the increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse student population in K-12 schools. In this article, we argue for the importance of including the development of a multilingual stance in these efforts, which is mainstream teacher candidates’ willingness and ability to engage in bi/multilingual practices. The article first reviews recent efforts that shows the importance of using students’ full linguistic repertoire in teaching bilingual learners across classroom settings, including mainstream classrooms. It then provides a synthesis of practices in teacher education that aim to scaffold teacher candidates’ development of a multilingual stance. We conclude with suggestions for further research and implications for teacher preparation.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual students
• additive bilingualism
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The article therefore does not focus on teacher preparation for bilingual or dual language education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ester de Jong

Ester de Jong is Professor in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education Program at the University of Colorado Denver. Prior to Denver, she was the Director of the School of Teaching and Learning and a Professor in ESOL/Bilingual Education at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Her research focuses on dual language education, language-in-education policy, and preparing general education teachers to work with bilingual learners. Dr. de Jong was President of TESOL International Association in 2017–2018.

Jiameng Gao

Jiameng Gao is a doctoral student specializing in ESOL and Bilingual Education at the College of Education, University of Florida. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Master of Science in Education in 2016. She was a former content developer in teacher professional development of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Beijing, China. Her research interests include mainstream teacher preparation for ELLs, immigrant children identity and language development, translanguaging and social justice.