Multilingual pedagogies and pre-service teachers: Implementing “language as a resource” orientations in teacher education programs

ABSTRACT

While Ruiz’s (1984) influential work on language orientations has substantively influenced how we study and talk about language planning, few teacher education programs today actually embed his framework in the praxis of preparing pre-service and practicing teachers. Hence, the primary purpose of this article is to demonstrate new understandings and expansions of Ruiz’s language-as-resource (LAR) approach and ways in which teacher education programs can model this orientation in their own classes, including those programs, like ours, that prepare mostly monolingual pre-service and in-service teachers to work with bi/multilingual students. The authors pursue this by laying out the theoretical framework for multilingual pedagogies that approach teacher education through the LAR orientation and then illustrate these pedagogies as they are realized in their own teacher education programs with the aim of moving closer to and expanding on Ruiz’s original proposal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Theresa Catalano

Theresa Catalano is Assistant Professor of Second Language Education/Applied Linguistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on education and migration and critical language studies. She teaches courses in language education such as Intercultural Communication, Schooling and the Multilingual Mind, and Linguistics for the ELL Teacher.Edmund ‘Ted’ Hamann is a Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with a courtesy appointment in Anthropology. He began his career as a bilingual family literacy teacher in Kansas City, piloting an experimental curriculum—Family Reading—that emphasized language-as-resource.

Edmund T. Hamann

Theresa Catalano is Assistant Professor of Second Language Education/Applied Linguistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on education and migration and critical language studies. She teaches courses in language education such as Intercultural Communication, Schooling and the Multilingual Mind, and Linguistics for the ELL Teacher.Edmund ‘Ted’ Hamann is a Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with a courtesy appointment in Anthropology. He began his career as a bilingual family literacy teacher in Kansas City, piloting an experimental curriculum—Family Reading—that emphasized language-as-resource.