Bilingualism, Biliteracy, Biculturalism, and Critical Consciousness for All: Proposing a Fourth Fundamental Goal for Two-Way Dual Language Education

Abstract

Two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share three core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. This article proposes a fourth core goal: critical consciousness. Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture, and race backgrounds, equity is unfortunately still a challenge in TWDL classrooms and schools. We argue that centering critical consciousness—or fostering among teachers, parents, and children an awareness of the structural oppression that surrounds us and a readiness to take action to correct it—can support increased equity and social justice in TWDL education. We elaborate four elements of critical consciousness: interrogating power, critical listening, historicizing schools, and embracing discomfort. We illustrate these elements with examples from TWDL research and practice. In addition, we describe how critical consciousness impacts and radicalizes the other three core goals, in turn supporting the development of more successful, equitable, and socially just TWDL schools.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional Resources

1. Critical Consciousness for All

Teaching Tolerance: https://www.tolerance.org/

This website supported by the Southern Poverty Law Center is replete with resources and lesson plans for teachers of all grades on a range of social justice issues. Primary concern of the organization is to support teaching all students to engage positively in diverse communities.

2. Rethinking Schools: https://www.rethinkingschools.org/

This online and print magazine for teachers produces four new issues per year with commentary on current critical issues in public education and lesson/unit plans and ideas for teaching for justice. Archives are available on the website, along with their published books that compile resources within particular content areas or around particular topics.

3. Barbian, E., González, G. C., & Mejía, P. (Eds). (2017). Rethinking bilingual education: Welcoming home languages in our classrooms. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.

This book is full of accessible and inspiring articles by teachers, scholars, parents, and activists engaged in bilingual education on a range of topics related to educating bilingual students K–12. It includes lesson plan ideas, interviews with activists, narratives from teachers or bilingual people, thoughtful commentary about struggles against injustice and is a great resource for teacher education programs focused on multilingual education.

4. Nelson Flores’ Blog: The Educational Linguist.

https://educationallinguist.wordpress.com/

Dr. Nelson Flores, Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, produces accessible, critical short articles that support educators, parents, and community members to develop critical perspectives around language, race, and power.

Notes

¹ Although there are TWDL programs in many languages, we will refer to Spanish and English as the languages in TWDL programs throughout this article both because most programs in the United States teach these two languages and because Spanish has historically been a particularly low-status language in the U.S. context (García, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deborah K. Palmer

Deborah K. Palmer is a Professor at the School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder.

Claudia Cervantes-Soon

Claudia Cervantes-Soon is an Associate Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University.

Lisa Dorner

Lisa Dorner is an Associate Professor at the Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis, University of Missouri.

Daniel Heiman

Daniel Heiman is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Teacher Education & Administration, University of North Texas.