Teachers’ language ideologies and practices on the use of Spanish in science classrooms

Abstract

This study explores teachers’ use of Spanish in sixth-grade bilingual science classrooms at an urban middle school in Texas. We used a case study approach to study how two Spanish-English bilingual teachers utilized Spanish during instruction in a unit on space exploration and their beliefs on Spanish use in English-dominant science classrooms. The results showed that the teachers used Spanish mainly for classroom management purposes like redirecting behavior and reiterating instructions previously given in English. There were inconsistencies between teachers’ practices and beliefs regarding Spanish use. The school’s English-centered policy and a lack of validation of language as a resource for science learning hindered the use of Spanish as a tool for science learning. The implications of the findings for teacher professional development were discussed.

Keywords:

• bilingual science classroom
• middle school
• teacher language ideology
• translanguaging
• science learning

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the teachers who participated in the study, and acknowedge Huan Zhang for her inputs on the earlier draft of the literature review. Lastly, the authors are indebted to the editor’s and reviewers’ insightful feedback on the earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by an internal grant awarded to the third author by the University of Houston.