Vernacular Spanish as a promoter of critical consciousness in dual language bilingual education classrooms

ABSTRACT

Historically, Spanish-speaking students have not been allowed to use their home and community linguistic practices in their schooling in the U.S., even in most Spanish-English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, which require standard Spanish with strict language separation policies. These pedagogical practices have led to the reproduction of deficit language ideologies in DLBE classrooms that may harm students. In this essay, we call for programs to adopt vernacular forms of Spanish, including translanguaging practices, in bilingual and biliteracy instruction in order to meet the needs of Spanish-speaking students and combat deficit language ideologies and practices. From a critical pedagogical perspective, deliberate inclusion of vernacular Spanish (and translanguaging) in bilingualism and biliteracy is an ideal means to develop critical consciousness for students in DLBE, which can serve to combat deficit language ideologies, and aligns to the proposal of critical consciousness as the fourth goal of DLBE. We offer recommendations for teacher educators and DLBE practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual language education
• translanguaging
• vernacular Spanish
• deficit ideologies
• critical consciousness

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 This vignette is a hypothetical illustrative student-teacher interaction based on a composite of experiences authors have both experienced and observed in bilingual and dual language classrooms. Both authors are teacher educators who conduct research in DLBE classrooms and J. Freire is also a former DLBE classroom teacher.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juan A. Freire

Juan A. Freire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Brigham Young University. His research concentrates on equity in dual language bilingual education in the areas of development of policy and planning and multicultural/bilingual teacher education.

Erika Feinauer

Erika Feinauer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Brigham Young University. Her research focuses on the language and literacy development of young bilingual students and the role of identity and agency in these processes. Much of her research has been conducted with students and communities in dual language bilingual education programs.