Más allá de la lengua: Embracing the Messiness as Bilingual Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT

Using testimonios as counterstories, we—a Latina/Indigenous immigrant and white U.S. male—examine our professional trajectories while noting changes that shaped our identities as educators and researchers within a bilingual teacher preparation program. The dual purpose of this paper is (a) to highlight our struggles as bilingual teacher educators to change both our own practices and those of our institutions in preparing future bilingual teachers to be politically engaged agents of change and (b) to connect our two experiences to advance the conversation around language ideologies, pedagogies, and activism among bilingual teacher educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual teacher educators
• pre-service bilingual teachers
• reflexión
• testimonios

Acknowledgments

This paper is dedicated to the participants of this study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blanca Caldas

Blanca Caldas is a transnational indigenous/Latina scholar and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research focuses on bilingual teacher education, minoritized language practices, and critical pedagogy. She presents her work in local, national, and international conferences (including ethnographic performances), and publishes in both English and Spanish.

Daniel Heiman

Daniel Heiman is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education at the University of North Texas (Denton). His research uses critical ethnographic methods and examines how stakeholders make sense of and interrogate neoliberal processes and policies in Dual Language Bilingual Education contexts, and critical pedagogies in bilingual teacher preparation.