Ramón Antonio Martínez

Teacher Agency in Bilingual Spaces: A Fresh Look at Preparing Teachers to Educate Latina/o Bilingual Children

This review poses an increasingly common—and increasingly urgent—question in the field of teacher education: How can teachers best be prepared to educate Latina/o bilingual learners? The answers that we offer here challenge some of the prevailing assumptions about language and bilingualism that inform current approaches to teacher preparation. To work effectively with bilingual learners, we argue, teachers need to develop a robust understanding of bilingualism and of the interactional dynamics of bilingual classroom contexts. Unfortunately, the conceptions of language and bilingualism portrayed in much of the teacher-directed literature fall short of offering teachers access to such understandings. In this review, we will make the case for developing materials for teachers that reflect both more up-todate theoretical understandings of language practices in bilingual communities and a more critically contextualized understanding of the power dynamics that operate in bilingual classroom contexts. We recognize that helping teachers come to these more robust understandings of bilingual language practices and the interactional dynamics of bilingual contexts implies an ideological shift for educators—and teacher educators—in the United States. Having made the case for rethinking how we talk to teachers about bilingualism in classroom contexts, we will venture to explore why this matters: What will teachers be better positioned to do once equipped with these understandings? It is our contention that such understandings will better position teachers to manage their classrooms for equity and learning for all students. Indeed, these more robust understandings of language and interaction are necessary if teachers are to capitalize on the flexibility and intelligence displayed by bilingual students as they engage in hybrid

Unpacking Ideologies of Linguistic Purism: How Dual Language Teachers Make Sense of Everyday Translanguaging.

This article draws on qualitative data from two Spanish-English dual language elementary classrooms to explore how teachers in these classrooms made sense of the everyday practice of bilingualism. Methodologically, this study relied on participant observation, video recording, and semi-structured interviews. Conceptually, this article draws on the notion of translanguaging to describe how these teachers and their students moved fluidly across multiple languages and dialects in their everyday interactions. Drawing on language ideological inquiry, this article illustrates that these teachers’ perspectives on translanguaging sometimes echoed ideologies of linguistic purism that emphasize language separation, while also reflecting counterhegemonic ideologies that privilege Spanish and promote bilingualism. Teachers’ everyday language use and instructional practices both reflected and contrasted with their stated ideologies. It is argued that a more nuanced understanding of teachers’ complex language ideologies can inform efforts to help them embrace translanguaging pedagogies that recognize and build on students’ everyday bilingualism.

“Do they even know that they do it?”: Exploring Awareness of Spanish-English Code-Switching in a Sixth-Grade English Language Arts Classroom

This article draws on scholarship in educational and linguistic anthropology to explore awareness of Spanish-English code-switching among bilingual Chicana/o and Latina/o students in a sixth-grade English Language Arts classroom. Analysis of qualitative data gathered via participant observation, video/audio recording, and semistructured interviews reveals that students articulated practical and discursive forms of awareness and that these forms of awareness were also sometimes embodied in their language use. It is argued that viewing awareness as a continuum affords a clearer understanding of the full range of their awareness by allowing for embodied reflections of awareness and shifts in individual speakers’ awareness across contexts.

Are You Gonna Show This to White People?: Chicana/o and Latina/o Students' Counter-Narratives on Race, Place, and Representation.

Abstract This article explores the recurring narratives on race, place and representation that emerged in the talk of Chicana/o and Latina/o sixth-graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles, California. Discourse analytic methods are used to closely examine how these narratives were constructed within the contexts of everyday classroom interactions. Drawing on the notion of counter-storytelling from critical race theory, the article highlights how these sixth-grade students articulated counter-narratives about who they were and what their community was like – often in direct opposition to what they perceived as white people’s stereotypical assumptions and misperceptions. It is argued that these narratives constitute a powerful and sophisticated critique of dominant narratives that frame working-class Chicana/o and Latina/o students in racist and pejorative terms. The article ends with a discussion of implications for understanding youth agency and the politics of representation.

A Digital Tool Grows (and Keeps Growing) from the Work of a Community of Writers.

This article reports on a collaborative inquiry into the use of a researcher-designed digital tool for the support of writing instruction in elementary classrooms. The digital tool in question is an online collection of original writing samples produced by elementary children that was conceptualized as a resource for coaching new writers using easily retrievable samples of “gems” produced by other young writers. This article describes the teacher education context from which the design of this tool emerged as well as the evaluation of this tool by a group of Master Reading Teacher candidates. Grounded in the literature on the use of mentor texts in writing instruction, this article highlights the role that authentic child-authored texts can play in supporting teachers’ instructional moves. The article ends with a discussion of implications for enhancing teacher professional development through the use of digital tools that can be utilized to promote reflective inquiry into writing pedagogy.