Overview
 Background
 Working definition of language minority students
 Context: Educational and language policy in the US/ Teacher
certification
 Pursuits as a teacher educator & researcher
 Highlighted literature in language minority teacher education
 Current issues/dilemmas/discussion points in U.S. teacher
preparation
 Definitions and applications of language
 Changing teacher role and knowledge base
 Social justice/advocacy
 My ongoing work
 Discussion questions
Working definition
 Language minorities:
 immigrants (not international students),who speak a
primary language other than English at home, and who
can be discriminated against on the basis of being a
nonnative/outer circle speaker of English (Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1992)
 often racialized minorities, from immigrant communities
and from low-income backgrounds (Suárez-Orozco & SuárezOrozco, 2003)
 studies & theories of Globalization (Block & Cameron,
2005), Immigration (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2003;
Suárez-Orozo, Suárez-Orozco & Todorova, 2008),
Multilingualism, Critical Race Theory (Yosso, 2005) are
weaved into this understanding
Context: Language and
educational policy in the
US/ Teacher preparation
 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) & Title III
 Mainstreaming
 Restrictive language environments/ Dual language
programs
 Endorsement – primary or secondary
In pairs:
What do you see as the most critical challenges and
ways forward in preparing teachers of language
minority students?
Pursuits as a teacher
educator & researcher
 Moving away from prescriptive knowledge base of
language minority teaching
 Focusing on teacher knowledge, skills, AND TEACHER
IDENTITY (Varghese, 2010)
 Using various conceptual frameworks (Alsup, 2006;
Bourdieu, 1986; Giddens, 1984; Morgan, 2004; Varghese et.al,
2005)
 Making links between different disciplines
 Engaging in various research settings/pursuing different
questions (Motha & Varghese, in preparation; Varghese et al.,
in preparation; Varghese, 2006, 2008, 2010; Varghese &
Johnston, 2007)
Highlighted literature in
language minority
teachers’ classrooms/work
 Research studies on language minority teachers’
professions & daily practice
(Creese, 2005; Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Varghese 2006, 2008; Tsui, 2003
Skilton-Sylvester, 2003)
 Classroom discourse, academic language development, &
instructional moves in language minority classrooms
(Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Gibbons, 2002, 2006; Moshkovitch, 2000,
2007)
 Social justice language minority teacher education
(Althanases & de Oliveira, 2010; Hawkins, 2011)
Salient
issues/dilemmas/discussio
n points in language
minority teacher
preparation
1) Definitions and
applications of academic
language
 Definitions of academic language (Gutiérrez, 2002;
Valdés, 2004)
 Applications to teacher preparation
 Task-related (Bunch et al., 2001)
 Discipline-specific (Barwell, 2005; Fang & Schleppegrell,
2008; Moshkovitch, 2000, 2007)
 Scaffolding (Gibbons, 2002, 2006; Walqui & van Lier, 2010)
2) Changing teacher roles
and knowledge base
 Collaborative teaching
 Grade level/mainstream teachers
 Language minority teachers
(Creese, 2005; English, 2012; English & Varghese, 2010)
3) Social justice/advocacy
 Personal backgrounds and experiences of teachers
 Teacher preparation
(Cochran-Smith et al., 2009; Dubetz & deJong,2011; Telléz &
Varghese, in press; Varghese et al., in preparation)
My ongoing work as a
teacher
educator/researcher
 How can we re-frame teacher education to be also
focusing on the project of developing teacher identity?
(Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Varghese, 2006, 2008, 2010)
 How do we create ‘social justice pedagogies’ in our
teacher preparation programs and for our student
teachers to enact? (Hawkins, 2011, Varghese & Motha, in
preparation)
 What types of expertise count and how do we develop
these for novice language minority teachers? How are
these different for grade-level/mainstream teachers?
Discussion questions
 What aspects of the presentation resonated with you as a
teacher educator, especially when thinking about the
context(s) in which you are teaching? What other issues
were not brought up that are relevant about your
context(s)?
 What expertise does your program help novice language
minority teachers develop and how does it do that?
 What types of experiences and reshaping would need to
be made to make teacher identity a central aspect of your
program? To what extent would this be useful or not?