Midwestern In‐service Teachers' Raciolinguistic Mindset and Pedagogies for Emergent Bilingual Learners: Whose Equity and Excellence Are We Seeking For?

• Published in: TESOL quarterly 2024-12, Vol.58 (4), p.1401-1427
• Main Authors: Song, Kim H., Schultz, Lyndsie Marie, Child, Gregory, Kim, Sujin, Dorner, Lisa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American English; Bilingual Students; Bilingualism; Educational Strategies; English; Ideology; Language ideologies; Language Usage; Language Variation; Language varieties; North American English; Professional development; Race; Sociolinguistics; Teachers; Teaching
• ISSN: 0039-8322; 1545-7249
• DOI: 10.1002/tesq.3280

This mixed methods study examined how a National Professional Development Grant project's first cohort (2018–2020) in the Midwest impacted mostly White and monolingual inservice teachers who work with emergent bilingual learners (EBLs). Two research questions (RQs) guided this study: RQ1: What were the inservice teachers English language ideologies and their confidence in teaching EBLs after they completed professional development on racially, linguistically, and culturally (RLC) responsive teaching mindsets and pedagogies? and RQ2: How did the inservice teachers respond to prompts about raciolinguistic ideologies and EBLs' use of Standard American English? Quantitative t‐tests and factor analyses on pre‐post teacher surveys were conducted to investigate RQ1. Qualitative open and axial analyses on teachers' reflections to prompts about language ideologies were completed for RQ2. Quantitative results revealed that a majority of the participating teachers reported improved confidence in developing RLC responsive teaching strategies for EBLs. At the same time, their reflections showed that they persisted in their deeply‐rooted raciolinguistic ideologies about English, even though they intended to acknowledge and appreciate EBLs' use of language varieties.