Enseñando en español: The need to support dual language bilingual education teachers' pedagogical language knowledge

Abstract

AbstractDual language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers, depending on the modality of the program, teach content areas (i.e., language arts, science, math, social studies) in a language other than English (LOTE) and English. DLBE teachers, who teach in Spanish, should be supported by school districts in meaningful ways. These districts should be equipped to provide the necessary academic and professional development for the DLBE teachers. This paper explores the increasing need to support DLBE teachers’ metalinguistic awareness as well as pedagogical language knowledge (see Bunch, 2013) in Spanish. Guided by Charmaz’ (2006) constructivist grounded theory, this paper analyzed ten transcribed audio interviews with a single DLBE teacher. Interview data included video-taped classroom observations (i.e., preplanning and postlesson implementation), robust field memos, and student artifacts. Data analysis suggested the need for further clarification as far as the teacher's own pedagogical language knowledge (PLK; Bunch, 2013) in Spanish. However, data also indicated that this particular educator was able to negotiate the linguistic and content demands of teaching language arts in Spanish by seeking multifaceted resources and using the full extent of her linguistic repertoire.