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Manka M. Varghese Associate Professor University of Washington College of Education

Teacher education for language minority teachers in the United States: Perspectives in preparing teachers. Manka M. Varghese Associate Professor University of Washington College of Education Seattle, Washington mankav@uw.edu MOSAIC Centre, University of Birmingham June 11, 2012.

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Manka M. Varghese Associate Professor University of Washington College of Education

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  1. Teacher education for language minority teachers in the United States: Perspectives in preparing teachers Manka M. Varghese Associate Professor University of Washington College of Education Seattle, Washington mankav@uw.edu MOSAIC Centre, University of Birmingham June 11, 2012

  2. 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

  3. 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 racializedminorities, from immigrant communities and from low-income backgrounds (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 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

  4. 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

  5. In pairs: What do you see as the most critical challenges and ways forward in preparing teachers of language minority students?

  6. 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)

  7. 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)

  8. Salient issues/dilemmas/discussion points in language minority teacher preparation

  9. 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)

  10. 2) Changing teacher roles and knowledge base • Collaborative teaching • Grade level/mainstream teachers • Language minority teachers (Creese, 2005; English, 2012; English & Varghese, 2010)

  11. 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)

  12. 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?

  13. 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?

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