ICssriusetisn ain A Tlefaarcoh e&r LEidliuac Baatirotno,l oSmumé mer 2017 11 Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers Honoring Working-Class Non-Standard Language Use in the Bilingual Education Classroom Cristina Alfaro San Diego State University Lilia Bartolomé University of Massachusetts, Boston Deslenguadas. (We are de-tongued.) Somos los del español deficiente. (We are those with deficient Spanish.) We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestizaje (your linguistic miscegenation), the subject of your burla (the subject of your derision). Because we speak with tongues of fire, we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally, and linguistically somos huérfanos (we are orphans)—we speak an orphan tongue. (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 58) As Gloria Anzaldúa’s quote eloquently describes, Mexicanos/Chicanos in the United States have historically suffered derision and mistreat- ment by the mainstream culture because of their use of nonstandard Spanish and English, as well as codeswitching (alternating between two or more languages or language varieties). In the field of education, codeswitching and the use of nonstandard English and native languages among low socioeconomic status (SES) linguistic minority students, including Latinos, have generally been recognized as a deficiency that needs to be repaired (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Garcia, 2014). Thus there is an urgent need to help mainstream teachers develop ideological clarity Cristina Alfaro is an associate professor in the Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education in the College of Education at San Diego State University, San Diego, California. Lilia Bartolomé is a professor of applied linguistics in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Their e- mail addresses are [email protected] & [email protected] Volume 26, Number 2, Summer 2017 12 Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers that will enable them to interrogate their own deficit views of low-SES emergent bilinguals, and of the nonstandard languages they bring to the classroom. Recognizing the need to prepare mainstream teachers to work more humanely and effectively with low-SES linguistic minority students, we maintain that it is crucial to explicitly help prospective bilingual teachers develop their ideological clarity in parallel with their peda- gogical expertise. This will enable them to understand nonstandard language use more accurately and objectively, and resist responding to their students from a biased viewpoint. Bartolomé (2002) explains that ideological clarity refers to the ongoing process that requires individuals to compare and contrast their explanations of the existing social order with those propagated by the dominant society. The expectation is that, by consciously juxtaposing ideologies, teachers will understand if, when, and how their belief systems uncritically reflect those of the dominant society and support unfair and inequitable conditions (p. 168). Much of our previous work focuses on the need to develop mainstream teachers’ ideological clarity in order to demystify deficit views, White supremacist assimilationist ideas, and meritocratic ideological myths (Alfaro, 2008, 2015; Bartolomé, 2008, 2010). In this chapter, we specifically highlight linguicist ideologies that are reproduced in bilingual classrooms and tout standard language as superior to nonstandard language varieties, which are viewed as undesirable.1 In fact, while one key goal of Spanish- English bilingual education is to prepare emergent bilinguals to master both standard Spanish and English, it too often comes at the expense of the linguistic capital that low-SES emergent bilinguals bring to school (Fitts, 2006; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Garcia, 2014; Scanlan & Palmer, 2009). Our position is that a concerted effort must be made to prepare teachers, including those who speak their students’ native languages and are members of the same cultural groups, to perceive potentially negative language ideologies more clearly and intervene more proactively to prevent the potential discriminatory manifestation of such ideologies. Being a member of the same ethnolinguistic group does not guarantee that a bilingual teacher holds counterhegemonic views of her low-SES students. In fact, many Latino bilingual teachers and prospective teach- ers have likely been infected with deficit and linguicist views of their linguistic minority students and must consciously resist internalizing and acting on these negative ideologies. In our experience, many Latino and bilingual teachers perceive the social order to be fair and just and thus see it as their role to assimilate their students into the school culture and to ways of speaking and being in the world. These teachers generally do not see a need to work against Issues in Teacher Education Cristina Alfaro & Lilia Bartolomé 13 the grain, as they find no fault with the schools’ ideological and material conditions; they believe students need to learn to fit in and leave their “deficient” cultural and language practices behind. Furthermore, the internal colonization of Latinos, particularly Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, is fully evident when bilingual teachers show a preference for students who most resemble the White middle-class “ideal” (Acuna, 2014; Bloom, 1991). Research suggests that some Latino/a teachers more favorably view lighter skinned Mexican American pupils who speak standard varieties of Spanish and/or English (Bloom, 1991). Moreover, it has of- ten been our experience that Latino/a bilingual teachers promote early exit into English and serve as apologists for efforts to sabotage native language development. As we discuss later in this chapter, the research has begun to capture harmful hegemonic ideologies and practices in bilingual classrooms, such as teachers’ disdain for students who speak nonstandard varieties of Spanish and codeswitch, and their preference for students who speak English. As of this writing, bilingual schools continue to proliferate across the nation, particularly in California, which is home to one-third of these schools (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2014). Given this extremely rapid growth and bilingual education’s historical commitment to improving low-SES emergent bilingual students’ academic achievement, the press- ing need to prepare ideologically clear bilingual teachers has become even more evident (Gándara & Hopkins, 2010; Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Gándara & Maxwell-Jolly, 2000; Garcia, 2014; Gonzalez & Darling Hammond, 1997; Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2012, 2013). We argue that teachers, in addition to developing humanistic bilingual pedagogical practices, must learn to identify hurtful dominant culture ideologies and their manifestation in the classroom so they can be prepared to intervene and create optimal learning condition for all their students. In this article, we first discuss the concept of ideological clarity and the need for teachers to develop this ability. We then share the general research on teachers’ ideological beliefs and attitudes about linguistic minority students, including specific research on bilingual teachers’ perceptions of nonstandard language use in the bilingual classroom. We conclude by discussing the incorporation of a “cultural wealth” model into the study of ideology in bilingual teacher education as a strategy to potentially improve the academic and linguistic achievement of linguistic minority students. Throughout the chapter we offer real-life vignettes to illustrate some of our key points and thus render our arguments more concrete and accessible. We want to point out that we write from the vantage point of ac- tive Chicana language-teacher educators and researchers, and former Volume 26, Number 2, Summer 2017 14 Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers bilingual education teachers and administrators. It is important to note that most of our teaching and research experience has been in English- Spanish language contexts, so most of our examples in this chapter thus reflect that experience. Given that a majority of current bilingual teacher candidates are products of restrictive language policies and have been schooled under the umbrella of structured English immersion, where the acquisition of standard English and assimilation into the dominant culture are the ultimate goals, we offer what we hope will be taken as constructive criticism from two teacher educators with 30+ years in the field of bilingual education. Today’s teacher candidates typically enter bilingual teacher credential programs without ever having had the opportunity to deconstruct their unconscious ideologies and free their minds from hegemonic teaching and learning practices (Ek, Sánchez, & Cerecer, 2013). We believe that having a well-articulated ideological stance can help a teacher navigate the political agendas they encounter, such as restrictive language poli- cies and anti-Latino public sentiment. We subscribe to an ideological framework that challenges the notion of biliteracy development as a monolithic construct. We view it instead as the balancing of asymmetrical power relations embedded in complex sociocultural relations and ten- sions. Given the growing recognition of the significance of ideological factors in education and the need to address them, the conversations of critical bilingual teacher educators have begun to center around the challenge of identifying, naming, and confronting the sociopolitical and ideological aspects of bilingual teacher preparation and professional development (Alfaro, 2008, 2015; Bartolomé, 2009; 2010; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Garcia, 2009, 2014; Sayer, 2012, 2013). Teacher Ideological Clarity: What Is It and Why Do Bilingual Teachers Need to Develop It? Giroux (1983, 2001) writes that critical theorists have always recognized that the most important forms of domination are cultural and economic, and that the pedagogical force of our culture, with its emphasis on belief and persuasion, is a crucial element of how we think about politics and enact forms of resistance and social transformation. Therefore, the explicit study of ideology should be one key principle in the preparation of educators. Darder, Baltodano, and Torres (2003) maintain that the study of ideology helps “teachers to evaluate critically their practice and to better recognize how the culture of the dominant class becomes embedded in the hidden curriculum that silence[s] stu- dents and structurally reproduce[s] the dominant cultural assumptions Issues in Teacher Education Cristina Alfaro & Lilia Bartolomé 15 and practice[s] that thwart democratic education” (p. 13). They recom- mend that teachers gain a firm understanding of dominant ideologies and develop effective counterhegemonic discourses that can resist and transform oppressive practices (Darder et al., 2003). Gramsci (1935/1971) defined ideology as the power of ruling class ideas to overshadow and eradicate competing views, becoming in effect the commonsense view of the world. He theorizes that it is precisely because schools and other institutions successfully perpetuate dominant ideologies and legitimize the existing order that dominant groups need not oppress people deliberately or alter their consciousness. Given their pervasiveness, ruling ideologies as perpetuated in schools are generally invisible, and where they are perceived they are generally considered “natural.” In fact, Eagleton (1991) explains that, because a society per- ceives hegemonic ideologies (such as deficit views of linguistic minority students and romanticized, supremacist views of middle-class White students) to be natural and self-evident, alternative ideas are generally overlooked because they are considered unthinkable. He maintains that dominant “ideologies exist because there are things which must at all costs not be thought, let alone spoken” (p. 58). Consequently, we contend that, in addition to mastering the neces- sary technical skills and content knowledge, bilingual teachers need to acquire the critical skills that will enable them to deconstruct the so- called natural and commonsense negative perceptions they may hold about their low-SES, immigrant, and other linguistic minority students. In fact, the limited research on teachers’ ideological orientations suggests that they typically reflect the dominant culture’s deficit assimilation- ist, classist, linguicist, and racist views of these students, the language varieties they speak, and the communities they come from (Ek et al., 2013; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Sleeter, 1993, 1994; Zeichner, 2003). Freire (1993) reminds us that teaching and learning in schools constitutes a political act tied to the ideological forces that operate on behalf of the dominant class. Education never is, has been, or will be a neutral enterprise (p. 127). If teachers are to experience a breakthrough to epistemological solidarity, they must strive to become ideologically clear, particularly on issues of standard and nonstandard language use in the dual language classroom, so as to “announce and denounce” ideo- logical or structural obstacles to teaching for equity and social justice. Unmasking Dominant Discriminatory Ideologies: What Do We Know about Teachers’ Ideological Orientations? Although no research definitively links teachers’ ideological stances Volume 26, Number 2, Summer 2017 16 Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers with particular instructional practices, many scholars have suggested that their ideological orientations are often reflected in their beliefs and attitudes and in the way they interact with students in the classroom (Co- chran-Smith, 2004; Hollins, 2014; Marx, 2006; Marx & Pennington, 2003; Nieto, 2005; Sleeter, 1993, 1994). In a recent literature review on teachers’ beliefs about English language learners, Lucas, Villegas, & Martin (2013) conclude that additional research is needed because many findings are inconclusive. Nevertheless, they note that various studies suggest that teachers continue to perceive emergent bilinguals as deficient. Interestingly, although there is a profusion of literature examining educators’ beliefs and attitudes, few systematic attempts have been made to examine the political and ideological dimensions of these beliefs and attitudes, or how educators’ worldviews reflect particular ideological orientations. Indeed, teachers’ beliefs and attitudes tend to be treated in the literature as overly psychologized apolitical constructs that magically spring from the earth and “merely” reflect personality types, individual values, and personal predispositions that have little to do with the larger political, ideological, social, and economic order. In other words, we know little about whether or how teachers view and rationalize the existing social order in terms of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language variety spoken, and whether or not their views influence how they treat and teach low-status, linguistic minority students. Moreover, there is still little acknowledgment that teachers’ beliefs about the legitimacy of the greater social order, and about the unequal power relations it creates among cultural groups at the school and classroom level, be taken into account to improve the educational processes and outcomes of linguistic minority education. Thus, although limited, teacher education research indicates that prospective teachers, regardless of their ethnic background, often have beliefs and attitudes about the existing social order that reflect potentially harmful dominant ideologies, and that they do so unconsciously and uncritically (Alfaro, et al., 2015; Davis, 1994; Gomez, 1994; Gonsalves, 1996, 2008; Haberman, 1991; Lucas, Villegas & Martin, 2013; Marx, 2006; Marx & Pennington, 2003; Sleeter, 1993, 1994). We maintain that educa- tors who thus accept the existing social order will likely perceive—and possibly treat—low-SES linguistic minorities who speak nonstandard language varieties as being at the bottom of the hierarchy of social status and power (Valdes, 1998). Key dominant ideologies held by educators include the belief that the existing social order—that is, the meritocracy—is fair and just, and that disadvantaged cultural groups are responsible for their own socioeconomic situation. In addition, deficit views of non-White and poor Issues in Teacher Education Cristina Alfaro & Lilia Bartolomé 17 students continue to be held by educators (Valencia, 1997; Valencia & Solórzano, 1997). Furthermore, many educators continue to subscribe to assimilationist viewpoints and believe that linguistic minority and immigrant students should conform to the mainstream culture. It is important to note that non-White immigrants typically arrive in the United States ignorant of the fact that a racialized social hierarchy exists and that it will affect the way they are perceived and treated (Gibson, 1988; Ogbu, 1987). This hierarchy is evident in the difference between how White immigrants and non-White newcomers have been assimilated. Ronald Schmidt (cited in Wiley, 1999) considers the colonial legacy when pointing out that the assimilation experience of linguistic minorities of color has been noticeably different from that of European immigrants, in that the education offered to non-White colonized or enslaved groups was exclusively assimilationist and functioned not to integrate the groups into the dominant culture but to subordinate and socialize them for second-class citizenship (authors’ emphasis; Wiley, 1999, p. 28). It is important to reiterate that, even though language and education policies aimed at European immigrants and non-White linguistic minority groups can be described as “assimilationist,” those for non-Whites (i.e., Indigenous peoples, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Hawaiian Americans) involved a dimension of subordi- nation rather than integration. A third belief related to an “assimilate to subordinate” orientation is deficit ideology, also referred to in the literature as the social pathology or cultural deprivation model, which has the longest history of any edu- cational perspective or “theory” (Flores, 2005; Menchaca, 1997; Valencia, 1997). Valencia (1997), who has traced its evolution over three centuries, found that the deficit model explains that the disproportionate share of academic problems among minority student is due largely to patholo- gies or deficits in their sociocultural backgrounds, such as cognitive and linguistic deficiencies (our emphasis). He explained that such “deficit” explanations continue to be the most prevalent in education (Valencia, 1997). It is our position that by not unmasking deficit thinking for what it really is—hegemonic ideology—it continues to exist and mutate in teacher education classrooms because, even though multicultural edu- cation attempts to “interrupt notions of deficit thinking, [it is] . . . often ‘contaminated by other forms of deficit thinking’” (Pearl, 1997, p. 215). The combination of a meritocratic view of the social order, an “assimi- late to subordinate” colonial tradition, and a linguistic deficit orientation proves especially dangerous because it rationalizes a disregard for the nonstandard language varieties spoken at home by working-class lin- guistic- minority students. Educators who do not identify and interrogate Volume 26, Number 2, Summer 2017 18 Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers their negative ideological orientations may unknowingly reproduce the existing “assimilate to subordinate” social order (Gonsalves, 1996, 2008; Marx, 2006; Marx & Pennington, 2003). Our own research (Alfaro, 2008; Alfaro et al., 2015; Bartolomé, 2004, 2008) suggests that many successful teachers have a counterhegemonic ideological orientation that enables them to question unfair and dis- criminatory practices in their schools. In studies of effective educators of linguistic minority students, we found that these educators reject dis- criminatory ideologies such as White supremacy, deficit views of low-SES nonmainstream students, and assimilation as a goal. They advocated instead for practicing “authentic cariño” (care) and incorporating their students’ primary languages and cultural values into their school culture and curriculum (Bartolomé, 2008). Furthermore, because they recognized that their minority students were not operating on a level playing field, these educators embraced their role as advocates and their responsibility to level the field for their students. These findings highlight the agency that teachers and other educators can wield in their work to create schools that are more just and democratic. Our findings also suggest that the formal study of ideology should be an essential component of any teacher education course of study. By critically studying dominant ideologies and how they manifest in schools, prospective teachers can develop critical thinking similar to that articulated by educators in the studies previously shared (Alfaro, 2008; Alfaro, et al., 2015; Bartolomé, 2004, 2008). They can begin to be agents of change as they develop critical thinking around hegemonic ideologies and adopt an ethical posture accordingly. As part of their learning about potentially harmful ideologies and the typical impact they have, bilingual teachers require explicit sociolinguistic instruction around nonstandard language use, particularly in light of the student populations they work with. This sociolinguistic understanding is expected to give teachers the tools they need to create their pedagogical structures—structures that will, on the one hand, enhance linguistic minority students’ ability to acquire standard Spanish and English and, on the other, create spaces in which the students’ cultural voices can emerge. In other words, the aim is for these students to succeed within the expectations of the school culture without having to subordinate their own working-class home cultures and language varieties. Issues in Teacher Education Cristina Alfaro & Lilia Bartolomé 19 Standard and Nonstandard Languages: A Critical Sociolinguistic Analysis Despite the Spanish language varieties and codeswitching typically present in bilingual classrooms, bilingual teacher preparation programs focus on what is considered the essential content knowledge and skills needed to teach in bilingual contexts; this curriculum includes course- work to develop these teachers’ standard Spanish proficiency. However, because few teacher educators master standard Spanish themselves and Spanish language teacher preparation materials are rare, the challenge is great. Furthermore, after decades of English-only public school instruc- tion, many prospective bilingual teachers have weak standard Spanish skills. Nationwide efforts are currently underway to improve teacher preparation practices related to teaching academic content in Spanish (Guerrero & Valadez, 2011). We agree that such efforts are important, but we maintain that is insufficient and inappropriate to strengthen prospective bilingual teachers’ standard Spanish language competence without also addressing dominant ideologies and asymmetrical power relations. Moreover, given the hegemonic nature of these issues, many prospective teachers have likely developed deficit views of their low-SES linguistic minority students of color. The following vignette illustrates the need for bilingual teachers to recognize and monitor their low regard for students’ nonstandard Span- ish language use and codeswitching practices. During one of Alfaro’s classrooms visits, she observed a content-area Spanish science experi- ment where students worked collaboratively. Yaniel, a low-SES Latino student, was fully engaged in his project when he excitedly stated, “Es que tú le meneaste el baking soda antes de ponerle suficiente agua.” (“That happened because you wiggled the baking soda before putting sufficient water.”) At that moment, Mrs. Franco interrupted and ada- mantly interjected, “Cómo que le meneaste, esa es una palabra grotesca (authors’ emphasis), la palabra indicada es mezclar . . . compañeros, por favor, díganle a Yaniel como se dice ‘baking soda’ en español. . . le dicen, bicarbonate de sodio.” (“What do you mean, wiggled, that is a gross word—the correct word is mixed…students, please tell Yaniel how to say ‘baking soda’ in Spanish…they tell him bicarbonate de sodio.”) Mrs. Franco clearly adheres to the need to keep languages separate and to use solely standard Spanish in her efforts to keep the language, as she described it, “pure.” Her teaching and learning practices appear to be informed by what Ofelia Garcia (2014) refers to as “compartmental- ized and monoglossic notions of language and bilingualism” (p. 101). Mrs. Franco risked humiliating Yaniel, and her disgusted reaction to Volume 26, Number 2, Summer 2017 20 Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers his using the word meneaste likely discouraged the creative, fluid, and dynamic nature of linguistic minority students’ nonstandard language use (García, 2014). Mrs. Franco’s ideological orientation toward language use in the classroom appears to mirror the prevalent linguicist beliefs that are perpetuated in mainstream classrooms, and it is shocking, though not entirely unexpected, to see this harmful ideology manifested in a bilin- gual/dual language classroom by a committed Latina bilingual educa- tor. Yaniel’s tongue was essentially being “yanked,” due to the teacher’s insistence that standard language is a superior choice over students’ home vernacular (Anzaldua, 1987). Although Mrs. Franco’s goal was for her fourth-grade students to become proficient bilinguals and biliterates, her pedagogy was informed by her deficit view of nonstandard language use and codeswitching. It is important to understand that teachers’ disdain for nonstandard languages is not based on a linguistic rationale but on dominant ideolo- gies that proclaim the superiority of standard Spanish, which has little to do with the language structure and a great deal to do with learned attitudes and biases, which are shaped by classist, linguicist, and racist notions intended to exclude rather than include (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Garcia, 2014). Ofelia Garcia’s research demands that we leave behind the deficit ideologies that surround the concepts of standard and non- standard language teaching and learning, and begin now to reinstate the linguistic databases that comprise bilingual education. How Are Nonstandard Varieties of Spanish Treated in Bilingual Classrooms? As bilingual educators, we like to believe that our emergent bilin- gual students are sheltered from much of the bias, mistreatment, and misunderstanding that occur in the world. However, despite the success of many bilingual/dual language and transitional bilingual education programs, the research suggests that social class and linguistic bias do show up in bilingual classrooms (Cervantes-Soon, 2014; Garcia, Lei, 2014; Hernandez, 2015). In fact, given bilingual educators’ commitment to producing bilingual students who are strong in the primary language, we often obligate our students to leave their nonstandard vernaculars at the door, in effect tongue-tying them (Delpit, 2008; Montaño et al., 2005). The unspoken assumption is that primary language teachers must aggressively model the standard because students come to the classroom speaking “uneducated” nonstandard varieties or “dialects” (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Garcia, 2014). Issues in Teacher Education