professional development for bilingual teachers in the united states: a site for articulating and...

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Professional Developmentfor Bilingual Teachers in theUnited States: A Site forArticulating and ContestingProfessional RolesManka VarghesePublished online: 26 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Manka Varghese (2004) Professional Development for BilingualTeachers in the United States: A Site for Articulating and Contesting ProfessionalRoles, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 7:2-3, 222-237,DOI: 10.1080/13670050408667810

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Professional Development for BilingualTeachers in the United States: A Site forArticulating and Contesting ProfessionalRoles

Manka VargheseUniversity of Washington, College of Education, Area of Curriculumand Instruction, Seattle, USA

Professional development for bilingual teachers has traditionally been viewed as aneutral site for training teachers. In the present study, a professional developmentfor bilingual teachers in the United States is explored through ethnographicmethods, speci�cally focusing on both the content delivery, and the interactionsbetween teacher educators and teachers. The present study shows how professionaldevelopment can become a site for the articulation and contestation of bilingualteacher professional roles. Speci�cally, it demonstrates how conceptualisations ofthe roles of bilingual teachers are often mired with differences and lack uniformity,especially because of the different backgrounds and settings teacher educators andteachers operate within. It points to the need to understand the different perspec-tives within the bilingual educational community. This research places bilingualteacher education within current understandings of learning and professional devel-opment, emphasising the situated nature of teaching and learning. Bilingual teach-ers and their development must be understood as agents who make choices andhave differentiated understandings of their profession, rather than as individualswho replicate the content and way they have been trained. This is especiallyimportant when we understand the multifaceted roles of bilingual teachers such aslanguage policy agents and advocates.

Keywords: bilingual teachers, professional development, teacher education, teacherlearning

IntroductionA number of scholars have described the waxing and waning of support

for bilingual education in the United States since the inception of the nationas it stands (Cazden & Snow, 1990; Crawford, 1999; Wiley, 2002). As thesesame scholars have noted, this ebb and �ow has mirrored the economic andsociopolitical conditions of the country, and how immigration policies haveplayed out under these circumstances. Ricento (1996) notes that during thepeak decades of immigration in the United States, ‘laws and initiatives werepassed restricting the linguistic, and in some cases, civil rights of non-Englishspeakers’ (1996: 4). In fact, as Hornberger (1990) states, ‘there can be littledoubt that the language-as-problem orientation has been the predominant onein the United States’ public sphere’ (1990: 24). Recently, the discourse sur-rounding bilingual education has been even more politically charged,especially if we consider the dismantling of bilingual education in California,Arizona and Massachussetts as well as the growing number of English-Only

1367-0050/04/02 0222-16 $20.00/0 Ó 2004 M. VargheseBILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM Vol. 7, No. 2&3, 2004

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223Professional Development for Bilingual Teachers in the US

movements throughout the country (17 states have passed English only). Inaddition, the reauthorisation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act(ESEA), in 2000 by President Bush and the Congress has eliminated Title VII,the Bilingual Education Act, the major funding arm for bilingual educationand language education, which had been in existence since 1968. AlthoughTitle VII had been increasingly funding ESL programmes (versus native langu-age development programmes) in recent years, in 2000 it was completelyreplaced by Title III in the new ESEA, which has been established to furtherEnglish Language Acquisition. Overall, the ideology surrounding bilingualeducation has been growing increasingly hostile, both at a federal and a statelevel (Crawford, 2002).

The highly politicised and debated nature of bilingual education serves asa determining factor in the formation of the professional roles of bilingualteachers in the United States (Lemberger, 1997; Stritikus & Garcia, 2000),especially, how they are trained, how they view themselves, and what is envi-sioned for them. Kaestle, a professor of education at the University of Chicagoand former president of the National Academy of Education, states that‘bilingual education illustrates the problems of education research in general,but in extreme form. The problems that are worse in bilingual education thaneducational research in general are the politicisation and mistrust’ (quoted inSchnaiberg, 1998). However, it is also important to see that the positioning ofbilingual education entirely to a ‘minority’ status has possibly prevented afull examination of some of the actual dynamics, processes, and perspectiveswithin a bilingual programme. It is revealing that even as discourses havefocused on the pro and con arguments for bilingual education, there havealways been internal differences within the pro-bilingual movement. Thesedifferences were especially evident during the Proposition 227 debates, thevoter initiative that outlawed bilingual education in California in June 1998,and which has been the �rst of other similar initiatives (Donahue, 2002). Forexample, even strong proponents of bilingual education such as Crawford(1999) and Krashen (1996) have been the �rst to acknowledge the existence ofmediocre programmes1 that Title VII monies have spawned.

Although oftentimes bilingual teaching has been viewed as a cohesive andoppositional (to mainstream teaching) profession, in this study I show thedifferences among stakeholders in how it is understood and con�gured. Forexample, as I demonstrate, there are some teachers and teacher educators whobelieve the goal of bilingual education to be the transition to English whileothers believe the goal to be dual enrichment of the two languages. I arguethe importance of acknowledging such differences rather than assuming anuni�ed a priori understanding of bilingual teaching, so as to assist bilingualteachers in exploring different con�gurations of their roles and ultimatelyattempt to create more quality bilingual programmes. Speci�cally, in thispaper I present �ndings from an ethnographic study to show how a pro-fessional development site for bilingual teachers becomes a locale for thearticulation and contestation of bilingual teachers’ roles. Through their dif-fering notions of the dimensions of their roles, I show how teacher educatorsand teachers expressed and contested the speci�c knowledge base and rolesof bilingual teaching during a professional development series. Moreover, the

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224 Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

way the content of the training was delivered illustrates the dif�culties ofcreating a cohesive, professional community of bilingual teachers and teachereducators. This study shows that there is not an uniform knowledge base andnotion of the roles for bilingual teachers.

The approach adopted in this study is based on theories of cultural pro-duction and practice theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984). In the last 20 years, socio-cultural theory has transitioned from the perspective of cultural reproductionwhere individuals are seen to be deterministically reproduced, to one of cul-tural production. Cultural production, therefore, views individuals not as ‘fax-like’ but as having motivations and aspirations, even when in�uenced bylarger societal forces. Levinson and Holland (1996) describe cultural pro-duction as follows: ‘through the production of cultural forms, created withinstructural constraints of sites such as schools, subjectivities form and agencydevelops’ (1996: 14). In the more recent understandings of identity formationand cultural production, it is becoming increasingly important to examine siteswhere identities are played out and somewhat produced in settings of formaleducation as Levinson et al. (1996) advocate. Importantly, the focus on localsites enables researchers and educators to escape possibly simplistic under-standings of individuals being in�uenced, and possibly subjugated, by domi-nant discourses and thereby look at the local meanings created by agents. Thepresent study focuses on the local site of a professional development pro-gramme for bilingual teachers. It shows how bilingual teachers escape abstractnotions of their roles. Their professional roles are seen to be simultaneouslyin�uenced by societal forces, shaped by speci�c local contexts (their schooldistrict, schools, and their instructors), and their own individual, personalhistories.2

Methods and SettingThis study is based on a professional development series for apprentice/

provisional bilingual (Spanish/English) teachers, which was offered to redressthe lack of bilingual preparation for many of the teachers. Signi�cantly, thiswas the �rst time since 1969 where professional development for bilingualteachers was formally addressed in this particular district. A contextual fea-ture of importance was also that the district was in the midst of reorganisingitself – for example, schools were being organised geographically into clusters.This was an effort to decentralise the district as well as provide continuity tostudents who would feed from their elementary schools to cluster middleschools and the cluster high school.

The professional development (which will be referred to as the PDI, Pro-fessional Development Institute) was typical in that as in the case of manyother bilingual teacher training programmes in the United States, it wasfunded through Title VII federal monies,3 and it was provided through a localuniversity. However, it took place in a state which did not offer teacher certi-�cation in bilingual education for teachers. Paradoxically there were numer-ous teaching positions in many schools for bilingual Spanish/English teachersas well as for several Asian languages. Therefore, the protocol to become per-manent bilingual teachers was to take a Spanish/English language test afterbeing certi�ed at the Elementary or Secondary level. Although a few of the

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teachers involved in the PDI were in this situation, most of them were appren-tices (had not completed their certi�cation). Due to the state’s ‘emergency’situation in terms of recruiting ESL and bilingual teachers, the requirementsfor these teachers were becoming progressively less de�nite.

An ethnographic approach was taken to understand the PDI emicallythrough the perspectives of the different participants, the teachers and teachereducators, in Urbantown,4 a large, urban city in the northeast of the UnitedStates.

The participants for the study were mainly the instructors of the PDI, DrMartinet and Dr Loera; a graduate assistant for the PDI, Deborah; theadministrator who conceptualised the PDI, Dr Valdez; as well as a group ofnovice/apprentice bilingual (Spanish/English teachers). These teachersparticipated voluntarily in this professional development opportunity andcould receive three credits per session to use towards either their certi�cationor in some cases, their graduate studies.

I was a participant observer of the PDI throughout the three sessions(starting in May 1996 and ending in December, 1996), assisting the teachereducators with administrative duties and sitting with teachers during lecturesand group activities. The �rst session consisted of three weekends, the secondsession consisted of the whole month of July, and the last session consistedof three weekends. Dr Martinet was in charge of the �rst session, Dr Loeraof the second, and in the third session, I followed the action research groupheaded by Deborah, the graduate assistant of the PDI. I kept �eld notes forthe sessions, conducted structured and semi-structured interviews of teachersand teacher educators during the PDI and after it. The questions I askedfocused on what both the teachers and teacher educators sought from the PDI,their perceptions of the PDI and particular topics that came up during thelectures, as well as their backgrounds coming into the PDI. I also collecteddocumentation of teacher journals, implementer handouts, as well as infor-mation about the PDI through the administrators and district of�ce.

The main process of data analysis was �rst reading and rereading �eldnotes, interviews, as well as documents, and then summarising these. Thesedata were then triangulated in order to come up with categories of themes.The two categories that emerged from the notes were the ‘content’ and the‘form’ of the PDI, which is how the �ndings section of this article is divided.The content was what actually was taught and how the teachers respondedto it. The way the teacher educators and teachers interacted, the ‘form’ ofthe PDI, both re�ected and contributed to the relationships between teachereducators and teachers, as well as the roles of the teachers.

Articulating and Contesting Bilingual Teacher Roles Through theContent of the PDI

Bilingual-speci�c contentDuring the PDI, there were constant attempts to formulate, although not

always consciously, what it means to be a bilingual teacher, especially inUrbantown. What was clear from observations and interviews with all parti-cipants was the necessity all saw in addressing bilingual-speci�c concerns,

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although the interpretations of ‘bilingual-speci�c’ varied according to roles,and also individuals.

Most of the teachers felt a greater need for bilingual-speci�c professionaldevelopment both because they had not received instruction in that before,and because they sought further clarity in terms of their professional roles.They especially looked for and envisioned the bilingual-speci�c knowledge interms of classroom strategies and language use. The teacher educators alsosaw the PDI as a way of providing a bilingual-speci�c dimension to the teach-ers. However, for them, bilingual-speci�c knowledge meant a mixture of abackground in the history and models of bilingual education, theories of lang-uage acquisition, and a practicum experience for teachers to implement whatthey had learned. What was also notable in terms of the instructors’ view wasthat they did not relate local contexts (or even knowing these contexts) tobilingual teacher roles. Therefore, a background in bilingual education for theteacher educators meant courses that were not necessarily related to the set-tings of the teachers, but that were more general in nature.

The teachers during the PDI also sought far more in terms of bilingual-speci�c content than what they felt had been offered. The action researchgroup that I observed (the third session of the PDI) had a spirited discussionthat verged occasionally on despair and frustration on this topic. On the lastday of this session, the discussion started with the facilitator, Deborah (thegraduate assistant), asking the three teachers who worked in schools in ClusterB for feedback on the �rst two sessions of the PDI. The teachers explainedthat they would have liked more activities and content speci�cally related tobilingual education. One teacher said:

So much of our job is just trying to �gure out what we’re doing becausewe want to have bilingual/biliterate students someday, that I wouldhave preferred something that pertains speci�cally to that. (Teacher,Audiotaped observation, 11/22/96)

When the teachers were given the opportunity to talk about their teachingsituations and expand on these, many related the bilingual-speci�c contentthat they were seeking to district-related issues, such as the lack of guidelinesand materials. At many points throughout this discussion, the teachers’attempts to interrupt each other and the spirited tone of the conversation weredirect manifestations of the personal involvement they felt relating to bilingualteaching in the district. The teachers related their confusion over their role (’Iwonder what, what am I doing here’) to their speci�c teaching situation, asthe following excerpt shows:

Teacher 1: My, my problem with what I’m doing, I wonder what, whatam I doing here, the-, I don’t see how, cause bilingual, ok the bilingualeducation programme is nine years old out here [Teacher 2: hhm] butthere’s no structure to it, there’s no guidelines, and you know, whichschool, and then the excuse is well, we have different populations andthe needs at Little Wood are different than the needs at Lewis. We’reteaching bilingual students [Teacher 3: right] and I don’t see how theneed [Teacher 3: how much different].

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Teacher 2:- (interrupts) Plus what happens so often is that the LittleWood students become the Lewis students [Teacher 1: Exactly!] I mean,they move [Teacher 1: Oh!] all over the place [Teacher 3: right!].

The major differences between the teacher educators’ and teachers’ concep-tualisations of bilingual teacher identities seemed to lie in the contexts bothgroups experience, i.e. the instructors came from a more academic and decon-textualised environment while the teachers viewed their roles as rooted in theclassroom and district setting.

In the ensuing sections, I take three major strands of the content of thePDI that show how both teachers and implementers emphasised and framedbilingual teacher roles differently. The next section expands more fully on theexample of language use that the teachers were seeking and which contributedclosely, especially in their eyes, to their role as bilingual teachers. In fact, theissue of language use was one that they grappled with daily in theirclassrooms and schools. The section after that shows how theory �gured larg-ely for implementers’ conceptualisations of bilingual teacher roles, andalthough teachers saw its importance, they also partially contested it. The lastsection, before I focus on the interactions between the teachers and teachereducators, is the role of advocacy. Advocacy is an area that is implied stronglyin the roles of bilingual teachers, like in many forms of minority education.However, in this study, teachers tended to link advocacy to their classroomsand students, while implementers framed it as a general trait that is intrinsicto bilingual teaching.

The role of language use and instructionThe most signi�cant but thorny question in the implementation of bilingual

education has always been how to structure the instruction of the two langu-ages.5 Not surprisingly, one of the major preoccupations for teachers in theirrole as bilingual teachers was the area of language use in the classroom. Theknowledge and security involved in knowing which languages to use and towhat extent played a strong part in how con�dent the teachers felt in theirprofessional roles.

The two following quotes from teachers demonstrated the concern mostteachers had about how English and Spanish should be implemented:

I don’t quite know, like, you know, I still feel at a loss, like, how muchEnglish to introduce to them, what to do with the different levels ofEnglish in my room. (Teacher, Interview, 02/18/97)

I liked last night, how to use languages developed language, mylanguage policy. I will go for partial separation, use 80% Spanish and20% English. (Teacher, Fieldnotes, 09/20/96)

In fact, teachers had more questions, and were visibly most attentive (e.g.taking notes) when the topic of language use was addressed. This was alsoshown by the signi�cant number of times questions were asked about it inteacher journals.

Institutional factors, especially in relation to language use/language policyin the district, were clearly a more important issue for teachers rather than

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instructors. Being university professors, the teacher educators did not seemto have much knowledge of this dimension of the teachers’ roles. The teachers,on the other hand, were the most emotional and involved during all threesessions of the PDI in the few instances when the role of the school district,and the language policy in their school’s bilingual programmes was broughtup. For example, when Dr Martinet initiated a discussion (06/14/96) aboutthe district’s language policy, it was one of the �rst times there was reciprocal‘teaching’ from the participants’ side because it was a topic they were moreknowledgeable about. This discussion re�ected both the perspectives of theteachers and of Dr Martinet of how and why the two languages should beimplemented, as well as the teaching realities of the teachers. The most salientissue that came out was the non-uniform ways languages were used acrossthe district, speci�cally across the two clusters (cluster A and B) of which theteachers were part. It was also made clear in the discussion that there weresigni�cant differences in terms of language use between Cluster A and B.Teachers in Cluster A were not as worried about their professional role interms of language use and implementation because their cluster had beenmaking steps towards institutionalising a language policy. This was in sharpcontrast with Cluster B’s lack of articulation between schools and within mostof its schools of a coherent language policy. This difference between the twoclusters in their language policy was con�rmed to me by talking to otherteachers and administrators during the following school year (1996–1997).

Another signi�cant issue linked to language instruction was that there wasnot a uniform understanding or belief in what the eventual goal of bilingualeducation should be in the PDI. For example, after Dr Martinet found outabout the varying ways languages were implemented in the teachers’classrooms, she mentioned over and over her worry that none of the teachersstressed the importance of learning English. She made clear what she envi-sioned as the goal for bilingual students, which was to mainstream by 7thgrade. Her model of bilingualism was therefore more of a transitional one.The following are two contrasting views from the teachers. One teacher hadbeen greatly involved in making sure her cluster, Cluster A, made two-waybilingualism an overt goal, and another teacher wrote in her journal thefollowing:

Bilingual educators must not lose sight of the original goals. Personally, Istrongly believe it is to teach the children the UNIVERSAL �rst language:English. (Teacher, Journal entry, 05/22/96)

By the teachers’ comments and explanations it was clear that the way langu-ages were used in the classroom depended on various factors to varyingdegrees. As I learned throughout the course of the study, this seemed todepend on factors such as teachers’ personal beliefs, the language policy intheir school, the policy in their cluster, and the con�guration of students intheir classrooms (whether they were Spanish or English dominant) (Varghese,2000). Overall, the way teachers and teacher educators responded to the con-tent of the PDI demonstrated the variation in how different stakeholdersviewed the way dual language instruction should take place as well as theeventual goal of bilingual education.

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The role of theory

The implementers, especially the instructor in session 2, Dr Loera, regardedtheory as an essential factor in the development of bilingual teachers. Dr Loerabrought up the connection between theory and practice many times bothimplicitly and explicitly. For example, she became slightly impatient whenteachers did not describe the relationship between theory and practice in oneof her presentations while she expressed excitement when teachers used termssuch as ‘scaffolding’. On several occasions, she emphasised the signi�canceof making the links between theory and practice. For example, she said:

You see how to integrate theory and practice – you see you’re doing italready but you don’t know you’re doing this.

Interestingly, I observed some teachers starting to incorporate theoreticalterms such as ‘scaffolding’ and the notion of ‘activating prior knowledge’ intheir classroom discourse as the PDI progressed. An important focus of a pro-fessional community and becoming a member is described by Lave andWenger (1991) as learning to ‘talk within’ (1991: 109). As one learns to do andtalk, a participant’s sense of identity as an expert increases and this interactswith his/her motivation. However, it is important to be aware that certainterms and speci�c types of performance were often demonstrated by teacherson a super�cial level. These behaviours may have been exhibited because theimplementers expected certain types of responses. In discussing how individ-uals appropriate discourse and make them meaningful to their practice,Lemke (1997) discusses that ‘performing the practices does not count towardmembership unless there is evidence that the practices are performed from theproper motivation’ (1997: 44–45). Although it was important for the teachers touse the discourse of their professional community, it was more relevant forit to be linked to meaningful change in their actual professional role.

Related to the issues of theory and practice is also how the teachers weremaking the links between them. Although certain theories were embraced byinstructors, teachers did not fully grasp these theories, and they were notnecessarily going to subscribe to these theories in a completely reproductivefashion. However, the implementers approached the series as if teacherswould be able to put theories ‘immediately’ into practice. This shows that theinstructors of the PDI assumed an unproblematic and automatic view ofteaching and learning in relation to the teachers, one where what is taught isimmediately learned. This was a manifestation of traditional models of edu-cation and learning which involved ways of thinking of learning as trans-mission, and which seemed prevalent in the actual teaching taking place dur-ing the PDI.

The role of advocacy

Many of the teachers strongly felt that they were role models or expressedthat one of the major reasons they had entered this particular profession wasto help Latino children. In a survey that I conducted after the PDI, four outof eight bilingual teachers surveyed wrote that the meaning or importance ofbeing a bilingual teacher was to be a role model to students or families or

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provide equitable access to them in education. For example, one teacher inthe PDI wrote the following in a journal entry:

We have to lift their spirits and reinforce them time after time becausethey are the re�ection of our community, a community in desperate needof reconstruction. (Teacher, Journal entry, 05/17/96)

The instructors strongly voiced the advocacy or initiator role for theirconceptualisations of bilingual teacher roles. However, this once again wasviewed as an automatic process. Dr Loera passionately conveyed her perspec-tive that:

We are preparing bilingual teachers to not only teach in a classroom butbecome advocates of bilingual education because it is so very debated,in the United States, so making it a point to train teachers not just toteach; they need to know the background, the law, the history, the meth-odology so that if asked, if pressured, you know, they can, you know.(Dr Loera, Interview, 04/22/97)

The need for advocacy was expressed also by both Dr Valdez and Dr Marti-net. In an interview with Dr Valdez, she told me about an incident when ateacher called her up in her of�ce and asked her in an accusatory mannerwhat their of�ce was doing about some of the deplorable things that had beenhappening in the bilingual educational community. She continued by saying:

And so I turned around and said, well, I’ve known of course of thoseissues for many years and have been trying to do a lot about them with-out any help, now, what are you, the teachers out there, going to doabout it cause you are the ones who have to organise it and so I said, Ichallenge you to start an organisation where there’s an advocacy goingon for some of these issues and I will help support it. (Dr Valdez, Inter-view, 10/96)

As the above quote shows, there was a sense when talking to the implemen-ters that advocacy was often viewed as intrinsic to a teacher, and even if notintrinsic, it could be automatically engendered through increased knowledgeon a particular topic. A sense of empowerment and leadership are importantqualities for bilingual teachers to possess but the process to develop these areoften long-term and complex – it cannot be assumed that teachers automati-cally have these qualities.

Articulating and Contesting Bilingual Teacher Identities Throughthe Form of the PDI

As intimated in the introduction, the way teaching and learning wereshaped and processed during the PDI re�ected the contradictory and dispar-ate notions of bilingual teacher roles. This was especially the case in the waythat the relationships between the instructors and teachers were framed andestablished. Minick, Stone and Forman (1993), quoted in Kirshner andWhitson (1997), state that the relationships and nature of the relationshipsdeveloped in face-to-face interactions during learning situations need to bestudied more closely. They call for studies of:

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real people who develop a variety of interpersonal relationships withone another in the course of their shared activity in a given institutionalcontext. Within educational institutions, for example, the sometimes con-�icting responsibilities of mentorship and evaluation can give rise to dis-tinct interpersonal relationships between teacher and pupils that haveimportant in�uences on learning. For example, appropriating the speechor actions of another person requires a degree of identi�cation with thatperson and the cultural community he or she represents. (Kirshner &Whitson, 1997: 7)

It is essential to focus on these ‘degrees of identi�cation’ and ‘con�ictingresponsibilities’ that surfaced in the interactions of the teachers and instruc-tors, since these seemed to contribute to a less cohesive bilingual professionalcommunity. Interestingly, studies of classroom discourse involving childrenhave raised concerns about contradictory models of teaching (Cazden, 1988;Heath, 1983; Lave, 1997) where the importance of collaboration is articulatedbut traditional practices of transmission actually prevail. In the same way asquestions have been raised about the development of students due to suchcontradictory models, it is important to emphasise the need to raise similarquestions about adult learning. Similarly, research in mainstream professionaldevelopment has contributed to views of teacher learning that conclude that‘the ways teacher learn may be more like the ways students learn than wehave previously recognised’ (Lieberman, 1995: 592), and this greatly in�uencesthe roles that teachers adopt.

In terms of teachers identifying with the teacher educators of the PDI, theinstructors, Dr Martinet and Dr Loera, were both Puerto Rican, like most ofthe teachers. This was mentioned by some of the teachers as a positive factor.For example, one of the teachers wrote in her journal, ‘I’m very thankful andhonoured to be taught by a Puerto Rican scholar’ (06/22/96). Both Dr Loeraand Dr Martinet occasionally used Spanish as an in-group marker during thePDI although their main language of instruction was English. Teachers alsofelt comfortable writing and speaking in Spanish during both sessions. The useof Spanish by the instructors was an example of how the instructors seemed towant to present themselves to the teachers as collaborators.

The con�ict the instructors felt about their roles as collaborators and guideswas shown in the discourse they used. On one hand, Dr Loera and Dr Martinet(as the occasional use of Spanish implied) presented themselves as colleaguesand collaborators with the teachers. But this role was sometimes dif�cult forthem. For example, Dr Martinet, when presenting the lesson plan activity inSession 1, �rst said, ‘I want you to end up with’ and then corrected herselfby saying, ‘we want to end up with’, including herself in the goal of theactivity, rather than being directive about it.

Although con�icted about their role, both the university professors weremore directive than collaborative in their approach in most instances. Thiswas very clear when comparing the discourse of the university professorswith that of the graduate assistant, Deborah, who was the facilitator of theinterpretive community for the action research that I followed. Table 1 sum-marises the differences between instructors.

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Table 1 Classroom discourse differences among instructors during PDI sessions

PDI Topic/ Topic Instructor Instructor Teacher Peer talksession participant control questions responses questions

nomination andresponses

1 and Instructor Instruc- ‘Do you ‘That’s Nodding/ Share2 tor understand?’/ correct’/ ‘Can you stories

or IRE ‘I want repeat the (but less(initiation, you de�nition?’ than threeresponse, to end up and closelyevaluation) with…’/ related toformat evaluation topic)

orreconceptu-alisation(theory)

3 Instructor Teacher ‘What do ‘You may ‘Is this a Suggestionsyou mean want to..’/ personal to eachwith that ’Have you thing other.kind of thought or a Shareobjective?’ of…?’ fact?’/ stories,(genuine ‘This is not closelyquestion) really related to

hard for the topicme’

The analysis summarised in the table uses the major classroom discoursecategories based on Mehan (1979) and further developed by Cazden (1988).Mehan (1979) observed that traditional classrooms were structured aroundthe IRE structure where the teacher Initiated the questions, usually in the formof information that the teacher already knew (e.g. what colour is the wall?),the student Responded, and then the teacher Evaluated whether the responsewas correct or not. For example, during the PDI, in contrast to the instructorswho focused on asking questions such as, ‘Do you understand?’ and IRE(initiation, response, evaluation) type questions, Deborah would ask genuinequestions, such as ‘What do you mean by this objective?’ Also, the instructorwould respond to teachers’ reactions by stating ‘That’s correct’ or instructingthem by stating, ‘I want you to…’ while Deborah would use modals and othergrammatical structures used for requests and suggestions, such as ‘You maywant to…’, ‘Have you thought of…..’

Naturally, the style was also in�uenced by the type of information thatwas being provided or negotiated in the action research as compared to the‘informational’ lectures of the �rst two sessions. The �rst two sessions,especially in the group settings were mainly centred around instructor lec-tures. Dr Martinet, for example, would explain something, and then proceedto say, ‘I’ll model it for you’ and tell teachers that there was a certain productor way of thinking ‘that I want you to end up with’.

Deborah, for example, started the �rst meeting of the interpretive com-munity group that she was facilitating by describing a story of a teacher doingaction research:

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I just thought, that just kind of struck me because I think that’s the waysome of you may have been feeling, um, as you go through this process.That’s the way I sometimes feel as I’m trying to put research questionstogether. (Audiotaped observation: 10/96)

Deborah, in this instance, put herself in the position of the teachers, andthe use of ‘may’ denotes how careful she was not to make assumptions aboutthe teachers’ responses.

Researchers in mainstream and second language teacher education(Johnston & Goettsch, 2000) have observed how the different contexts thatuniversity professors and classroom teachers operate in impact the develop-ment of language teachers. Morgan (this issue) raises the possibility that thereare ‘incompatible pedagogies’ that are at work. This section shows how thediscourse itself (in addition to the content being delivered, as explored in the�rst section) used between teachers and teacher educators denotes and con-tributes to the often hierarchical nature of the relationship between bothgroups. This potentially plays a signi�cant part in how bilingual teachers seethemselves and how they become part of the bilingual educational com-munity.

Conclusions and ImplicationsThe overall content and form of the professional development opportunity

for bilingual teachers described in this study demonstrate the different concep-tualisations that teachers and teacher educators have of the bilingual teachingprofession in the United States. Signi�cantly, this points to both the variationwithin the realm of bilingual teaching and the need to recognise this variation.Too often, there has been an assumption that different stakeholders involvedwithin bilingual education have similar understandings of the profession,leading to a lack of dialogue about the roles of bilingual teachers. Due todiverse contexts of participants and teacher educators involved in the pro-fessionalisation of bilingual teachers and because of individual professionalcontexts and personal histories, it may be dif�cult to refer to a single com-munity or a role for these teachers. The teachers and teacher educators in thisstudy were involved in diverse paths or networks as bilingual educators. Theteacher educators may not have been as prepared to address dimensions of thebilingual teaching profession that were rooted in the particular contextualisedpractices of the teachers, such as language use and classroom strategies. More-over, a greater knowledge of the actual teaching contexts of the teachers couldhave helped the instructors tailor the content, and to be more intentional withcertain aspects of the dimensions of bilingual teaching, such as advocacy. Interms of the interactions in the PDI, the instructors presented themselves inmany ways as traditional teachers who were imparting knowledge to the part-icipants. Even discussions around bilingual education and bilingual educationmodels in Urbantown were not raised explicitly or were not personalised suf-�ciently for a level of identi�cation to occur between teachers and instructors.Although this was not the focus of this paper, it is also important to be awarethat not all teachers responded in the same way to the training they receivedduring the PDI.

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The �ndings above lead us to three critical points in understanding teachertraining for bilingual teachers in the United States and in other countrieswhere language policies are contested. First, that ideological tensions existrelating to the ultimate goals of bilingual education, even within the bilingualeducational community – between furthering the concept of a uni�ed nationstate, which for many would be achieved through a focus on learning English,or furthering the protection of the rights of language minorities, which wouldbe helped through an enrichment dual language policy. Second, is the needto understand teacher education as a situated practice, where training has tobe linked to the actual classroom practice of teachers in their local contexts.This would require bilingual teacher educators to be deeply cognisant ofnewer understandings of teacher learning (Bransford et al., 2000; Putnam &Borko, 2000). These approaches are advocating for professional developmentto move in the direction of both localised and contextualised learning as wellas framing professional development as forums for discussion and developinga community of practice (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Putnam and Borko (2000)explain this movement as a product of the new ways by which knowledgeand thinking are viewed, that is, the situated perspective. They explain thesituated perspective in the following way:

...the physical and social contexts in which an activity takes place are anintegral part of the activity, and that the activity is an integral part ofthe learning that takes place within it. How a person learns a particularset of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns,become a fundamental aspect of what is learned. (Putnam & Borko,2000: 4)

This approach of contextualising or ‘situating’ professional development isone that is also being called for within language teacher education – anapproach that is ‘against approaches that see language teacher education inpurely neutral and technicist terms and that do not engage teacher-learnersin issues and dynamics of the sociocultural contexts of schools and schooling’(Freeman & Johnson, 1998: 409). The last overall point that needs to be madeand one that is linked to the �rst two is that bilingual education and languageeducation in general has been largely dominated by deterministic theories,which do not account for agents’ (in this case that of bilingual teachers) motiv-ations and choices. Some recent studies that have escaped these notions ofcultural reproduction are those of Brutt-Grif�er (2002), Rampton (1995) andThesen (1997). For example, Brutt-Grif�er (2002) shows how teachers nativeto the former British colonies around the world have actually been one of themajor proponents of the spread of English – this observation runs counter toformer propositions that have viewed the spread of English as a purely top-down policy. In the same vein, this study shows how the contestation of lang-uage policy and the role of bilingual teachers occurs among teachers andteacher educators within the bilingual educational community – it is notpurely a debate or discussion that exists in the larger public arena. This isespecially critical if we view the important role that bilingual teachers playin carrying out language policy within a classroom and country (Hornberger,this issue; Hornberger & Ricento, 1996; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997). In fact,

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Kaplan and Baldauf frame language policy as a bundle of policies – personnel,curriculum and materials, evaluation, and the local community – personnelpolicy being devoted to the training and recruitment of language teachers.

This study, therefore, emphasises the need to discuss within the bilingualresearch community and teacher training institutes what is expected ofbilingual teachers and negotiate these expectations with teachers. Due to themarginalised nature of the profession and the multiplicity of dimensionsexpected from bilingual teachers (as teachers of language and content, advo-cates for their students and families as well as of bilingual education) in thecountry, it becomes even more necessary to initiate this dialogue and explo-ration of the professional roles of bilingual teachers. This study shows howprofessional development for bilingual teachers may provide a useful sitewhere to investigate such articulations and tensions. Professional developmentsettings, either in the form of workshops or university programmes, can actas an important initial catalyst for a dialogue about the different evolutionand orientations of the various stakeholders involved in bilingual teaching.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Manka Varghese, University of

Washington, College of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction,Box 353600, Seattle, WA 98195-3600, USA ([email protected]).

Notes1. According to these and other proponents, a major cause of such uneven pro-

grammes may have been the lack of political and �nancial support.2. The in�uence of the individual histories is explored in the larger study (see

Varghese, 2000).3. For an extensive discussion of Title VII, the Bilingual Education Act, see The

Bilingual Research Journal, Volume 22, 14. Pseudonyms are used throughout the study.5. In this issue, the articles by Toribio and Valdes address more speci�c issues that

bilingual teachers would struggle with related to language, such as code-switching,and the differences between academic and social language.

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professional development for bilingual teachers in the united states: a site for articulating and...

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