the power of perspectives: building a cross-cultural community of learners

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The Power of Perspectives:Building a Cross-culturalCommunity of LearnersJorge P. Osterling & Rebecca K. FoxPublished online: 26 Mar 2010.

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The Power of Perspectives: Buildinga Cross-cultural Community of Learners

Jorge P. Osterling and Rebecca K. FoxGraduate School of Education, George Mason University, USA

This paper describes a collaborative action-research project initiated by two profes-sors of multilingual=multicultural education at a large US university, whose goalwas to update a required first-semester graduate course in a bilingual=second lan-guage teacher-education programme and to adapt it to the needs of students andschools faced with a range of bilingual learner needs. Through a dialogic approach,the researchers successfully tapped into their students’ own multilingual languageacquisition and multicultural experiences for use as a springboard for learning.The study examines the multidimensional second language learning pathwaybetween and among teachers and students from diverse backgrounds that can beapplied in the PK-12 classroom.

Keywords: teacher education, reflective practice, action research

IntroductionBoth new and experienced PK-12 teachers increasingly find themselves

working in multilingual and multicultural classrooms. With over 6000 differ-ent languages spoken (Grimes, 2003) globally, students are enroling inschools and universities where the language of instruction (LoI) is neitherthe students’ mother tongue (L1) nor the vernacular spoken in their local com-munity, but a second language (L2) such as Spanish for indigenous peoples inmany Latin American countries, or Mandarin in China. On occasion, a thirdlanguage may become the LoI used in institutions of higher education (e.g.English in Spain). It is important, therefore, that colleges of education assistfuture foreign=second language teachers in discovering and tapping into themultilingual skills of their students, regardless of the LoI used in a particulareducational system, both for their increased learning and for emulating intheir own classrooms. While multilingualism in classrooms has been widelyacknowledged in many African, Asian, European, and Latin American socie-ties, in much of the US an assumption of monolingualism dominates, despitethe country’s ever-increasing cultural and linguistic diversity. According tothe US Census 2000, almost 18% of American households speak a languageother than English at home on a regular basis (US Bureau of Census, 2003).

This shift in the demographics of the US, coupled with a new attention tohigh standards of learning and stronger performance-based educational goals,has created a fertile opportunity for educators to examine teacher educationprogrammes critically. As US graduate schools of education prepare teachersto meet the changing needs of an increasingly linguistically and culturallydiverse PK-12 student population, they need to modify teacher preparation

1367-0050/04/06 489-17 $20.00/0 # 2004 J.P. Osterling & R.K. FoxBILINGUAL EDUCATION IN BILINGUALISM Vol. 7, No. 6, 2004

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courses and delivery. These programmes must represent best practices andfoster in students attitudes that sensitise them to the needs of all learnersand to the richness of a multilingual approach. Linguistic and cross-culturalcompetence is both a pathway and a goal that seeks to facilitate learning atall levels by all participants.

This paper analyses a collaborative action-research project conducted bytwo faculty members at the Center for Language and Culture at George MasonUniversity’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) in Fairfax, VA. The goal ofthe research was to update the course entitled Bilingualism and Language Acqui-sition Research (EDCI 516)1, a required first-semester course in the foreign=second language teacher licensure programme. The course examines researchin first and second language acquisition (SLA), including the interaction of abilingual person’s two languages with applications to the classroom. Research-ers sought to make programme changes based on current research and litera-ture on SLA. The ethnographic approach provides a framework for examiningan existing programme and its assumptions about the nature and changingneeds of the current student population.

The instructors adopted a holistic approach to teacher development, built onthe notion of the second language teacher as a critical and reflective thinkerwho facilitates classroom instruction based on guiding student learning. Inaddition to engaging their students, who are future second language teachers,in the mastery of specific course content in linguistic and language acquisitiontheories, the instructors challenged them to explore the knowledge and beliefsunderlying their attitudes about teaching practice. Students were invited toreflect on their experiences in acquiring a second language, their own socialcontexts, and their professional training and how those experiences mightinfluence their teaching philosophies.

This project is the first phase of a two-part longitudinal research plan. Part1, this paper’s focus, is an action-research project conducted during the FallSemester of 2001. The project reflects emergent and ongoing recommenda-tions for programmatic growth and change designed to meet the needs oflearners in this programme (which includes native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) of English) and to prepare teachers to meet the needsof PK-12 students. Part 2, in progress, includes the creation of survey – andother research – tools to collect post-graduate data from the participants inPart 1 about the benefits and application of this course in their PK-12classrooms.

Background informationUS teachers of PK-12 students are being called upon to provide

differentiated educational services for linguistically and culturally diversestudents; there is also a call for increased learning opportunities for thestudy of world languages. Based on the most recent survey results ofEnglish language learners (ELLs), it is estimated that 4,584,946 ELL studentswere enroled in US public schools (PK-12) for the 2000–2001 school year.This number represents approximately 9.6% of total public school studentenrolment, and a 32.1% increase over the reported 1997–1998 public school

490 Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

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ELL enrolment (NCELA, 2003). In Fairfax County Public Schools alone,a Virginia school division where many programme graduates teach, atotal of 163 languages are spoken and American Sign Language (ASL),Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin, Russian and Spanishare taught.

For individuals seeking licensure in the areas of world and second languageeducation from post-baccalaureate or graduate-level teacher education pro-grammes in the US, contemporary preparation now augments the traditionalknowledge base to include exploration of many instructional approaches inschool settings through the medium of two languages, usually a native (L1)and a second (L2) language that will meet the needs of linguistically and cul-turally diverse learners. By examining their own thinking and learning pat-terns, pre-service teachers can raise their awareness of the role that previousexperiences and social contexts played in their acquisition of a second lan-guage. Simultaneously, contemporary SLA research continues to highlightthe benefits of second language learning and the impact these experienceshave on the learner’s cognitive development, academic achievement, and posi-tive attitudes toward cultural diversity (Collier, 1995).

A Collaborative ApproachThe multilingual=multicultural research professors elected to team-teach

Bilingualism and Language Acquisition Research (EDCI 516), and to expose theteacher candidates to a model that they could implement, the instructors’backgrounds mirroring diversity found in the classroom. Each came from dif-ferent sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds and was educated in very dif-ferent systems both in the US and overseas. One is a Spanish–English–German trilingual male, born and raised in South America; the other is anEnglish–French bilingual female, born in the US. Both brought to the class-room extensive international experience and represent collectively more than50 years of teaching experience at all levels.

Osterling provided the perspectives of a professional trained during the1970s as an educational anthropologist, influenced by the works of LevVygotsky, Paulo Freire, and several Latin American liberation theologians.2

His belief that education implies a dialogic exchange between teachers andstudents, where both learn, both question, both develop a sense of their ownself-worth (cf. Freire, 1970), was incorporated in EDCI 516 and supplementedby the extensive use of Blackboard-5 educational software. Fox brought years ofexperience teaching French and working with teacher candidates. Alsostrongly influenced by Vygotsky, and by the second language research ofVirginia P. Collier, Fox embraces the constructivist approach to learning andthe power of differentiated instruction designed to meet the needs of secondlanguage learners.

At times, collaboration by two professors in the design, teaching, and evalu-ation of a single course is not encouraged because it calls for a higherfaculty=student ratio. However, the collaborative model, by increasing thesharing of ideas and styles, can result in more thoughtful and reflective teach-ing. From the outset, the instructors continually asked students to collaborate

The Power of Perspectives 491

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in the course update process, and the current course delivery reflects this col-laborative effort, in which knowledge on SLA was developed by connectingpersonal experiences of students and teachers.

The Study GoalThis action-research study was a conscious effort to upgrade an introduc-

tory, graduate-level, teacher education course to meet the educational needsof the linguistically diverse American students. The main goal was to incor-porate a culturally responsive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995a,1995b), in which the teacher strives to respond to the sociolinguistic back-grounds of students. Inspired by the Funds of Knowledge (Moll et al., 1992),Freire’s (1970, 1998) philosophy, Vygotsky’s (1978, 1986) social constructivistapproach, and Gardner’s (1983, 1999) Theory of Multiple Intelligences, theinstructors progressively transformed the class into one where studentsbecame teachers and teachers became learners. The approach included acommitment to build a dialogical community of learners. Using theVygotskian approach, which emphasises the importance of social context incognitive development, the researchers challenged students to tap into theirpersonal language acquisition processes.

Graduate students need to learn varied instructional strategies and assess-ment procedures that are sensitive to different sociolinguistic situations andhow to adapt instruction and assessment in US classrooms to incorporatethe changing cultural and linguistic resources that children now bring toschool. EDCI 516 prioritises sociocultural research about the relationshipsbetween language and culture and requires graduate students to completefield experiences with adults and=or children whose language, ethnicity orrace differs from their own. The researchers argue that understanding a lan-guage and culture different from one’s own is not only an academic matterof facts to be learned, it also requires an opening of one’s attitude and yieldsa better-prepared bilingual teacher.

It was also our aim to engage students in the process of updating the courseby using their continual feedback to assess and improve the changes designed,to give transformative learning opportunities.

Research DesignTwo overarching research questions emerged to lead this study:

(1) How can EDCI 516 faculty offer first-semester students transformativeopportunities, strategies, and experiences that will both provide a solidfoundation in the stated course content of Bilingualism and LanguageAcquisition Research (EDCI 516) and also support their PK-12 classroomwork to meet the needs of increasingly culturally and linguisticallydiverse populations?

(2) How effective were the changes made in the course in creating theintended transformative experiences?

This project used a variety of qualitative data collection approaches thatincluded student voices through in-class dialogues and electronic postings


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(Blackboard-5), researcher observation notes and memos of classroom andcourse planning activities, students’ academic work and evaluations, andinterviews with previous EDCI 516 instructors. Given the researchers’ back-grounds in critical theory and progressive educational philosophies, the meth-ods used differed from traditional research methodologies, where researchersare the experts controlling all aspects of the project. The researchers becamefacilitators and the students shared their language experiences, their edu-cational beliefs, and their emergent knowledge. This cooperative learninginvolved everyone, increasing their level of understanding of the process bywhich language is acquired while constructing new knowledge, and develop-ing a critical perspective on the theories and models discussed.

The researchers discussed the research problem and their emergentresearch questions with their students, and it became clear that the focuswould be to apply critical pedagogy to the EDCI 516 instruction and tothe classroom environment. Students were asked for permission to use theirwork and to highlight any issues that would help their instructors adapt andimprove the course to address the students’ professional needs and theresearch objectives. In this way, the project evolved into a teamwork effortwhich provided opportunities to all members of the group to evaluate thecourse delivery methods and its successes, and to suggest improvementsfor future semesters. Preliminary and ongoing analysis of data allowedample opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the changes to the courseas well as to make necessary changes in implementation. During the quali-tative research, a constructivist approach to course delivery supported thebuilding of a cross-cultural community of learners and ensured the success-ful delivery of required course material.

Profile of the participants in the studyThe participants in this study include EDCI 516 class members (N ¼ 28) and

researcher instructors (N ¼ 2). Together, they spoke 25 different world lan-guages and dialects, among them Arabic, Russian, Spanish, French, ASL,German, Chinese, Neo-Melanesian, Italian, Thai, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Viet-namese, Laotian, and English. One-third of the class was composed ofnon-native English speakers from such countries as Argentina, France, Leba-non, Guatemala, and Tunisia. All socioeconomic classes were represented,and many class members were children of families or spouses who had livedoverseas in many roles, and several had enroled in PK-12 schools there.

The processThe two instructors agreed to jointly design the EDCI 516 syllabus and pre-

pare weekly lesson plans, adopting a dialogic discussion approach to teachingreinforced by the use of educational technology and group learning strategiesand techniques. Like many United States graduate-level introductory courses,EDCI 516 is a three-credit-hour course offered once a week for 14 weeks. Eachsession has a theme (e.g. myths and misconceptions about second languagelearning; bilingualism and cognition), which is reinforced through an asyn-chronous online discussion moderated by the instructors.


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Prior to every class, the two instructors held a long planning sessionwith a criti-cal review of the past class (i.e. whether the goals and objectives had beenreached), a comparison of personal journals (e.g. comments on student or facultyparticipation during classroom dialogues and private meetings), and an analysisof online postings. Based on this information and the curriculum, the weeklytheme and objective were discussed and the lesson plan developedwith a Power-Point presentationwhichwas posted inBlackboard-5 the night before class. Finally,the two instructors coordinated the activities and procedures, which includedwhat students would be doing, how they would be grouped (e.g. small groups,pairs, large group), and what each instructor’s role would be during the sessions.

Students were expected to actively participate in every session, as well aselectronically, by critically analysing, asking questions, or making observa-tions about the readings. Students were asked to record and analyse an orallanguage sample made by a language learner where they connect thishands-on experience to course readings and materials, and share a personalreflection. They also had to spend a minimum of 10 hours observing and inter-acting in an ESOL=foreign language classroom in a Northern Virginia schooland submit a written report.

The first session plans exemplify the process of building the EDCI 516 com-munity of learners. Instructors invited all new graduate students to thecomputer laboratory, where they were taught Blackboard-5 interactive soft-ware. Once logged in, students found their first interactive assignment: aninvitation to discuss Esmeralda Santiago’s (1998) autobiographical novel,Almost a Woman. That week, 25 students and the instructors interacted electro-nically about how the Santiago narrative had touched them. As a newlyarrived, 13-year-old Puerto Rican and the eldest child, Santiago shoulderedthe responsibility of learning English, as well as serving as her mother’sinterpreter and guide in America. A representative posting is as follows:

Although I have just recently (this past weekend) begun to dive in to San-tiago’s story, I already find myself more educated. Maybe this is becauseI’m finding out how very little I really knew about the obstacles thatpeople like her face daily. It is so much easier to understand when youhave a bird’s eye view of their world. I couldn’t image having survivedthrough the conditions she was burdened with. I can see how she wouldfeel as if she didn’t belong to either side. . .being needed to interpret forher mother for unemployment benefits, while, at the same time her Tatais questioning why she is required to eat American food, let alone beingasked to speak the American language.

The online discussion set the stage for the second class on the concepts ofbilingualism and language proficiency, engaging everyone in a critical dia-logue where both US-born and immigrant students commented on Santiago’sexperiences in acquiring a second language, often comparing them with theirown. In class, students discussed how they identified with the mother, or thegrandmother, examining how some of the feelings from the novel crossedassumed cultural borders, becoming universal maternal expectations for theirchildren. Like Esmeralda, younger class members remembered their desire tobe like their friends.


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The next Blackboard posting seeded for the upcoming class by engagingstudents in their own attitudes towards language:

Santiago’s teachers claimed they could tell what borough their studentscame from simply by listening to them speak. Do you feel that you have adistinctive accent? Can you tell what part of the country others are fromby the way they speak? Is any accent more pleasing to you than others?

DiscussionThis upgrade of Bilingualism and Language Acquisition Research (EDCI 516)

provided teacher candidates with opportunities to contribute to the develop-ment and assessment of the effort and to understand how language learnersbest learn a second language, whether it is English or any other world lan-guage. Future teachers of ELLs learned the merits of two-way immersion(TWI) programmes (also known as dual language programmes) where stu-dents use their first language (L1) to keep up with grade-level subject matter,while simultaneously developing English language skills.

Overall, the stated course objectives were achieved. The students masteredcourse material at a sound level and learned major SLA theories while simul-taneously making connections with their personal experiences and teachingpractices. The quality of their research papers amply testifies to their abilitiesas well as the strengths of both the foreign=SLA programme.

This study examines several key elements that are now serving to updatecourse content and delivery.

A community of learnersOne of the collaborative action-research goals was to update the course by

building a community of learners among the participating faculty and stu-dents. GeorgeMason University’s Graduate School of Education is a communityof learners in which faculty and students are committed to working together inthe discovery and construction of knowledge. However, first-semester gradu-ate students, such as those enroled in EDCI 516, needed assistance in becomingmembers of GSE’s community of learners to benefit from all its strengths.

Following Boyer (1987) and Sergiovanni (1994: xiii), the researchers arguedthat as a prerequisite to achieving EDCI 516’s goals and objectives, they had toensure that community values were at the centre of this course. The com-munity established in this entry-level course of bilingual education wouldserve as the foundation for a continuing community of professionals. In prac-tice, this implied bringing together two of America’s most powerful edu-cational traditions – often viewed as separate and contradictory: one thatfocuses on individual growth and development, and the other on encourage-ment of the students to serve their communities.

These two foci also served to underscore the cultural backgrounds of indi-viduals in the class, providing areas for participants to grow in both the pro-fessional development and community service areas. As students used theirown cultural and multilingual backgrounds to better understand theory, theyalso served their classroom community by sharing their experience. Teacher


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candidates are encouraged to use their learning to serve children as instruc-tors, mediators and advocates in their PK-12 classrooms.

Class members who were teaching as well as participating in this classshared results of learning from their students:

The other day, I was working with a young student who had just arrivedfrom a war torn country, and I haven’t been able to forget what shetaught me. She had watched her uncle and cousin be killed in the street,right there in front of her eyes. She was devastated. Just the look in hereyes showed me that pain that was there. At 13, what she has alreadyseen and experienced is more than many adults have ever confronted.And here she was trying so hard to learn English, and I was there tryingto help in that process. As she tried to make sense of the assignment shehad to do for class, I could see that reading stories somehow didn’t seemof the utmost importance to her. We need open hearts right here in ourown country and in our own classrooms. We need to hear what othersbring to us, what they can teach us about life.

It is possible to see the emergence of a community of learners when all classmembers, including faculty, are freely and frequently contributing to the col-lective knowledge, creating an environment of safety and respect where per-sonal and diverse insights are welcomed. This did not happen overnight.We began the process by asking all students to read an autobiographical novel,posted questions on Blackboard-5 about the novel, and then asked everyone toconnect their personal language acquisition experience to the author’s.Although all students and faculty began responding to postings immediately,it took time as well as private and in-class encouragement by all of us to cometo a greater understanding of the approach and to consistently use one anotherto build knowledge. Data from student postings on Blackboard, course evalua-tions, and researcher memos and journals served as evidence that the goal ofestablishing a community of learners was achieved.

Teacher candidates must have structured opportunities for critical reflectionon the ways in which culture affects language acquisition and behaviour,particularly when teaching students from backgrounds different from theirown. This is essential when training American teachers who have not livedor gone to school in another state or part of the world. Opportunities, suchas this one, to hear fellow classmates help open their eyes:

I am a person in a woman’s body with two children and no husband. Icome from South America and the first thing I think about myself is ‘Iam a person. I want to be treated like a person, and I treat others likethat.’ Simple and old rule.

In my country, we have different kinds of people and nobody is shout-ing or screaming about our different kind of types. We receive manypeople from different countries and we help them.

I learned HERE what it means to be discriminated against and humi-liated. Sad, but true. I am still feeling afraid to talk in English, becausewhen I started speaking it, people from here looked at me, with thatincredible expression: ‘Whattttt?’ In addition, usually, they just ignored


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me. You cannot speak English, so, you are stupid. I am still fighting withmy written and oral expression. I want to learn a lot about multiculturalissues, because I want to help people like me, ‘Aliens’, giving them themost important feeling: self-esteem.

Multiple perspectives strengthened the learning community as class memberslooked closely at reactions and interpretations from colleagues to help themunderstand course material more deeply. A posting captured succinctly manyof the points made by students:

We all struggle out of our little warm cocoons into a rather shocking worldwhen we see the perspectives of others. And if you’re lucky, you keep ongoing through this process all through your life. The more perspectives youcan access, the more you’re going to learn. It should be an ongoing processandwe, as teachers, need to be open to that andopenour students to that, too.

The power of perspectives provided by the emergent community of learnerssupported the discourse approach to learning. In order to increase interactionamong students and faculty, instructors asked everyone to share ‘ah-ha’experiences. Exchanging when new perceptions occurred also helped high-light which classroom activities were transformative. Reflecting on a requiredreading, a student discussed her new perception:

I have taught for several years in a very multicultural setting in. . .. Thisyear, like others, I have students from 14 different countries representedin my classroom. Some students I get do not speak any English. Yet I amamazed at how fast they pick it up. I also see many adults who have beenhere much longer and still struggle with speaking English. On the sur-face, it looks like children learn the language much quicker than adultsdo. Like the article said, students are often placed in environments(schools) where they are surrounded by English every day and theyare more motivated to try it and use it, whereas, a lot of adults are notso highly motivated. Obviously, there are exceptions to this.

Another connected an ‘ah-ha’ to her classroom experience with secondlanguage learners from a summer school teaching experience:

Finally, when reading the part discussing how oral proficiency in a newlanguage does not guarantee a total understanding of the language, Iimmediately had a flashback of my recent summer school experience. Ihad 17 first grade ESOL students. I was dumbfounded, as I could notunderstand why their writing was so poor when just 10 minutes priorI overheard them converse in English on the playground. Alas, I learnedthrough colleagues that this is precisely why they call it ‘playgroundtalk=dialogue’. This oral display is not completely indicative of their Eng-lish skills. It is very deceiving.

Adopting, modelling, and implementing a dialogical approachThe EDCI 516 instructors adopted an instructional conversational approach

(Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, 1991) to teaching. This is characterised by the exten-sive use of dialogic discussions (between faculty and students and among


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students themselves), where all parties – including those that present alterna-tive or opposing outlooks – interact freely with each other through question-ing, sharing ideas, and building new knowledge. Adopting a dialogicapproach to teaching required the instructors to make a fundamental shift frombeing principal performers to being participants. With this model, EDCI 516valued the voices, contributions and cooperation of all students and faculty,again modelling a teaching strategy for multilingual PK-12 classrooms. Courseevaluations and student interviews revealed that students not only respondedpositively to the strategy but also used it in their classroom.

As Billings and Fitzgerald (2002: 910) indicate, since people use language insocial situations to claim, create, or negotiate stances or roles in relation to oneanother, more is happening than can be surmised from the accumulated mean-ings of spoken words. Because all class members desired strong academiclanguage acquisition for their students, particularly for those whose firstlanguage is not English, this approach provided language modelling, andcollaborative learning opportunities.

Certain implicit assumptions intrinsic to the culturally responsive pedagogyserved to engage learners’ inherent cultural beliefs. When opening class dis-cussion on an assignment read, such as Krashen’s (1982) five hypotheses ofSLA3 McLaughlin’s (1992) article entitled ‘Myths and misconceptions aboutsecond language learning: What every teacher needs to unlearn’, – both instruc-tors engaged in a ‘presentation dialogue’ through which they encouraged theirstudents to analyse personal experiences in the light of the theories presented.

Since over two-dozen different languages were spoken in this classroom –not common among American graduate students – both instructors and stu-dents reflected on the entire process which each of them underwent to learntheir second (L2) or third language (L3). As an example of this process, anArgentine-born student fluent in Spanish, English, French, and ASL commen-ted on the complex formal and informal language acquisition processes thatmost children of immigrant parents undergo. Carlos’ parents brought himas an infant to the US while they were attending medical school and returnedto their home upon graduation.

The first time I remember learning a language was when I returned toArgentina after living in the U.S. for 3 years. I first moved to the U.S.when I was four, but moved back to Argentina at age 7. Between the agesof 4–7, I attended English-speaking schools, but do not recall activelylearning the language. I do however recall making an effort to learnSpanish when we moved back to Argentina. Even though my familyand I spoke Spanish while living in the U.S., I had to learn to read andwrite it upon my return to my mother country.

The second time I recall making an effort to learn a language was whenwe moved back to the U.S. when I was 12. During that time, I had maderemarkable progress with Spanish and I was able to skip some grades andeventually entered ‘high school’ in Argentina when I was 12.

A few months after starting school in Argentina, we moved back to theU.S. My parents felt that because I was ‘advanced’ in Argentineanschools, the same would happen in the U.S.. . .


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He later connected this personal experience to required readings from the text(Baker, 1996):

It wasn’t until my last semester of my senior year that I began to ‘catchon’ and begin to do better in school. (Come to think about it, that wholeexperience kind of supports the whole BICS=CALP [i.e., Jim Cumminsdistinction] thing) Had I known this back in 1981, I could have savedmyself years of educational agony, and my parents could have savedthemselves money they spent on tutors.

Another example comes from a Tunisian-born female student who shared thefollowing:

I can say that I ‘know’ how to speak, read and write in four different lan-guages. My L1 is Arabic, my L2 is French, my L3 is Italian and my L4 isEnglish.

I started learning my L2 [French] when I was in first grade, that is tosay that I was taught how to write it and read it in the same time I wastaught to do the same in my L1. . . How did I acquire my L3 (Italian)?Perhaps, the most interesting language acquisition process that I wentthrough was learning how to speak Italian. Italy is actually one of ourneighboring countries, and Italian television had started broadcastingto my country during the late sixties, long before satellite televisionwas available. Starting at around the age of 14, the amount of time thatI spent watching Italian TV news, variety shows, music, etc. was suchthat my three siblings and I started understanding and speaking Italianbetween ourselves. . . I think that what made my task ‘easier’ with myL3 is the many similarities that Italian shares with my L2 (both Italianand French derive from Latin) and also my passion for and fascinationwith the Italian way of life, which resembled in a certain way the Med-iterranean life-style that I have been born and brought-up into.

This posting and others similar to it connected theory to real life, providing apoint of departure for classroom and online discussion and supporting thedialogical approach being implemented.

Taking advantage of the technological revolutionAlthough educational technology is a valuable supplementary tool in the

classroom and in research activities, it is not a substitute for traditional class-room practices. Technology was used to support learning and to facilitatecommunication with and among the students, and also for researching theaddition of educational technology: how would it add to the students’ acqui-sition of and the instructors’ delivery of course material? The instructors useda variety of multimedia applications such as PowerPoint presentations, edu-cational videos, and Blackboard-5 software to provide an online forum andready access to online materials, email among class members, and web sites.

Blackboard-5, a user-friendly, password-protected course and managementdelivery system, allowed instructors to put course information easily online


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and allowed all participants to communicate as often as needed with oneanother.

In practice, educational technology had its own challenges. Time continuedto be a significant barrier. Making Blackboard-5 an important element in thedesign of the course meant that both instructors had to tailor and redesignEDCI 516 for the delivery of information and to facilitate online dialogue.While most of the students had average technological skills, they continuedto request time for integrating technology into instruction. EDCI 516 facultyand GMU’s technical support staff were always available to assist. This needfor assistance diminished by the semester, and most students identified theBlackboard discussions as ‘insightful’, and ‘very helpful’ in their attainmentof course objectives.

This forum gave each student a voice. Some of the shyer class membersliked this opportunity to think about what they wanted to ‘say’ before postingtheir ideas. Others were resistant to using technology because it was new tothem. As the semester progressed, all class members became regularlyengaged in posting commentary and provided concrete evidence that thematerial had been read and indicated which concepts were understood andwhich ones still needed further explanation. As one student posted:

I found [Colin Baker’s] paragraph on the loss of a minority language inchildren to be so true (1996, p. 80). As I grew up and French became theminority language for me, I just did not want to speak it anymore. Peerpressure was great. English was obviously the language around me that Iwanted to use and felt I needed to speak. I remember being terriblyembarrassed when my mother would speak in French to me in front ofmy American friends! How I love her for not having given up though(and for many other reasons too of course!).

I had really ‘lost’ the use of French in my early teenage years, and asluck would have it, went to spend a year in France at the age of 16–17. Ispent weekends with my beloved grandmother who spoke not a word ofEnglish. Through necessity, my French came back, and when I suddenlyfound that speaking French was a real plus (I could converse with cuteFrench boys, and that I could translate for my American friends, etc.), Idove back into the language, and became fluent once again.

By reflecting first on their own language acquisition, students discovered thateach had life experiences and resources that they had never fully appreciatedbefore. According to a student:

It was an ‘ah-ha’ for me to think of bilingualism as a first language.After reading about it and discussing it, it does make sense. I had justnever thought of it that way. What made it such an ‘ah-ha’ for me is thatmy younger sister’s L1 is bilingualism. I was preschool age when my par-ents moved to Papua New Guinea. My parents were both involved intheir work and I spent a lot of time with our maid, who spoke to mein her language. We had two women who took care of us and one spokemostly Neo-Melanesian and the other spoke mostly Ibangu. My parentsspoke English to us. When my sister was born, from the very beginning


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she had three languages spoken to her on a daily basis. As she wasacquiring her L1, she would speak in all three languages, sometimesusing all three in one sentence.

Final exercise: Cross-cultural experiential learningInspired by the cross-cultural, experiential-learning approach, where stu-

dents carry out specific tasks or projects that require the application of knowl-edge gained, the final course activity was a language analysis project. Eachstudent taped and analysed a 3–5 minute oral sample from someone learninga second language. This gave students the opportunity to analyse a ‘real’ lan-guage learner, make theoretical and practical connections to the research andmodels discussed in class, and to offer – as future language teachers – specificrecommendations for assisting this particular learner in the learning process.

Students all mentioned the applicability of the exercise. One studentreflected on how this brief language analysis confirmed her gut feeling thatshe needed to identify every student’s language proficiency in both their firstand second languages. Another commented:

The language analysis project enriched me as a teacher of English Lan-guage Learners. Working with J reminded me of how fragile an ELLcan be. Here is a boy who has been separated from his mother since kin-dergarten, who had to overcome his fear of flying to come to a new cul-ture. How scary! The more I found out about him, the better I was able toassess his language development and to come up with suggestions.Working with J reminds me how much more I need to find out aboutmy students so I can help them.

The teacher as a cultural mediator and advocate in classroom andschools

One motivation for the authors to teach Bilingualism and Language AcquisitionResearch was the belief that 21st-century teachers must have the ability tounderstand and interpret the culture of each of their students, particularlythose who are second language learners, to help them adapt and learn morerapidly in the American school system. To do this, it is necessary to developa new interpretative framework in which teachers become cultural brokers.Through this new lens, each educator could analyse their own culture, chan-ging school communities, and the roles US teachers are now expected to playin ‘building bridges’ between the students, their families, school administra-tors, and the larger community they serve. This is particularly important sinceover the past several decades, American schools have demonstrated limitedconsistent success in educating culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Data gathered from the online forum support the findings that this app-roach resulted in changing attitudes among course participants. A representa-tive sample comes from a Northern Virginia teacher:

I have several students from El Salvador who are adjusting very slowlyto the culture of my classroom. I’ve found it a challenge to keep in mindthat these kids have been through war, earthquakes, or other situationsthat I cannot even imagine. Having a notebook and pencil every day,


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and being motivated to learn about different kinds of clouds may not be onthe top of their priority list. . . . Perhaps some of my students do not under-stand the choices a high school diploma will allow them to have in theUnited States. It really is all about perspective, and I think the perspectivegoes both ways. We need to understand our students’ perspectives, but alsowe need to educate our students to understand better our perspective sothey can be as successful as they want to be in this country.

Another Virginia-born teacher shared a powerful teaching moment she hadwith an Arabic-speaking ESOL student in her predominantly Hispanic class-room:

I have a student who is from a country that uses an Arabic alphabet whois a minority in my class of mostly Central Americans . . . her [Arab] lan-guage is considered a low status minority language among her ESOLpeers. She had come to the blackboard this morning to write her answerto a work problem and the rest of the class started to laugh at her as theywatched her write in her labored child-like way.

I asked the class to be quiet and then asked her to please write theanswer again but this time in Arabic. They watched quietly as she effort-lessly wrote her beautiful script across the board. I then explained thatlearning English meant for this student that she also had to learn a com-pletely new alphabet and style of writing as well as learn the pronunci-ation, grammar, and vocabulary. I actually saw the light go on in the eyesof several of my students’ eyes as they realized the special challengesfaced by their classmate.

Professional teachers need to envision themselves as language and culturalbrokers–cultural mediators, and as advocates of more equitable policies andpractices both in the classroom and in the schools where they work. A studentdiscussing this issue commented:

Through my experience in working as a teacher’s aide for two years now,I feel that it is extremely important for the teacher to act as a link betweenthe students and the administration. There are times when the adminis-tration has no idea what the needs of the ESOL students are, especiallywhen ordering supplies for our classroom. We cannot use traditionaltextbooks for students who do not speak English, and yet they expectus to use such materials.

My fellow teacher and I have had to reiterate to the Principal and Vice-Principal what our ESOL students need. Unfortunately, for those who donot understand the process of second language acquisition, it is veryhard for them to comprehend what we are saying. Several teachers inthe school also do not understand how hard it is for ESOL students toadapt to an English-only classroom, and what is upsetting is when theydo not try to make the students comfortable in their classrooms. Theystill think it is the sole job of the ESOL staff to educate these students.That is why we have to serve as brokers to link services and needsbetween the students, other teachers, and the administration.


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Conclusions and Further ResearchThe experience of transforming the classic American university classroom

yielded an authentic cross-cultural community of learners. Adopting a dialogicapproach to teaching and incorporating culturally sensitive pedagogy and assess-ment strategies prepares teachers to work with linguistically diverse students.Courses such as EDCI 516 should provide future teachers with opportunitiesfor self-inquiry and reflection while tapping into participants’ funds of knowl-edge (Moll et al., 1992). Raising the students’ awareness of the challenges posedwhen teaching students different from themselves helps refine their teachingphilosophy and enables them to value multiple perspectives.

We further argue that having graduate courses team-taught by a cross-cultural faculty team provides future teachers with valuable models of culturalnegotiation, culturally responsive teaching, and multiple approaches toknowledge acquisition. Active incorporation of online technology stimulatedstudent discussion with multilingual perspectives on course materials. Thispractice supports current research about the power of ongoing and alternativeassessment practices for all learners, but particularly for second language lear-ners. Programmes without an international student base could engage inonline discussions with students from other universities, accessing multipleperspectives.

The researchers are actively engaged in preparing follow-up surveys for classparticipants to assess the effects of this multidimensional course delivery. It istheir hope that there will be an impact on both the teachers themselves and thestudents in their PK-12 classrooms. In the culture of American higher education,instructors do not often have an opportunity for joint planning and delivery. Theprocess has contributed significantly in the growth of the researchers’ criticalreflective practice and has positively influenced their teaching practice.

The action-research project has left several questions that require furtheranalysis. The first set reflects on the power of modelling negotiation and experi-ential learning in the preparation of teachers. As a complex social process, mul-tilingual negotiations are often fluid, multifaceted and rich in context. As such,successful negotiations require cross-cultural competence skills, including anunderstanding of cultural biases and misconceptions. Should faculty specia-lised in teaching language acquisition courses be encouraged to conduct morecollaborative action-research projects to fine-tune their courses and teachertraining programmes? If so, how might these co-teaching opportunities besupported and encouraged by higher education administration, particularlyin these times of large budgetary restraints?

The second group of questions deals with the most efficient and cost-effective ways to train culturally responsive educators who will teach America’sculturally and linguistically diverse students. Is modelling by a cross-cultural fac-ulty team teaching language and culture courses the best approach? What are thetrade-offs of this approach? What is the impact that team teaching could have onthe preparation of culturally and linguistically responsive teachers?What could itbe on the university’s overall faculty=student ratio in a period of budgetary cuts?The authors seek answers to these questions in the Phase Two data of thisresearch project.


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AcknowledgementsWe wish to thank all our EDCI 516 colleagues who participated in this

faculty action-research project. We would also like to express our sincerethanks to Professors Jack Levy (George Mason University, Fairfax) and EricH. Robinson (formerly of University of Massachusetts, Boston) for theirconstant encouragement and valuable input.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Jorge P. Osterling, Graduate

School of Education – MSN 4B3, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA22030–4444, USA ([email protected]).

Notes

1. A highly recognised course for almost 30 years, Bilingualism and Language Acqui-sition Research (EDCI 516) has been updated several times and has often beenacknowledged as one of the best graduate courses offered by our programme. How-ever, in response to growing demographic changes in student populations at alllevels, and the call for changes in teacher education programmes, the researcherswere challenged to explore creative avenues that would enrich the students’ knowl-edge base in ways that would provide them with new dimensions of understandingto meet the changing needs of the US’s diverse student population.

2. Leonardo Boff, OFM, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Juan Luis Segundo, S.J. among others.3. Krashen’s five hypotheses are the acquisition-learning hypothesis, monitor hypoth-

esis, natural order hypothesis, input hypothesis and affective filter hypothesis (Kra-shen, 1982).

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the power of perspectives: building a cross-cultural community of learners

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