Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy 9781853597565

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Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM Series Editors: Professor Colin Baker, University of Wales, Bangor, Wales, Great Britain and Professor Nancy H. Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA Recent Books in the Series Language Use in Interlingual Families: A Japanese-English Sociolinguistic Study Masayo Yamamoto Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen and U. Jessner (eds) Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education: Case Studies of French and Chinese Michèle de Courcy Language Minority Students in the Mainstream Classroom (2nd edn) Angela L. Carrasquillo and Vivian Rodríguez World English: A Study of its Development Janina Brutt-Griffler Power, Prestige and Bilingualism: International Perspectives on Elite Bilingual Education Anne-Marie de Mejía Identity and the English Language Learner Elaine Mellen Day Language and Literacy Teaching for Indigenous Education: A Bilingual Approach Norbert Francis and Jon Reyhner The Native Speaker: Myth and Reality Alan Davies Language Socialization in Bilingual and Multilingual Societies Robert Bayley and Sandra R. Schecter (eds) Language Rights and the Law in the United States: Finding our Voices Sandra Del Valle Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in Multilingual Settings Nancy H. Hornberger (ed.) Languages in America: A Pluralist View (2nd Edition) Susan J. Dicker Trilingualism in Family, School and Community Charlotte Hoffmann and Jehannes Ytsma (eds) Multilingual Classroom Ecologies Angela Creese and Peter Martin (eds) Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge (eds) Beyond the Beginnings: Literacy Interventions for Upper Elementary English Language Learners Angela Carrasquillo, Stephen B. Kucer and Ruth Abrams Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy Janina Brutt-Griffler and Manka Varghese (eds) Language Learning and Teacher Education: A Sociocultural Approach Margaret R. Hawkins (ed.) The English Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice Vaidehi Ramanathan

For more details of these or any other of our publications, please contact: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 47 Series Editors: Colin Baker and Nancy H. Hornberger

Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy Edited by

Janina Brutt-Griffler and Manka Varghese

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy Edited by Janina Brutt-Griffler and Manka Varghese. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism: 47 Includes bibliographical references. 1. Bilingualism. 2. Education, Bilingual. 3. Language and languages–Study and teaching. I. Brutt-Griffler, Janina. II. Varghese, Manka III. Series. P115.B5453 2004 404'.2–dc22 2004002821 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-755-4 (hbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2004 Janina Brutt-Griffler, Manka Varghese and the authors of individual chapters. The contents of this book also appear in the journal Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Vol. 7, Nos 2&3. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain.

Contents Janina Brutt-Griffler and Manka Varghese: Introduction

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Guadalupe Valdés: Between Support and Marginalisation: The Development of Academic Language in Linguistic Minority Children

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Almeida Jacqueline Toribio: Spanish/English Speech Practices: Bringing Chaos to Order

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Nancy H. Hornberger: The Continua of Biliteracy and the Bilingual Educator: Educational Linguistics in Practice

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Brian Morgan: Teacher Identity as Pedagogy: Towards a Field-Internal Conceptualisation in Bilingual and Second Language Education

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Angela Creese: Bilingual Teachers in Mainstream Secondary School Classrooms: Using Turkish for Curriculum Learning

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Carol Benson: Do We Expect Too Much of Bilingual Teachers? Bilingual Teaching in Developing Countries

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Manka Varghese: Professional Development for Bilingual Teachers in the United States: A Site for Articulating and Contesting Professional Roles

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v

Introduction Janina Brutt-Griffler Department of English, University of Alabama, USA Manka Varghese College of Education, University of Washington, USA

Bilingualism has generally been conceptualised as a subfield of the various disciplines (linguistics, cognitive psychology, applied linguistics, education) in which it falls (Baker, 1996). In all of them, bilinguals have been conceived as a sort of special problem – one that Du Bois (1903) described in another context as that of twoness. For bilinguals bring with them two of something which all of these disciplines have assumed that persons should be furnished with only one of – language. This special condition has occasioned considerable concern, much debate, and even surprising rancour, but it has never caused custodians of their fields to alter their essential notions of the boundaries of their respective branches of enquiry. They have expected bilinguals and those who study them to make the necessary adjustments. And yet, bilinguals are the majority of the world’s population – their existence and their numbers an implicit challenge to the disciplines mentioned above. Approached in this way, the world’s bilingual majority has proven an elusive subject of study. Bilinguals simply do not obey the rules set out for them, either scientifically, or, as we shall see, politically. Far from being monolinguals in two languages, as it were, they carve out their own space as bilinguals (cf. Grosjean, 1989). An increasing body of evidence shows that they do not use language the way monolinguals do. They refuse to hold their two (or more) languages as distinct, disconnected systems (cf. Cook, 1992, 2002; Grosjean, 1989; Kecskes & Papp, 2000). More radically still, they transform the languages they speak in unexpected ways, with still less anticipated results (cf. Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Thomason & Kaufman, 1988; Weinreich, 1974). They often refuse to submit to attempts to regulate their behaviour according to the accepted norms of monolingualism, no matter how strident the attempts to do so. And those efforts are manifold and nearly universal. The language usage of bilinguals is perhaps the most politicised issue in linguistics. In few other domains do governments, non-governmental institutions, policy makers, and educators intrude quite so blatantly into so deeply personal a domain. It sometimes seems that the bilingual cannot so much as utter a sentence without invoking a reaction from one side or another – not for what s/he says, but rather as a result of the language s/he selects to say it in, or the ways s/he uses language (see Toribio, this volume). At the same time, bilingualism has become enmeshed in political imperatives that have saddled it with a political vocabulary of questionable linguistic merit – mother tongues, additional languages, and so forth. After all, position politics, as Valde´s reminds us in 1

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this volume, has little patience for the complexities of the societies it makes policy for. In a world in which politics remains tragically rooted in essentialist notions of nation, ethnicity, and culture (for all of which language serves as a fundamental basis), bilinguals represent something of an excluded middle between the allegedly mutually exclusive opposites since they violate the essentiality of one or more of these categories. In the same way bilinguals disrupt the boundaries between cultures, ethnicities, and nations, they destabilise received categories of linguistic inquiry. Scholars of bilingualism encounter a deeply embedded mental structure in positivist (‘scientific’) thought and culture that the quantitative substantiation of twoness instantiates a qualitative relation of opposition and antagonism. Confronted with speakers of two (or more) languages, linguistics has traditionally conceived them in what Hornberger (this volume) calls the ‘binary oppositions so characteristic of bilingualism’ – their languages were ordered (first and second), characterised (native and nonnative), and scrutinised for evidence of interference, malformation, and deviance (cf. Toribio, this volume) from the purported ‘monolingual norm’ (cf. Valde´s, this volume). To be sure, the investigation of every natural phenomenon has begun thus. It was nothing less than an article of faith in physics that mass and energy constituted distinct, immutable categories – until Einstein theorised, and the march of technology confirmed, that they were different forms of the same underlying mass-energy continuum. In other sciences as well, the seemingly fixed and immutable categories have experienced the same destabilisation with the advance of knowledge. The study of bilingualism is undergoing and has been undergoing a similar transformation under the pressure of what Hornberger calls a ‘postmodern and increasingly multicultural and globalised world’ in which ‘tensions between essentialist and postmodern formulations of culture and identity; traditional holistic notions of bounded, isolated entities are being challenged and replaced by an emphasis on multiple, fragmented, overlapping, contradictory, multivocal, and situationally contingent identities and cultures’. As a result, the field finds itself more and more tethered by a discourse of language binaries, first and second, native and non-native. Bilingualism is the study of bidirectional transitioning, or the mediation of a linguistic space traditionally conceived as composed as discrete atoms – particular languages. Bilinguals remind us that linguistic space is rather a continuum of Language (which is far more extensive than is contemplated by the notion of Universal Grammar). Within bilinguals, it is not only languages that cohabit in the same linguistic space, but an accompanying process of, in the words of Toribio, ‘mixing of cultures and world views’ that is impenetrable to some, troubling to others. This process is but one of many at work in the world today that merge together phenomena (such as culture, ethnicity, nation) that are, according to some, supposed to remain separate and distinct. Research on bilingualism has been handicapped with a terminology that does not suit its study, because it is one based, paradoxically, on monolingualist assumptions (Grosjean, 1999). As a result, bilingualism continually encroaches on the categories in which it has typically been expressed. For example, there is currently much discussion among political theorists of language about the importance of mother-tongue education. The problem is that,

Introduction

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as with so many other aspects of the bilingual’s competence, the terminology used fails to capture the linguistic reality. Modern linguistics claims only that children acquire languages natively, but not that there is any linguistic imperative for any particular child to acquire any particular language, including that of their parent(s). This makes statements like ‘children should be grounded in mother-tongue literacy’ problematic. For example, take a child who does not speak the language of its parents. The child’s ‘mother tongue’, that is, the only language s/he speaks would not then be a mother tongue in the political sense. The point is not to engage in semantic debates, but to demonstrate that the categories of bilingualism are not at all fixed and immutable, but subject to change. If a child, for example, acquires two languages ‘natively’, then there is no linguistic basis on which to determine which of the two is the child’s mother tongue. Take the Puerto-Rican American children in East Harlem cited in Toribio’s contribution who ‘could be observed to speak English with each other, while shifting to Spanish in deference to their elders…. For these children, Spanish and English together constitute their linguistic competence in a singular sense, and their linguistic performance will draw primarily upon English or Spanish, as required by the “observables” of the speech situation, e.g. pragmatic norms, specific setting, and participants’. As this example illustrates, ‘mother tongue’ is a political ascription, the usefulness of which has begun to erode for hundreds of millions of persons around the globe. Linguistically, there is no reason that a child must speak the same language as its parents – or learn only that language natively. A ‘first language’ or ‘mother tongue’ can be acquired under all kinds of different circumstances – and in fact there can be more than one. And if there can be more than one native language there is also no linguistic reason why anyone should be monolingual. For instance, Ridge (2002) in his AILA plenary address noted, ‘As a child I lived in a farm environment rich with English and Zulu and learned both quite naturally’. No doubt other children in similar environments did so, do so, and will continue to do so. Applying notions of the ‘mother tongue’ as the universal medium of education would, nevertheless, prescribe one language for those whose parents spoke Zulu and another for those whose parents spoke English, quite apart from their actual proficiency in either of the languages, and, as such, this would be done entirely for political, rather than actual linguistic reasons. Valde´s’s contribution to this special issue shows that such decisions are fraught with significant consequences that will follow the children for the rest of their lives. It will affect their ability to master the academic language of higher education and profoundly affect the quality of education available to them. To refuse to recognise this kind of process, which Valde´s refers to as linguistic ghettoisation, on the basis that it allegedly does not involve a fundamental ‘human right’ (as Skutnabb-Kangas, in press, does in a recent exchange with Brutt-Griffler, in press) – and thereby to insist on the upholding of political hierarchies that attach to language – does not satisfy the realities of many countries. Moreover, Ridge points out Ironically, putting the choice in binary form generally favours English as an option – in a way which is to the advantage neither of English nor

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of the language it is placed against. As Rama Kant Agnihotri (1995) and Nkonko Kamwangamalu (1997) have claimed with some cogency, denying people proper access to the language they perceive as offering them major advantages leaves them little room to discover the value and uses of their mother tongue. Benson, in her study of bilingual education and bilingual teachers in developing countries, taking Bolivia and Mozambique as case studies, echoes Stroud (2002) in noting that ‘parents and indeed most sectors of society look to school to provide children with “linguistic capital”, meaning competence in the dominant language’. It is in this respect that Valde´s’s contribution intervenes in the ongoing debates to point attention to a vital and largely ignored aspect of the question. She demonstrates the important condition that the question of the education of minority children does not end with that of the language in which that education takes place, as would appear from much of the literature, in addition to highlighting the urgency of looking beyond the primary educational level. Language in education, including medium of instruction, is only part of the full education of the bilingual child, including her ability to progress through secondary to higher education. Bilingual educationalists must be as concerned with what bilingual students learn, particularly as it affects their chances for post-secondary achievement, as they are with in what language they learn it. And this involves issues of socioeconomic status that have been largely absent from the language rights debates. At the same time, Valde´s’s concern must be addressed: bilinguals are not simply users of language, and their lives should not be subject to greater regulation because one or more of the languages they speak are important to others in this world (cf. Mufwene, 2002). From the linguistic standpoint, mother-tongue education is a political doctrine that has been advocated by colonial administrators and language rights advocates, in both cases to serve political rather than linguistic ends. As BruttGriffler (2002) demonstrates, British colonial administrators in Africa and Asia never argued that a knowledge of English interfered with mother-tongue literacy. They argued that it interfered with imperial economic policy. Similarly, language rights activists began by claiming that English and other ‘dominant’ languages threaten to deprive minority languages of their speakers. When they now, as in the case of Skutnabb-Kangas’s (in press) recent work, claim that there are linguistic reasons why mother tongue should be the medium of education, they are not only shifting the ground, but engaging in vast generalisations. As Valde´s argues, broad political agendas (whether ‘English Only’ or ‘Mother Tongue Education’) seldom fit every situation – the world has become too linguistically complex for such sweeping agenda. Each situation must be identified for what it is, and those pushing a particular political agenda seldom take the time to do so. They reduce bilingualism to the sorts of binaries that Hornberger criticises in her contribution. Pedagogy must be transformed to reflect new understandings of bilinguals. For this reason, Widdowson, in his important new work, Defining Issues in English Language Teaching (2003), calls for a paradigm shift aimed at filling ‘the

Introduction

5

need to reconceptualise the subject as essentially concerned with the process of bilingualisation’. He adds, ‘guiding the development of bilinguals has to be attuned to the bilingualisation process, and not by the imposition of an exclusively monolingual pedagogy’ (2003: 162). The literature on bilingualism shows how profound a reconceptualisation that would represent. All the papers in this issue attempt to broaden the conceptualisation of bilingualism that we argue for here. Valde´s’s work in this volume reminds us of the inextricable link between bilingualism, specifically the development of academic language, and the participation and access of immigrant students in academic life. As Valde´s concludes ‘what we are saying about academic language is the product of what we see in schools today and of our knowledge of the barriers facing minority students’. Hornberger’s contribution presents a way of framing the knowledge base of bilingual educators by using her model of the continua of biliteracy (1989), which she developed in her earlier work, and suggesting its usefulness as a way for bilingual educators to understand the issues and dilemmas confronting them. What is significant about her contribution is that she frames the work of bilingual educators as a series of dilemmas where choices and decisions need to made according to contradictory pressures rather than a stable knowledge base with universal and static facts to draw upon. Moreover, Hornberger makes a strong connection between the responses and choices teachers make and their own identities as language teachers; for example, when a teacher must evaluate language and content, the identity of the teacher extends itself beyond that of a sole teacher of language. These dilemmas include that of context, or local/global where bilingual educators must respond to ‘both global and local pressures on our students’; that of media, or standard/nonstandard, where decisions have to be made about the variety of languages and types of media that should be taught and included in the classroom; that of development, or the language/content dilemma where educators face the difficult task of teaching and assessing language and content; and last, the dilemma of content, the language/culture/identity dilemma, where bilingual educators need to simultaneously respond to their students’ linguistic and cultural repertoires that they bring. Following this theme, Toribio’s article shows how the linguistic choices and performance of bilinguals are constituted by a constellation of factors that need to be considered simultaneously and contextually.

Teacher Identities and the Roles of Bilingual Teachers The inter-relationship of bilingual teachers’ identities with the way they access and operate their knowledge base is an important one because, as we argue, the knowledge base must take into account the process as much or even more than the product, and as these teacher identities are ‘constituted’ or created while they are being performed (Morgan, this issue). As Johnston et al. (in preparation) argue the more researchers have examined the role of teachers in the processes of language teaching and learning, the clearer it has become that a deeper understanding of teachers and their work requires a consideration of

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who teachers are: the professional, cultural, political, and individual identities which they claim or which are assigned to them. Johnston (2003) in his other work argues that the language teaching profession is essentially a postmodern one and one where the teacher is engaged (more than any other teaching profession) in moral dilemmas and choices. The language/content dilemma is one that is coming increasingly to the forefront for students who need to access higher levels of education, and opens up what had traditionally been considered an identity which had focused exclusively on language teaching. In much of the work on immigrant students in American (DeStigter, 2001; Olsen, 1997; Toohey, 2000; Valde´s, 1998, 2000, 2003; Valenzuela, 1999) and UK public schools (Rampton, 1995), these scholars take us into a world where students must negotiate their multiple lives and where they mostly ultimately pay a price in the career choices that are open to them. Valde´s (1998, 2000) questions how many immigrant students can access academic content that would give them a greater chance of escaping their socioeconomic status when they are segregated linguistically and placed in low level ESL classes. One of the arguments that is being made currently in the United States is to provide mainstream or content area teachers with techniques in language support (what is being referred to as sheltered instruction, Echevarria et al., 2000) in order to address and partially avoid this ghettoisation. Creese’s examination of language support teachers in the United Kingdom, specifically Turkish language teachers, provides us possibly a futuristic look into what happens when such a policy takes effect because in the UK, as she explains, the policy is that of inclusion. However, as Benson’s comparison of bilingual teachers in Mozambique and Bolivia makes clear, this practice of bilingual teaching has been the dominant one in many developing countries – ‘primary bilingual teachers in developing countries are normally expected to teach all subjects and to be bilingual’. Creese explains that although most of the language support in UK classrooms is conducted by non-bilingual EAL (English as an additional language) teachers, there are also a significant number of bilingual language support teachers. Creese’s work demonstrates the dilemma of the work and identity of language support teachers, who through providing translation and interpretation of content areas for their students, are in many ways simultaneously engaged with endorsing ‘dominant educational discourses’. An important question that she leaves us with is ‘what constituted teacher professional knowledge in co-taught classrooms’? The identities of bilingual teachers can, therefore, be created and enacted in different forms – as content area teachers who are either bilingual or know how to provide language support to their students, as teachers who can speak, teach in and through the two languages (and may have content area expertise) or as teachers who transition students to the majority language (as ESL or EAL teachers). These different roles and contexts also call for formulating the knowledge base of bilingual teaching in different ways. As Benson also proposes, this may require breaking ‘the mould for the one teacher-one classroom model, which may be just as outdated as the onenation-one language concept’.

Introduction

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Operationalising the Knowledge Base of Bilingual Teaching Through Professional Development The final theme of this special issue that spans several of these papers is how the professional development for bilingual teachers must be conceptualised across various settings. Much of the professional development literature on bilingual teachers has been propositional and somewhat static. In the context of the United States, the prescriptive nature of this has been mainly because of Title VII, federal legislation for bilingual teacher professional development which has led policy makers and professional development providers to outline competencies for bilingual teachers. Among these frameworks are one proposed by what was formerly known as the National Association for Bilingual Education (1992) and one by Canales and Ruiz-Escalante (1993) who also provide an excellent review on past approaches to bilingual teacher competencies. What has been missing in much of the conceptualisation of bilingual and second language teacher professional development seems to focus on two main issues. First, is the decontextualised way much of the knowledge has been presented and taught as well as the discrete units this knowledge has been presented as (Johnston & Goettsch, 2000), as shown by the different competencies outlined above. Morgan (this volume) explains it as ‘the ways that language teacher education programmes teach, and the ways that teachers teach (and learn) are in many ways incompatible pedagogies’. The second issue is that this knowledge base has failed to include many of the roles which bilingual teachers are involved in. Benson’s paper is helpfully organised around some of the major roles that she identifies for bilingual teachers in developing countries – bilingual teacher as pedagogue (either/both of languages and content), as linguist (of language and literacy), intercultural communicator (interpreter and teacher of cultures), community members (insiders of the students’ cultural groups), and finally advocates (of bilingual programmes). She also includes a vision of how the professional development of bilingual teachers may look like under this expanded view of their roles. Varghese’s ethnographic exploration of a professional development session for bilingual teachers in the United States situates the knowledge base of bilingual educators in the broader sociopolitical context of how bilingual education is played out in the country. Like Morgan’s and Benson’s papers, she shows how the pedagogical roles of second language teachers extend beyond the linguistic domain, and include concerns of advocacy for their marginalised profession and students. Furthermore and differently from the other papers, this paper delineates how the bilingual educator’s knowledge base must be negotiated within their professional development setting. It makes clear that there is no single and unified knowledge base for the bilingual teaching profession, and that this base must be discussed by both professional development providers and teachers in relation to the local contexts of the teachers. The papers in this issue complicate the processes of bilingualism and most significantly, demonstrate the local and contextual nature of how bilingualism is performed or created, which an international perspective helps us with. The argument made above rests on the understanding that bilingualism occurs in

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varying settings where one cannot make assumptions of sequential bilingualism or of a mother tongue, of a universal distinction between a dialect and a language, or presume that many language minority groups across the world will not find value in a dominant language and creatively make it their own; furthermore, the sociohistorical and identity development of bilinguals and bilingualism cannot be separated from the linguistic selves of these individuals and communities. Correspondence Correspondence should be directed to Janina Brutt-Griffler, The University of Alabama, Department of English, PO Box 870244, Tuscaloosa, AL 354870244, USA (janina.brutt-griffl[email protected]).

References Baker, C. (1996) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English. A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Brutt-Griffler, J. (in press) The sound of retreat: The linguistic imperialist camp in disarray. The Journal of Language, Identity and Education 3 (2). Canales, J. and Ruiz-Escalante, J.A. (1993) A pedagogical framework for bilingual education teacher preparation programs. Proceedings of the Third National Research Symposium on Limited English Proficient Student Issues, Focus on Middle and High School Issues 1, 113–153. Cook, V. (1992) Evidence for multicompetence. Language Learning 42, 557–591. Cook, V. (ed.) (2002) Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DeStigter, T. (2001) Reflections of a Citizen Teacher: Literacy, Democracy, and the Forgotten Students of Addison High. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903) The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A.G. McClurg. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp (1968). Echevarria, J., Vogt, M. and Short, D.J. (2000) Making Content Comprehensible for English Language Learners: The SIOP Model. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Grosjean, F. (1989) Neurolinguistics, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language 36, 3–15. Grosjean, F. (1999) Bilingualism, Individual. In B. Spolsky (ed.) Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics. Amsterdam, New York: Elsevier. Hornberger, N.H. (1989) Continua of biliteracy. Review of Educational Research 59 (3), 271–296. Johnston, B. (2003) Values in English Language Teaching. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Johnston, B. and Goettsch, K. (2000) In search of the knowledge base of language teaching: Explanations by experienced teachers. Canadian Modern Language Review 56, 437–468. Johnston, B., Johnson, K., Morgan, B. and Varghese, M. (in preparation) Theorizing language teacher identity: Three perspectives. Submitted. Kecskes, I. and Papp, T. (2000) Foreign Language and Mother Tongue. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mufwene, S. (2002) Colonisation, Globalisation, and the Future of Languages in the Twenty-first Century. http://www.unesco.org/most/vl4n2mufwene.pdf National Association for Bilingual Education (1992) Professional Standards for the Preparation of Bilingual/multicultural Teachers. Washington, D.C.: Office of Bilingual Education and Language Minority Affairs. Olsen, L. (1997) Made in America: Immigrant Students in our Public Schools. New York: New Press.

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Rampton, B. (1995) Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London, New York: Longman. Ridge, S. (2002) English, Ideology and Need. Plenary at AILA. Applied Linguistics in the 21st Century: Opportunities and Creativity. 13th World Congress of Applied Linguistics. 16–21 December 2002, Singapore. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (in press) ‘Do not cut my tongue, let me live and die with my language’. A comment on English and other languages in relation to linguistic human rights. The Journal of Language, Identity and Education 3 (2). Thomason, S.G. and Kaufman, T. (1988) Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Toohey, K. (2000) Learning English at School: Identity, Social Relations, and Classroom Practice. Clevedon, UK, Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Valde´s, G. (1998) The world outside and inside schools: Language and immigrant children. Educational Researcher 17 (6), 1–15. Valde´s, G. (2000) Learning and Not Learning English: Latinos Students in American Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Valde´s, G. (2003) Comment, Enlarging the pie: Another look at bilingualism and schooling in the US. In J. Fishman (ed.) Special Issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Bilingualism and Schooling in the United States 155/156, 187–196. Valenzuela, A. (1999) Subtractive Schooling : U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany: State University of New York Press. Weinreich, U. (1974) Languages in Contact (8th edn). The Hague: Mouton. Widdowson, H. (2003) Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Between Support and Marginalisation: The Development of Academic Language in Linguistic Minority Children ´s Guadalupe Valde School of Education, Stanford University, USA Within the last several years, researchers working with linguistic minority children have focused increasingly on the development of the types of language proficiencies that are required to perform successfully in academic contexts. Most practitioners and researchers agree that, in order to succeed in schools, such learners must be given the opportunity to acquire academic, rather than everyday, language. Unfortunately, in spite of the growing interest in the kind of language that will result in school success, we currently lack a single definition or even general agreement about what is meant by academic language. This paper examines the conflicting definitions and conceptualisations of academic language and argues that limited understandings of bilingualism and of the linguistic demands made by academic interactions will lead to the continued segregation of linguistic minority children even after they have reached a level of stable bilingualism. Keywords: academic language, second-language learners

In the American context, debates surrounding the education of linguistic minority children have become especially acrimonious within the last several years. Anti-bilingual education initiatives in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have polarised both members of the public and school personnel. Opponents of bilingual education argue passionately that if children are not taught in English, they will not acquire the common public language. They contend that young children learn English quickly and that therefore they should be limited to a maximum of 1 year of special instruction in ‘structured immersion’ classrooms followed by mainstream classes. Researchers and practitioners who have worked extensively with linguistic minority students, on the other hand, argue that it takes a minimum of 3–5 years to develop oral proficiency in English and 4–7 years to develop academic English proficiency (Hakuta et al., 2000–2001). These researchers further argue that English language learners require some type of sustained help and support for learning both content knowledge and English. In responding to the rhetoric surrounding these recent initiatives and/or in simply trying to explain English language development to sympathetic individuals, it has become increasingly clear to practitioners and researchers who work with language minority children that the general public has little understanding of the subtleties of English language learning and about the types of English that are required to succeed in school. It has also become clear that much more work needs to be done by the profession in understanding the kinds of language that will result in school success. Unfortunately, there is currently no agreed-upon definition of either academic English or academic language in general. While this has been discouraging and problematic for many researchers and practitioners within the 10

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second-language teaching profession, what is significant is that a number of related professions are engaging in the examination of what they understand to be academic language and inquiring about its role in the school success of all children. It is my position that it is both useful and productive to try to unravel and to examine what different professional groups mean by the various terms used to refer to academic language and particularly to understand the dialogic nature of the discussion itself – a discussion held at professional meetings, at conferences, in articles published in journals and in entire books written by scholars as they consciously or unconsciously respond to what the Bakhtin Circle1 referred to as other voices in the dialogue. These voices include those heard through the popular media, those of political activists of various types and backgrounds, and those of everyday citizens who wish to inform themselves before voting on now-popular propositions that directly focus on language. In this paper, I am concerned with professional communities in the United States and with the multiple voices that surround and contextualise currently ongoing, parallel conversations about the development of academic language. Informed by Bakhtinian theory, I argue that the context for all discussions, including academic debates, encompasses a multitude of dialogues that help shape, reconfigure and constantly change the multi-voiced utterances of the various speakers. The discussion of academic language is no exception. The various existing approaches to the definition of academic language have developed and evolved in communication with a particular set of voices that are part of specific professional worlds. I will describe these various definitions as well as the voices to which these various perspectives primarily speak. I will point out, moreover, that, given the various boundaries of academic professions, the dialogue on academic language is unfortunately made up of a series of unconnected conversations that often fail to be heard by scholars who are members of other closely related professions. My second concern in this paper is with the voices available to second language learners in both their communities and their schools. While I agree that English language learners must be given the opportunity to acquire and master the kind of language that will allow them to succeed in school, I have many questions about the kinds of academic language that can be taught and learned in classrooms. I will suggest that what is missing from a number of professional and scholarly discussions focusing on academic language is a view of the types and range of experiences and interactions that must surround minority youngsters if they are to acquire the kinds of language proficiencies considered desirable by educational institutions.

The Scholarly Dialogue on Academic Language Scholarly discussions do not take place in a social vacuum. Even without the insights offered by the Bakhtin Circle about the nature of intertextuality, it is very generally accepted that scholars engage in an ongoing dialogue with other members of their academic communities and their professional organisations. Scholars respond to each other’s papers, engage in polemical debates about theories and their implications, and write dense scholarly tomes, some-

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times understandable exclusively to other members of the same inner scholarly circle. Within recent years, however, the recognised isolation of scholars in their ivory towers and the perceived irrelevancy of their opinions to public debates has given way to a view in which scholarly ‘experts’ have taken on the role of providing information and background to the courts, to media organisations and to the public in general. As was made evident by the recent Ebonics controversy,2 the opinions of university researchers and scholars often become very much a part of national debates on issues about which the public has strong interest. As members of professional media organisations seek both to provide background for their audiences and a balance of differing opinions, scholars are sought after to present their views and to participate in what Tannen (1998) has called the ‘argument culture’. Scholars are expected, not to engage in a discussion of the complexity of issues, but to take one of two diametrically opposed sides. Television news programmes, for example, regularly offer their viewers the perspective of a single ‘resident’ expert who interprets a controversy for the public, or they present two scholars who take on opposing views on the issues in question. As was made evident by the California campaign opposing Proposition 227,3 public exchanges where journalists required that bilingual education scholars and second language acquisition experts engage in debates with political activists were very different from academic exchanges among professional colleagues. Often individuals engaged in the discussion of Proposition 227 had strong opinions and little knowledge of and little respect for scholarly evidence. In the case of academic English, the discussion of many significant and important issues is taking place in a context in which the response of both the community of scholarly specialists and members of the public (including special interest organisations, news media, parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers) are anticipated. The dual realms of public context and academic

Figure 1

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orbit surrounding scholarly discussion result in a discourse that is made up of utterances that are a link in the chain of speech communication in two very different types of spheres; the academic sphere and the public sphere. Scholarly utterances, then, particularly on topics that are of public interest, attempt to refute, affirm, supplement, rely on, presuppose and take into account as Bahktin maintained, the ‘echoes and reverberations’ ([1986] 1990: 91) of two very different discourse communities. The context for the current dialogue on academic language is depicted in Figure 1. The ideological context In the United States, all public discussions relating to academic language, no matter how neutral, are currently taking place in a context that is influenced by ideologies about the standard language. For example, discussions of academic English are informed by ideologies about standard English as well as by ideologies about the place of English in multilingual America. To those concerned about the erosion of Standard English, any mention of the teaching of academic language necessarily refers to the teaching of the ‘correct’ language to all students but especially to students who are speakers of non-standard varieties of English. To those concerned about maintaining and protecting the status of English as the language of education in this country, on the other hand, discussions of the teaching of academic language necessarily focus on the use of English as the only language in which instruction is offered, especially to newly arrived immigrant students. Researchers and practitioners, then, who enter into the discussion of academic English in the United States engage in a dialogue with both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic voices that are part of the discourse surrounding both Standard English and English Only as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2

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The Public Sphere The dialogue about Standard English The various voices that have taken part in the dialogue surrounding standard English have been well described by numerous scholars both in the United States and in Great Britain. The voices are heard at times of conflict over national curricula and at times when guardians of the language march forward to defend a glorious heritage (J. Milroy, 1999). Hegemonic voices argue for teaching the standard language to the underprivileged, while counter-hegemonic voices argue that insisting on the standard will only continue to maintain the position of the powerful who already speak the privileged variety of the language. The particular beliefs about language that are known as ‘standard language ideology’ with reference to English have been examined by Milroy and Milroy (1999), Lippi-Green (1994, 1997), and by L. Milroy (1999). Recently, the debates surrounding the Ebonics controversy once again foregrounded the deeply engrained beliefs among Americans about the importance of teaching standard English. As Baugh (2000: ix) pointed out, the Ebonics debate ‘launched another round in a continuing national discussion on how best to educate students for whom standard English is not native’. This discussion, as Wolfram et al. (1999) maintain, once again involved the voices of those who oppose the teaching of standard English and favour the acceptance of all varieties of English. It also involved the voices of the proponents of teaching standard English who argue that all students, in order to succeed in school and in the workplace, must master standard English. As is the case in all public debates and discussions of standard English, the Ebonics debate involved both the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic positions depicted in Figure 2. The ever-present voices of what Milroy and Milroy (1999) have termed ‘language guardians’ and Bolinger (1980) called ‘language shamans’ were very much in evidence. Also present among the supporters of the teaching of standard English were African-American conservative pundits whose views Baugh (2000: 113) attributes to a ‘uniform sense of linguistic shame about their heritage’. These individuals were joined in their condemnation of Ebonics by other opponents of ‘bad’ and ‘incorrect’ English, prescriptivists, and those fearful about the future of English in America. Countering these views – perhaps with little success – were the declarations of academic specialists who focus on the study of African American Varieties of English including Baugh, Rickford, and Smitherman. The dialogue about English-Only Like standard English ideologies, ideologies of English monolingualism underlying the English-Only movement are protectionist and view English as fundamentally threatened by the current state of affairs. In the case of EnglishOnly, the threat is seen to involve, not merely the incorrect use of the language by particular groups of people, but the increasing use of non-English languages by rapidly growing immigrant communities. The various voices that have taken part in the debates surrounding English-Only have been well described by Barron (1990), Crawford (1992) and Daniels (1990). These include the voices

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of patriotic citizens whose parents or grandparents did not maintain their immigrant languages and who are afraid that the United States will lose its common language as well as the very strong voices of nativists who fear that, because this country is being overrun with foreigners, Americans are being made to feel like strangers in their own land. Supporters of English-Only oppose the use of bilingual ballots, bilingual education, the use of non-English languages in the workplace, and special assistance to non-English speakers. Like individuals who support only allowing standard English in classrooms populated by African-American children who speak African American English Vernacular, many well-intentioned teachers who oppose bilingual education worry that newly arrived immigrant children will not acquire enough English to succeed both in school and in the workplace. Proponents of the use of non-English languages in addition to English, on the other hand, include cultural pluralists, supporters of bilingual education, supporters of immigrant language maintenance, and political activists supporting the rights of newly arrived immigrants. Standard English as a highly charged notion Within the American public sphere, the voices that enter into a discussion of standard English express deeply held views about education and particularly about the education of children who arrive in school speaking either non-English languages or non-standard varieties of English. The voices of academic scholars involved in public sphere conversations, respond to and refute or affirm the utterances of both informed and uninformed others – all of whom have strong opinions about academic language.

The Professional and Scholarly Sphere Communities of professional practice In comparison with the public voices engaged in dialogue surrounding the discussion of academic language, scholarly conversations attending to the definition and investigation of the kind of language required for academic success embrace perspectives that differ depending on the particular focus of the professional practice or research community in question. Figure 3 depicts the different communities of professional practice that are currently focusing on academic language. As will be evident from Figure 3, discussions of academic language have focused on two very different groups of students. The first group attends to those individuals whose first language is English, while the second group attends to students who have learned or are learning English as a second language. While the concerns of the different professional groups focusing on these two types of students may be similar at some levels, the specific focus of attention and the definitions of academic language used by one professional group and another vary significantly. For example, in the case of what I have called here Mainstream English which includes the teaching of literature, the teaching of writing and composition at the secondary and college levels, and the teaching of what is known as language arts in the elementary school, the focus on academic English development

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Figure 3

centres on the development of proficiencies in both oral and written text production. Perspectives within the profession differ, and there are both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic voices involved in the conversation within the profession. I will limit my discussion here to the perspective of the field of composition studies within which discussions about academic language and discourse have focused primarily on written language. Responding to the pedagogical needs of teaching English composition to both mainstream and non-mainstream students within the United States, examinations of the characteristics of academic discourse (e.g. Elbow, 1991, 2000) within writing and composition studies have sought to describe both the intellectual practices of written academic discourse and its surface features. These intellectual practices have been described as involving a particular reading of the world, a way of thinking and of presenting oneself and one’s thinking to other members of the same discourse community. Some researchers (e.g. Flower & Hayes, 1981) point out that academic discourse involves writing for an imagined community of peers for a specific purpose. For other researchers academic discourse also involves writing to think through genuine problems and issues. From this perspective, as I have illustrated in Figure 4, academic discourse is considered primarily to involve the presentation of reasons and evidence as opposed to feelings and opinions. It also involves the development of explicit logical arguments, the detachment of the writer or speaker from his/her topic, the communication of authority, and, to some degree, the display of knowledge or erudition. Academic discourse is also described as following particular stylistic conventions including the use of standard English. In part because of the concern about students known as ‘basic writers’ discussions of academic discourse have attempted to take a position about both the organisational patterns and the ‘errors’ that characterise the oral and writ-

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Figure 4

ten text production of students who enter the academy from non-mainstream backgrounds. Walters (1994) captures the challenges facing these nonmainstream students who enter the academy in his following conceptualisation of academic discourse: Academic discourse clearly represents the stage of hyperliteracy. Education at the college and university level is overwhelmingly dedicated to teaching students to inhabit textual worlds, hypothetical worlds created and sustained through the language of academic discourse . . . Undergraduate students are encouraged to hold their own in class discussion by stating their opinions and supporting them with acceptable textual evidence, and postgraduate students in seminars and oral examinations are required to participate in the discourse of their discipline, assuming a kind of authority they do not, in fact, possess. In order to succeed, they must learn to ‘speak in paragraphs’, using a register inappropriate for most daily face-to face interactions. (1994: 641) What stands out in Walters’ conceptualisation is the existence of hypothetical worlds within the academy that are created and sustained through language and that require students to state their opinions and support them with textual evidence in registers considered appropriate for such academic exchanges. Some members of the writing and composition profession, however, still focus their attention primarily on correct usage, correct grammar, and correct spelling, especially in the oral and written texts of students who do not come to school speaking the varieties of language valued by academic institutions.

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For these individuals academic language is primarily understood to mean that language which is free of non-standard or stigmatised features. By comparison, the communities of professional practice that focus on students who are speakers of English as a second language have a related but somewhat different perspective on academic discourse/language. In the United States, the college-level TESOL profession is concerned primarily with international students at the post-secondary level. As I have pointed out in Figure 5, for this group of practitioners, academic language, then, is that language used to carry out academic work at the university level as well as the language used within particular disciplines and professions to carry out communication within the field. Much attention has been given especially by those researchers focusing on English for Special Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) (e.g. Bhatia, 1997, 1999; Johns, 1997; Swales, 1990) to the analysis of academic genres, that is, to describing the particular conventions of texts produced by members of professional discourse communities. The definition of academic language, while not expressed in the same terms as by the writing and composition community for L1 writers, has many elements in common with it. The TESOL profession also sees academic languages as a set of intellectual practices. Primarily, however, at the college level, this profession is particularly focused on stylistic conventions that are part of that practice (within particular professions), including text organisation, presentation of information, and grammar and usage. Importantly, the TESOL College profession views its students as competent both academically and linguistically in their first language and considers that the profession’s role is to help them to avoid discourse accent (i.e. the transfer of rhetorical styles

Figure 5

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from the L1 to English writing, (Kaplan 1966, 1972, 1988)) as well as other non-native features that are likely to interfere with communication. The ESL profession that works with K-12 students, by comparison, focuses on non-English background, immigrant students who enter American schools. Much of the activity of this profession has been directed at the teaching of the structure of English to such youngsters as a preliminary to their learning subject-matter through English. More recently, however, the Pre-K to 12 ESL profession has, at least in theory, become increasingly committed to contentbased approaches to language teaching and to describing the kinds of English language proficiencies needed to succeed academically, as illustrated in Figure 6. The ESL Standards for PreK-12 Students (TESOL, 1997), for example, define this English as: (1) the English used to interact in the classroom; (2) the English used to obtain, process, construct and provide subject matter information in spoken and written form; and (3) the appropriate learning strategies to construct and apply academic knowledge. It is important to mention that there are competing conceptualisations and definitions of academic language within the profession. I will say more about the very different voices in the conversation within the ESL K-12 profession in the second part of this paper. Finally, the bilingual education profession is the only group that has been concerned with the development of academic language in both English and the first language of arriving immigrant students. This group of practitioners, however, has focused almost exclusively on the development of what has been called Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency or CALP which is considered to be fundamentally different from BICS, that is, from Basic Interpersonal

Figure 6

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Communication Skills. CALP, as I have illustrated in Figure 7, was defined initially by Cummins (1979) as ‘conceptual-linguistic knowledge’ and later (1984) as the ability to manipulate and interpret language in cognitivelydemanding, context-reduced texts. This conceptualisation has met with much criticism by researchers (Edelsky et al., 1983; Hawson, 1996; MacSwan, 2000; Martin-Jones & Romaine, 1987). However, most practitioners who encountered BICS and CALP in their teacher preparation courses accept it uncritically.4 The view presented in Figure 7, then, reflects the original conceptualisation of CALP. I will talk further about more current conceptualisations of academic language including those proposed by Cummins himself. My point in contrasting these different perspectives (which are in several cases only the most well-known, but not universally accepted, positions within the profession discussed) is to emphasise the multi-voiced nature of the academic discussion surrounding academic language as well as the boundaries between speech communication spheres. The professional and academic sphere involved in the discussion of academic language that I have depicted in contrast to the public sphere in Figure 1, rather than a single communication sphere is made up of, what I have called elsewhere (Valde´s, 1992), distinct compartments that necessarily assume and imagine different addressees, different conversations, and different arguments and that result in various levels and degrees of dialogism among these similar but very diverse professional communities. As will be evident in Figure 8, the various communities of professional practice may have little to do with one another. Experts in literacy and writing that are part of what I have called here the Mainstream English profession, for example, although depicted here as a single profession, may miss many

Figure 7

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Figure 8

opportunities for dialogue with experts within the same field that work at different levels and with different age groups. Additionally, moreover, mainstream English-teaching professionals may rarely interact with TESOL college specialists. ESL K/12 practitioners, on the other hand, may participate only as a small and peripheral segment of the bilingual education community but may view themselves as sharing many of the same concerns. Both groups may have little or no communication with the mainstream English profession.

Research Communities As will be evident from Figure 9, the problem of dialogism among the members of related but separate communities of professional practice that have approached the description of academic language becomes even more complex when one considers the various research perspectives that have informed their views and positions. Figure 9 lists several research perspectives that have directly influenced discussions of academic language in the various communities of professional practice. As will be noted, these research communities themselves overlap in significant ways, and researchers who could be classified as working within one research area can often be placed in one or several other related fields. My point here is that in defining academic language, the various communities of professional practice, have looked to and been informed by different dialogues and different voices within the research segment of the scholarly domain which have themselves been informed a variety of

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Figure 9

different disciplines, for example, anthropology, education, sociolinguistics, communication, sociology, literary theory, and psychology. The work in variationist sociolinguistics, for example, in its study of dialect (e.g. Labov, 1966, 1971) or in its study of register (Biber, 1994, 1995) have influenced the thinking of the mainstream English community not only in professional statements such as Students Right to their Own Language (Conference College Composition and Communication, 1974) but also in its approach to the writing of students who do not speak standard English (e.g. Ball, 1998; Farr, 1993; Farr & Daniels, 1986; Lee, 1993). Work on world Englishes (e.g. Kachru, 1992; Pennycook, 1994, 1998), even though less influential in the ESL K-12 and in bilingual education, is increasingly being seen as important by practitioners and researchers working with college-level TESOL (e.g. Rodby, 1992) who argue strongly against single standards of British and American English in the teaching of second language learners. Other sociolinguistic research, by comparison, has primarily influenced practitioners who work with young children. The work of Heath (1983), for example, has had lasting impact on the language arts and the bilingual education fields. Investigations of classroom interactions and classroom language

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conducted by Cazden (1988) and Mehan (1979) is also well known to practitioners in both areas. Bilingual educators have also been deeply influenced by the work of Phillips (1972, 1983) on the rules governing speech and silence in the classroom among native American children. Similarly the work of Au and Jordan (1981) is frequently referred to by both mainstream early reading researchers and by bilingual educators. Other work on literacy development in young children, however (e.g. Daiute, 1989; Dyson, 1989, 1993; Graves, 1983) is not well known by second language practitioners and researchers. Work on literacy and literacies, including research in reading as well as in writing and composition has primarily been carried out within the mainstream English profession. Classic works, for example, on the oral and literate continuum (Chafe, 1984; Tannen, 1984a,b), on process writing (Britton, 1972; Emig, 1971; Flower & Hayes, 1981), on teachers’ responses to writing (Brannon & Knoblauch, 1982; Freedman, 1987, Freedman & Sperling, 1985), on writing and learning (Langer, 1986; Langer & Applebee, 1987), and on peer response groups (Gere, 1987) are sometimes cited by TESOL College researchers. However, few ESL K-12 researchers or researchers focusing on bilingual education refer to them. When this literature is reviewed by TESOL college researchers (e.g. Johns, 1990; Raimes, 1985, 1987; Santos, 1992; Silva, 1993) it is often to point out the difficulties of theory development in L2 writing and the lack of applicability of research findings in first language writing to the teaching of writing in a second language. Very little attention has also been given by the L2 communities to the extensive work that has been carried out on literacy as a social and cultural practice (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Delpit, 1988; Edelsky, 1991; Gee, 1990; Rose, 1989; Street, 1984; Walsh, 1991). The view that there are multiple literacies rather than a single literacy, that these literacies depend on the context of the situation, the activity itself, the interactions between participants, and the knowledge and experiences that these various participants bring to these interactions is distant from the view held by most L2 educators who still embrace a technochratic notion of literacy and emphasise the development of decontextualised skills. It is important to point out that there are a number of researchers who do work on both literacy and the education of linguistic minority children at the elementary school level (e.g. Bartolome´, 1994, 1998; Bartolome´ & Balderrama, 2001; Dı´az & Flores, 2001; Edelsky, 1986, 1991; Flores, 1990; Flores et al., 1991; Gutierrez, 1992, 1993, 1995; Gutierrez et al., 1997; Reyes, 1992, 2001). These individuals provide one of the few important and exciting links between L1 and L2 research. The TESOL college research community has examined literacy practices from a somewhat different perspective although it has not directly taken part in the dialogue on literacy as a sociocultural practice. Focusing on what is known as language and public life or language for special purposes (i.e. Swales, 1990), it has drawn on work in sociolinguistics especially on the sets of features that characterise registers (Biber, 1994, 1995). It has also drawn on work that has examined the ways that language and discourse function in the construction of science, profession building, the shaping of scientific communities, the process of construction of scientific knowledge and the role that scientists play in such endeavours (e.g. Gunnarsson, 1998; Gunnarson et al.,

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1997). This conceptualisation, while similar to those presented by others (e.g. Gee, 1990), has been found useful by the TESOL college profession for examining how the development of proficiencies in academic language relate to socialisation processes within particular professions, established traditions in expressing particular views of reality, and the ways in which relations to other related knowledge domains are conveyed. The language and class analysis literature including the work of Althusser (1969, 1971); Bernstein (1964, 1977); Bourdieu (1977, 1988); Bourdieu and Passeron (1977); Bowles and Gintis (1977); Giroux (1983); Gramsci (1971); Persell (1977); and what Pennycook (2001) has recently referred to as the ‘critical applied linguistics literature’ (e.g. Fairclough, 1989, 1992; Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; Pennycook, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001; Tollefson, 1991, 1995) have recently begun to influence the discussion of academic language in both the mainstream and the TESOL college professions, but they have had much less impact on the ESL K-12 and bilingual education fields. Within the mainstream English profession these views have been especially influential for researchers concerned about cultural and linguistic diversity such as Guerra (1997) and Reyes (1992). Segments of the TESOL college profession, particularly outside the United States (e.g. Canagarajah, 1999; Roberts et al., 1992; Wallace, 1992) have also been deeply influenced by this work. Within the U.S. TESOL profession, only a few researchers (e.g. Auerbach, 1989, 1993, 1995) have drawn attention to the fact that the teaching of language is an inherently political process. Similarly only a few voices within the K-12 public education communities (e.g. Darder, 1991a, 1991b; Darder et al., 1997; Walsh, 1995) have called for a critical bilingual and bicultural pedagogy as a foundation for bilingual education. Finally, as might be expected, with occasional exceptions, research on bilingualism (to include both societal and individual bilingualism) and second language acquisition has not directly influenced the mainstream English community. Research on second language acquisition and bilingualism has primarily informed conceptualisations of academic language within the TESOL College, the ESL K-12 and the bilingual education communities. The research on second language acquisition/learning that is best known to second language practitioners and teacher educators is primarily psycholinguistic in orientation and is often interpreted as emphasising the acquisition of grammatical structures. Similarly, the research on bilingualism that has been most influential in the teaching of second-language learners is the work of psycholinguists and second-language acquisition (SLA) researchers such as Cummins (1973, 1976, 1977a, 1977b, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984a, 1984b); Genesee (1978, 1988); Hakuta (1986); Hakuta et al. (1984, 1986); Krashen (1985); Lambert (1955, 1959, 1966, 1969, 1972a, 1972b, 1977); Larsen-Freeman (1991); Long (1981, 1983, 199l); Peal and Lambert (1962); and Wong-Fillmore (1982, 1985, 1991, 1992). Many of these scholars have examined the cognitive consequences of bilingualism. Interestingly, little attention has been given to the voices within the research community on bilingualism that argue against a monolingual bias and a monolingual norm (e.g. Cook, 1997; Grosjean, 1989; Mohanty & Perregaux, 1997; Romaine, 1995; Woolard, 1999) and that maintain that it makes little sense to

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compare children raised in bilingual communities with children raised in settings in which only one language is spoken. In sum, positions about academic language in diverse learners that are held by the different professional communities have developed and evolved in communication with particular sets of voices that are a part of specific professional worlds. In Bakhtinian terms (Bakhtin, [1986]1990: 91) utterances within each professional world ‘must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding utterances of the given sphere…Each utterance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known and somehow takes them into account’. Unfortunately, existing boundaries between professional fields have not allowed related dialogues to become a part of ongoing conversations within particular communities. As a result, there has been little opportunity for refutation or affirmation of highly relevant utterances that take place in parallel but unconnected conversations. My focus in this section has been to suggest that because there may be important consequences when highly relevant dialogues do not enter professional and scholarly conversations, it is critical for us to study not only what does enter into these conversations but also what does not.

Academic Language and Second Language Learners: Which Voices and Which Communication Spheres? As a result of the uneven intertextuality among the various voices engaged in the discussion of academic language it should perhaps not surprise us that, like the blind men hoping to describe the elephant, each of the different communities of professional practice tends to see but a small part of the larger reality. The different existing perspectives on academic language and discourse bring into focus the complexities of the challenge involved in establishing objectives for the acquisition of academic English by minority second language learners. The examination of the various communications spheres allows us to see, perhaps, why it is that within school settings, it is difficult for educators who focus on L2 learners and for mainstream English professionals to work toward the same agreed-upon goals. As I have attempted to illustrate here, there is no agreement about what each of the groups means by the terms academic English, academic discourse or academic language. There is only assumed agreement and the expectation by mainstream English-teaching professionals that ESL practitioners can and will deliver second language learners who are ‘well prepared’. As Figure 10 illustrates, ESL practitioners and mainstream English-teaching professionals are in very separate worlds within the same schools. Unfortunately, as I will argue in this section, the results of the limited communication between professions and the emphasis on different elements of the academic language construct have serious consequences for young second language learners. To make matters even more complex, discussions about academic language and its definition within the ESL and bilingual professions are different for ELL students at different levels. At the elementary level, American researchers are most directly concerned with identifying the number of years that it takes students to acquire the kind of language needed to achieve in school, that is, to be ‘fully competitive in the academic uses of

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Figure 10

English with their age-equivalent, native English-speaking peers’ (Hakuta et al., 2000–2001: 1). These researchers argue that this question is especially important given the debates concerning the type of support that is needed by non-English-speaking students in the elementary grades. A great deal of attention, then, is given to supporting the development of the language needed by children to achieve ‘reclassification’, a designation given to children when they are considered to be fluent English speakers. Unfortunately, because reclassification criteria are varied and often include not only the passing of English language assessment tests but also scores on standardised achievement tests, there is much discussion about the types of proficiencies that are assumed by the assessment procedures used in the reclassification process as well as by mandated standardised state tests. By comparison, researchers working beyond the elementary school years, have increasingly become more concerned about the limited academic opportunities available to middle school and high school ELL students. They argue (e.g. Valde´s, 1999, 2000) that in many high schools around the country, second language learners – whether previously reclassified in middle school or newly arrived – are locked into ESL ghettos from which they seldom exit. They are placed in a series of ESL classes throughout their four years of high school as well as in sheltered subject matter classes within which content is taught by adapting the English language and the mode of presentation in order to make the subject matter content more accessible to language learners. As illustrated in Figure 11, in many high schools in the United States in which there are large numbers of English language learners, movement between regular and

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Figure 11

college prep classes and ESL/sheltered classes is generally limited. Difficult as such movement is, it is much more possible for students to move out of, for example, sheltered general science and move into regular biology, or to move from sheltered algebra to regular geometry than it is for them to move into regular, college-prep, mainstream English literature courses. In many schools, mainstream English teachers continue to insist that second language learners have not yet developed the kind of English that they need in order to do well in their classes. They worry about the errors ELL students make in written English; they worry about their ability to read the texts they assign; and they worry about their ability to engage in discussions about literature at the level that they require. Practitioners concerned about English language learners might find it easy to place blame and to argue that mainstream English teachers want to pretend that the world is made up exclusively of English monolingual, native-speaking students. I am arguing, however, that perspectives about the language required to succeed in regular mainstream English courses stem from very different understandings that ESL teachers and mainstream teachers have about academic English. The students who, from the perspective of the ESL teacher may have acquired academic English as this professional community has defined it, may nevertheless be very distant from the minimal level at which the mainstream teacher imagines her students must begin. The problem, then, may one of definition, one of belonging to distinct communication spheres and to attending to very different voices. Unfortunately, until there is increased communication between mainstream teachers and ESL practitioners, there will be little progress. ESL practitioners will continue to define the objective of their instruction on their own terms

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and continue to blame mainstream teachers for rejecting the students that they have carefully prepared to be mainstreamed. There will continue to be twoschools-in-one as administrators become increasing clever at making certain that second language learners are tracked into so-called college-prep English courses designed especially for them and taught by not-quite-mainstream English teachers who are willing to work with them. Unfortunately, if these students manage at some point to move beyond high school, they will once again enter the ESL ghetto at the community college level where they will be placed into a long sequence of even more ESL classes all of which are a prerequisite for entry into the credit-bearing composition course for basic writers (Harklau et al., 1999). Once again, the problem is voices that are absent in the essential conversations of two professional fields. In Bakhtinian terms (Bakhtin, [1986] 1990), because, the highly relevant dialogues of the mainstream English-teaching profession take place in a different communication sphere, ESL practitioners cannot affirm, refute, presuppose or take into account utterances that are part of a very different conversation.

Expanding Conversations and Conceptualisations: The Challenges Academic English, whether it is referred to as academic language or academic discourse, is central to the school achievement of all learners in the United States. The parallel unconnected conversations that have been carried out by the various professional communities, however, have emphasised different characteristics of the type of language that is needed to succeed in school. The first step in changing the current state of affairs is for communities of professional practice to learn about the work of other professional communities so that dialogues taking place in varied conversations can begin to be part of the same communication sphere. In the sections that follow, I outline the challenges of taking such a first step for individuals who are concerned about the education of English language learners and who are members of the ESL and bilingual education communities. As a member of this community, I point out that we can benefit immensely from examining our now expanding conceptualisations of academic language against existing definitions within the mainstream English profession. I also argue that in engaging in a dialogue with researchers (e.g. Gee, 1990) who have argued that the type of language that is valued in academia is part of an identity kit acquired as a result of legitimate participation in the practices of the dominant, it will be possible for us to begin to examine the ways in which language, social class and power are related to the acquisition of particular ways of speaking. This examination, in turn, may bring us to the serious questioning of whether ‘academic language’ can be easily taught and learned. Moving beyond BICS and CALP To our credit, there are many encouraging signs of movement in the secondlanguage-teaching profession. Researchers and an increasing number of practitioners are moving beyond the early notions of BICS (basic interpersonal communicative skills) and CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) within which contextualised versus decontextualised uses of language were

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considered to be fundamental. Even Cummins himself (2000), while still defending the appropriateness of the distinction, has to some degree moved away from describing academic language abstractly and now describes academic proficiency as ‘the extent to which an individual has access to and command of the oral and written academic registers of schooling’ (2000: 67). The new ESL Standards (TESOL, 1997), moreover, include precise descriptors and progress indicators that can help teachers evaluate students’ progress toward the acquisition of the kind of English that will allow them to succeed in school. In the Standards document, for example, we are told that to achieve academically students will use English to follow oral and written directions both implicitly and explicitly, request and provide clarification, request information and assistance, explain actions, negotiate and manage interactions, and ask and answer questions. They will also use English to obtain, process, construct and provide subject matter information in written form. They will retell information, compare and contrast information, persuade, argue, and justify, analyse, synthesise and infer from information. They will also hypothesise and predict, understand and produce technical vocabulary and text features according to the content area. For other practitioners, the definition of academic language is much less elaborate. It is seen simply as subject-matter English, the kind that will automatically be acquired through content-based instruction. Whether programmes involve immersion as in the Canadian model, two-way immersion, content-based ESL or sheltered instruction, the sense is that in these contexts students will automatically acquire ‘academic language’. For practitioners who take this view, academic language is simply the language used in biology, mathematics and social studies. They consider the specificity of the Standards to be unnecessary, and they take the position that special attention need not be given to teaching students to hypothesise, predict, persuade or to attend to text features according to content area. Still other voices in the profession, continue to attend primarily to form and to follow the original conceptualisation of CALP. The LMRI (Linguistic Minority Research Institute) Newsletter which is widely distributed to both practitioners and researchers in California, for example, reported on work carried out by Scarcella and Rumberger (2000) that defines academic English as a language that: 앫 앫 앫 앫

makes more extensive use of reading and writing, makes more accurate use of grammar and vocabulary, is cognitively demanding and must be learned without contextual cues, requires a greater mastery and extensive range of linguistic features than ordinary English.

As will be noted, the notion of cognitive demands and the view that such language has few contextual cues are still prevalent in this definition. Many researchers, of course, reject this view. Recently Bartolome´ (1998), for example, has argued that the dichotomy between de-contextualised and contextualised discourse is a false one because as Gee (1990) has maintained, no discourse exists without context. She argues that the use of such terms hides the fact

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that what is really being discussed is the description of different varieties of language. Bartolome´ (1998), has specifically criticised the misteaching of academic discourse in a bilingual English/Spanish classroom and argued that students will only acquire this type of discourse if teachers create discourse events that require these students to ‘practise’ by producing what she terms ‘linguistically contextualised language’. Examining three opportunities for requiring such production from students: (1) oral vocabulary and definition lessons; (2) classroom presentations; and (3) individual writing; she maintains that these events must be structured so that students address real or imaginary distant audiences with whom they can assume little shared knowledge. Students’ perception of the lack of shared knowledge, she maintains, will result in the need to ‘elaborate linguistic messages explicitly and precisely to minimise audience misinterpretation’ (1998: 66). In the case of the classroom in which she carried out her research, Bartolome´ found that students did not see the need to produce clear and overtly explicit texts. She attributes students’ behaviour to the teacher’s tendency of not insisting on formal language in the classroom and argues further that academic language will only be acquired if direct attention is given to its acquisition. It is important to note that Bartolome´’s definition of academic discourse comes closer to the definitions used by mainstream English professionals in that it includes explicitness and the use of formal language. The emphasis on direct attention or direct teaching of academic language has increasingly been directed at instruction on writing by Bartolome´ and other researchers. It has become evident to a number of administrators and practitioners that many students could be reclassified as fluent English speakers and mainstreamed if only they were able to write well enough to pass the writing portions of existing standardised language examinations. Sadly, it has also become evident that secondary ESL professionals have not been prepared to develop the writing proficiencies of second language learners. As traditional language teachers who are concerned especially about grammatical accuracy, when they attempt to teach writing, they tend to focus on controlled composition (Valde´s, 1999, 2000; Valde´s & Sanders, 1998) in order to control students’ errors. In an attempt to move beyond such practices, some school districts are bringing in L2 writing experts to conduct workshops in order to prepare teachers to work with ESL writers. Unfortunately, all too often such workshops focus primarily, if not exclusively, on organisation and mechanics. Teachers are being encouraged to expect that the presence of topic sentences, body paragraphs, introductions and conclusions coupled with the absence of major mechanical and grammatical errors equals good writing. What is often missing entirely from discussions of the teaching of academic discourse to L2 learners in both high school and the upper grades is the notion that writing is about ideas, that presentations are about ideas, and that when one engages in writing and speaking one also engages in a dialogue with others. Unfortunately, all too often, second language pedagogy and so-called pedagogical support for second-language learners does not take into account what we know about dialogue from the perspective of Bakhtinian theory. It does not consider that second language writers, as is the case for all other

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writers, want ‘to be heard, understood, responded to, and again to respond to the response’ (Bahktin, [1986] 1990: 127). For example, as compared to discussions about minority college writers (e.g. Severino et al., 1997), within discussions about L2 students in the secondary school, teacher response to student writing has not been problematised. Teachers have not been encouraged to enter into a dialogue with students as interested readers of their students’ ideas. The reading and writing connections described in the recent volume The Best for Our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino Students (Reyes & Halcon, 2001) are seldom made by most teachers of L2 learners. The discussion of texts and students’ relationship to texts – indeed their interaction in rich dialogues with the writers of many types of texts – is not part of the conversation in the majority of schools. The position of both researchers and practitioners concerned about L2 students is understandable. The lack of academic success experienced by such youngsters, especially in the light of increased standardised testing is a national scandal. It is tempting to believe that if teachers can bring students to the point that they can learn through English, that is, that they can understand classroom explanations, participate in group discussions, read academic material, and produce written texts that are correctly structured and organised and free of mechanical errors, much will have been accomplished. I have no quarrel with this view. Getting students to such levels is indeed a major accomplishment. I am also not arguing that students should not be taught the conventions of academic language. I am not even entering into the discussion of whether students should also be made aware of the nature of powerful discourses, or of their social locations in the broader world. What I am questioning is whether academic language can, in fact, be taught or learned effectively in the selfcontained, hermetic universes of ELL classrooms. I am arguing that in order for students to eventually engage as writers in what Guerra (1997: 252) has called ‘the arduous act of struggling with a clash of voices’ the classroom must be opened to multiple texts and multiple voices. Students must be encouraged to see themselves as having something to say, as taking part in a dialogue with teachers, with students in their classroom, with students in their school, with members of their communities, and with other writers who have written about issues and questions that intrigue them. I maintain that students should not be encouraged to merely pretend to talk to distant audiences so that their teacher can correct their vocabulary and syntax. They should be made aware of other voices, of how they speak, how they write, of the ways they say and do not say what they mean, of the resources they use to gain attention, to persuade, and to explain, and then, they should be encouraged to respond. From the perspective of Bakhtinian theory, students should be invited to see themselves as being active participants in a ‘social dialogue’ and their writing as a ‘continuation’ and ‘rejoinder’ to that same dialogue (Bakhtin, [1981] 2002: 277). Unfortunately, as is evident to those who work with linguistic minority students, that is, with both second language learners and speakers of nonstandard varieties of the language, the increasing residential and academic segregation in which these students find themselves offers few possibilities

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for their participation in communication spheres where academic language is used naturally and comfortably by those who, as Gee (1992: 33) has suggested, have acquired it by ‘enculturation (apprenticeship) into social practices through scaffolded and supported interactions with people who have already mastered the Discourse’. In the best of situations, L2 students will have teachers who are speakers of academic varieties of English and who will use these varieties in numerous ways to model the use of such discourse. In a greater number of cases, however, such students will have either non-native speakers of English as their teachers (whom Wong-Fillmore (1992) has characterised as interlanguage speakers of English) or teachers who, while competent in academic varieties of English, must use the language in very constrained ways in order to ‘shelter’ content instruction.5 In the case of bilingual classrooms, it may also be the case that teachers have developed a very limited range of proficiencies in the heritage or minority language of the students. Spanish bilingual teachers, for example, are often second and third generation Mexican-Americans who have themselves been schooled entirely in English and have not mastered the academic varieties of Spanish or second-language learners of Spanish who may also had few opportunities to hear academic Spanish outside of university literature classrooms. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Valde´s & Gioffrion-Vinci, 1998), for Mexican-American bilinguals, the class position of their families in Mexico as well as the diglossic nature of their communities in which they live may have provided little access to the higher-level registers of Spanish. To date discussions about the acquisition of English by minority second-language learners (except for the work of Wong Fillmore) have not seriously examined teachers’ proficiency and ease in the target language or target discourse.6 Interestingly, Bartolome´ in her critique of the misteaching of academic discourse looks to the production of such language by the ELL students themselves as important linguistic input for the further development of their proficiency in academic discourse. Bartolome´ appears to be relying on language that what would surely be a learnerese variety of academic discourse (Wong Fillmore, 1992) that, as is the case with other spoken interlanguage varieties, would not provide students with native-like models of standard academic language. She does not emphasise in her prescription of good teaching of academic discourse the need for exposure to a large variety of oral and written texts or the modeling of the target discourse by a teacher who has him/herself acquired this discourse. I would argue, moreover, that what is important from the perspective of Bahktinian theory is that teachers command a variety of speech genres as members of various larger communication spheres. They must see their jobs as helping to acquaint their students with the ‘authoritative utterances that set the tone – artistic, scientific, and journalistic works…which are cited, imitated and followed’ (Bakhtin [1986], 1990: 88). They must understand that second language students need to be given an opportunity to shape and develop their speech experience in ‘continuous and constant interactions with others’ individual utterances’ ([1986], 1990: 89).

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Imagining Other Possibilities In examining the discussion taking place among L2 educators, it is clear that where we are now and what we are saying about academic language is the product of what we see in schools today and of our knowledge of the barriers facing minority students. I believe that what we need to do is to imagine other possibilities. Like Guerra (1997: 258), we too must envision language minority L2 writers who develop what he called ‘intercultural literacy’, that is, ‘the ability to consciously and effectively move back and forth among as well as in and out of the discourse communities they belong to or will belong to’. Even in middle school, we should want minority L2 writers to understand that they too have something to say. They may choose to say it only to their communities using the conventions appropriate for those communities, but they may also choose to say what is important to them to those who will only listen if the appropriate conventions are followed. We must find ways of giving them the resources and tools to use in multiple discourse communities and communication spheres while helping them to value their own voices. From my perspective, the first step in getting ourselves – that is, those of us who work in K-12 ESL and in bilingual education – to a point where we move beyond minimal possibilities for our students is to open the discussions about academic language and discourse to the voices of the mainstream English profession and to invite them to solve the problem with us. We must also engage in a broader dialogue with the voices of the research communities that can guide us beyond our sometimes narrow focus on the acquisition of grammar and lexis and contextualised and decontextualised language. And finally, we must continue to struggle to make accessible to our second language students the textual worlds that are now beyond their reach. They too must hear and respond to other voices and to be ‘filled with echoes and reverberations of other utterances’. (Bahktin, [1986] 1990: 91) that are part, of not just few, but many spheres of speech communication. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Guadalupe Valde´s, School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA94305-3096, USA ([email protected]).

Notes 1. I use the Bakhtin Circle following Duranti and Goodwin (1992) and Moraes (1996) in order to avoid the debate concerning the specific authorship of the works of Voloshinov and Medvedev that have been attributed to Bakhtin. 2. The Ebonics controversy began when the Oakland California school board declared Ebonics (African-American English) to be the official language of African American students. Members of the board argued that, because it was students’ first language, Ebonics should be used as a bridge in the acquisition of standard English. The board’s declaration led to an extensive controversy among educators, linguists, and members of the general public. For a description of this controversy, the reader is referred to Baugh (2000). 3. Proposition 227 was an anti-bilingual education initiative which was passed by vot-

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ers in California. It requires that English language learners be taught primarily in English through ‘immersion’ programmes that do not exceed one year. Subjectmatter instruction in non-English languages (bilingual education) is permitted only under special waivers. 4. It is important to point out that a number of researchers carried out research that, to some degree, supported the BICS and CALP conceptualisation. Saville-Troike (1984), for example, in a provocatively entitled article ‘What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement’ reported on research carried out on English language acquisition by minority youngsters. She distinguished between the language acquired in social interactions and language measured by the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) in English. 5. I am indebted for this insight to George Bunch who is an experienced ESL and social studies teacher and a doctoral student at Stanford University. 6. The recent work of Bartolome´ (1998), however, because it focuses on the misteaching of academic discourse in bilingual classrooms, does discuss the language proficiency of the teacher with whom she worked. She states that the teacher (a second-language speaker of Spanish) is highly proficient in this language as well as English, but, except for pointing out that the teacher has taught in Mexico, she offers no details supporting her high evaluation of the teachers proficiency.

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Johns, A.M. (1997) Text, Role and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachru, B.B. (1992) The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures (2nd edn). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kaplan, R.B. (1966) Cultural thought patterns in intercultural communication. Language Learning 16, 1–20. Kaplan, R.B. (1972) The Anatomy of Rhetoric: Prolegomena to a Functional Theory of Rhetoric. Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Development. Kaplan, R.B. (1988) Contrastive rhetoric and second language learning: Notes toward a theory of contrastive rhetoric. In A. Purves (ed.) Writing Across Languages and Cultures (pp. 275–304). London & Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Krashen, S. (1985) The Input Hypothesis. Oxford: Pergammon. Labov, W. (1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Labov, W. (1971) Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lambert, W.E. (1955) Measurement of the linguistic dominance in bilinguals. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 50, 197–200. Lambert, W.E., Havelka, J. and Gardner, R.C. (1959) Linguistic manifestations of bilingualism. American Journal of Psychology 72, 77–82. Lambert, W.E. (1969) Psychological studies of interdependencies of the bilingual’s two languages. In J. Puhvel (ed.) Substance and Structure of Language. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lambert, W.E. (1972a) Language-acquisition contexts and bilingualism. In A.S. Dil (ed.) Language, Psychology and Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lambert, W.E. (1972b) Language, Psychology, and Culture: Essays by Wallace E. Lambert. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lambert, W.E. (1977) Effects of bilingualism on the individual. In P.A. Hornby (ed.) Psychological, Social and Educational Implications. New York: Academic Press. Lambert, W.E. and Moore, N. (1966) Word-Association responses: Comparison of American and French monolinguals with Canadian monolinguals and bilinguals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3, 313–320. Langer, J.A. (1986) Learning through writing: Study skills in the content areas. Journal of Reading 29, 400–406. Langer, J.A. and Applebee, A.N. (1987) How Writing Shapes Thinking: A Study of Teaching and Learning. Urbana IL: NCTE. Lankshear, C. and McLaren, P. (eds) (1993) Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis and the Postmodern. Albany NY: State University of New York Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Long, M.H. (1991) An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research. London: Longman. Lee, C. (1993) Signifying as a Scaffold for Literacy Interpretation: The Pedagogical Implications of an African American Discourse Genre. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Lippi-Green, R. (1994) Accent, standard language identity and discrimination pretext in the courts. Language in Society 23, 163–198. Lippi-Green, R. (1997) English with an Accent. London: Routledge. Long, M. (1981) Input, interaction and second language acquisition. In H. Winitz (ed.) Native Language and Foreign Language Acquisition (p. 379). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Long, M. (1983) Native speaker/non-native speaker conversation in the second language classroom. Applied Linguistics 4, 126–141. MacSwan, J. (2000) The threshold hypothesis, semilingualism, and other contributions to a deficit view of linguistic minorities. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 22 (1), 3–45. Martin-Jones, M. and Romaine, S. (1987) Semilingualism: A half-baked theory of communicative competence. Applied Linguistics 7 (1), 26–38. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Milroy, J. (1999) The consequences of standardization in descriptive linguistics. In T. Rex and R. Watts (eds) Standard English: The Widening Debate (pp. 16–39). London: Routledge. Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1999) Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. (3rd edn). London: Routledge. Milroy, L. (1999) Standard English and language ideology in Britain and the United States. In T. Rex and R. Watts (eds) Standard English: The Widening Debate (pp. 173– 206). London: Routledge. Mohanty, A.K. and Perregaux, C. (1997) Language acquisition and bilingualism. In J.W. Berry, P.R. Dasen and T.S. Saraswathi (eds) Handbook of Cross-cultural Psychology: Basic Processes and Human Development (Vol. 2, pp. 217–253). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Moraes, M. (1996) Bilingual Education: A Dialogue with the Bakhtin Circle. Albany NY: State University of New York Press. Peal, E. and Lambert, W. (1962) The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs 76 (546), 1–23. Pennycook, A. (1990) Towards a critical applied linguistics for the 1990’s. Issues in Applied Linguistics 1, 8–28. Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman. Pennycook, A. (1998) English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2001) Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Mahwah NJ: Erlbaum. Persell, C.H. (1977) Education and Inequality: The Roots and Results of Stratification in American’s Schools. New York: The Free Press. Phillips, S. (1972) Participant structures and communicative competence: Warm Springs children in community and classroom. In D. Hymes, C. Cazden and V. John (eds) Functions of Language in the Classroom (pp. 370–394). New York: Teachers College Press. Phillips, S.U. (1983) The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. New York: Longman. Raimes, A. (1985) What unskilled ESL students do as they write: A classroom study of composing. TESOL Quarterly 19 (2), 229–258. Raimes, A. (1987) Language proficiency, writing ability, and composing strategies: A study of ESL college writers. Language Learning 37, 439–467. Reyes, M.L. (1992) Challenging venerable assumptions: Literacy instruction for linguistically different students. Harvard Educational Review 62 (4), 427–446. Reyes, M.L. (2001) Unleashing possibilities: Biliteracy in the primary grades. In M.L. Reyes and J. Halcon (eds) The Best for our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino Students (pp. 96–121). New York: Teachers College Press. Reyes, M.L. and Halcon, J. (eds) (2001) The Best for our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino Students. New York: Teachers College Press. Roberts, C., Davies, E. and Jupp, T. (1992) Language and Discrimination: A Study of Communication in Multi-ethnic Workplaces. London: Longman. Rodby, J. (1992) Appropriating Literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Romaine, S. (1995) Bilingualism (2nd edn). Oxford: Blackwell. Rose, M. (1989) Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin Books. Santos, T. (1992) Ideology in composition: L1 and ESL. Journal of Second Language Writing 1(1). Saville-Troike, M. (1984) What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement. TESOL Quarterly 18 (2), 199–219. Scarella, R. and Rumberger, R.W. (2000) Academic English key to long-term success in school. UC LMRI Newsletter 9 (4), 1–2. Severino, C., Guerra, J.C. and Butler, J.E. (eds) (1997) Writing in Multicultural Settings. New York: Modern Language Association.

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Silva, T. (1993) Toward an understanding of the distinct nature of L2 writing: The ESL research and its implications. TESOL Quarterly 27 (4), 657–675. Street, B.V. (1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge. Swales, J.M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tannen, D. (1984a) The oral-literate continuum in discourse. In D. Tannen (ed.) Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy (pp. 1–33). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tannen, D. (1984b) Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tannen, D. (1998) The Argument Culture. New York: Random House. TESOL. (1997) ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc. Tollefson, J.W. (1991) Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the Community. London: Longman. Tollefson, J.W. (ed.) (1995) Power and Inequality in Language Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Valde´s, G. (1992) Bilingual minorities and language issues in writing: Toward profession-wide responses to a new challenge. Written Communication 9 (1), 85–136. Valde´s, G. (1999) Incipient bilingualism and the development of English language writing abilities in the secondary school. In C.J. Faltis and P.M. Wolfe (eds) So Much to Say: Adolescents, Bilingualism and ESL in the Secondary School (pp. 138–175). New York: Teachers College Press. Valde´s, G. (2000) Learning and Not learning English: Latino Students in American Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Valde´s, G. and Geoffrion-Vinci, M. (1998) Chicano Spanish: The problem of the ‘underdeveloped’ code in bilingual repertoires. Modern Language Journal 82 (4), 473–501. Valde´s, G. and Sanders, P.A. (1998) Latino ESL students and the development of writing abilities. In C.R. Cooper and L. Odell (eds) Evaluating Writing (pp. 249–278). Urbana IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Wallace, C. (1992) Critical literacy awareness in the EFL classroom. In N. Fairclough (ed.) Critical Language Awareness (pp. 59–92). London: Longman. Walsh, C. (ed.) (1991) Literacy as Praxis: Culture, Language and Pedagogy. Norwood NJ: Ablex. Walsh, C.E. (1995) Critical reflections for teachers: Bilingual education and critical pedagogy. In J. Fredrickson (ed.) Reclaiming our Voices: Bilingual Education, Critical Pedagogy and Praxis (pp. 79–88). Ontario, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Walters, K. (1994) Writing and education. In H. Hunther (ed.) Schrift und Schriftlichkeit; Ein interdisziplinares Handbuch internationaler Forschung /Writing and its Use: An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research (pp. 638–645). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wolfram, W., Adger, C.T. and Christian, D. (1999) Dialects in Schools and Communities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Wong Fillmore, L. (1982) Language minority students and school participation: What kind of English is needed? Journal of Education 164 (2), 143–156. Wong Fillmore, L. (1985) When does teacher talks work as input. In S. Gass and C. Madden (eds) Input in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 17–50). Rowley, MA: Newbury. Wong Fillmore, L. (1991) Second language learning in children: A model of language learning in social context. In E. Bialystok (ed.) Language Processing in Bilingual Children (pp. 49–69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wong Fillmore, L. (1992) Learning a language from learners. In C. Kramsch and S. McConnell-Ginet (eds) Text and Context: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Language Study (pp. 46–66). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Woolard, K.A. (1999) Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1), 3–29.

Spanish/English Speech Practices: Bringing Chaos to Order1 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA This paper presents a linguistic analysis of Spanish-English bilingual speech for scholars and practitioners of bilingualism. More specifically, the study surveys several outcomes of language contact, among these, inter-lingual transference, codeswitching, and convergence, as evidenced in the speech practices of heritage Spanish speakers in the United States. The emergent assessment is linguistically informed, thereby illuminating our understanding of bilingual speech forms, and encourages perspectives and pedagogies that validate bilingual speech practices. Keywords: contact, codeswitching, convergence

Introduction I am the sum total of my language. (Charles Sanders Peirce) ¿Y si soy ma´s de uno, Peirce? ¿Y si soy dos, o tres o – como dirı´a David – un millo´n? ¿En que´ momento, en que´ participio del mundo se convierte tu suma en mi resta, Peirce? (Gustavo Pe´rez Firmat) The language situation and linguistic behaviours of heritage Spanish speakers in the United States are seldom regarded impassively; the ambiguity expressed in the above title is intended to invoke the contradictory and conflictive fervour with which Spanish-English bilingual speech practices have been addressed by scholars, educators and policymakers. On one representative position, the bilingualism and attendant linguistic manifestations that may result from the sustained contact of heritage and dominant language are lauded as essential to communication in bilingual communities, where speakers are commonly called on to access a continuum of grammatical, discursive, and sociolinguistic competencies in one or the other of two languages (cf. Valde´s, 2000). A lot of people look at it as a disadvantage… ‘Oh, you’re Spanish’.2 But the way I look at it is this: blessed, you’re blessed to speak two different languages. (quoted in Toribio, 2003a) [I]t is helpful to imagine that when bilinguals code-switch, they are in fact using a twelve-string guitar, rather than limiting themselves to two six-string instruments. (Valde´s, 1988: 126) However, as lamented by Zentella (1998, 2000), it is also, indeed much too frequently attested that in the ‘linguistic logic’ of US society, heritage Spanish 41

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is a negative carryover that must be cancelled out, and the would-be benefit of possessing and deploying Spanish alongside English is equated with zero: A teacher comes up to you and tells you, ‘No, no. You know that is a filthy language, nothing but bad words and bad thoughts in that language’. I mean, they are telling you that your language is bad. (quoted in Salazar, 1970, cited in Crawford, 1992) Those poor kids come to school speaking a hodgepodge. They are all mixed up and don’t know any language well. As a result, they can’t even think clearly. (quoted in Walsh, 1991: 106) The present article elaborates a linguistically informed assessment of the contact Spanish, contact English, and Spanish-English bilingual speech of heritage Spanish speakers in the United States, devoting attention to bilingual development and deployment and to several phenomena of language contact and interaction, among others, inter-linguistic influence or transference, especially salient in early stages of learning, codeswitching, the alternating use of two language codes, and convergence, the increased equivalence between two languages or language varieties.3 The survey will make evident that rather than compensating for linguistic deficiency, ‘illicit language acts’ signal the strategic and efficient use of linguistic and cognitive resources in the appropriation and management of two language systems. The paper is organised as follows. The discussion is deliberated in the exposition of relevant research in bilingual codeswitching, English-language development, heritage language decline and loss, and contact-induced convergence, together with illustrative contact English, contact Spanish, and Spanish-English bilingual samples culled from the literature. The work ends with the presentation of three activities, suitable for classroom use, that may further advance educators’ appreciation of the speech practices of SpanishEnglish bilinguals, and in so doing, dispel certain misconceptions of the linguistic abilities of heritage Spanish speakers in the United States.

Bilingual Speech Practices Spanglish is the language of border diplomacy (Guillermo Go´mez Pen˜a) In most bilingual communities, members find themselves situated along a continuum that induces different ‘language modes’ (Grosjean, 1998) within a ‘bilingual range’ (Valde´s, 2000).4 For instance, Zentella (1981, 1997), reports that in her long-term participant study of the linguistic practices of el bloque, a Puerto-Rican community in el barrio of East Harlem, children could be observed to speak English with each other, while shifting to Spanish in deference to their elders, as illustrated in the recorded exchange in (1). For these children, Spanish and English together constitute their linguistic competence in a singular sense, and their linguistic performance will draw primarily upon English or Spanish, as required by the ‘observables’ of the speech situation, e.g. pragmatic norms, specific setting, and participants.5 (1) Context: Lolita (age 8) pushes Timmy (age 5) off her bike, and Timmy tells the adults nearby.

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L to T: T to adults: L to T: T to L: Adult to L: L to adult:

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Get off, Timmy, get off. Ella me dio! (‘She hit me’.) Porque TU me diste! (‘Because YOU hit me!’) Liar! ¿Por que´? (‘why?’) Porque e´l me dio, por eso. El siempre me esta´ dando cuando me ve. (‘Because he hit me, that’s why. He’s always hitting me whenever he sees me’.)

It is also commonplace in such communities that as bilingual speakers interact in bilingual mode, they will extend this ability to alternating languages in unchanged speech situations – that is, to codeswitching (Zentella, 1988). Gumperz, in his seminal work on discursive strategies, notes the important functions served by codeswitching (Gumperz, 1976, 1982).6 The premise underlying his and many subsequent studies is that codeswitching is a conscious choice on the part of the speaker. Consider, by way of example, the study by Montes-Alcala´ (2001), which is dedicated to analysing bilingual email exchanges and imputing particular stylistic goals to specific code-alternations; sample forms appear in (2): (2) Stylistic features commonly marked by language alternations: (a) reported speech I think so, dijo e´l. ‘I think so, / said he’. (b) emphasis Mientras estara´ a miles de millas away from here. ‘Meanwhile he must be thousands of miles / away from here’. (c) elaboration Caminamos por Melrose, checking out the stores, y luego decidimos ir a cenar. ‘We walked on Melrose, / checking out the stores,/ and then we decided to go to dinner’. (d) parentheticals Allı´, totally out of the blue, acabamos planeando un viaje para la semana que viene. ‘There, / totally out of the blue / we ended up planning a trip for the coming week’. (e) fixed or formulaic phrases No tenı´a fuerzas para nada, ası´ que lo deje´ and I called it a day. ‘I did not have strength for anything, so I left him / and I called it a day’. As shown, the author carefully controls her languages, bending them to her will rather than simply confining herself to the dictates of their individual form (cf. Ferguson, 1982; Widdowson, 1994). Another, however markedly different, example of the ‘ownership’ of language is discerned in the dictionaries in (3), created by the adult migrant farm

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workers depicted in Kalmar (1980, 2001). Presented with few opportunities for developing English language skills, Jacinto, Cipriano, and Alonso took hold of their own education, directing their Spanish-language abilities in asserting themselves in English. (3) (a) Jacinto’s dictionairy AVIVAC …… ‘ahorita regreso’ (‘I’ll be back’) LIMISI ……‘de´jame ver’ (‘Let me see’) AIDONO ……‘yo no se´’ (‘I don’t know’) LRERO ……‘poco’ (‘a little’) (b) Cipriano’s dictionary JAMACH DU YU ORN … …‘¿cua´nto ganas?’ (‘How much do you earn?’) AI NID SAM ER … …‘necesito aire’ (‘I need some air’) AI GUENT TU TAON … …‘yo fui al pueblo’ (‘I went to town’) GUIQUEN GOU NAU ……‘podemos ir ahora’ (‘We can go now’) (c) Alfonso’s dictionary TU URRILLAP ……‘darse prisa’ (‘to hurry up’) RUAT AUEY ……‘en seguida’ (‘right away’) GUIOLTY …… ‘culpable’ (‘guilty’) TU RUICH …… ‘alcanzar’ (‘to reach’) Though neither English nor Spanish, this non-native and non-target variety is not to be characterised in terms of acquisitional inadequacy (cf. BruttGriffler, 2002; Kachru, 1983; Romaine, 1992), but rather in terms of linguistic empowerment: through these entries, migrant workers claim an ‘other’ language in communicating and recording everyday life events.7 To be sure, the language samples in the dictionaires differ in significant respects from those in the email exchanges, the latter of interest here. Most obviously, the Spanish-English bilingual author of the forms in (2) does not alternate her languages for lack of knowledge of structures or lexical items in her language systems, but in fulfilling ‘a conscious desire to juxtapose the two codes to achieve some literary effect, an exercise of self-consciousness’ (Lipski, 1982: 191). However, similar to the language forms of the dictionaries, codeswitched forms are context-bound, practiced by bilinguals, for bilinguals. Indeed, for many bilinguals, codeswitching is an in-group or community norm (cf. Toribio, 2002; Zentella, 1981, 1997). Not mixing languages in certain circumstances would be considered irregular and socioculturally insensitive (cf. Seliger, 1996).

Spanish-English Bilingual Codeswitching ‘Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English y termino en espan˜ol’ (title of Poplack, 1980) Parallel to studies focused on the social and discursive factors that enter into its use are research efforts that have examined the grammatical properties

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of codeswitched speech.8 Consider the codeswitched forms that comprise the children’s narrative in (4).9 (4) ‘Robin el Chicano bird’ (Campbell, 1977, cited in Timm, 1993)10 ‘Robin, get up’, said Mrs. Bird. The sun was coming up. Era una fresca man˜ana en primavera. ‘Robin, get up!’…repeated Mrs Bird. Robin could hardly open his eyes. He was so sleepy. ‘Robin!’ called Mrs Bird, for the third time. Robin escucho´ el canto de unos pajarillos que celebraban the arrival of spring. ‘If only I could sing’, said Robin. He got up and went to the window. Vio lots of birds jumping from place to place mientras cantaban alegremente. ‘If only I could sing’, Robin said again, with tears en sus ojos. Then he flew away yendo a parar on top of a dried bush by a little pond. In the first lines of the above narrative, inter-sentential codeswitching is prevalent; entire segments may be identified as well-formed Spanish and English sentences. As the narrative progresses, the author moves between English and Spanish within the confines of a single clause, unveiling a mode that offers greater expressive possibilities without violating the grammatical rules of either Spanish and English (Pfaff & Cha´vez, 1986; Toribio & VaqueraVa´squez, 1995).11 Such intra-sentential codeswitched forms readily suggest a high degree of competence in the component languages. Nevertheless, as Poplack (1980: 615) asserts, it is ‘precisely those switch types which have traditionally been considered most deviant’. Furthermore, the nomenclature – terms such as Spanglish and Tex-Mex for Spanish-English codeswitching – carries pejorative connotations reflecting these misconceptions about the intellectual or linguistic abilities of those who codeswitch (cf. Ferna´ndez, 1990; Flores & Hopper, 1975). Perhaps most injuriously, the latter impressions are given voice not only by educators and policymakers, but by persons within the bilingual speech communities themselves; i.e. many heritage speakers internalise the stigma attached to their speech forms and ascribe only negative or covert prestige, if any, to their community speech norms (cf. Toribio, 2002; Wald, 1988; Zentella, 1998).12 But it is by now well-established among researchers in linguistics that intrasentential codeswitching is not a random mixture of two flawed systems; rather, it is rule-governed and systematic, demonstrating the operation of underlying grammatical restrictions.13 Proficient bilinguals may be shown to exhibit a shared knowledge of what constitutes appropriate intra-sentential codeswitching. For example, Spanish-English bilingual speakers will agree that all of the codeswitching examples previously illustrated represent acceptable bilingual forms, whereas other language alternations do not. Consider the excerpt from the ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ fairy tale narrative in (5); the language alternations in this invented text include switching at boundaries known to breach codeswitching norms (e.g. between auxiliary and main verb, between object pronoun and main verb, between noun and modifying adjective).

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(5) ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ / ‘Blancanieves y los Siete Enanitos’ E´rase una vez una linda princesita blanca como la nieve. Su madrastra, la reina, tenı´a un ma´gico mirror on the wall. The queen often asked, ‘Who is the ma´s hermosa del valle?’ Y un dı´a el mirror answered, ‘Snow White is the fairest one of all!’ Very envious and evil, the reina mando´ a un criado que matara a la princesa. El criado la llevo´ al bosque y out of compassion abandoned la allı´. A squirrel took pity on the princess and led her to a pequen˜a cabina en el monte. En la cabina, vivı´an siete enanitos que returned to find Snow White asleep in their beds. Back at the palace, the stepmother again asked the espejo: ‘Y ahora, ¿quie´n es la ma´s bella?’ El espejo otra vez le answered, without hesitation, ‘Snow White!’…14 In a reading task, reported in Toribio (2001b), bilinguals rejected the language alternations in this narrative as being affected and forced. Several readers involuntarily self-corrected the ill-formed switches in their out-loud performance; and although unable to articulate exactly what accounted for their negative assessment of the alternating forms in the narrative, some participants proposed explicit editing recommendations for improving on the ill-formed combinations of the text: (6) The story was easily understood because I understand English and Spanish, but I just think, like, for example the last sentence, ‘When Snow White bit into the apple, she callo´ desvanecida al suelo’, that I wouldn’t say it, it doesn’t sound right. I would probably say, ‘When White bit into the apple, ella se callo´ al suelo’. Or ‘she fell desvanecida al suelo’… Significantly, bilinguals proffer such judgments in the absence of overt instruction – speakers are not taught how to codeswitch. Nevertheless, just as monolingual native speakers of Spanish and English have an intuitive sense of linguistic well-formedness in their language, Spanish-English bilinguals are able to rely on unconscious grammatical principles in producing and evaluating codeswitched strings. Thus, contrary to common assumptions, codeswitching patterns may be used as a measure of bilingual ability, rather than deficit. In fact, the degree of language proficiency that a speaker possesses in two languages has been shown to correlate with the type of codeswitching engaged in.15 In her research on bilinguals of diverse levels of competence, Poplack (1980) observes that those who reported to be dominant in one language tended to switch by means of tag-like phrases (e.g. …sabes/…you know and …verdad?/…right?); in contrast, those who reported and demonstrated the greatest degree of bilingual ability favoured intra-sentential switches. This is corroborated by the ethnolinguistic research of Zentella (1981, 1997), which attests that proficient bilinguals display distinct behaviours in codeswitching from their more Spanishdominant or English-dominant community peers. Likewise, Montes-Alcala´’s email corpus (cf. (2)) demonstrates inter-sentential codeswitching at the beginning of the sample, when the author’s degree of bilingualism was more limited, and increased intra-sentential codeswitching in the later periods as the author reached a steady state of bilingualism, ‘building a bridge between both

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languages’ (Montes-Alcala´, 2001: 198). Finally, similar patterns are attested among children acquiring two languages from birth (cf. Babbe, 1995; De Houwer, 1995; Meisel, 1989, 1994), among children acquiring a second language in early childhood (cf. McClure, 1981), and among adult second language learners (cf. Bhatia & Ritchie, 1996; Rakowsky, 1989; Toribio, 2001a). Taken together, these investigations lead to the conclusion that, regardless of age, the child/adult bilingual’s codeswitching ability reflects the development of linguistic competence in the component languages (Babbe, 1995).

Bilingual English and Beyond ‘English is broken here’ (Coco Fusco) Like Spanish-English bilingual speech forms, bilingual English forms emerge from the ways in which heritage Spanish speakers deploy their languages in contact situations. Consider the English-language segment in (7), produced by a bilingual child developing English-language literacy. The orthographical ‘errors’ attested in this English-language sample are predictable on the basis of the child’s pronunciation (itself indicative of the phonological and phonetic differences between his specific Spanish dialect and the standardised English norm) and the pairing of advanced Spanish-language literacy and incipient English-language literacy (cf. Zabaleta & Toribio, 1999).16 (7) my freybret tv show es pober renyers ders 6 paber renyers day rescu persen adey seyt de world edey no ebriting der juymens pat dey morf to paber renyers a sayf da world of Rira an jor masters pat lor zet cam an jiguas guyning da paber renyers pat da paber renyers win de bars and day sayf da world.17 In this example, we see that the differences in the inventory and distribution of the sounds of English versus Spanish prove difficult for the child – note the substitutions for the English sounds [v] and [␪] in *具ebriting典 for everything, the representation of the flap in *具rita典 for rita, and the fricative in *具ders典 for there’s. English vowels also prove a formidable obstacle for the child; especially noteworthy is the representation of long vowel sounds in *具feybret典 for favorite, *具seyt典 for saved, *具juymens典 for humans, and the representation of lax vowels as in *具jor典 for her, *具da典 for the, and *具pat典 for but. We observe the reduction or deletion of consonant sequences which are disallowed in Spanish: *具persen典 for persons, *具seyt典 for saved, and *具eday典 for and they. Lastly, and most striking, are the Spanish-phonological processes transferred into Engish orthography: the reinforcement of the [w] glide by the insertion of [b/g], as in *具pober典 for power, *具guas典 for was, *具guyning典 for winning and *具bars典 for wars. Thus, while the text may be assailed as representative of the intrusion of one system on another, or worse, dismissed as impenetrable by the inexpert reader, it is most properly characterised as demonstrative of inter-lingual influence, and most profitably regarded as an agentive practice, permitting the child author to draw on his native language abilities to their full advantage. In addition to pronunciation (and its orthographical representation), the involuntary influence of the native language on the second language may be

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observed at the level of morphology and syntax (cf. Baetens Beardsmore, 1986; Clyne, 1972; Grosjean, 1982). Consider the bilingual English examples in (8), uttered by kindergarteners in relating scenes from a picture book, and those in (9), prepared in written form by fifth and seventh Grade Spanish heritage students:18 (8) (a) And this is a bear snow… a book coloreding. (b) A pig and a kitty big and a snake big. (9) (a) I like the shark because is my faborite sea animal. (b) I didn’t like the lake because is to dirty and is not good for swimming… (c) I like the star fish and the diferents snails. (d) Thank you for explaining what eat the animals in the sea. (e) Thank you for letas see the pictures of the sea. In discussing the bilingual English forms of the children represented in (8), Miller (1995) points to the differential development in lexicon versus grammar. Specifically, she writes, ‘They learned first those elements of English which would prove most efficient, that is, which would convey the most information in the simplest way possible. As a result, their English lexicon approaches the level of their monolingual peers, while their English syntax is not as fully developed’ (1995: 23). This is documented in their naming of objects with incorrect adjective-noun order in compounds and in phrases. In (9) there are additional exemplars in which Spanish language grammatical properties underlie English-language productions: we detect the nonexpression of subject pronouns in (9a, b), the agreement of adjective and noun in (9c), the post-verbal positioning of a subject in (9d), and the infinitive-plusenclitic complement in (9e). Of course, continued experience and instruction in English will lead to target-like pronunciation, grammar, and overall literacy for all of the children and adolescents quoted here.

Heritage Language Decline and Loss My name hangs around me like a loose tooth (Lorna Dee Cervantes) Just as bilingual abilities develop with contextualised practice, so too can they decline. It has been reported that as speakers become increasingly proficient in English, they tend to become progressively less proficient in Spanish, in what Silva-Corvala´n (1988) has termed ‘a bilingual continuum’.19 For example, the narrative in (10) very clearly exposes Spanish language reduction in the lexicon and simplification and restructuring in morphological and syntactic structures (e.g. gender marking, lack of doubling of indirect objects phrases with clitic pronouns); also evident is the use of English words (e.g. gun [cf. pistola]), phrases (e.g. se puso en disguise [cf. se disfrazo´]), and discourse markers (e.g. so [cf. pues]).20 (10) Oral narrative (transcribed) Esta es la historia de…Cape[l]ucita Roja y…la mama´ de Capelucita Roja dijo que…que se lleve este dulce o comida a su abuelita so …se fue y

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encontro´ un lobo que…hablo´ con ella y despue´s…ella siguio´ caminando a casa de la abuelita. Pero el lobo se fue…llego´ al casa primero y asusto´ al abuelita y…se puso en …disguise [laugh] de la abuelita so …cuando llego´ Capelucita Roja ella vio que no era su abuelita…pero al mismo tiempo el…squirrel, argrillita, argrita (?) dijo a alguien que estaba en mucho ummm danger y… [long sigh] el hombre se fue a buscar a Capelucita Roja que sı´ estaba en… in danger y la salvo´ ummm porque llevo´…un… gun a salvarla y Capelucita encontro´ a su abuelita y estaban felices, estaban bien.21 The analysis of such speech forms invites careful consideration, however. It may be the case that for this heritage speaker not enough input and subsequent experience with Spanish has resulted in incomplete or imperfect learning, and the dominant language has become an ‘indirect data source’ for the native language (cf. Seliger, 1996).22 Or it may be the case that reduced exposure to and use of Spanish has had dire consequences on her linguistic performance, but competence has remained intact (cf. Bullock & Toribio, 2004, Montrul, 2002; Toribio, 2000b). Another pertinent factor is the range of linguistic forms that served as models for the speaker’s Spanish language acquisition; for instance, as reported in the literature, the popular repertoire of most ‘ordinary’ Mexicans who immigrate to the US is made up largely of middle to low registers of Spanish, characterised by a narrower range of lexical and syntactic alternatives (cf. Valde´s, 1988, 2000).23 Thus, without application of qualitative and quantitative methodologies assessing the speaker’s language history and abilities, we can only conclude that such forms are non-target-like.24 And even then, cautions Lipski, ‘it is not always possible to separate the overlapping domains of English structural transfer, prior existence of archaic/non-standard forms arising outside the United States, and the general results of language erosion’ (1993: 156). As recounted in Toribio (2002), the speaker whose narrative is represented in (10) presents a profile of features and behaviours that coincide with those described by Lipski (1993) in his discussion of the ontogenesis of ‘transitional bilingualism’: little or no school training in Spanish; Spanish spoken in earliest childhood as the language of the home often in conjunction with English; a rapid shift to English before adolescence; subsequent Spanish use limited to intimate circles; responding to bilinguals partially or wholly in English when addressed in Spanish.25 Likewise, the speech forms in (11–13), drawn from extracts of a personal diary (cf. Toribio, 2000), exemplify the linguistic characteristics of vestigial Spanish usage signalled by Lipski: instability of nominal and adjectival inflection (11), incorrectly conjugated verb forms (12), errors of prepositional usage and categorical use of redundant subject pronouns (13). (11) Alterations in nominal and adjectival agreement (a) Fuimos a dejar el televicio´n viejo a la casa. [sic] ‘We went to leave the old television at the house’. [cf. el televisor viejo/la televicio´n vieja] (b) Y les dices que haga una cosa… [sic] ‘And you tell them to do something…’ [cf. le dices que haga / les dices que hagan]

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(c) Noma´s los muchachos de mı´ tios… [sic] ‘Only my uncles’ kids …’ [cf. mis tı´os] (12) Alterations in verbal morphology (a) Sabes salemos todos negrı´os de la labor. [sic] ‘We come out all black from the field’. [cf. salimos] (b) Para los muchachos cuando vienieran a medio dia. [sic] ‘For the boys when they would come at mid-day’. [cf. vinieran] (c) Ama me digo que le poniera un bote de agua… [sic] ‘Ama told me to put a bottle of water…’ [cf. pusiera] (13) Alterations in pronouns, prepositions, and complementisers (a) Fui a despedir de todos los del grupo. [sic] ‘I went to say goodbye to all in the group’. [cf. despedirme] (b) Las vistas llamaban ‘Rafahel el angel’. [sic] ‘The movies were called ‘Rafael the angel’. [cf. se llamaban] (c) Las flores que estan en un lado de mi ventana se fueron cayendo las ramas. [sic] ‘The stems on the flowers that are on one side of my windows started falling’. [cf. a las flores…se le fueron cayendo] (d) Siempre habı´a sa´bido que el doctor B. era muy buena jente yo le dije era. [sic] ‘She had always known Dr. B. to be a good person. I said he was that’. [cf. le dije que lo era] (e) Pos yo digo a uno le hace sentirse… [sic] ‘Well I say that it makes one feel…’ [cf. digo que a uno] (f) Ama digo que no movı´eramos nada hasta sepamos de verdad. [sic] ‘Ama told us not to move anything until we know for sure’. [cf. hasta que sepamos] (g) Bueno las tengo que contestar pronto para salgan el Lunes. [sic] ‘Well I have to respond to them quickly so that they go out on Monday’. [cf. para que salgan] Notably, these characteristics are seldom if ever found among fluent native speakers or even among bilinguals whose Spanish contains structural interference from English, who readily recognise these as being non-target-like.

Bilingual Spanish ‘I don’t speak Spanish. I just only speak English with Spanish words’. (eight-year-old boy) Consonant with the foregoing discussion, the appearance of English language elements in Spanish language contexts need not be interpreted as indicative of attrition; it could simply be an instance of codeswitching, in which case, the grammatical autonomy and integrity of each language may be maintained. This is not to say, however, that the Spanish of proficient bilinguals is impervious to the incursions of the second language system. As affirmed by Silva-Corvala´n (1994), among others, the permeability of a grammar to

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external influence depends on the existence of superficially parallel structures in the languages in contact (but cf. Thomason & Kaufman, 1988). Although the differences between Spanish and English are significant (and therefore, it is premature to speak of one fused syntax and two vocabularies – cf. Muysken’s (2000) congruent lexicalisation – as implied by the boy quoted immediately above), there is considerable syntactic parallelism between the two languages, which may lead to convergence. Two salient properties demonstrate the differences and emergent similarities at once. English allows only for preverbal positioning of subjects; Spanish accepts preverbal subjects, but additionally sanctions post-verbal placement (e.g. Llego´ Juan ‘Juan arrived’). And English requires that subjects be overtly expressed; Spanish tolerates overt subjects, but additionally licenses (and in some contexts requires) that subjects have no overt realisation (e.g. Hablo espan˜ol ‘I speak Spanish’). Such equivalence is the basis for emergent convergence in Spanish-English bilingual settings – to be found in the reduction of grammatical options in the heritage language with greater allowance to those shared with the dominant linguistic system – and may be the basis for further structural convergence between the two linguistic systems (Muysken, 2000). This raises the important question of whether specific language forms are further favoured when the languages are simultaneously deployed. The issue, then, is not whether the Spanish language is maintained while drifting towards or converging with the grammatical options shared with the English language system, but whether this drift is promoted by bilingual (vs monolingual) language modes (cf. Grosjean, 1998).26 In testing these claims of inter-lingual violability, Toribio (2003b, 2004) examines the variation that is attested in the Spanish speech data produced by a codeswitching bilingual as he engages in Spanish and Spanish-English codeswitched speech across two conditions.27 The above-referenced syntactic features of Spanish – the positioning and (non) expression of subjects – were selected for inquiry.28 Since these properties of Spanish syntax are determined by discourse – and semantic-pragmatic considerations, their analysis must go beyond the confines of isolated sentences to a consideration of linguistic forms in relation to the narrative or other discourse functions that they perform within a given text. The extended discourse of the monolingual excerpt of Little Red Riding Hood in (14) and the bilingual extract of The Beggar Prince in (15) prove especially opportune for examination of subject expression and positioning; however, the cursory discussion that follows is focused on the omission (marked by ⭋) versus expression of the subject, to the exclusion of its positioning.29 (14) …Cuando ⭋ iba, cuando ella iba cantando y caminando de pronto detra´s de un a´rbol, salio´ el lobo, el mismo lobo que la iba persiguiendo. E´l le dio unas flores y le dijo que´ bonita se miraba. ⭋ Tambie´n le pregunto´ que pa’ do´nde ⭋ iba, verdad, y ella le respondio´, y le dijo, ‘⭋ voy a la casa de mi abuelita a darle un… un en… a entregarle algo que mama´ me mando´. ⭋ No se´ que´ ⭋ es’. Entonces, e´l le dijo, ‘Okay, pues, ⭋ nos vemos. Y ten buen dı´a’. En eso, e´l se fue y ella siguio´ por el bosque, feliz, cantando con sus flores que le dio el lobo. Mientras ella iba por el bosque, el lobo se apuro´ y llego´ a la casa de la abuelita.30

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(15) …Since she had agreed to go and live with him. Ella dijo que ⭋ voy a ver a ver cua´nto ⭋ puedo quedarme aquı´. Let’s see if I could get used to it. Well she did, ⭋ se quedo´ almost you know, ella dijo, ‘⭋ Me voy a quedar aquı´ un mes y a ver a ver que´ tal’. y llegando el, la cuarta semana, pues ya entonces ella empezo´ a sentir el, que´ tan duro es trabajar, how, how easy she had it, how all the things that, that, that she took for granted, you know, she, uh, she started to reflect upon, ası´ que ella decidio´ en la, durante la cuarta semana de que ella se iba a regresar al palacio, ella no podia vivir como una pesona humilde.31 At first observation, the Spanish of both texts appears structurally wellformed: most expressed subject pronouns correctly serve the function of contrast, switch reference, or disambiguation. But, there are some pronominal uses to which no such function can be attributed, especially when the English language is also activated; noteworthy in this respect are the pronouns in the bilingual Spanish samples in (14). The use of pronouns in these bilingual selections is not grammatically incorrect, but discourse-pragmatically odd, being marked by a selection of available grammatical options that coincide with those of English. Thus, unlike the attrition previously discussed, these passages do not involve the incorporation or loss of morphological information or syntactic structures. Yet, similar to the attrition already mentioned, the subtle changes represented, are motivated by a principle of redundancy reduction: the speaker arrives at the most parsimonious grammar that can serve both Spanish and English when both systems are activated (Seliger, 1996; Toribio, 2004). To recapitulate, there is implicit in proficient bilingual speech behaviour an appeal towards economy: the speaker reduces processing costs while enjoying the richness of bilingualism (Muysken, p.c.). Such a finding affords an explanation for why Spanish-English bilingual speakers’ Spanish language abilities may not be identical to those of native speakers who have acquired and used their Spanish in settings in which only Spanish is employed for all interactions.32 Finally, such a finding leads to a judgment against cries of corruption and degradation by the self-proclaimed conservators of the Spanish language. For it is uncertain, states Valde´s (2000: 119) ‘whether linguistic conservatism is a predictor of language maintenance or whether the survival of a language in a minority-majority context requires the acceptance of “interference” phenomena by its speakers’ (cf. Silva-Corvala´n, 1994; Woolard, 1992).

Pedagogical Implications Our real lives are the family, our friends, the street, jobs, and all that we came with from before. (a high school student quoted in Walsh, 1991) It is hoped that the foregoing discussion may be heeded as an exhortation to educators to become familiar with the research literature on bilingual speech practices. Much is to be gained by educators’ understanding of the language diversity of heritage language students, especially as they uphold the standardised linguistic varieties that are required for academic success (cf. Valde´s, 2000). The ensuing paragraphs present pedagogical practices that further pro-

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mote this positive disposition towards heritage language students, their particular speech forms, and their communities of practice.33 Teachers who serve Spanish heritage language students may carry out examinations of bilingual materials in concert with activities in subjects such as social studies and language arts. Suitable exemplars are readily available in the literary output of poets and writers. The linguistic inflections in Tato Laviera’s bilingual poem, ‘My graduation speech’, reproduced in (16), are especially instructive for high school audiences. The poem reflects Laviera’s deliberate use of ‘anti-aesthetic’ language to render an enactment and commentary of the linguistic dilemma of Puerto Ricans in the United States (Flores, 1993).34 (16) ‘My graduation speech’ i think in spanish i write in english i want to go back to puerto rico, but i wonder if my kink could live in ponce, mayagu¨ez and carolina tengo las venas aculturadas escribo en spanglish abraham en espan˜ol abraham in english tato in spanish ‘taro’ in english tonto in both languages how are you? ¿co´mo esta´s? i don’t know if i’m coming or si me fui ya si me dicen barranquitas, yo reply, ‘con que´ se come eso?’ si me dicen caviar, i digo, ‘a new pair of converse sneakers’. ahı´ supe que estoy jodı´o ahı´ supe que estamos jodı´os english or spanish spanish or english spanenglish now, dig this: hablo lo ingle´s matao hablo lo espan˜ol matao no se´ leer ninguno bien so it is, spanglish to matao what i digo ¡ay, virgen, yo no se´ hablar! Numerous and varied themes arise in the interpretation of this poem, some oriented towards content, and others focused on linguistic form. At one level,

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the poem is an indictment of the educational system, at another, the linguistic modulation of the poem represents the difficulty of marking out an ‘interlingual’ space. Laviera presents a poet-persona who is silenced by the linguistic mismatch between English and Spanish, one who is inarticulate even in Spanglish, not only by assertion (‘Spanglish to matao’), but also by employing in his speech such combinations as ‘yo reply’, ‘or si me fui ya’, and ‘what i digo’, switches, which, as noted, are unacceptable among bilingual speakers (Toribio & Vaquera-Va´squez, 1995). Yet, writes Flores (1993: 176), the closing line ‘must be understood ironically: the reader is by now aware that the speaker knows what he is saying and can say what he thinks in both languages and in a wide array of combinations of the two’. Linguistic issues of voice may also be highlighted in discussing prose narrative, such that excerpted from Norma Cantu´’s Canı´cula: (17) Mami was the madrina one year; she sewed the most beautiful outfit for the baby Jesus – of white tulle, embroidered in white silk, complete with knitted cap and socks – we all helped with the preparativos, although we usually did anyway, even when it was some other neighbor who was the madrina. From the tamalada on Christmas Eve, for the acostar al nin˜o, the singing of Mexican carols, and later because we kids insisted, English ones as well, the champurrado and the little bags of goodies (oranges, pecans, Mexican cookies), and the colaciones and other Christmas candy that fell from the star-shaped pin˜ata that invariably Ton˜o, the oldest of the neighborhood bullies, would break, Don˜a Carmen’s posada was the best. The Spanish lexical items function as echoes of a cultural tradition that remains inaccessible to the main language of the text, English. Thus while we may offer the facile conclusion of lexical borrowing as typical of language contact situations, as an aesthetic practice, its description is more complex, for in mixing languages, there is a mixing of cultures and of world views that is part and parcel of the (im)migrant experience. Other classroom activities could reference naturalistic language samples such as those afforded in personal narratives. Students could be asked to chronicle their own experiences, independently or in collaboration with siblings and other family members. The brief entries in (18), drawn from the personal history of an agricultural worker (cf. (11–13)), are uniquely valuable in allowing for extensive cultural and linguistic analysis and discussion (Toribio, 2000a). (18) Sali para D. en avion a las 2 de la tarde, pero ya mero no la hacı´a como antes de llegar al aero-puerto se nos fletio la llanta de la troca de J. Estuve en D. por cerca de 4 horas. estaba en ‘stand by’. […]…adema´s no tenemos agua caliente, ni ban˜o para ban˜arnos y el servicı´o (escusado) se esta cayendo nomas con unas tablas delgadas sosteniendolo y la puerta del servicio esta toda quebrada; no la puedes cerrer porque si la sierras se quebra; Nombre si pisas un poca pesado …[…] A. y D. no andan trabajando en la labor noma´s se quedan en la troca porque toda-

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via no se comienza la escuela para los migrantes creo que empieza hasta la semana que entra y nosotros no nos registramos porque ya nos vamos para Norte Kora y Minnestota. […] Nomas va a la escuela A. y D., todos los demas vamos a trabajar en el betavel. Estuvimos levantados desde las cinco de la man˜ana y el (bus) autobus vino como a las 7:30 siete y media. [sic]35 Perhaps the most immediately outstanding feature of the journal is in its form and what it reveals about the author and her social and linguistic disadvantages. In surviving largely as an oral language, the Spanish of this speaker may be attrited in isolation from the codified (written) norm and adapt in its contact with English. The samples represent a simplification of the complex mapping between sound and graphemes to a few known values, and reproduce many of the phonological characteristics of her rural dialect. Most telling of the direct transcription of oral speech is her rendition of the state name: Norte Kora, a phonetic representation of her pronunciation of ‘North Dakota’. The vocabulary, e.g. items such as la labor ‘the field’ speaks to her occupational segregation in agricultural communities and to broader features of colloquial Mexican Spanish, e.g. noma´s ‘only’. Another salient characteristic of the journal is the adoption of English words and phrases, e.g. phonetically unincorporated forms such as stand by, and loan translations, such as pero ya mero no la hacı´a ‘I nearly didn’t make it’ (lit. trans.), which may be uninterpretable to the reader who has no knowledge of English. With respect to grammar, the principal tendency in the journal is to simplify the verbal morphology, with the result that there is a greater number of verbs that follow the regular conjugation; in addition, mismatches in agreement are noted for subject-verb agreement, especially with null and post-verbal subjects, va a la escuela A. y D. ‘A. and D. go to school’. But the keynote of this written record is the issue of selfdetermination: the author literally writes her own history in a voice that clearly articulates her migrant identity. In conclusion, it should be patently evident that the introduction of materials and activities such as those outlined above can provide the basis for teacher-facilitated peer discussions on a broad range of viable and vital issues – from civics to orthography – that are of personal relevance and educational merit to heritage language students. More than that, the mere act of acknowledging that bilingual speech forms are worthy of examination will cultivate an affective environment that will translate into greater engagement on the part of Spanish heritage students. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, The Pennsylvania State University, 211 Burrowes Building, University Park, PA 16801, USA. Notes 1. The paper draws its subtitle from a paper co-presented with Santiago VaqueraVa´squez at a joint conference of The Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American

56

2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy Studies and the Pacific Coast Council for Latin American Studies held in Las Vegas in 1995. It is not uncommon for Latinos in the US to self-identify as ‘Spanish’; also attested is the classifying of English-speakers as ‘English’. As described in Muysken’s synchronic study of bilingual speech, in many situations of prolonged language contact, a number of phenomena involving mixing co-occur: lexical borrowing, codemixing, interference, calquing, relexification, semantic borrowing, first language transfer in second language learning (cf. Muysken, 2000). The reader is referred to Grosjean (1982) for a popular, accessible text on bilingualism. Consult Zentella (1988, 2000) for a discussion of the principal communicative patterns – ‘who speaks what to whom’ – that emerged in her study of the bilingual families of el bloque. Gumperz provides a list of discourse functions marked by codeswitching: quotation, addressee specification, interjections, reiteration, and message qualification (cf. McClure, 1981; Valde´s-Fallis, 1976). The listing is not exhaustive, as a review of the literature will demonstrate; subsequent research has corroborated Gumperz’s classification and has revealed additional conversational strategies accomplished by codeswitching. Especially noteworthy are the findings reported by Zentella (1997), who identified at least 22 communicative aims achieved by code alternation among Puerto Ricans in New York City. As such, the forms are bound to the context of this migrant community and need not be regulated by reference to a standardised norm. The reader is referred to the early Spanish-English code-switching studies by Aguirre (1977, 1985), Gingra`s (1974), Gumperz (1976), Gumperz and Herna´ndezCha´vez (1975), Lipski (1985), McClure (1981), Pfaff (1979), Poplack (1980, 1981), Timm (1975), and Zentella (1981). We must bear in mind, however, that literary examples do not necessarily represent societal usage, since the former reflect inherent correction, editing, and rewriting. We are nonetheless in agreement with Lipski (1985) that the literary artefact should not be entirely exempted form sociolinguistic criteria (cf. Toribio, 2001b). For relevant discussion on the narrative structure of codeswitching, consult the literature grounded in Keller (1979). The Spanish portions are translated as follows: ‘It was a fresh spring morning’; (he) listened to the song of the some little birds who were celebrating’; (he) saw’; ‘while they sang happily’; ‘in his eyes’; ‘going to land’. Note that intra-sentential codeswitching is to be distinguished from lexical insertions and tag-switches (cf. Romaine, 1995 for discussion). Lexical insertions (i) and tags (ii) may be evidenced in both monolingual and bilingual modes of interaction; in contrast, codeswitching, of interest here, is illustrative of a bilingual speech mode which requires a high degree of bilingual competence. (i) Leı´ el libro en el reference room. (‘I read the book in the reference room’) (ii) It’s raining a lot these days, verdad? (‘It’s raining a lot these days, isn’t it?’) When the parents in Zentella’s (1981) study of el bloque were asked why they or their children shifted between Spanish and English, they all attributed it to a lack of linguistic knowledge. However, her observations revealed that only ten percent of switches were intended to cover gaps in knowledge. Consult the syntactic-theoretical works of Belazi et al. (1994), D’Introno (1996), MacSwan (1999, 2000), Toribio (2001a), Toribio and Rubin (1996), Woolford (1984, 1985). In the monolingual rendition, the language switches are indicated by a slash mark: ‘There once was a beautiful princess as white as the snow. Her stepmother, the queen, had a magic / mirror on the wall. The queen often asked, ‘Who is the / most fair in the valley?’ And one day the / mirror answered, ‘Snow White is the fairest one of all!’ Very envious and evil, the / queen sent a houseboy to kill the princess. The houseboy took her to the forest and / out of compassion abandoned / her there. / A squirrel took pity on the princess and led her to

Spanish/English Speech Practices

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

57

a / small cabin in the forest. In the cabin, there lived seven dwarfs that / returned to find Snow White asleep in their beds. Back at the palace, the stepmother again asked the / mirror: ‘And now who is the most beautiful?’ the mirror again answered / her, without hesitation, ‘Snow White!’… It must not go unremarked, however, that although codeswitching is subserved by bilingual competence, it is not an essential feature of bilingual practice. Researchers such as Valde´s (1981) and Lipski (1985) have observed that while competence in two languages is a necessary precondition, it is an insufficient prerequisite in determining successful codeswitching performance: membership in a community in which codeswitching is practised may also be required. That is, codeswitching practice requires social knowledge that is culturally specific and acquired through contextualised practice (cf. Toribio 2002). These data were made available by Richard Dura´n, Professor of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara and director of the project entitled ‘Activity and Classroom Culture Among Language Learners’, sponsored by the Center for Research on Education of Students Placed At-risk, Johns Hopkins and Howard Universities. A normative orthography would render the following: My favourite TV show is Power Rangers. There’s six power rangers. They rescue persons and they saved the world and they know everything. They’re humans but they morph to power rangers and save the world of Rita and her masters but Lord Zedd comes and he was winning the power rangers but the power rangers win the wars and they save the world. The written texts were made available to me by Karen Beckstead. This pattern of transitional bilingualism is masked by continued influx of monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants, but the shift to English is evident (cf. Bills et al., 1995; Gutie´rrez & Silva-Corvala´n, 1993; Martı´nez, 1993; Silva-Corvala´n, 1986, 1994; Torres, 1997), and the lack of intergenerational transmission will usher in language shift away from Spanish (cf. Fishman, 1964). Consult Zabaleta (2001) for further discussion on language variation and attrition among heritage speakers. The text is translated as follows: ‘This is the story of Little Red Riding Hood and …Little Red Riding Hood’s mother said that…that to take these sweets or food to her grandmother so…she went and found a wolf that…spoke with her and then…she continued walking to the grandmother’s house. But the wolf went…arrived at the house first and scared the grandmother and…’ This speaker could be said to represent Fishman’s (1964) fourth stage of immigrant bilingualism: English has displaced the mother tongue in all except for the most intimate or private domains. Valde´s suggests that because of the large influx of persons of rural and workingclass backgrounds, the Spanish of the Southwest is characterised by features of the Mexican normal rural. This is not to suggest, she cautions, that these speakers are unable to alternate Spanish speech styles; rather, the difference between the Spanish spoken by Mexican-Americans in the Southwest and that spoken in Mexico is in the fewer number of styles in the speakers’ repertoire, and the frequency with which each style is employed. It is unclear whether such tendencies entail changes in competence, i.e. in the formal morphosyntactic features of the component languages (cf. Platzack, 1996). The interested reader is referred to Vago (1991) for discussion of aspects of native language attrition that indicate that more abstract levels of knowledge may be affected, e.g. as revealed by a speaker’s inability to make grammaticality judgments. As reported in Toribio (2000b, 2002), the speaker’s everyday interactions are carried out almost exclusively in English, though she embellishes her speech with Spanishlanguage discourse markers, formulaic expressions, and lexical items (which could be considered part of her core English-language lexicon). The speaker switches into Spanish, even in bilingual interactions that favour English, her dominant language, in order to assert her cultural autonomy and uniqueness; i.e., linguistic modulation

58

26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy becomes an act of cultural differentiation and reaffirmation, the linguistic material around which her Latina identity is configured. Seliger and Vago (1991) note that such a reduction of redundancy presupposes that the bilingual’s languages are not altogether autonomous of each other. The speaker was selected for analysis because he reported engaging in oral codeswitching in a diversity of discourse contexts, especially with in-group members such as friends and family, and some reported alternating Spanish and English in their written communications (e.g. personal letters, and email) as well. As is well known, the ordering of phrases in Spanish declarative sentences demonstrates a sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic considerations such as themerheme/topic-focus requirements, and lexical considerations such as verb class (cf. Llego´ Juan ‘Juan arrived’ vs. Estudio´ Juan ‘Juan studied’). In addition, subject pronouns are omissible in Spanish; they are in contexts of contrastive focus, switch reference, or disambiguation. What is required is a thorough quantitative analysis of the positioning of subjects as sanctioned by verb class and by theme-rheme/topic-focus properties. For instance, the low incidence of post-verbal subjects in the ‘bilingual’ Spanish mode could be due to the fact that the speaker produced few unaccusative verbs that license this pattern, or that the speaker adopted alternate strategies for marking theme-rheme/topic-focus contrasts (the latter possibility, of course, is significant as it speaks to the point). The segment is translated as follows: ‘When she walked, when she walked singing and walking from behind a tree there appeared a wolf, the same wolf that was following her. He gave her some flowers and told her how pretty she looked. He also asked her where she was going, right, and she responded, and said to him, ‘I’m going to my grandmother’s house to giver her a… a… to give her something that mother sent me. I don’t know what it is’. Then he told her, ‘Okay, well, we’ll see each other. And have a good day’. ‘Just then, he left and she continued through the woods, happy, singing with her flowers that the wolf had given her. While she walked through the woods, the wolf hurried and arrived at the grandmother’s house’. The Spanish language segments are translated as follows: ‘[…] She said that I am going to see how long I can stay here. […] she stayed […] she said, ‘I’m going to stay here a month and see how it is’. […] and having arrived the the fourth week, well then she began to feel the how hard work is […] so she decided in the during the fourth week that she was going to return to the palace, she could not live like a humble person’. This linguistic study also invites investigations into related issues, among these, the assessment of language proficiency among bilinguals (cf. Valde´s & Figueroa, 1994), and the simultaneous processing and representation of languages and language modules (cf. the early proposal by Sridhar & Sridhar, 1980). Recent treatments such as those of Haberman (1995), Ladson-Billings (1994), and Olsen (1997) have yielded a consistent profile: successful teachers are those who demonstrate a disposition that includes, among other attributes, an orientation to the specific community of which the students are members, and skills in using students’ linguistic strengths to teach a second language or language variety. Consult Bruce-Novoa (1982) and L. Flores (1987) for insightful discussion on Chicano poetry. ‘I left for D. by plane at 2 in the afternoon, but I almost didn’t make it since before arriving to the airport we got a flat tire on J’s truck. I was in D. for close to 4 hours. I was on ‘stand by’. […] …in addition we don’t have hot water, nor a bath for bathing and the facilities re falling only some thin boards holding it together and the door is all broken; you can’t close it because if you close it breaks; man, if you step on it heavily. […]…A. and D. aren’t working in the fields they just stay in the truck because school for the migrants doesn’t start I think it doesn’t start until next week and we did not register because we were going to North Dakota and Minnesota. […] Only A. and D. go to school, all the others of us go to work

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in the beet fields. We were up since five in the morning and the (bus) bus came around 7:30 seven-thirty’.

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age acquisition and attrition. In H. Clahsen (ed.) Generative Perspectives on Language Acquisition (pp. 369–414). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Poplack, S. (1980) Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en espan˜ol: Toward a typology of code-switching. In J. Amastae and L. Elı´as-Olivares (eds) Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects (pp. 230–263). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Poplack, S. (1981) Syntactic structure and social function of code-switching. In R. Dura´n (ed.) Latino Language and Communicative Behavior (pp. 169–184). Norwood, NJ: ABLEX Publishing. Rakowsky, A. (1989) A study of intra-sentential code-switching in Spanish-English bilinguals and second language learners. PhD thesis, Brown University. Romaine, S. (1995) Bilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Seliger, H. and Vago, R. (1991) Introduction. In H. Seliger and R. Vago (eds) First Language Attrition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Seliger, H. (1996) Primary language attrition in the context of bilingualism. In W. Ritchie and T. Bhatia (eds) Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 605–625). New York: Academic Press. Silva Corvala´n, C. (1986) Bilingualism and language contact. Language 62 (3), 587–608. Silva Corvala´n, C. (1988) Oral narratives along the Spanish-English bilingual continuum. In J. Staczek (ed.) On Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan Linguistics (pp. 172–184). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Silva Corvala´n, C. (1994) Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Sridhar, S.N. and Sridhar, K. (1980) The syntax and psycholinguistics of bilingual codemixing. Canadian Journal of Psychology 34 (4), 407–416. Thomason, S. and Kaufman, T. (1988) Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. Timm, L.A. (1975) Spanish-English code-switching: El por que and how-not-to. Romance Philology 28 (4), 473–482. Timm, L.A. (1993) Bilingual code-switching: An overview of research. In B. Merino, H. Trueba and F. Samaniego (eds) Language and Culture in Learning (pp. 94–112). Bristol, PA: The Falmer Press. Toribio, A.J. (2000a) Migrant language: Spanish language variation and loss. Unpublished manuscript, The Pennsylvania State University. Toribio, A.J. (2000b) Code-switching and minority language attrition. In R. Leow and C. Sanz (eds) L1 and L2 Acquisition of Spanish (pp. 174–193). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Toribio, A.J. (2001a) On the emergence of code-switching competence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4 (3), 203–231. Toribio, A.J. (2001b) Accessing Spanish-English code-switching competence. International Journal of Bilingualism 5 (4), 403–436. Toribio, A.J. (2002) Spanish-English code-switching among US Latinos. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 158, 89–119. Toribio, A.J. (2003a, forthcoming) The social significance of Spanish language loyalty. The Bilingual Review. Toribio, A.J. (2003b, forthcoming) Unilingual code and bilingual mode: The Spanish of Spanish-English bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism (special issue, Ad Backus, editor). Toribio, A.J. (2004, forthcoming) Convergence as an optimization strategy of bilingual speech: Evidence from code-switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Special issue: Bilingualism and convergence). Toribio, A.J. and Rubin, E.J. (1996) Code-switching in generative grammar. In J. Jensen and A. Roca (eds) Spanish in Contact (pp. 203–226). Cambridge, MA: Cascadilla Press. Toribio, A.J. and Vaquera Va´squez, S.R. (1995) Bringing chaos to order. Unpublished manuscript presented at The Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies and the Pacific Coast Council for Latin American Studies joint conference.

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The Continua of Biliteracy and the Bilingual Educator: Educational Linguistics in Practice1 Nancy H. Hornberger Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania The continua model of biliteracy offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings; bilingual teacher education represents a conjunction of all three of these and hence, a good candidate for applying the continua model. This paper uses selected experiences in language teacher education as practised at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education to illustrate the potential of the continua model as heuristic in continually (re)writing the bilingual or language educator’s knowledge base in response to the demands of educational policy and practice. A series of vignettes serves as a means for exploring dilemmas confronting bilingual (and language) educators and ways in which the continua model might shape a response: the global/local dilemma – global social, cultural, and political trends as contexts for biliteracy; the standard/nonstandard dilemma – media of biliteracy as reflected in evolving views of language and literacy in the world; the language/content dilemma – enquirybased teacher education as an approach to the development of biliteracy; and the language/culture/identity dilemma – teachers’ and learners’ identities and cultures as they relate to biliteracy content. The paper concludes with a few comments on bilingual educators as researchers, teachers, and language planners and on the need, now more than ever, for bilingual educators to be advocates. Keywords: language and identity, language and content, global English, language planning, language teacher education, nonstandard languages in education

Introduction The continua model of biliteracy offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings; bilingual teacher education represents a conjunction of all three of these and hence, a good candidate for applying the continua model. In what follows, I use selected experiences in language teacher education as practised at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (PennGSE) to illustrate the potential of the continua model as heuristic in continually (re)writing the bilingual or language educator’s knowledge base in response to the demands of policy and practice in today’s ever-evolving schools, in the US and worldwide. After a brief introductory overview of the continua model and of the Educational Linguistics programmes at PennGSE, we will take up a series of vignettes as a means for exploring some of the dilemmas confronting bilingual (and language) educators in today’s postmodern and increasingly multicultural and globalised world; and suggest ways in which the continua model might shape a response. We begin by looking at some recent global social, cultural, and political trends, as contexts for biliteracy (the global/local dilemma); and then take up the media of biliteracy as reflected in evolving views of language and literacy in that world (the standard/nonstandard 63

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dilemma). Thereafter, we will turn to enquiry-based teacher education as an approach to the development of biliteracy (the language/content dilemma); and finally to teachers’ and learners’ identities and cultures as they relate to biliteracy content (the language/culture/identity dilemma). I conclude with a few comments on bilingual educators as researchers, teachers, and language planners and on the need, now more than ever, for bilingual educators to be advocates.

Continua of Biliteracy2 The continua model of biliteracy uses the notion of intersecting and nested continua to demonstrate the multiple and complex interrelationships between bilingualism and literacy and the importance of the contexts, media, and content through which biliteracy develops. Biliteracy, in this model, refers to ‘any and all instances in which communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing’ (Hornberger, 1990: 213); and the notion of continuum is intended to convey that although one can identify (and name) points on the continuum, those points are not finite, static, or discrete. There are infinitely many points on the continuum; any single point is inevitably and inextricably related to all other points; and all the points have more in common than otherwise with each other. The purpose of using the continuum as the basic building block of the model is to break down the binary oppositions so characteristic of the fields of bilingualism and literacy and instead draw attention to the continuity of experiences, skills, practices, and knowledge stretching from one end of any particular continuum to the other. Specifically, the continua model depicts the development of biliteracy along intersecting first language–second language, receptive–productive, and oral–written language skills continua; through the medium of two (or more) languages and literacies whose linguistic structures vary from similar to dissimilar, whose scripts range from convergent to divergent, and to which the developing biliterate individual’s exposure varies from simultaneous to successive; in contexts that encompass micro to macro levels and are characterised by varying mixes along the monolingual–bilingual and oral–literate continua; and with content that ranges from majority to minority perspectives and experiences, literary to vernacular styles and genres, and decontextualised to contextualised language texts (Hornberger, 1989; Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000). Figures 1 and 2 schematically represent the framework by depicting both the nested and intersecting nature of the continua, while Figure 3 summarises all 12 continua (four nested sets of three intersecting continua each). It is worth noting that Figures 1 and 2 are not intended to represent the continua model per se, but are meant rather as aids to visualisation of the relationships among the continua. Figure 1 depicts the continua as a series of nested boxes representing contexts, media, content, and development of biliteracy respectively, while Figure 2 shows that each box is a cluster of its three intersecting continua. Not only is the three-dimensionality of any one set of three intersecting continua representative of the interrelatedness of those three constituent continua, but it should be emphasised that the interrelationships extend across the four sets of continua as well; hence the nesting of the three-dimensional

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Figure 1 Nested relationships among the continua of biliteracy

Figure 2 Intersecting relationships among the continua of biliteracy

spaces. Finally, the two-way arrows in Figure 3 represent the infinity and fluidity of movement along each of the continua; the three-dimensional boxes must also be visualised as infinitely expanding and contracting spaces, not bounded boxes as drawn in Figures 1 and 2.

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Figure 3 The continua of biliteracy

The notion of continuum conveys that all points on a particular continuum are interrelated, and the intersecting and nested relationships among the continua convey that all points across the continua are also interrelated. The model suggests that the more their learning contexts and contexts of use allow learners and users to draw from across the whole of each and every continuum, the greater are the chances for their full biliterate development and expression (Hornberger, 1989: 289). Implicit in that suggestion is a recognition that attention has not usually been given to all points and that movement along the continua and across the intersections may well be contested. In educational policy and practice regarding biliteracy, there tends to be an implicit privileging of one end of the continua over the other such that one end of each continuum is associated with more power than the other (e.g. written development over oral development); there is a need to contest the traditional power weighting by paying attention to, granting agency to, and making space for

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actors and practices at what have traditionally been the less powerful ends of the continua (Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000: 99). In order to understand any particular instance of biliteracy, be it at the level of individual actor, interaction, event, practice, activity, programme, site, situation, society, or world, we need to take account of all dimensions represented by the continua. At the same time, the advantage of the model is that it allows us to focus for analytical purposes on one or selected continua and their dimensions without ignoring the importance of the others. Here, we will consider bilingual and language teacher education as practised at PennGSE as an instance of biliteracy and focus, for analytical purposes, on each set of three continua – contexts, media, development, and content, consecutively– as illustrated by experiences of bilingual and language educatorsin-the-making in the programme. I borrow and adapt the term bilingual educators-in-the-making from Varghese (2000), who depicted the experiences of several bilingual educators through the course of their professional development workshop and beyond, as they returned to the classroom. We will return to her study below.

Educational Linguistics in Practice When, in 1976, a graduate programme in Educational Linguistics was inaugurated at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (PennGSE), two historical ‘accidents’ conspired to create a context which fostered the development of an integrated, socioculturally/sociolinguistically informed, interdisciplinary, enquiry-based approach to bilingual, English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL), and foreign language teacher education, an approach and programmes which endure and thrive to the present.3 These accidents were, first, that PennGSE happens to be in a state that neither then nor now offers either bilingual or ESL certification for teachers; and second, that the Dean who inaugurated the programme and oversaw its first several years happened to be one of this century’s foremost sociolinguists, anthropological linguist Dell Hymes. The lack of either ESL or bilingual certification in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had many disadvantages for the fields of bilingual education and language education more generally, but one benefit of this absence was that our bilingual and language teacher education programmes had the freedom to evolve in response to research, theory, and practice in the field, without the specialised constraints which might have been imposed by separate sets of certification requirements in bilingual, ESL, and foreign language education. At the same time, Dean Hymes’ strong scholarly leadership in sociolinguistic and sociocultural approaches to education provided an academic environment with multiple strengths in language, literacy and culture located not only in Educational Linguistics, but across the school, which infused and influenced the programmes from their very beginnings. Similarly, the lack of a clearly defined and widely practised field of Educational Linguistics then, as now, confers both benefits and disadvantages in our work. On the one hand, there is the freedom to define the field by our practice; on the other, the ambiguity of professional identity is at times experienced as a burden (as testified by students and faculty in the Educational

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Linguistics programme at a recent Educational Linguistics Forum held at PennGSE, 5 December 2002). This burden of ambiguity is the same paradox which lies at the core of the continua of biliteracy and of the bilingual educators’ dilemmas discussed below. It is not my intent to gloss over the very real challenges entailed, but rather to underline that there are freedoms, as well as burdens, in these dilemmas.4 Our PennGSE approach to bilingual and language education is one which stresses an inclusive and contextualised view of the communicative competence bilingual and language educators seek to instill in their students, and of the knowledge and practices of bilingual and language educators themselves. We also take an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to language education in all its guises, e.g. ESL/EFL, foreign language, and bilingual teaching; this means that our bilingual educators-in-the-making prepare themselves alongside foreign language and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) educators-in-the-making, and vice versa. Furthermore, we see research, theory, and practice as integrally linked and mutually informing; this means that the bilingual and language educators-in-the-making enrolled in our professional masters programmes in TESOL and Intercultural Communication prepare themselves alongside researchers-in-the-making enrolled in our doctoral programme in Educational Linguistics, and vice versa. How does this play out in actual practice? The following vignettes from our programmes pose illustrative dilemmas confronting our bilingual, ESL/EFL, and foreign language educators-in-the-making, representative of similar dilemmas facing educators in today’s postmodern and increasingly multicultural and globalised world. I begin by looking at contexts for biliteracy and the global/local dilemma; and then take up the media of biliteracy and the standard/nonstandard dilemma; the development of biliteracy and the language/content dilemma; and the content of biliteracy and the language/culture/identity dilemma. In each case, I present the dilemma in practice as experienced by our educators-in-the-making, then consider it in the light of related literature and suggest ways in which the continua model might shape a response.

Contexts of Biliteracy: The Global/Local Dilemma Throughout the city at sites such as the Nationalities Services Centre, International House, the Jewish Educational and Vocational Service, the SHINE programme, or K-12 public school classrooms, Penn’s TESOL masters students, including those who plan to be bilingual educators, carry out the required service component of their comprehensive examination, providing 30 hours of ESL instruction to recent immigrant adults, language minority children or international students. About half of these TESOL students are themselves international students who will return to their home countries to teach English in EFL settings, and for these students in particular, a recurring concern is: how can I (the teacher) apply what I am learning in this ESL teaching experience to the EFL context in which I will be teaching after I graduate? For that matter, how relevant is what I have learned in my courses about, for example,

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African-American Vernacular English or Mexican American or indigenous language education in the US to my future EFL teaching in Japan (or China or Korea)? The call for educators, and in particular language educators, to be aware of globalisation and of the role of language education in globalisation, is being sounded by multiple voices and from myriad disciplines, of which I mention here only two. Language educator Tove Skutnabb-Kangas challenges teachers to look more into global politics and markets, and into the role of English language teaching and the diffusion-of-English paradigm in that globalisation, and to choose instead the ecology-of-language paradigm, lest the killing of linguistic and cultural diversity and the failure of education of minorities continue to be reproduced by the educational systems of the world (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1998b: 11). Unlike the diffusion-of-English paradigm which assumes a parallel between a universal/dominant language (English) and a universal/dominant economic system (capitalism) (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1998a: 3), ‘the ecology-of-language paradigm involves building on linguistic diversity worldwide, promoting multilingualism and foreign language learning, and granting linguistic human rights to speakers of all languages’ (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996: 429, citing Tsuda, 1994). On language ecology, see also Haugen (1972), Hornberger (2002b) and Kaplan and Baldauf (1997). Anthropologist Kathleen Hall argues that globalisation and the consequent ‘decentring of the nation-state and % decline in the geopolitical dominance of the West have created spaces for new forms of cultural identifications and politics to emerge’ (Hall, 1999: 136). Educational institutions find themselves embroiled in these emerging politics, at the heart of which are tensions between essentialist and postmodern formulations of culture and identity; traditional holistic notions of bounded, isolated entities are being challenged and replaced by an emphasis on multiple, fragmented, overlapping, contradictory, multivocal, and situationally contingent identities and cultures. The global/local dilemma, that is, how we as bilingual educators can respond adequately and fully to both global and local pressures on our students, is an expression of the continua of biliterate context. The tensions the above authors highlight between the global/universal and the local/diverse, between bounded, isolated identities or cultures and overlapping, contradictory ones, are everpresent in the EFL/ESL, foreign, and bilingual teaching contexts that PennGSE’s language educators-in-the-making experience. In every language education context, the interrelationship of dominant, standard, global English (or other dominant language) and learners’ local, nonstandard or non-English (non-dominant) language practices has implications for educators’ programmatic, curricular, and interactional choices. The continua of biliteracy framework provides a heuristic for educators to consider as they make their choices. Specifically, the continua frame contexts of biliteracy in terms of the interrelationships across micro-and-macro (local-and-global) levels of context, and across oral-and-literate and multilingual-and-monolingual mixes of language use; and remind educators of the need to provide space for the traditionally less powerful ends of those continua, i.e. for oral, multilingual

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interaction at the local, micro level, whether they are teaching in a bilingual classroom in Philadelphia or an EFL classroom in Korea.

Media of Biliteracy: The Standard/Nonstandard Dilemma For TESOL teachers in EFL settings, as well as for bilingual and foreign language educators, another question which recurringly arises is: which variety of the language should I teach and use in my class? For bilingual educators in the U.S., this question might revolve around standard and nonstandard varieties of Spanish and English in the community’s repertoire. For TESOL teachers in EFL settings, the question becomes one of which variety of English to promote – a ‘world standard’ such as American or British English, as has been traditionally hegemonic in EFL teaching, or an indigenous standard such as Singaporean English, Malaysian English, Indian English, or the like? The standard/nonstandard dilemma, that is, how we as bilingual educators can respond adequately and fully to both the demand for standard language varieties and the prevalence and valuing of nonstandard ones, finds a helpful heuristic in the continua of biliteracy too. The continua model frames the media of biliteracy in terms of the language and literacy varieties involved, specifically the interrelationships between language structures, literacy scripts and practices, and the sequence and mix of varieties. The framework thus informs not only issues such as the coexistence of different standard and nonstandard varieties in the learners’ repertoire as in the vignette above, but also questions about how to place students whose language proficiencies may reflect criss-crossed, simultaneous acquisition of multiple languages and literacies, or how to handle widely divergent writing systems, or codeswitching practices. Specifically, the continua model urges educators to give consideration to the traditionally less powerful ends of the continua, i.e. to dissimilar, divergent, nonstandard varieties and writing practices, and to codeswitching and language mixing practices, as learners draw on all the available communicative resources in their developing biliteracy. With regard to varieties of English, Brutt-Griffler (2002) has argued that World English, far from being an entirely alien language imposed on the world by Anglo-American, Western (linguistic) imperialism, has in fact spread in large part due to the struggle against imperialism. She foregrounds the agency of non-mother-tongue English speech communities in abetting both English language spread and English language change, arguing that the two processes are intimately connected and that the proliferation of varieties of English is a necessary result of the development of World English. Bilingual, foreign, and second language speakers of English make it their own, changing the language as they spread it. Varieties of English, in this view, are not aberrations or temporary digressions from the standard to be ignored in hopes they will go away, but are instead essential to the very life of the language and therefore to be recognised and valued. Similarly, with regard to varieties of Spanish, Valde´s has consistently drawn our attention to the fact that Spanish language education for heritage speakers

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cannot be the same as for foreign language learners (Valde´s, 1981, 1983). Recently, she has urged bilingual educators to be cautious in embracing twoway bilingual education, wherein English speakers learn Spanish and Spanish speakers learn English in shared classes. She suggests that the Spanish taught in such programmes may come closer to the standard taught in foreign language classes than to the nonstandard varieties the Spanish speakers bring with them to school and she urges educators to ask themselves: who will in fact be the beneficiaries of the language resources developed in the programme? (Valde´s, 1997: 412–420). With regard to codeswitching and language mixing, recent research documents the richness and complexity of codeswitching practices in multilingual classrooms around the world, and the variety of pedagogical purposes, ideological underpinnings, and ecological relationships these practices reflect. Far from dismissing these practices out of hand, these studies provide evidence that language mixing very often enables educators to contextualise and communicate academic content for multilingual learners, which would otherwise remain inaccessible due to language policies, curricula, and materials mandating instruction in languages the learners do not speak (Creese & Martin, 2003; Heller & Martin-Jones, 2001; Martin-Jones & Heller, 1996). Beyond nonstandard and mixed uses of language, the continua model also urges educators to make space for the multiple communicative media available in today’s world. The New London Group (1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) uses the term multiliteracies to refer to the multiplicity of communications channels and media in our changing world (and secondarily to the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity); the concept of multiliteracies in this sense extends literacy beyond reading and writing to other communicative modes, such as the visual, audio, spatial, and behavioural. The New London Group’s notion of multiliteracies is echoed in Street’s recent call for language educators to pay more attention to a broader notion of languages and literacies. Street (1999) points out that the New Work Order, with its emphasis on asset building and market share and on workplace behaviours like flexibility, adaptation to change, and collaboration (Gee et al., 1996), implies an analogous New Communicative Order (cf. Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), in which management skills, general communication skills, computer literacy, and interpretation of icons, signs, and visual images such as those on the internet are as much in demand as traditional reading and writing literacy skills (or more so). He draws on the work of Bakhtin (1981) (heteroglossia), Halliday (1985) (systemic linguistics), Hymes (1964) (ethnography of communication), and Kress (1997) (social semiotics), for a theoretical framework for analysing, understanding and teaching this communicative competence broadly defined, i.e. ‘knowing when and how to use resources from different channels’ (Street, 1999: 3). Where Skutnabb-Kangas refers to global/local tensions in terms of diffusion-of-English and ecology-of-language paradigms, and Hall in terms of globalising forces and the emerging politics of culture and identity, Street borrows Bakhtin’s metaphor of the centripetal and centrifugal forces of heteroglossia to urge that ‘as centripetal forces [e.g. government prescriptions] and the pressure to take language literally become ever more powerful’ (Street,

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1999: 23), educators – and in particular language educators – need to acknowledge centrifugal forces [new communicative practices] as well and to reconceptualise the ‘role of language in education in terms of this wider framework for language, literacy, and communication’ (Street, 1999: 16). He cites examples of these new communicative practices such as the mixed modalities evident in the use of text and image in a water quality slide intended to help people in South Africa recognise when water is safe to drink, or in American teenagers’ use of beepers to pass messages that are a mix of Morse Code and logographic principles which also frequently draw on historical and cultural associations (e.g. the numbers 66 used to mean ‘let’s hit the road’, drawing on cultural knowledge of the TV series Route 66); these examples extend the standard/nonstandard dilemma beyond language varieties per se to the whole range of visual, audio, spatial, and behavioural semiotic modes and modalities available for communication in today’s world. For the bilingual educator, then, the continua model offers an awareness of the many and varied codes and channels available as communicative resources and a heuristic for decision-making as to when and how to use these resources.

Development of Biliteracy: The Language/Content Dilemma A small core group of teachers and administrators at Potter Thomas Bilingual Elementary School in North Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community are simultaneously implementing a new maths curriculum and piloting portfolio assessment as an alternative to standardised testing. As Penn Educational Linguistics doctoral student Melisa Cahnmann and I work with them during a 3-day summer workshop on issues of mathematics, language, and portfolio assessment with bilingual and bidialectal urban youth, we attempt to address the question which resurfaces constantly for these teachers: when should I (the teacher) be evaluating my students for their language and when for their maths knowledge, and how can I keep the two separate? Cochran-Smith and Lytle, long-time PennGSE colleagues and founders of the Practitioner Enquiry strand of PennGSE’s annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum (Hornberger, 2002a), explore three conceptions of teacher learning in relation to university-based research: the knowledge-forpractice conception, which assumes that university-based researchers generate knowledge for teachers to use in order to improve their practice; the knowledge-in-practice conception, in which teachers are assumed to learn from the opportunity to probe knowledge embedded in the work of expert teachers; and the knowledge-of-practice conception, in which it is assumed that ‘the knowledge teachers need to teach well is generated when teachers treat their own classrooms and schools as sites for intentional investigation at the same time that they treat the knowledge and theory produced by others as generative material for interrogation and interpretation’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999: 250). In elaborating on the knowledge-of-practice conception of teacher learning, they emphasise the importance of the enquiry community and of an enquiry stance as modus operandi (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999: 289). Among the

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examples of enquiry communities they mention are the National Writing Project, where knowledge about the teaching of writing, language, and literacy is constructed collaboratively, teacher to teacher, in local, regional, and national institutes and on-line networks over time; the locally based Philadelphia Teachers’ Learning Cooperative, where teachers set out ‘to improve their knowledge and practice by documenting children’s learning in school contexts, uncovering and clarifying their implicit assumptions about teaching, learning and schooling, and solving a variety of school-based educational problems’, also over time (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999: 285–286); and the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, another locally based ongoing collaborative community of teachers, researchers, and graduate students ‘who are concerned with understanding how everyday life in classrooms is constructed by members through their interactions, verbal and other, and how these constructions influence what students have opportunities to access, accomplish, and thus, “learn” in schools’ (Green & Dixon, 1993: 231). Importantly, these enquiry communities engage in these processes over time, on the order of years and decades, not weeks or months. The common work of these practitioner enquiry communities is ‘to generate local knowledge, envision and theorise their practice, and interpret and interrogate the theory and research of others’, what Cochran-Smith and Lytle call ‘taking an enquiry stance’ (1999: 289). The metaphor ‘enquiry as stance’ is intended to capture ‘the ways we stand, the ways we see, and the lenses we see through’ (1999: 288); it is a stance which intentionally stands against the epistemological dualism of formal knowledge–practical knowledge and which regards both knowledge generation and knowledge use as inherently problematic. As Cahnmann and I, two university-based researchers, grapple together with Potter Thomas staff over guiding and assessing bilingual and bidialectal learners’ developing maths understandings, we together enact an incipient enquiry community such as described above, where knowledge emerges in the practice of education, here in the form of a persistent question about how teachers should evaluate their biliterate learners’ language and academic development (Cahnmann & Hornberger, 2000). Later, in her own dissertation research, Cahnmann uses what she calls the core aspects of the continua of biliteracy – monolingual–bilingual norms, oralcy–literacy, and micro–macro – to understand the struggle and contradiction involved in one bilingual teacher’s assessment and correction of students’ oral and written productions; and concludes that the answer to whether a teacher should or should not correct a student’s work is better understood as a continuum of complex and multifaceted considerations (Cahnmann, 2003). In seeking answers to the language/content dilemma, that is, how we as bilingual educators can respond adequately and fully to the demands of teaching and evaluating both language and content, the continua of biliteracy model again offers a useful heuristic, framing learners’ developing languages and literacies in terms of the interconnectedness of oral–written, receptive– productive, and L1–L2 dimensions, and linking those not only to context and media, but to content as well. Specifically, the continua model reminds us that biliteracy learning may proceed in any direction along the three intersecting

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continua and that it may do so by backtracking, spurting, or criss-crossing just as readily as by steadily progressing in linear fashion; and further that there is an infinite potential for transfer of skills across any of the three continua, but, by the same token, understanding or predicting transfer is elusive if not impossible, precisely because the three continua are interrelated and furthermore nested within all the other continua. This means that educators’ evaluation of learners’ work must also be holistic across the continua, always taking into account that an ungrammatical expression of accurate content, or a grammatically correct expression of inaccurate content, may be just as much a sign of learning as a grammatically correct expression of accurate content. It is here that the value of the enquiry community and enquiry stance come to the fore as educators struggle to work out the specifics of such holistic evaluations in their day-to-day practice.

Content of Biliteracy: The Language/Culture/Identity Dilemma A number of Penn Intercultural Communications masters students and Educational Linguistics doctoral students are employed as foreign language instructors at various Penn departments, such as Romance Languages, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the Penn Language Centre. Several teach in the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies, which offers a combined liberal arts and business degree with an international focus, at both the bachelor’s and master’s level. As our students teach Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, or other languages to prospective business people, they often confront this challenge: how can I as teacher and representative of my native language and culture counter the lack of respect for or genuine interest in other worldviews which I sometimes find in my students? To what degree is an understanding of the new culture a necessary part of learning a new language, and to the degree that it is, which ‘culture’ should be taught? ‘In EFL classrooms’, Duff and Uchida write, ‘issues of sociocultural identity and representation are very important’ (Duff & Uchida, 1997: 452). Like Skutnabb-Kangas above, as well as Tollefson (1991), Pennycook (1994), Hornberger and Ricento (1996) and others, they note that ‘the English language teaching industry is not culturally, politically, socially, or economically neutral’ and EFL in particular ‘plays a powerful role in the construction of roles, relations, and identities among teachers and students’ (Duff & Uchida, 1997: 452). Furthermore, they point out that social and cultural aspects of other groups, particularly those associated with the target language, are often discussed in foreign language classes and that ‘teachers’ or students’ identities and beliefs related to gender roles, nationality, ethnicity, teaching methods, and language use [may] conflict with those of colleagues, students, professional publications, popular media, or local cultures’ (Duff & Uchida, 1997: 452). They ask: how do teachers negotiate these issues? how do they reconcile their own sense of identity with ‘national stereotypes of their own and others’ linguistic and cultural values? how do they negotiate the curriculum in terms of its cultural content?’ (Duff & Uchida, 1997: 453). In an in-depth study of four EFL teachers in Japan, they found that teachers’

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perceptions of their own sociocultural identities were ‘deeply rooted in their personal histories, based on past educational, professional and (cross-)cultural experiences’, but that these same identities ‘were also subject to constant negotiation due to changing contextual elements, such as the classroom/ institutional culture, instructional materials, and reactions from students and colleagues’ (Duff & Uchida, 1997: 460). Themes of complexity and dynamic negotiation predominate in their description of teachers as ‘cultural workers’ (Giroux, 1992) in their EFL classrooms. Similarly, but in a different context – that of urban bilingual educators in Philadelphia, Varghese argues that becoming a bilingual educator is primarily a process of negotiating professional identities, rather than simply one of acquiring skills and knowledge per se. Her study explores how the professional identities of a group of bilingual Latino teachers-in-the-making are formed, interpreted, and enacted and how national and local discourses influence that identity formation and enactment (Varghese, 2000: vi). Particularly striking in her findings is the uncovering of a ubiquitous but implicit assumption that, given the (increasingly) political and controversial nature of bilingual education in the United States, bilingual educators need to be advocates and agents for change (Varghese, 2000: 1). Like Cummins (1996), she sees the negotiation of identities as a potential but not automatic tool for the empowerment of bilingual educators and their students, one which is mediated by the teachers’ understandings of their local settings and their personal histories; as Varghese shows, although all the teachers-in-the-making in her study had a sense of the advocacy/change agency role for bilingual educators, only some of them enacted it, while others avoided it by focusing exclusively on their classroom practice or by leaving the profession altogether (Varghese, 2000: 2). In another case of urban bilingual education, that of multilingual learners in England, Leung et al. (1997) also emphasise the making, remaking, and negotiating of cultural identities. These learners, they argue, ‘actively construct their own patterns of language use, ethnicity, and social identity’, often in ‘strong contradiction to the fixed patterns and the reified ethnicities attributed’ to them (Leung et al., 1997: 544). In contexts like these, they suggest, it makes more sense for language educators to think of learners’ language proficiency in terms of language expertise, affiliation, and inheritance, rather than native speaker, non-native speaker or mother tongue categories. In these terms, language expertise refers to how proficient they are, while language affiliation refers to the ‘attachment or identification [they] may feel for a language whether or not they nominally belong to the social group customarily associated with it’ and language inheritance to the ‘ways in which individuals can be born into a language tradition … whether or not they claim expertise in or affiliation to [it]’ (Leung et al., 1997: 555). The language/culture/identity dilemma, that is, how we as bilingual educators can respond adequately and fully to dynamic negotiation of cultures and identities and of overlapping language affiliations not necessarily linked to expertise or inheritance, finds resonance in the continua of biliteracy heuristic which frames the content of biliteracy in terms of continuities – from minority to majority representations, vernacular to literary expressions, and con-

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textualised as well as traditional academic decontextualised forms (see also Cummins, 2003). Skilton-Sylvester, in her study of literacy, identity, and educational policy among Cambodian women and girls in Philadelphia, argues that these content dimensions allow for looking not only at where languages and literacies are used and learned (context), what aspects are used and learned (media), and how they are used and learned (development), but also the kinds of meanings expressed in particular biliterate contexts, through specific biliterate media, and during particular moments of biliterate development. Whereas the media continua focus on the forms literacies take, the content continua focus on the meanings those forms express. In particular, she argues for the importance of including minority, vernacular and contextualised whole language texts in bilingual learners’ literacy experiences (Skilton-Sylvester, 1997). These considerations are essential for bilingual educators as they negotiate issues of cultural stereotyping, intercultural respect, and conflicting or overlapping cultural traditions and particularities, such as those highlighted in the above vignette.

Concluding Comments Bilingual educators are simultaneously researchers, teachers, and language planners. The continua of biliteracy model can serve as heuristic as these educators daily face dilemmas instantiated in programmatic, curricular, and interactional choices in their classrooms and schools, in the course of their practice. As we have seen above, the continua of biliteracy framework as heuristic encourages bilingual educators, in their role as teachers, to approach biliterate learners’ developing communicative competence in socioculturally and sociopolitically contextualised, locally and multiply inclusive, enquiry-based, and dynamically negotiated ways. As researchers, bilingual educators (and all language educators) need to have opportunities to reflect critically on the contexts and content of their teaching; and to uncover the communicative repertoires (media) that students bring to school and that can serve as resources for their language and literacy development. As language planners, bilingual educators have a particularly important role to play. Skilton-Sylvester reminds us that ‘looking at the ways teachers create classroom policies of their own while accepting and challenging the policies that are handed down to them is a useful and important endeavour in working toward more equitable educational policies and practices for linguistically diverse students’ (Skilton-Sylvester, 2003: 170). She cites Ricento and Hornberger (1996: 408) on the permeability of policy across its multiple layers from macro to micro and the greater likelihood of change coming from the bottom-up than from the top-down. Schwinge provides an example of just this: using the continua model to analyse curricular modifications made by two elementary school teachers working with Latino biliterate learners, she shows that while there is a growing trend in American education for schools to adopt standardised curricula like the Success for All reading programme, some bilingual education teachers act as bottom-up language and literacy planners by adapting and elaborating on the suggested activities and the content of the mandated programmes to better enable their students to become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural (Schwinge, 2003). As English-only policies

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and monolingual language ideologies continue to exert their sway both nationally and internationally, we need bilingual educators to be conscious advocates for the language rights and resources of language minority students and speakers of endangered, indigenous, immigrant, and ethnic languages, wherever they may be. Correspondence Correspondence should be directed to Nancy H. Hornberger, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 3700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104–6216, USA ([email protected]). Notes 1. An early version of this paper was presented as a plenary at the international conference on Research and Practice in Language Teacher Education: Voices from the Field, on 1 May 1999, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2. Portions of this section, including the figures, were first published in Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester (2000) and are reprinted here with permission of Multilingual Matters Publishers, Clevedon, UK. 3. The programmes in Educational Linguistics, then and now, encompass the Ph.D. specialisation in Educational Linguistics begun in 1976 and master’s specialisations in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL, also dating from 1976) and Intercultural Communication (launched in 1978). I have been affiliated with these programmes since 1985, and have directed them for much of that time. See Hornberger (2001a, b) for a more complete account of the Educational Linguistics programmes. By intention, a number of the scholars cited here for illustrative purposes are graduates (or current students) of the Educational Linguistics PhD program whose own research focused on bilingual education and/or biliteracy: Cahnmann, Creese, Schwinge, Skilton-Sylvester, and Varghese. 4. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing out this point.

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Ricento, T.K. and Hornberger, N.H. (1996) Unpeeling the onion: Language planning and policy and the ELT professional. TESOL Quarterly 30 (3), 401–428. Schwinge, D. (2003) Enabling biliteracy: Using the continua of biliteracy to analyse curricular adaptations and elaborations. In N.H. Hornberger (ed.) Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in Multilingual Settings (pp. 248–265). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Skilton-Sylvester, E. (1997) Inside, outside, and in-between: Identities, literacies, and educational policies in the lives of Cambodian women and girls in Philadelphia. Unpublished Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Skilton-Sylvester, E. (2003) Legal discourse and decisions, teacher policymaking and the multilingual classroom: Constraining and supporting Khmer/English biliteracy in the United States. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6 (3&4), 168–184. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1998a) Linguistic diversity, human rights and the ‘free’ market. In M. Kontra, R. Phillipson, T. Skutnabb-Kangas and T. Va´rady (eds) Approaches to Linguistic Human Rights . Budapest: Central European University Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1998b) The politics of (ESL in) multilingual education: Languages, culture, power and liberation. Unpublished manuscript. Street, B. (1999) New literacies in theory and practice: What are the implications for language in education? Linguistics and Education 10 (1), 1–24. Tollefson, J.W. (1991) Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the Community. London: Longman. Tsuda, Y. (1994) The diffusion of English: Its impact on culture and communication. Keio Communication Review 16, 49–61. Valde´s, G. (1981) Pedagogical implications of teaching Spanish to the Spanish-speaking in the United States. In G. Valde´s, A.G. Lozano and R. Garcı´a-Moya (eds) Teaching Spanish to the Hispanic Bilingual: Issues, Aims, and Methods (pp. 3–29). New York: Teachers College Press. Valde´s, G. (1983) Planning for biliteracy. In L. Elı´as-Olivares (ed.) Spanish in the US Setting: Beyond the Southwest (pp. 259–262). National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Valde´s, G. (1997) Dual-language immersion programs: A cautionary note concerning the education of language-minority students. Harvard Educational Review 67 (3), 391–429. Varghese, M.M. (2000) Bilingual teachers-in-the-making: Advocates, classroom teachers, and transients. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Teacher Identity as Pedagogy: Towards a Field-Internal Conceptualisation in Bilingual and Second Language Education Brian Morgan York University, Toronto, Canada This article explores the transformative potential of a teacher’s identity in the context of bilingual and second language education (SLE) programmes. The first section examines several theoretical options by which this potential might be conceptualised. Drawing on post-structural notions of discourse, subjectivity and performativity, the author emphasises the contingent and relational processes through which teachers and students come to understand themselves and negotiate their varying roles in language classrooms. Simon’s (1995) notion of an ‘image-text’ further develops this dynamic, co-constructed understanding and shifts it more specifically towards pedagogical applications: the strategic performance of a teacher’s identity in ways that counteract stereotypes held by a particular group of students. These post-structural ideas on teachers’ identities are then evaluated in reference to the knowledge base of bilingual and SLE. The author then proposes a ‘fieldinternal’ conceptualisation by which such theories might be rooted in the types of practices characteristic of language education programmes. The next section of the article describes the author’s personal efforts to realise these concepts in practice. ‘Gong Li – Brian’s Imaginary Lover’ is a story of how the author’s identity became a classroom resource, a text to be performed in ways that challenged group assumptions around culture, gender, and family roles in a community, adult ESL programme serving mostly Chinese seniors in Toronto. Keywords: bilingual education, teacher identity, second language education

Introduction As noted by Varghese (2001), teacher identity in bilingual and second language education has only recently emerged as a subtopic within the field of language teacher education. Several key issues, to date, have defined a growing research agenda in this area. One of importance, given the complex status of World English (e.g. Brutt-Griffler, 2002), has been the colonial legacy of a ‘native speaker fallacy’ (see Canagarajah, 1999; McKay, 2002; Phillipson, 1992), a vague cluster of linguistic and pragmatic norms by which the bilingual and intercultural skills of Non-Native Speaker (NNS) teachers have been marginalised (see e.g. Braine, 1999; Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 1999; Kramsch, 1998; Lin et al., 2002; Liu, 1999). A second line of inquiry looks closely at the concept of identity itself, not as a fixed and coherent set of traits, but as something complex, often contradictory, and subject to change across time and place. Inspired, in large part, by Norton’s (2000) feminist poststructural investigation of subjectivity,1 a number of researchers have examined how a teacher’s experiences of identity – gender, race, class, culture, or sexual orientation, as examples – both shape and are 80

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shaped by the processes of instruction and interaction that evolve within specific sites of bilingual and second/foreign language education (see e.g. Amin, 1999; Duff & Uchida, 1997; James, 2002; Johnston, 1999; Varghese, 2001, in press). Both a professional and a personal identity, in this perspective, codevelop as instantiations of discourses, systems of power/knowledge (cf. Foucault, 1980, 1982; Pennycook, 1994) that regulate and ascribe social values to all forms of human activity – oral and written texts, gestures, images, and spaces – within particular institutions, academic disciplines, and larger social formations. An expanded understanding of discourse is important here in that it sets certain parameters regarding the declarative and procedural knowledge to be conveyed in language teacher education programmes. In poststructural theory, discourses constitute rather than determine a teacher’s identity, the latter concept inferring a (neo)Marxist notion of ‘false consciousness’, in which teachers are relatively passive vis-a`-vis the reproduction of dominant class interests through schooling. ‘Constitution’, on the other hand, is intentionally distanced from a humanist, modernist perspective – a fully autonomous, selfaware subject, who is able to freely choose which aspects of his or her identity are of pedagogical value or to know in advance how his or her identity matches up with a particular group of students (see e.g. Belsley, 1980; Butler, 1992; Norton, 2000; Pennycook, 2001; Weedon, 1987). Poststructural theory seeks to articulate a metaphorical space ‘in between’. Acts of conformity are never identical to the subject positions offered in discourse. Cross-cutting experiences (i.e. other discourses and other subject positions) create dissonance between role expectations and actual ‘performance’ (cf. Butler, 1990; Nelson, 1999).2 Simply put, in class I may act like a teacher – or like a white, male teacher – seeking approval from a particular group of students and fulfilling my professional ‘responsibilities’. But by repeatedly doing, rather than just being, I become more aware of the degree to which it is an act or ‘im-personation’ (Gallop, 1995), a text of myself that I have, in part, unknowingly scripted. With each performance and the responses it engenders from students, I become aware of other ways to re-script myself; that is, I gain insights into ways of subverting or transforming the ‘rules’ (e.g. educational practices) to which I have been ‘subjected’. In this perspective, conformity to discourse is a precondition for agency or resistance. Simon’s (1995) notion of an ‘image-text’ serves as an example. In graduate programmes, Simon (1995) has observed the tendency of students to ‘produce a series of overdetermined and affect-laden image-texts’ (1995: 98) of faculty, which ‘become important resources for identification and the focus of student desires within the intimate pedagogy of doctoral education’ (1995: 99). Within this setting, Simon performs (cf. Butler, 1990) his own identity – ‘to teach as a Jew’ – in ways that resist the institutional discourses that position Jewish scholars in the academy. Simon’s agency, however, has broader intentions. By challenging the stereotypes students may have of Jewish academics, Simon seeks to undermine the tendency of both students and colleagues to essentialise ‘others’ in demeaning and sometimes oppressive categories (see e.g. Kubota, 1999).

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A key point to draw from Simon is that a teacher’s identity, his or her image-text, is a pedagogical resource for bilingual and second language education. An image-text, however, is unlike other teaching resources in that its outward appearance and application cannot be formalised in a pre-determined way. Moreover, an image-text is co-created, its authorship belonging to both teacher and students. Thus, an image-text must be discovered contingently and relationally if it is to be utilised. Although I have focused primarily on describing teacher identity in this section, student identity formation is an inseparable dimension of this process. In a later section, ‘teacher identity as pedagogy’, I will offer a more concrete, narrative-based perspective on how this performative model was realised within a particular setting, a communitybased ESL programme located in downtown Toronto’s Chinatown. As we theorise teacher identity, however, it would be misleading to attribute innovation entirely to concepts loosely defined as postmodern or poststructural. Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work on situated learning and cognition,3 and Vygotskian-based sociocultural theories (Lantolf, 2000), for example, offer complementary perspectives on the participatory aspects of learning and the continuous (re)organisation of self and collective understanding that takes place within bilingual and ESL/EFL classrooms. In sum, teachers’ identities, following these conceptual frames, are always implicated in the types of social futures imagined and produced through schooling. But the abstract perspectives of these frames, or their fine-tuned differences, potentially leave both teachers and teacher educators in a kind of theoretical vertigo. A research agenda on teacher identity in bilingual and second language education would need to explore the degree to which theories from other disciplines can be ‘imported’, as Freeman (2000) cautions, and the types of local ‘translations’ they require if they are to inform pedagogical concerns – in other words, a field-internal4 conceptualisation. A field-internal perspective recognises the need to expand the knowledge base and interdisciplinary scope of our profession – but in an intra-disciplinary way, grounded in familiar contexts of language research and practice. Still, as we work through and compare concepts or experiences from the field, it is important to remember that poststructural theory is particularly vigorous and insightful in this respect. Any theory, whether about identity or pedagogy or their conflation, cannot be viewed in isolation, not as a timeless ‘thing-in-itself’. Poststructuralism urges us to look, simultaneously, at the human activity that takes place around a theory, and at the conflicts that have preceded it and are now concealed – ‘subjugated knowledges’, according to Foucault (1980), ‘those blocks of historical knowledge which were present but disguised within the body of functionalist and systematising theory’ (1980: 82). Butler (1992) extends similar criteria to theorists, through whom power/knowledge operates at an often-imperceptible level: The subject who theorises is constituted as a ‘theorising subject’ by a set of exclusionary and selective procedures. … My position is mine to the extent that ‘I’ – and I do not shirk from the pronoun – replay and resignify the theoretical positions that have constituted me, working the

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possibilities of their convergence, and trying to take account of the possibilities that they systematically exclude. (Butler, 1992: 8–9) A field-internal approach to teacher identity, if we make use of Foucault and Butler, requires us to look inward as we look outward in our attempts to expand or reinvigorate the knowledge base of bilingual and second language teacher education. It entails a watchful, critical reflexivity in our responses to a theory’s insights and ‘exclusions’ as they emerge in local sites of practice (see e.g. Auerbach, 2000; Benesch, 2001; Kumaravadivelu, 2001; Morgan, 2002; Pennycook, 2001). And following Foucault, it requires that we investigate local forms of language learning ‘subjugated’ by the rules governing theory formation in our profession. Of equal importance, such field-internal activities hold out the potential of bilingual and second language professionals becoming contributors rather than just borrowers in the formation of identity theories across the social sciences. In many ways, we underestimate the relative uniqueness of our field of expertise – the metacognitive and experiential diversity of our students and classrooms, and the specific types of language activities and language awareness through which this ‘diversity’ is understood. More will be said around these ideas in the sections to follow.

Defining a Course of Action: Cummins’ Framework As to the various conceptual frames above, the complex, inter-causal features of discourse, language and identity have been richly theorised, whereas concrete pedagogical recommendations for bilingual and second language education have been less forthcoming (see, however, Baker, 1996; Freeman, 1998; Kumaravadivelu, 2001; Nieto, 1996; Valde´s, 1996; Wong, 2000). The work of Cummins is particularly important in that it is perhaps the most detailed elaboration of how identity negotiation and language learning co-relate through pedagogy. It is to his framework that I now turn. In Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society (2001), and Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire (2000), Cummins passionately and persuasively establishes a central role for teacher identity in bilingual and second language education. In Cummins’ framework, cognitive development and academic achievement are inseparable from teacher-student identity negotiation (see e.g. a framework for academic language learning; 2001, Ch. 5). Choices in methodologies (e.g. collaborative critical inquiry vs. teacher-centred transmission), or the structure of bilingual programmes (e.g. two-way bilingual programmes that promote additive bilingualism vs. compensatory/transitional programmes, 2001, pp. 164–168), highlight particular identity options for students, which in turn have lifelong social consequences: ‘An image of the society that students will graduate into and the kinds of contributions they can make to that society is embedded implicitly in the interactions between educators and students’ (2001: 18). Teaching, learning, and identity negotiation are thus ultimately caught up with power relations. Cummins sketches out a view of classrooms as semiautonomous, ‘sites of resistance’ in which the micro-interactions and interper-

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sonal spaces negotiated between teachers and students have the potential of either challenging or reproducing dominant power structures in society. Micro-interactions between educators, students and communities are never neutral; in varying degrees, they either reinforce coercive relations of power or collaborative relations of power. In the former case, they contribute to the disempowerment of culturally diverse students and communities; in the latter the micro-interactions constitute a process of empowerment that enables educators, students and communities to challenge the operation of coercive power structures. (Cummins, 2000: 44–45) Cummins’ perspective here resonates with the work of Foucault (1980, 1982) and Bourdieu (1991), and even more explicitly with the social justice concerns of Corson (2001). There are no neutral spaces in schooling, no ways to insulate oneself from the social consequences of one’s activities. Standardised tests, psychometric models, reading methodologies, constructs of language proficiency, ‘scientific’ research on bilingualism – all are interconnected, in some key way, with power relations. To apply these technologies or instruments uncritically or without regard to the prior learning experiences of a particular group of students is to hasten the likelihood of academic underachievement and social marginalisation for minority students. Cummins’ work is also important in that it offers a field-internal set of pedagogical priorities for teacher identity in bilingual and second language education. Moreover, it bridges the fragmentation of language that underpins much applied linguistics research. By fragmentation, I mean a way of thinking about language as if it were an end in itself – realised by the reproduction of discrete forms/texts, or by the performance of closely-specified tasks – rather than a means towards enriched social capacities and human creativities. Nonetheless, in spite of the strengths of Cummins’ framework, such perspectives on teacher identity are mostly positioned as outside the core content offered in language teacher education programmes (see e.g. Grabe et al., 2000). I will briefly outline two discourses responsible for this positioning. First, the scope of teacher identity that I have outlined above lacks ‘currency’, both in a metaphoric and literal sense, at a time when governments increasingly view ‘human beings [as] inhabit[ing] a market place where the quality of something is decided according to the price it can fetch, rather than any intrinsic qualities it might have’ (Corson, 2002: 6). Such a world-view, as Corson (2002) trenchantly observes, gives rise to the ‘evaluative state’ in which high-stakes, standardised testing comes to both define and delimit knowledge in schools. Identity negotiation, against this backdrop, is not easily isolated or measured and is thus an unlikely foundation for ‘teaching and learning for marketplace utility’ (Corson, 2002). To date, there are no ‘identity benchmarks’ or task descriptors in bilingual or second language education that adequately capture its holistic features. Similarly, it is a notion that eludes standardisation. Teacher–student interactions can have direct and immediate effects on identity, but indirect and long-term influences need to be considered as well. Seating arrangements, classroom materials, peer relations, extra-curricular activities, in addition to home and community language practices, family relations

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and personal experiences all potentially influence the interpersonal meanings given and received in class (see e.g. James, 2002; Toohey, 2000). Such complexities problematise the scope and place for identity negotiation in curricula organised increasingly to service the ‘knowledge’ needs of global markets and multinational corporations (e.g. Gabbard, 2000; Spring, 1998). The second ‘obstacle’ is substantial, and in a sense, constrains the pedagogical possibilities of Cummins’ framework at a foundational level. If we are to make teachers aware of identity as having pedagogical implications, then we should attempt to convey that information in ways closely related to teacher’s own pedagogical experiences and ways of knowing. As several researchers in language teacher education indicate (e.g. Borg, 1998; Johnston & Goettsch, 2000; Varghese, 2001, this issue), such an approach remains unrealised in most programmes. Johnston and Goettsch (2000), for example, note that the knowledge base of most teacher education programmes tend to be organised around facts and propositions and taught to novice teachers in the form of distinct modules such as methodology, SLA, language structure, etc. They argue, in contrast, that the complexities of teaching require greater integration of these sub-fields. Teaching is more of a process-oriented, context-embedded activity: strategies and explanations about language are often improvised and refined through ongoing dialogue with students and emergent conditions in classrooms. Moreover, teachers’ own ways of theorising about their practice tend to be narrative in form, anchored in ‘stories and specific, concrete professional experiences’ (2000: 462), which are undervalued in academic settings. Mentioned above, Varghese’s (2001, this issue) ethnographic study of a Professional Development Institute (PDI) for bilingual Spanish/English teachers offers a similar perspective. Teachers in the PDI saw their professional identities as rooted in local classroom and district settings. These lived, situated experiences shaped their expectations of the kinds of ‘bilingual-specific’ knowledge they would need and receive at the PDI (e.g. specific classroom practices, strategies for dual language use). Although the instructors of the PDI believed they could and did meet such expectations, they interpreted and conveyed ‘bilingual-specific’ knowledge as a component within traditional, academic modules (e.g. SLA, history and models of bilingual education) and in a manner that Varghese characterises as mostly transmission-oriented. In common, Varghese (2001, this issue) and Johnston and Goettsch (2000) draw attention to a striking contradiction: the ways that language teacher education programmes teach, and the ways that teachers teach (and learn) are in many ways incompatible pedagogies – a significant obstacle if we are to convey the kinds of insights on identity negotiation outlined by Cummins. Also, in common, both discourses described in this section objectify the notion of identity in ways that undermine Cummins’ micro-contextual framework. In the discourse of ‘market-value utility’ (Corson, 2002), identity risks being commoditised, perceived by new teachers as a ‘value-adding’ set of socio-pragmatic skills for cross-cultural entrepreneurship. In the dominant discourse of language teacher education, identity risks being modularised, perceived by new teachers as an abstract and independent variable of occasional relevance to teaching.

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The modularised view, to be fair, facilitates new teachers’ awareness of important differences in the profession, such as the marginalisation of NNS teachers raised in the introduction. But following Simon’s (1995) notion of ‘image-text’, the perspective on identity I want to emphasise requires that we move beyond descriptions/explanations of difference and inequality to a sense of ‘how that difference will be deployed, rendered, and positioned in regard to both the substance and process of learning’ (1995: 90). What Simon suggests here is a move from ‘teacher identity and pedagogy’ – juxtaposed, yet separable variables – to a notion of ‘teacher identity as pedagogy’, a conflation or synthesis more in keeping with the continuous interweaving of identity negotiation and language learning articulated in Cummins’ (2000, 2001) framework. The following personalised account is an effort towards a more fieldinternal conceptualisation in bilingual and second language teacher education. It is in many ways a constructive dialogue, which can be briefly summarised: Through a poststructural lens, identities – mine in particular – are seen as ‘constituted’ within institutional discourses (a community-based ESL programme, co-sponsored by a board of education and the Chinese community agency where the classes took place). Key features of my ‘image-text’ are discovered relationally and performatively (cf. Butler, 1990) so that they might be ‘deployed, rendered, and positioned’ (Simon, 1995: 90) in class. Minority identities (e.g. Chinese ethnicity) are affirmed through teacher–student interactions, but at the same time, it is an affirmation that strategically opens up other ‘identity options’ (cf. Cummins, 2000, 2001) – other ways of being a man or woman, husband or wife – that have been discursively excluded, following Butler and Foucault. Through the lens of language teacher education, these ‘identity options’ or ‘interpersonal spaces’ (Cummins, 2001) are viewed as uniquely constituted and negotiated through the types of ‘languaging’ (e.g. L2 grammar, writing and vocabulary practices, L1/L2 translations, group work, etc.) that have evolved in this particular site and are characteristic of bilingual and second language education. Finally, following the insights of Varghese (2001) and Johnson and Goettsch (2000), knowledge about teaching – about the possibilities for ‘identity as pedagogy’ – is retained and conveyed, by way of stories, or narratives that attempt to show the dynamic flow between texts and textualised identities.

Teacher Identity as Pedagogy: The Setting Spatial limitations prevent me from giving a more detailed account of the ESL programme and students I taught at the Chinese Community Services Association of Toronto (CSSAT) for 8 years ending in the summer of 2001 (see e.g. Morgan, 2001, 2002). There were anywhere from 10 to 20 students on a given day (classes ran Tuesday to Friday, 9:30 pm to 12:30 pm). Most of the students, about 75%, were women and seniors; all of them spoke Chinese, mostly Cantonese, as the majority of the class came from Hong Kong; a few students from the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan attended as well. CSSAT has continuous intake, charges a nominal registration fee, and does not test students. Classes are usually multilevel, students choosing a class

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based on convenience and friendships rather than objective language criteria. Students often leave for months at a time, and teachers rarely complain because they need to maintain daily attendance numbers (17, as of last year) in order to keep their classes (and jobs) going. While many of the students may respect or even admire their teacher, these same students can easily become distracted or indifferent to the ‘latest’ pedagogical innovation brought before them. In respect to identity pedagogy, these adult students see their language classroom – and the types of interpersonal spaces shaped within – as temporary places, not as deeply committed, life choices, a point I emphasise in contrast to the postgraduate environment in which theories and pedagogies around identity are usually nurtured.5 Another key feature of CCSAT is bilingualism. Students’ L1, Chinese, predominates in this setting. Bilingual posters, bilingual ESL courses, Chinese heritage language programmes, and counselling services in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, help create an environment in which Chinese is perceived as a source of pride, the predominant language of the local community, and an aspect of collective identity validated and potentially mobilised through the dominant discourse of multiculturalism in Canada (Ignatieff, 2000; Taylor, 1994). In my class, the advanced class at CCSAT, I often encouraged students to use their L1, especially to explore ideas that are important but difficult to express in English. On several occasions, students’ L1 literacy practices and decompositional strategies for L1 vocabulary became invaluable tools for L2 Critical Language Awareness (e.g. Morgan, 2001, 2002). In respect to bilingualism and identity at CSSAT, race and gender factors should also be considered. For many ESL students, as Amin (1999) notes, the ideal teacher of English is a White, Anglo Male, who speaks a dominant variety of English. When a non-native speaking, woman of colour comes to teach ESL, her authenticity and expertise is challenged to degree that would never happen to her white, male colleagues. For me, the privileges of being white, male and ‘accentless’, in the eyes and ears of many, made me a highly desirable EFL teacher in China (Chongqing, 1987–1988), and certainly helped make my experiences there positive ones. These experiences in China, in turn, enhanced my desirability as an ESL teacher at CCSAT. In class, students loved the fact that I knew a few rudimentary phrases in Mandarin and would often teach me new words. It was a source of pride for them when programme administrators got me to sing Chinese songs at our annual banquet, and they were also proud of the fact that I liked to read Chinese history and had travelled to many parts of China and Hong Kong. In sum, these interwoven and often imperceptible facets of my experience – of race, gender, and language – had a contingent, prestige value that enabled me to present myself in challenging ways that might not have been acceptable from other teachers. Data collection The primary source of data collection for the next section was through participant observation field notes made over approximately 5 months, from February to June in 1998. Following Robson (1993) and Lynch (1996), practical considerations required that I quickly jot down abbreviated notes and

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observed points during lessons and expand upon descriptions immediately after class or during a break. This included students’ comments and examples of their work (e.g. on the blackboard). After class, these expanded descriptions were stored in a teacher’s log, with entries dated and space kept on the side for codes and temporary hypotheses to be entered. Other data used are examples of students’ writing, included with their permission. Emerging hypotheses from data analyses were shared and discussed with teaching colleagues at CCSAT (cf. peer debriefing, Lynch, 1996) following the validity criteria for naturalistic inquiry established by Lynch (1996).

Gong Li: ‘Brian’s Imaginary Lover’ Students often came late, some having to travel over an hour on public transport. In the early minutes of a class, I often tried to start up an informal discussion while students were arriving. Early one morning in February 1998, I mentioned seeing Gong Li/Zhang Yi Mou’s new movie Shanghai Triad. Mei, one of my more outspoken students, then replied ‘We don’t like Gong Li. We won’t go to the movie’. I was surprised by her response as my students often vocalised their pride in the growing international reputations of many Chinese artists. When I asked Mei why, she said ‘She stole another woman’s husband. Chinese people don’t like Gong Li’. The whole class laughed. I countered that I really liked her acting and had seen many of her movies before, including Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum, Old Well, Yellow Earth, and Ju Dou. The fact that I had seen so many Gong Li movies surprised a few in class and led one older student, Yang, to describe Gong Li as ‘Brian’s imaginary lover’. Everybody loved this, and Yang revelled in the playful threat of telling my wife about my imagined infidelity. That day Gong Li was an ongoing theme in our lessons. As it was close to Chinese New Year, we spent a long time looking at a vocabulary list on personal characteristics related to the Chinese zodiac. This is always a fun activity for this group. I pose questions such as ‘what qualities make a good politician/ artist/ teacher/ parent/ etc.?’ for group discussion. Many students use their bilingual dictionaries, comparing L1 translations, and forming semantic maps/lists of various synonyms and antonyms on the list. Then an interesting exchange occurred: in describing attributes of those born in the year of the monkey, the work sheet used ‘erratic genius’. To explain, I used synonyms such as ‘constantly changing’ and ‘unpredictable’. Then Mei said, ‘Just like Elizabeth Taylor’. Everybody howled, and I asked her if she liked Elizabeth Taylor? Her answer was ‘I admire Elizabeth Taylor’. Then I asked her how she could admire Elizabeth Taylor and yet hate Gong Li. Liz had also stolen other women’s husbands along the way (e.g. Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton). Mei just laughed and said it was okay to admire Elizabeth Taylor because ‘she isn’t Chinese’. This comment was a real eye-opener. What I saw as a direct contradiction – easily resolved – was actually a purposeful, double standard, one that provided a glimpse of how collective identities around culture and gender are regulated and sometimes contested – especially under contact from external value systems. For me, Mei’s response was fundmentally performative in the sense defined by Butler. Not even Mei really believed that ‘all Chinese hate

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Gong Li’. Her intent was to do something with language, bring about or prevent a change in social relations – through the invocation of an exclusionary norm – rather than establish the truth validity of a proposition. Later that same day, we went out together for dim sum lunch. Near the end as the bill arrived, a student named Yawen reached into her husband’s jacket pocket, got out his wallet and counted out their share of the bill. Immediately, Yang grabbed my arm, pointed and said out loud, ‘Look, Li Ping [the wife] controls the family finances’. Embarrassed and anxious to refute Yang, the husband quickly responded, ‘bu, bu [no, no]’. I saw how embarrassed he was, and I tried to intervene on his behalf in a ‘face-saving’ effort. I started talking to the group about how my wife makes most of the financial decisions in our marriage. Then I started to talk about credit cards, as the couple’s wallet was open revealing their gold card. I told them I had the same card and that my wife, Allison, had got mine for me – a point I emphasised: I couldn’t have got one on my own.6 These two incidents, especially with the credit card, instigated a lot of thought. Similar to Simon, I started to reflect on the possible ‘image-text’ that my class constructed of me, the relational privileges inscribed within that text based on my being a white, male, native-speaking teacher, and the symbolic capital (cf. Bourdieu, 1991) gained through my experiences of teaching in China. I thought that I should utilise these privileges – deploy them or resignify them, in the poststructural sense of shifting/rupturing the social referents/meaning students ascribed to my ‘image-text’. I wanted to attempt this in a way that was not threatening, but rather thought-provoking, opening up possibilities for other identity options (cf. Cummins, 2000, 2001) around our collective assumptions about gender. To my surprise, this became a dialogical activity in the performative sense that I have described above. How I viewed myself and presented myself in class changed frequently in response to students’ comments and queries. One example revolved around the topic of cooking. I enjoy cooking, and do most of it in our home. This aspect of my life was a shock for many students the first time they found out and something of which I should be ashamed, in the eyes of some. Instead of underplaying it, I started to ask openly for advice on preparing Chinese dishes and soon began bringing students along on shopping trips to local Chinese markets. Other aspects of my domestic life were similarly deployed. I started to talk more about difficulties in childrearing (I have a 7-year-old daughter), house cleaning tips, shopping, and my wife’s preeminent role in family financial matters. In the months soon after the Gong Li ‘affair’, a couple of incidents in class indicated that a re-scripted ‘image-text’ was being circulated in class. One day in March 1998, Ling mentioned to the class that she would be very busy all weekend cleaning the house and preparing food for her out of town guests. Eileen admonished her and said, ‘That’s out of date. Ask your son and husband to help you’. Su Ying then commented, ‘Brian does house work’. Another incident occurred on International Women’s Day. We were looking at related words such as gender, sexism, male chauvinism, patriarchy, matriarchy. One student from Hong Kong used ‘Big Mannism’ as a literal Cantonese synonym for male chauvinism. Eileen then started to tease another

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student named Wong: ‘You’re a “big man”. I see your wife carrying all the groceries’. Immediately, Joyce looked at me and asked, ‘Who’s the boss in your marriage?’ (everyone in class started howling with laughter). I replied, ‘In money matters, my wife makes most of the decisions. I do most of the cooking and grocery shopping, and I don’t mind. Most of my male friends cook. If they didn’t, they’d have to eat at restaurants all the time’. Then, Eileen said, ‘Guai Lo [foreign, non-Chinese] men are good’. Ling added ‘Brian is a good husband’. These types of teacher–student interactions would happen once or twice a week, or lead to discussions that lasted a half an hour, or only a minute. As mentioned earlier, identity negotiation does not conform easily to standardised measurement, so I cannot provide empirical evidence of changes in attitude as a direct effect of my activities. However, classroom interactions and interpersonal relations do articulate with students’ memories, beliefs, and perceptions of the dominant society. Together, these aligning factors potentially bring about gradual and cumulative shifts in the identity options students imagine for themselves and their communities. The student composition in Appendix 1, serves as an example. Although it was not an assignment, its controversial content – a challenge to traditional, cultural proscriptions against remarriage for widows – indicates its close intertextuality with the events I have described. The Applicant for Husband The story in Appendix 1, The Applicant for Husband, was an unsolicited piece of work written and illustrated by an older man in my class, Leung. He asked me to work with him to revise it, copy it, and hand it out to the whole class. It was submitted a couple of months after the first Gong Li incident. Leung’s composition invokes and challenges collective norms regarding culture, age, gender, and family loyalties. The story generated a unit of language activities and compositions. Here are two examples of students’ responses: (1) Times have changed. We can’t keep the old ideas to treat the event of the applicant for husband. When you are old, alone, and not capable of doing everything, you have no merits, but only an amount of money left that can support you in old life. You need a man or woman as your intimate friend. I think it is a reasonable choice. So the story of the ‘applicant for husband’ is common and usual now. I don’t see such a case with ‘strange eyes’. (2) This story makes me think that people is greedy and sometimes foolish. First of all, this old woman should not ask for a young man to be her husband while they are unknown to each other. The story said that there were many young men applied because of the sincerity of her notice. I don’t think it’s true. They applied for only one purpose – that is the money. These two compositions and the others produced in class were soon placed on our bulletin board with Leung’s illustrated text at the centre. They continued to be a ‘presence’ for many, many months after. These responses are

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also representative of the fact that in spite of the apparent homogeneity of the class, students both supported and resisted the identity options being offered them.

Conclusions Let me return to an idea, speculative to some degree, about the relative uniqueness of our work and our students, and the value of contributing ‘fieldinternal’ insights towards theory-formation that is interdisciplinary in scope. I tend to overstate this point, but I do so as a reflection of the collective selfdoubt that lingers from our professional origins – linguistics applied (see e.g. Pennycook, 2001: 2–3; Widdowson, 1980). Borrowing, rather than creating, sits easier when named in this derivative fashion. Teachers’ identities and their place in bilingual and second language education are a case in point. An intuitive argument could be made that discourses, subjectivity, power relations, or identity negotiation are domainspecific, ‘higher order’ phenomena – hence, disarticulated from the kinds of form-focused, instrumental tasks that can preoccupy an L2 classroom. For example, in an insightful chapter on identity and second language learning, Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) state: If we transcend the domain of phonology and morphosyntax and move into the domain where meanings and selves are constituted by language…agency and intentionality take centre stage. The individual may feel comfortable being who he or she is and may not wish to ‘become’ a native of another language and culture. Thus, negotiation of new meanings and construction of new subjectivities may be irrelevant to her/his personal agenda. (2000: 170) I want to suggest that the points being made here about ‘domains’ and ‘subjectivities’ are, in part, ‘field-external’ when placed against the narrative I have constructed. Based on my experiences at CCSAT, I would counter that there are no linguistic ‘domains’ in which ‘agency’, ‘intentionality’, or ‘choice’ are unconstituted by discourses. Elsewhere (Morgan, 1997) I have tried to demonstrate that even at the suprasegmental, phonological level, identity negotiation takes place and is interwoven through every facet of L2 instruction. The ‘Gong Li’ story similarly demonstrates a continuously intertextual, ‘multidomain’ of practices – some, in retrospect, laboriously morphosyntactic – through which teacher–student identities are negotiated. For me, the Gong Li story emphasises that intentionality, like the subject who assumes its sole possession, is always ‘in process’. The symbols and meanings that anchor one’s nativeness are always open to resignification, producing new liminalities that can be profoundly discomforting, as in the potential validation of Gong Li’s ‘immorality’ or the image-text of a ‘domesticated’ male teacher. The subject doesn’t choose to ‘stay’ or ‘go’ so much as he or she is compelled to continuously ‘perform’ what is required of difference, both within and between categories of identity. This performative model has great explanatory power in helping me understand my experiences at CCSAT. As I learned new things about my students, I was compelled to learn new things about myself through their responses.

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And by experimenting, by presenting an ‘image-text’ of myself that countered some of their assumptions, I witnessed a newfound interest in exploring identity options around culture, gender, and family life. The Applicant for Husband compositions offer some evidence of this development, but they also underscore the strengths of Cummins’ framework and the close links between identity and language learning he details. In this respect, a research agenda on teacher-student identities is enriched by poststructural theory, but only to a partial degree. For its potential to be realised, it must be rooted in the fieldinternal practices that constitute bilingual and second language education. Finally, as Foucault would remind us, the notion of ‘teacher identity as pedagogy’ is always potentially ‘dangerous’, and the myriad forms of power that teachers hold over students should never be forgotten. Therefore, we need to present ourselves – our image-texts – in ways that are unthreatening and respectful, indeed, similar to other ‘texts’ we bring to class: always open to critical analysis and reinterpretation. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Brian Morgan, Department of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ([email protected]). Notes 1. In this article, the terms subject and subjectivity are used interchangeably with identity and conceptualised primarily by way of poststructural ideas. This conflation does not negate other ways of theorising human experience but reflects, instead, my preference for the sharp insights on language, power, and identity that I see poststructuralism offering classroom-based research. 2. Identity as ‘performance’ originates with Austin’s (1975) distinction between constative and performative utterances. The former are statements that refer to prior or existing ‘realities’ and can therefore be evaluated in terms of their truth or falsity. In contrast, the latter are statements that create or bring into being that which is named by language (e.g. ‘Let the games begin’). In a famous passage, Butler (1990) adopts the performative to describe gender as ‘the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being’ (p. 33). A performative model illuminates the creative and contingent means by which individuals employ language to differentiate themselves, and ‘shifts the focus away from a simple cataloging of differences’ (Cameron, 1997: 49; Ehrlich, 1997) based on static, homogeneous group boundaries. 3. Varghese (in this issue), for example, uses a ‘community of practice’ frame (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in her ethnographic study of a professional development programme for bilingual teachers. Structured around forms of academic ‘expert’ knowledge, the programme, through both its conventional content and delivery, brought about participants’ awareness of its underlying limitations and biases. The dominant discourse of the programme – the assumption of a unified knowledge base in bilingual education – subsequently became ‘a locale for the articulation and contestation of bilingual teachers’ roles’. 4. I am indebted to Atkinson (in press) for introducing me to this term, which he develops in his forthcoming book, TESOL and Culture: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Beyond. 5. I refer here again to Simon’s (1995) description of the ‘intimate pedagogy of doctoral education’ (1995: 99). The ‘intimacy’ he discusses is an inseparable aspect of both

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theory-formation and pedagogy in such settings, and unparalleled in adult ESL programmes. Almost all doctoral students desire to be professors and live academic lives; hence their identities are strongly invested in the social prestige of the university and in acquiring the textual strategies of their professors. Such intimacies, I believe, are not unrelated to the kinds of practices/techniques associated with poststructural thought (i.e. critical introspection, textual deconstruction). What can often take place in such doctoral settings is an excessively self-conscious form of dialogue – aware, troubled and skeptical of the ‘deep’ consent that underpins it. 6. Some might wonder why I refer to Allison as my ‘wife’ rather than ‘partner’ – which I sometimes do in other settings. In this class of mostly Chinese seniors, the lexical term ‘partner’ is not easily substituted for the traditional status accorded the word ‘wife’ and could, in the eyes of some, imply a lower social ranking, thus making the purported equality of such a relationship seem irrelevant to married life. While lexical change can be an important strategy for gender-based language reform (e.g. Ehrlich & King, 1998), within particular speech communities, re-articulations that attach new meanings/referents to ‘old’ signifiers can be more effective.

References Amin, N. (1999) Minority women teachers of ESL: Negotiating white English. In G. Braine (ed.) Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching (pp. 93–104). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Atkinson, D. (in press) TESOL and Culture: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Beyond. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Auerbach, E.R. (2000) Creating participatory learning communities: Paradoxes and possibilities. In J.K. Hall and W.G. Eggington (eds) The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching (pp. 143–164). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Austin, J.L. (1975) How to do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baker, C. (1996) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Belsey, C. (1980) Critical Practice. London: Methuen. Benesch, S. (2001) Critical English for Academic Purposes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Borg, S. (1998) Teachers’ pedagogical systems and grammar teaching: A qualitative study. TESOL Quarterly 32, 9–38. Braine, G. (ed.) (1999) Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English: A Study of its Development. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Brutt-Griffler, J. and Samimy, K.K. (1999) Revisiting the colonial in the postcolonial: Critical praxis for nonnative-English-Speaking teachers in a TESOL programme. TESOL Quarterly 33, 413–431. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1992) Contingent foundations: Feminism and the question of ‘postmodernism’. In J. Butler and J.W. Scott (eds) Feminists Theorise the Political (pp. 3–21). New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. In G. Raymond and M. Adamson (Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, D. (1997) Performing gender identity: Young men’s talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In S. Johnson and U.H. Meinhof (eds) Language and Masculinity (pp. 47–64). Cambridge: Blackwell. Canagarajah, A.S. (1999) Interrogating the ‘native speaker fallacy’: Non-linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results. In G. Braine (ed.) Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching (pp. 77–92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Corson, D. (2001) Language Diversity and Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Corson, D. (2002) Teaching and learning for market-place utility. International Journal of Leadership in Education 1, 1–13. Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (2001) Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society (2nd edn). Ontario, CA: California Association of Bilingual Education. Ehrlich, S. (1997) Gender as social practice: Implications for second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 19, 421–446. Ehrlich, S. and King, R. (1998) Gender-based language reform and the social construction of meaning. In D. Cameron (ed.) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader (2nd edn) (pp. 164–179). New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1982) The subject and power. In H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds) Beyond Structuralism (pp. 208–226). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freeman, D. (2000, October/November) Imported theories/local understandings: Part 1. TESOL Matters 10 (4), 1, 6. Freeman, R.D. (1998) Bilingual Education and Social Change. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Gabbard, D.A. (ed.) (2000) Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gallop, J. (1995) Im-Personation: A reading in the guise of an introduction. In J. Gallop (ed.) Pedagogy: The Question of Impersonation (pp. 1–18). Bloomington, IA: University of Indiana Press. Grabe, W., Stoller, F.L. and Tardy, C. (2000) Disciplinary knowledge as a foundation for teacher preparation. In J.K. Hall and W.G. Eggington (eds) The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching (pp. 178–194). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. James, C. (2002) ‘You can’t understand me’: Negotiating teacher-student relationships in urban schools. Contact: Special Research Symposium Issue 28 (2), 8–20. Johnston, B. (1999) The expatriate teacher as postmodern paladin. Research in the Teaching of English 34, 255–280. Johnston, B. and Goettsch, K. (2000) In search of the knowledge base of language teaching: Explanations by experienced teachers. Canadian Modern Language Review 56, 437–468. Ignatieff, M. (2000) The Rights Revolution. Etobicoke, ON: Anansi Press. Kramsch, C. (1998) The privilege of the intercultural speaker. In M. Byram and M. Fleming (eds) Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective: Approaches through Drama and Ethnography (pp. 16–31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2001) Toward a postmethod pedagogy. TESOL Pedagogy 35, 537–560. Lantolf, J. (ed.) (2000) Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lin, A., Wang, W., Akamatsu, N. and Riazi, A.M. (2002) Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field: From TESOL to Teaching English for Globalized Communication (TEGCOM). Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1, 295–316. Liu, J. (1999) Nonnative-English-Speaking professionals in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 33, 85–102. Lynch, B.K. (1996) Language Programme Evaluation: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McKay, S.L. (2002) Teaching English as an International Language. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Morgan, B. (1997) Identity and intonation: Linking dynamic processes in an ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly 31, 431–450. Morgan, B. (2001) Community-based ESL: Exploring ‘critical citizenship’. In J. Murphy and P. Byrd (eds) Understanding the Courses We Teach: Local Perspectives on English Language Teaching (pp. 115–134). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Morgan, B. (2002) Critical practice in community-based ESL programmes: A Canadian perspective. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1, 141–162. Nelson, C. (1999) Sexual identities in ESL: Queer theory and classroom inquiry. TESOL Quarterly 33, 371–391. Nieto, S. (1996) Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education (2nd edn). White Plains, NY: Longman. Norton, B. (2000) Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change. London: Longman. Pavlenko, A. and Lantolf, J.P. (2000) Second language learning as participation and the (re)construction of selves. In J.P. Lantolf (ed.) Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning (pp. 155–177). New York: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robson, C. (1993) Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner Researchers. London: Blackwell. Simon, R.I. (1995) Face to face with alterity: Postmodern Jewish identity and the eros of pedagogy. In J. Gallop (ed.) Pedagogy: The Question of Impersonation (pp. 90–105). Bloomington, IA: University of Indiana Press. Spring, J. (1998) Education and the Rise of the Global Economy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Taylor, C. (1994) The politics of recognition. In A. Gutman (ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (pp. 25–73). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Toohey, K. (2000) Learning English at School: Identity, Social Relations and Classroom Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Valde´s, G. (1996) Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Varghese, M. (2001) Professional development as a site for the conceptualisation and negotiation of bilingual teacher identities. In B. Johnston and S. Irujo (eds) Research and Practice in Language Teacher Education: Voices from the field (pp. 213–232). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Centre for Advanced Research in Second Language Acquisition. Widdowson, H. (1980) Models and fictions. Applied Linguistics 1, 165–170. Weedon, C. (1987) Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. New York: Basil Blackwell. Wong, S. (2000) Transforming the politics of schooling in the U.S.: A model for successful academic achievement for language minority students. In J.K. Hall and W.G. Eggington (eds) The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching (pp. 117–139). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Appendix 1: The Applicant for Husband

Bilingual Teachers in Mainstream Secondary School Classrooms: Using Turkish for Curriculum Learning Angela Creese University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK In England an inclusive language and educational policy is implemented which intends to give bilingual/EAL (English as an additional language) students access to a national curriculum studied by all students. Bilingual/EAL children are placed in English mainstream secondary school classrooms where their language and learning needs are to be met by a working partnership between the subject teacher and EAL teacher. The bulk of the language support in English schools is non-bilingual and is delivered in English. However, there is sizeable number of bilingual EAL teachers in England’s multilingual schools. The focus of this paper is an ethnographic study of six Turkish/English bilingual EAL teachers from three London secondary schools, using observations, interviews, classroom transcripts and government/school policy documents as data sources. The paper describes how bilingual EAL teachers work within secondary school subject discipline classrooms where the primary focus is curriculum learning. It shows these bilingual EAL teachers resisting the support role usually played by EAL teachers for a more traditional subject teacher role of transmitter and explainer of curriculum content. This decision to work within the dominant pedagogic framework of secondary schooling in effect keeps the bilingual/EAL teacher and children at the centre of classroom life. Keywords: bilingual teachers, knowledge construction, curriculum

Introduction Bilingual EAL and non-bilingual EAL teachers working alongside classroom/subject teachers are the main means by which a policy of inclusion for bilingual students is enacted in English primary and secondary schools. Mainstreaming in England developed as a progressive educational policy and challenged the previous provision which excluded bilingual children from mainstream classes until they were ‘proficient enough’ in English to join their peers to learn subject curricula (Reid, 1988). The bulk of these collaborative teaching relationships are between non-bilingual English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers and subject teachers.1 The most recently published national survey, although in need of updating, found that 86% of the teachers were deployed as non-bilingual EAL teachers; 9% as community language teachers,2 and 5% as bilingual EAL teachers (Bourne, 1989: 34). It is likely that the low figures for bilingual teachers persist today, especially as there is no professional route into EAL (Leung, 1998, 2001; OFSTED, 2002).3 EAL teachers qualify in the same way as subject teachers. In fact, they are subject teachers and have moved into EAL once in the mainstream setting. That is, in England, it is not possible to specialise in EAL or make language issues central in initial teaching training. EAL teachers are therefore subject trained in a secondary school curriculum area. Their specialisation in EAL comes through practice and continuing professional development courses run through their local government services and university courses. 97

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In educational policy documents, EAL teachers are a generic category. There is no distinction made between those who are bilingual in a community language (hereafter, bilingual EAL teachers) and those who are not (hereafter nonbilingual EAL teachers). They are described as doing the same work. This involves making the curriculum accessible, informative and interesting for all students in statutory education. In fact, because EAL is not seen as a specialist area but a generalist skill desired of all teachers working within an inclusive educational agenda, all teachers are required to be language teachers. Language teaching is the professional responsibility of all teachers … The pupil’s own level of language development should provide the starting point for work. Like all pupils, bilingual pupils should have access to a stimulating curriculum which, at the same time, helps their language development. (NCC, 1991: 1) On paper at least, EAL teachers do the same work as any other classroom teacher in supporting the needs of bilingual/EAL students, which is to provide for both language learning opportunities as well as curriculum learning opportunities in the subject classroom. In practice however, secondary school subject teachers do not always take on the role of facilitator of language learning in their classrooms. This role is often left to the EAL teacher (Creese, 2000, 2002b). It is the EAL teacher who is often expected to deliver the pedagogic aims of language learning explained in policy documents. One policy document describes this pedagogy in the following terms. Effective teachers of pupils learning EAL provide ample opportunities for pupils to hear and read good models of a range of styles and registers of English. They take every opportunity to extend pupils’ English and provide ‘scaffolded’ learning opportunities which match the level of pupils’ English development to curriculum content. . . Some pupils learning EAL will need additional support, e.g. instructions, explanations, information, prior rehearsal of some of the points or use of illustration, to understand teacher ‘input’.….They will need opportunities to practise language. Well-structured group work and opportunities to work collaboratively are particularly effective in helping pupils with EAL to learn English, since they allow pupils to test their ideas and understanding, and ask questions to clarify their understanding, in a supportive environment. (TTA, 2000: 47) In this quote the importance of modelling English, group work and providing scaffolding opportunities is highlighted. That is, the emphasis is on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of learning. I have discussed elsewhere what happens when EAL teachers are left in the classroom managing the pedagogy but with no subject content to teach (Creese, 2000, 2002a, 2002b; see also, Arkoudis, 2000; Lee, 1997). Without a subject curriculum to deliver to students and without a fully developed partnership between the subject teacher and the EAL teacher, an EAL teacher can become positioned as helper to the subject teacher. This has repercussions for the students with whom they work. EAL teachers who become seen as helpers within the classroom are marginalised in the

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school as are their areas of expertise and the students they work with. The EAL teacher is left focusing on an educational agenda seemingly less important, with the possibility of its rejection by the very students s/he is undertaking to help. In the worse case scenario the curriculum support role played by the EAL teachers becomes part of the picture of deficit, not because what the EAL teacher is doing is intrinsically unhelpful but because there are other educational discourses and agendas more dominant in classroom life.

Bilingual EAL Teachers in English Secondary Schools In this paper, I will be concentrating on bilingual EAL teachers. I do this because I wish to show how bilingual EAL teachers develop additional roles in mainstream classrooms which extend the work they do beyond the more usual support role expected of non-bilingual EAL teachers. They achieve this through the use of other languages in the mainstream context which is an overwhelmingly English dominant zone. Educational policy in England encourages the use of other languages only for transitional purposes; that is, until the student is proficient enough to learn the subject curriculum through English. The current policy has been developed around an argument that the huge diversity in languages which exist in English schools makes bilingual education in mainstream schooling impossible and undesirable. We find we cannot support the arguments put forward for the introduction of programmes of bilingual education in maintained schools in this country. Similarly we would regard mother tongue maintenance, although an important educational function, as best achieved within the ethnic minority communities themselves rather than within mainstream schools, but with considerable support from and liaison with the latter. (DES, 1985: 406) Bilingual EAL teachers work in a climate in which an emphasis is placed on the use of other languages for transitional and pastoral uses only. Other languages are presented as a rich resource in this transition. Multilingualism is supported in as much as it supports the learning of English. The National Curriculum recognises that variety of language is a rich resource which can support learning in English. Where appropriate, pupils should be encouraged to make use of their understanding and skills in other languages in learning English. (Teaching English as an Additional Language: a Framework for Policy, SCAA, 1996: 2) Neither in policy documents nor in practice (Creese, 1997) do bilingual EAL teachers receive any encouragement to expand their role in using other languages for the teaching of the subject curriculum beyond transition to English.4 Research on bilingual teachers and assistants in England has been predominantly carried out in English primary schools (Bourne, 1989, 1997, 2001; Martin-Jones & Saxena, 1989, 1996, in press). Very little empirical work has been done on bilingual EAL teachers in English secondary schools. Research on bilingual teachers in secondary schools is much richer in the US (see Bunch

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et al., 2001; Ruiz, 1992; Valde´s, 1997, 1998). However, the provision of schooling is clearly very different between the two national contexts. In the US, bilingual teachers can be employed to work bilingually within bilingual programmes whether their orientation is transitional, maintenance or enrichment (Baker, 2001). In England, there are no statutory bilingual or dual immersion programmes. Instead, bilingual EAL teachers are engaged primarily to play a support role in curriculum learning and are employed to use their first languages to ease the transition to English in monolingual subject-focused classrooms or for pastoral reasons to assist in home/school links. Bilingual EAL teachers are not employed to teach the curriculum bilingually. Nevertheless, if the literature on bilingual teachers in the US context is not explicitly transferable to the English context at programme level, there are elements of the debate in the US which are. Valde´s’ work has been important in looking at the instructional dilemmas that surround the education of immigrant children in US secondary schools. She has described how the school systems can work against immigrant children so that some of them never move beyond ESL or sheltered classes to mainstream classes. Her work shows the unwillingness of some mainstream teachers to work with immigrant children in subject-focused classrooms. She shows the dilemmas mainstream subject teachers face in making their classrooms into arenas in which language and content learning can be integrated. In one particular case study, she finds that ‘like many other mainstream teachers forced to take English-language learners, she [the mainstream teacher] simply directed her class at the ability levels of her mainstream students’ (Valde´s, 1998: 9). That is, the mainstream teacher made little attempt to integrate the teaching of language and subject content. I explore similar themes in this paper. I attempt to understand why subject teachers might adopt such an attitude. I do this by linking micro classroom discourses to macro societal debates on what it is to be teacher today. To understand how learning is viewed in mainstream multicultural urban schools, we need to understand the pressures teachers are under to perform particular kinds of roles and how they attempt to meet these goals in diverse classrooms. As stated earlier, the mainstreaming of bilingual EAL students is viewed as a progressive and inclusive multicultural policy (Nieto, 1999). It necessarily, places bilingual EAL students and discussions of bilingualism at the heart of the mainstream education agenda. Consequently, the evaluation of EAL support needs to be discussed in terms of what other instructional processes are going on in the mainstream classroom. Special provision for bilingual/EAL students in secondary school-focused classrooms needs to be seen as part of the ecological picture of mainstream classroom secondary school life and what counts as learning in that space. Pedagogy is a complex social practice which draws in its participants in differing and complex ways. When two teachers work together collaboratively, classroom practices and knowledge take on a new complexity. Walkerdine (1988) has shown how pedagogic discourse constitutes the pedagogic subject and in doing so becomes not simply the message or the medium of knowledge but an instance of social construction. That is, the way teachers

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and other class participants speak and act will constitute classroom communities with their insiders and outsiders, winners and losers. Similarly, Bernstein (1990) has argued that patterns of pedagogic practice in the classroom consist of discourse conventions and protocols resulting in an agenda often invisible to its participants. These visible and invisible curricula play a part in the construction of the pedagogic subject as the pedagogies’ ‘message systems’ construct what counts as ‘school knowledge’ (Ball, 1997; Luke & Luke, 1999; Whitty et al., 1998). One of the points I have made elsewhere is that EAL support unless coupled with a subject teacher engaging in similar agendas becomes seen as not ‘real’ learning or teaching. This is because the dominant pedagogy in these classrooms is the transmission of curriculum content and pedagogies which support that most efficiently. Secondary school classrooms seem to allow little opportunity for a focus on language learning. The process of language learning and the negotiation of meaning appear to be a luxury teachers feel they can ill afford. In this paper I look at how the bilingual EAL teachers use their first languages to stay focused on this primary aim of secondary school education.

Methodology and Analytic Frameworks The three schools in this study are in economically poor and richly diverse parts of London. The schools are a lively mixture of colours, cultures, languages and difference. Over 90% of the students are listed as having English as an additional language (EAL). The largest linguistic minority during the data collection period was Turkish speaking.5 The Turkish-speaking minority consists of an older more established Turkish Cypriot community and newer Turkish/Kurdish speaking refugees (IOE,1999; Ladbury, 1977; Mehmet Ali, 1991). Both have settled in the same areas of London. The primary methodology and analytical framework used for this paper was the ethnography of communication (Hornberger,1993; Hymes, 1968, 1974; Saville Troike, 1996). The ethnography of communication gives the researcher the opportunity to understand and explain the perspectives of the research participants. Entry to the research site was through the permission of the head of EAL support. I then shadowed the language specialists through their working day and spent just over 2 weeks with each of the four language specialists in each of the three schools. I spent, on average, one 10-week term in each school – approximately 460 hours observation in total. The data consist of fieldnotes analysed and written up as vignettes (Erickson, 1990, 1996); ethnographic and semi-structured interviews analysed for reoccurring themes; classroom transcripts of the EAL teachers and subject teachers working together in the classroom and analysed for patterns in ways of speaking in class-fronted and small group interactions. Twenty six teachers were observed and interviewed in English using semistructured and ethnographic approaches. Twelve of these teachers were EAL teachers and the remaining 14 were subject specialists (teaching across the whole curriculum range). Of the twelve EAL teachers, six were bilingual in Turkish and six were not bilingual in a community language. From the total

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Table 1 Bilingual EAL teachers in three London secondary schools Sinchester – mixed, 11–16 years

Skonnington – single sex girls school, 11–18 years

Soldingstoke – mixed, 11–16 years

● Nese – From Turkey, female, early 30s; lived in UK for approx 5 years. Instructor training for qualified teacher status in England. Original subject area: English

● Unal – From Cyprus, ● Nur – From Turkey, male, lived in UK for female, lived in UK over 20 years. for approx 7 years. Teacher, PhD from Teacher. Original London University. subject area: English Original subject area: humanities

● Birgul – from Turkey, ● Dilek – From Cyprus, ● Yilgin – From female, early 30s lived and female, lived in UK Turkey, lived in UK studied in UK for approx 5 for over 20 years. for approx 5 years. years. Teacher. MA from Teacher. Original Teacher: modern London University. subject area: science foreign languages Original subject area: English

of 26 teachers I audio recorded ten teacher pairings engaged in classroom teaching. The bilingual teachers requested not to be audio taped in their classroom teaching.6 The data presented in this data therefore draw on observations and interview data. In each school, two EAL language specialists were bilingual Turkish and two were not bilingual in a community language of the classroom. This paper focuses on the six bilingual teachers in the three schools and the teachers they worked with (Table 1). The data sections which follow draw on interview transcripts from the bilingual EAL teachers and the subject teachers they worked with. The data presented are intended to be representative of the overall findings (Creese, 1997). The data are divided into two sections. The first gives voice to the bilingual teachers and their rationale for using Turkish in the subject classroom. The second section describes the views of subject teachers in the schools.

Bilingual Teachers: Explaining Subject Curricula In the following section, interview data are presented from the bilingual EAL teachers themselves in which they describe their use of Turkish in the mainstream classroom. The bilingual teachers see themselves primarily as explainers of information rather than as accessors/facilitators of information. They are primarily focused on conveying the subject content and only secondarily on simplifying so that the students could learn English. Learning English is seen as happening over time, whereas subject learning is seen as happening in the here and now. They give an account of the best use of their time in the mainstream as keeping students up with content knowledge. In the extract below, a bilingual teacher is describing her role to me. Extract one Well, I think if they [bilingual/EAL students] think they are keeping up with the content they are reassured that they are not being left behind.

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Especially with the Turkish kids who have been used to the system where you fail and you have to repeat the same class. I mean, I think they ought to know the content. It is easier if you know the language of the student you are helping. It is harder if you don’t know the language....If you know the language you can translate and try and explain it to them. But I think they ought to know what is going on in the class, as well as trying to learn some new words. (Dilek: Skonnington School) This bilingual teacher was originally science-trained. In the above transcript she describes her primary role as keeping students up with the content area. Her skills of translating and interpreting the subject teacher, tasks and texts from one language into another in a subject that she knew, meant that she stayed focused on the subject curriculum message and consequently, the Turkish-speaking bilingual children followed the same agenda as the rest of the class. She is also aware of how the Turkish students are likely to interpret the English education systems and the problems this might cause and she uses this knowledge to shape her teaching. The next quote comes from another bilingual teacher in the same school who was also head of the language/learning support. Extract two I think our main job ought to be facilitating access to the curriculum. This obviously works in different ways. If the support teacher has prior knowledge of what the content of the lesson was going to be and the nature of the work that was going to be, and if the support teacher had the opportunity of providing additional worksheets or maybe having to provide some kind of simplified version I think that is what the support teacher ought to be doing. I am finding increasingly that I am not really producing worksheets because nearly all the girls that I support, there are exceptions obviously, tend to be Turkish speakers. And it isn’t only a question of simplifying things, it is easier to explain things in Turkish. (Unal, Skonnington School) In this quote this teacher speaks as the middle manager he is and refers to the policy documents and the support work he is required to do. However, he also refers to the bilingual work he does which is not captured in these documents. He starts by speaking of ‘accessing’ the curriculum as ‘our main job’ and of offering ‘simplified versions’ of materials. However, he ends by speaking in terms of ‘I’ and contrasting the effectiveness of ‘explaining’ as opposed to ‘simplifying’. He is able to explain because the majority of students he works with are Turkish speaking and he shares their language as well as knowing the subject material well. This teacher sees the role of the first language as being very important in teaching and learning subject material. In fact, in the quote that follows, we see the same teacher construct ‘learning’ to mean specifically subject learning. The learning of English on the other hand, which is often seen as an important element of EAL support work, is described as naturally acquired and not part of any taught process.

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Extract three Well, language is a continuous thing isn’t it? You acquire it little by little. So yes, language does come along . . .but obviously language is an accumulative thing, isn’t it? You acquire little by little, it doesn’t all come at once. (Unal, Skonnington school) The bilingual teacher goes on to suggest that the students’ English is not adequate for what he sees as the main teaching and learning agenda of the mainstream classroom. Extract four On the whole this might be a bad admission to make. I think the amount of language that we initially teach them is not really adequate for their learning. It is only when they really become more articulate that it does become a vehicle for learning really. . . .After all, no matter how much I teach girls at stage one or two they’re still not independent and they’re simply learning lists of words or phrases or whatever and that really by itself it not sufficient or adequate to enable them to learn. (Unal, Skonnington) In Unal’s discourse, we see different constructions of teaching and learning taking place. Whereas subject curriculum is learned, language is acquired. In other words, whereas the subject curriculum needs to be taught, the second language needs to be acquired gradually over time. In this bilingual EAL teacher’s discourse there is support for the use of the first/dominant language for subject teaching and learning. The use of Turkish for this role was endorsed by all six of the Turkish-speaking teachers in this study. Using Turkish in the mainstream subject-focused classroom allowed these bilingual teachers and students to follow the same curriculum as the non-bilingual students. In the following section we look at how subject teachers viewed the use of Turkish in their classrooms for subject teaching and learning.

Views of Subject Curriculum Teachers: Using Turkish for Content Learning A distinction has been made between explaining curriculum content versus the facilitating of learning in mainstream classrooms. Subject teachers generally described themselves as responsible for the curriculum content and rarely as language teachers. Extract six 앫 If it is technical language, I think it comes down to me, like technical words like designing briefs, like ergonomics and things, but often the basic language and the simplification of language, is well, done by the support teacher. (technology teacher, Soldingstoke) 앫 Well, I have expertise in terms of the curriculum, the syllabus and so I am directing what we are going to study next and plan that in relation to the curriculum. (geography teacher, Sinchester)

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앫 I tend to have more responsibility in the instruction. (history teacher, Skonnington) Indeed, one EAL teacher interview transcript shows a certain level of frustration that subject teachers pay little attention to language issues. I think that subject teachers see themselves very much as content teachers, rather than language teachers. I’d be interested to hear what they had to say. Because from what I have seen and from what I have discussed with subject teachers, I don’t think they see themselves as having any sort of part in this language teaching at all. (non bilingual EAL teacher, Sinchester School) This was a common view expressed by EAL teachers (Creese, 1997). Throughout the data, subject teachers saw themselves very much as teachers of subject content and very little as teachers of English as an additional language. They assigned this role to non-bilingual EAL teachers. However, they saw the role of bilingual EAL teachers differently in their classrooms. In the following extract, an information technology subject teacher contemplates her own role alongside her bilingual colleague, Nur. Extract eight Nur’s job, the difference? Well, in this classroom, Nur has a bigger role than she would have in other classes that I have. In this class she has more pupils as such than I have and so she would do a lot of translation work and I’d be explaining things and she would work with most of the children in this room. I think there are only two that don’t need Nur, as such. So I do all the main teaching, I do the main demonstrations and the problems and then she would sort of filter them through her to those who need it. So her role is hard to say, is not more important than mine but it is kind of. (Information technology teacher, female, Soldingstoke) In this piece of data the subject teacher maintains that there are clear role differences between herself and Nur. The ‘main teaching’ continues to be done by herself. This includes explaining and demonstrating. Nur’s role is to translate and interpret this, as the subject teachers says, ‘to filter it’. However, because of the large number of Turkish-speaking children in the class Nur’s role becomes ‘more important’. Why should Nur’s role become more important because there are more bilingual/EAL children in the class? The answer seems to lie in the job description this subject teacher has constructed for herself. She sees her primary job as teaching concepts, problem solving and demonstrating. Without being able to follow what the children understand and do not understand, she is unable to do this job. Nur has taken over this role. Extract nine In this class, they [bilingual/EAL] have a difficulty with the concepts and a lot of the problems are that I don’t realise how much they know or don’t know, how much they are understanding, because when Nur

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isn’t here, and say we are doing a theory lesson or something on the board and I say, do you understand, they don’t say anything and I don’t really understand what they don’t understand. (ibid) In the data presented above and below we can see that in translating and explaining, Nur’s ‘support’ role has grown into teaching rather than supporting subject content and in doing so she is no longer supporting the subject but is teaching it. Translation and interpretation of content from one language to another is a great asset to the subject teacher because she can feel assured that the students are learning content and understanding content. However, in this very process, she feels her role as a subject teacher has fundamentally changed. She sees herself as retaining her subject knowledge expertise but also as losing her pedagogic interpretive skills. Nur, on the other hand, is seen as having both knowledge expertise through translation and the pedagogic skills to interpret whether students understand or not. Extract ten So I think, Nur, her main role is not really supposed to be translation and you can’t directly translate in this subject but she’s, she does a lot of explaining. . . so Nur trains them to say, this word means or this word wants you to, which I wouldn’t be able to do, because I don’t really know where they are or what level or understanding they have. (ibid) Translating has become explaining and teaching. These quotes from the subject teacher highlight what she sees and does not see as her classroom role. One area she claims as her own is the explaining of subject content; so much so in fact, that when this role is adopted by the bilingual teacher, she describes Nur as having a more important job in the classroom than she does. One role which the subject teacher does not see as her own is the focus on language learning which in policy documents is also expected of her in classrooms where bilingual EAL students are learning. Her construction of ‘hers’ and ‘Nur’s’ students shows that the policy of education inclusion and entitlement based on the mainstream classroom providing an opportunity for the most efficient route to English language learning is not working fully in this case at least. This subject teacher sees her job as the delivery of the information technology curriculum. She is aware that Nur’s Turkish provides a valuable way to deliver this aim even though it fundamentally changes her job as a teacher. In my data, seven of the 14 subject teachers in open ethnographic interviews, spoke of the importance of first languages for subject teaching in a similar way. A flavour of this is given in the extracts below. Extract eleven I don’t discourage the use of the first language if people need to communicate in it. I am quite happy if it clarifies. I mean I can’t use it myself because I have no idea. But if somebody said, yes we could understand this if we translated it then yes. Because as I said my aim is to get them to understand. I don’t care if they understand in English, Turkish or whatever. . . it might give them some positive things like they understand what all the others do but in their own language. (History, Sinchester School)

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Extract twelve [non bilingual EAL] Support is like having another teacher in the room, and it means they can sit with one person and you know that person is getting attention but having Nur here is a different sort of thing. I know the children will understand what I am saying. I mean I definitely couldn’t do it without Nur. (Information Technology teacher, Soldingstoke). Extract thirteen Well I would be really supportive of having more mother tongue but the problem is time and resources. We [laughs] we have got one girl that we sit with and we work out a glossary and she gives as a translation [laughs] which we then photocopy for others, but it is very difficult, because of time and resources and because neither of us speak Turkish, and not just Turkish, all the Asian kids as well. Having so many different languages in the school is a real problem. (Humanities teacher, Soldingstoke School) This endorsement by subject teachers for the use of first language for the transmission of the subject curriculum is an indication of what the subject teachers see as the primary purpose of secondary school teaching and the pedagogy which delivers this. It endorses a particular view of pedagogy as built upon subject knowledge and its efficient transmission to pedagogic subjects. The bilingual EAL teachers in this study acquiesce by maintaining a focus on subject content albeit by working outside the dominant monolingual status quo. In this way, bilingual EAL teachers are working both within dominant pedagogic paradigms of subject curriculum delivery but also against them by using other languages in a setting which does not explicitly make use of them. Likewise, subject teachers work within the policy of subject content transmission. Subject teachers are under pressure to foreground this aim over other roles such as the facilitation of English language learning. In fact, such is the pressure on subject teachers to deliver examination results which show curriculum learning that these teachers express a willingness to have the curriculum taught in any language as long as subject learning takes place. Subject teachers, in endorsing the use of bilingual explanation, interpretation and translation, are therefore playing their part in expanding the role of other languages in the mainstream beyond the rhetorically safe ‘language as resource’ position which keeps other languages ‘outside and incidental to the learning process’ (Bourne, 2001: 251).

Conclusion There is little in the way of bilingual education in English secondary schools. It has not been supported in either policy documents or found to exist in any sustainable way in the empirical work which has investigated the use of other languages in English classrooms. Work on other languages in English secondary schools has mostly described its pastoral and transitional role. This paper has attempted to show its teaching and learning role in the mainstream and

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the support it receives from subject curriculum teachers. My argument has been that the bilingual teachers choose to endorse dominant educational discourses and in doing so include bilingual children in the same endeavours as other non bilingual children. Currently in secondary schools, a professional knowledge based on facilitation, access and awareness of language in the absence of a curriculum subject seems to hold little currency despite the very sound educational rationale behind such work. EAL teachers attempt to do invaluable work in a pedagogic climate which mediates against them and therefore the students they work with. Cooperative fully fledged teaching relationships between subject teachers and EAL teachers in secondary schools are rare. The pattern continues to be that EAL teachers take responsibility for the language and learning support work, which in turn, is positioned as ‘generic’ and less important than the ‘expertise’ of curriculum knowledge (Lee, 1997). Expertise is the ability to transmit the subject curriculum in whatever language is available and achieve commendable examination results. This paper has attempted to illustrate the importance of bilingual discourse in English secondary school classrooms for subject learning because it works within the dominant pedagogic aims of secondary school learning. However, it leaves many questions unanswered and many debates unheard. Some of these questions are: Where are the boundaries and overlaps in translating and explaining in the use of first and heritage languages for subject teaching? How much do bilingual teachers ‘borrow’ and/or transform the words of others in their teaching of subject curricula? What impact does the use of other languages have on the construction of teacher knowledge in secondary schools? What constitutes teacher professional knowledge in co-taught classrooms? How do these classroom discourses impact on issues of discourse and power in the construction of different pedagogic players? Guidance on beginning to answer questions can be gained, in part, from the literature on translation, interpretation and reflexivity (Venuti,1992). In addition to these questions, one of the unheard debates in this paper is whether this transmission approach to pedagogy offers only a limited solution to the needs of all students in schools and whether more radical pedagogies offer more scope for students’ learning (Edwards, 2000; Kress, 1999; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1999). Discussions on bilingual education and EAL support need to retain a front seat at such mainstream pedagogic debates. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Angela Creese, School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK ([email protected]). Notes 1. Non-bilingual in one of the classroom’s community languages. 2. Community/heritage languages can be taught on the secondary school timetable as a modern foreign language. 3. EAL secondary school teachers are trained teachers in other subject areas and may choose or be co-opted into EAL language and learning support work.

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4. In order to higher the profile of language learning in England there have been some recent moves to pilot content and language integration project (CLIP, 2003). However, the emphasis is on the use of modern European foreign languages rather than community languages (http://www/cilt/org.uk/clip/index.htm). Moreover, the primary aim appears to be providing more opportunities for the majority monolingual population to become better language learners rather than increasing the use of community languages for the teaching of mainstream curriculum in secondary schools. 5. Data were collected in 1994/1995. 6. It was not clear why this should be so, but there was some hostility in the schools to the use of their languages for teaching purposes (Creese, 2002a).

References Arkoudis, S. (2000) I have linguistic aims and linguistic content: ESL and science teachers planning together. Prospects 15, 61–71. Baker, C. (2001) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (3rd edn). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ball, S. (1997) Policy sociology and critical social research: a personal review of recent education policy and policy research. British Educational Research Journal 23 (3), 257–274. Bernstein, B. (1990) The Structure of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 4. London: Routledge. Bourne, J. (1989) Moving into the Mainstream. Winsor: NFER-Nelson. Bourne, J. (1997) The continuing revolution: Teaching as learning in the mainstream multilingual classroom. In C. Leung and C. Cable (eds) English as an Additional Language (pp. 77–88). York: NALDIC Publications. Bourne, J. (2001) Doing ‘What Comes Naturally’: How the discourses and routines of teachers’ practice constrain opportunities for bilingual support in UK primary schools. Language and Education 15 (4), 250–268. Bunch, G.C., Abram, P.L., Lotan, R.A. and Valdes, G. (2001) Beyond sheltered instruction; Rethinking conditions for academic language development. TESOL Journal 10 (2/3), 28–33. CLIP (2003) Centre for English Language Teaching website. http://www/cilt/org.uk/ clip/index.htm) Visited February 2003. Creese. A. (1997) Mainstreaming as Language Policy and Classroom Practice: Partner Teachers’ Roles, Relationships and Talk in Multilingual British Secondary Schools. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Creese, A (2000) The role of language specialists in disciplinary teaching: in search of a subject? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 21 (6), 451–470. Creese, A. (2002a) EAL and ethnicity issues in teacher professional and institutional discourses. In C. Leung (ed.) Language and Additional/Second Language Issues For School Education: a Reader for Teachers (pp. 14–24). York: NALDIC. Creese, A. (2002b) The discursive construction of power in teacher partnerships: Language and subject specialists in mainstream schools. TESOL Quarterly. 36 (4), 597–616. Department of Education and Science (DES) (1985) Education for All (The Swann Report). London: HMSO. Edwards, A. (2000) Researching Pedagogy: A sociocultural agenda. Inaugural Lecture. University of Birmingham. http://www/edu.bham.ac.uk /SAT/Edwards1.html Erickson, F. (1990) Qualitative methods. In R.L. Linn and F. Erickson (eds) Research in Teaching and Learning, Vol 2. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Erickson, F. (1996) Ethnographic microanalysis. In S.L. McKay and N.H. Hornberger (eds) Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching (pp. 283–306). New York: Cambridge University Press. Hornberger, N.H. (1993) Ethnography in linguistic perspective: Understanding school processes. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington DC.

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Do We Expect Too Much of Bilingual Teachers? Bilingual Teaching in Developing Countries Carol Benson Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, Sweden Given the unique character of bilingual students and the programmes that support them, primary bilingual teaching is a challenging job in any country. However, bilingual teachers in developing contexts are especially challenged; they are often undertrained and underpaid, and must function in under-resourced schools with undernourished students. Meanwhile, they are expected to teach beginning literacy in the mother tongue, communicative language skills in the exogenous (ex-colonial) language, and curricular content in both, requiring that they be as bilingual and biliterate as possible. In addition, they must bridge the linguistic and cultural gap between home and school, become respected members of the community, and manage any opposition to educational use of the mother tongue. Using examples from Bolivia and Mozambique, developing countries from two different continents both of which are in the process of implementing bilingual programmes, this paper discusses the training needs of bilingual teachers as well as the built-in strengths they possess on which their training should capitalise. The outcomes of this discussion are a set of suggestions for alternative teaching models that could optimise teacher effectiveness in such contexts, as well as a template for a training curriculum that builds on teachers’ strengths while addressing their weaknesses. Keywords: bilingual education, bilingual teachers, teacher training, developing countries, Bolivia, Mozambique

Introduction Most would agree that bilingual teaching is more challenging than monolingual teaching, given the unique character of bilingual students and the programmes that support them. This paper discusses how even greater challenges are faced by bilingual teachers who work in developing countries, where a combination of factors related to poverty and complicated by former colonial languages still make Education for All1 an elusive goal. What are the demands placed on bilingual teaching in these contexts, and how are they met? What are the alternatives for optimising teacher effectiveness? This paper examines the role of the bilingual teacher from the perspective of educational development using examples from the author’s research and work in Bolivia and Mozambique, both of which are in the process of undergoing reforms in favour of bilingual, intercultural schooling. Based on findings from these two contexts, the paper proposes teaching models and training programmes that may be better suited to meeting the needs of teachers in multilingual developing countries. The following is a linguistic and educational snapshot of each country from which examples will be drawn: Mozambique is a multilingual African country of 15.5 million (World Bank, 2001) in which about three-quarters of the population speak one or more of 112

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24 indigenous languages, and about one-quarter are speakers of Portuguese as a first, second or foreign language (Katupha, 1985). Portuguese is the official language of primary schooling, in which about 50% of the school-aged population are currently enrolled (UNICEF, 1999). An estimated 56% of the population lacks literacy skills (UNESCO, 2000). Bolivia is a multilingual South American country of about eight million, of which an estimated 70% belong to one of 33 indigenous groups (Albo´, 1995; Mun˜oz, 1997). About one-third of the population are monolingual Spanish speakers, and another 20% speak Spanish as a second language (Albo´, 1995). Spanish has traditionally been the only language of primary schooling, whose enrollment is estimated at 60% in rural indigenous Andean regions (ETARE, 1993). UNESCO (2000) estimates overall illiteracy at about 15%, but rural illiteracy rates among women, for example, are over 40% (INE, 1997). As these brief descriptions illustrate, there is a mismatch between the language of the school and the language of the home. It is logical to assume that if developing education systems are to reach entire populations with relevant, understandable basic schooling, previously excluded languages and cultures must be utilised to a greater extent. This is possible if the appropriate teaching cadres can be cultivated and supported. The next section provides some background information regarding the implementation of bilingual schooling in economically disadvantaged countries.

Implementing Bilingual Schooling in the Context of Development School systems in poor countries are plagued by inequalities between urban and rural areas, between elite and subordinate social groups, and between boys and girls. In both Mozambique and Bolivia, some of the roots of inequality lie in ethnolinguistic heritage, meaning the ethnic and speech community into which residents are born. This heritage determines not only the child’s first language or languages but also the degree to which the child will have access to the language of the dominant group. In this situation, the ‘haves’ tend to be those who speak the prestige language, which is usually the (exogenous) language of the former colonial power and the official language of governance and schooling. Meanwhile, the ‘have-nots’ tend to be those whose languages lack formal recognition2 and whose access to the prestige language is limited, even if they themselves make up a numerical majority of the population. All but a tiny minority of Mozambicans and three-quarters of Bolivians are born into speech communities whose languages and cultures are not the dominant ones. As Stroud (2002) points out in his state-of-the-art report on bilingual schooling in developing countries, parents and indeed most sectors of society look to the school to provide children with ‘linguistic capital’, meaning competence in the dominant language. The task now facing economically disadvantaged countries is to develop inclusive basic education systems that serve entire school-aged populations with high-quality basic education. Whether or not this education includes home languages and cultures, school reform requires large investments of capital that these countries have little chance of generating on their own. In

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such contexts, ‘have-not’ schools already function under extremely adverse conditions. For example, rural schools in Mozambique experience chronic illness and disease among students and teachers, lack of basic facilities such as desks or even school buildings, short (two- to three-hour) school days, and frequent school closures due to strikes by teachers who go unpaid for months at a time (Benson, 2000; Palme, 1992). The Bolivian Andes are characterised by low temperatures, meagre crop yields, inadequate sanitation and lack of infrastructure, causing remote schools to suffer from the ‘Wednesday teacher’ syndrome, where teachers commuting from larger towns miss all but the middle of the school week due to lack of transportation, low salaries, illness, administrative obligations, or political activities (d’Emilio, 2001; King & Benson, 2004). In contexts like these, teachers must face challenging teaching situations ranging from poorly attended, one-room multi-grade schoolhouses to overloaded grade-level classrooms. To this job, teachers bring precious little formal training. Some have received preservice teacher training, which can last from one to four years following primary or even some secondary education, a system that education ministries usually supplement with some form of continuing (inservice) education. A significant proportion of teachers in developing contexts have attended only four to six years of primary schooling prior to their training; for example, five years ago the Mozambican Ministry of Education reported that 75% of the primary teaching force was ‘qualified’, but that most had 4+4 (four years of primary education plus four years of teacher training) or 6+1, neither of which was considered sufficient (MINED, 1997: 21). Meanwhile, unqualified teachers have various levels of formal schooling but lack pedagogical training, a problem which is discussed below in the Bolivian context. Having little or no training means that teachers often lack opportunities to gain competence in the dominant language. The majority of teachers in Mozambique are not mother-tongue speakers of Portuguese and are therefore subject to what Hyltenstam and Stroud (1993: 99) have called ‘linguistic insecurity’ when they are expected to teach in that language. This has affected relatively fewer teachers in Bolivia due to traditionally limited opportunities for indigenous people to gain the level of formal education required for them to become teachers, but difficulty with Spanish has indeed been identified as a problem for bilingual teachers (Hyltenstam & Quick, 1996; see discussion below). While physical and economic constraints must be addressed across sectors, there is evidence that teaching and learning contexts can be improved through educational reform. The past 20 years have seen a resurgence of interest in bilingual education in a number of developing countries, based on findings from around the world. Some former British colonies can draw on their colonial experiences with mother-tongue instruction as part of ‘separate’ schooling for indigenous peoples, the most bitter example of which was Bantu education in South Africa under apartheid (Heugh, 2001). Spanish missionaries in Latin America brought mother-tongue instruction to religious practice and often to schools (Albo´, 1995; Hyltenstam & Quick, 1996), providing some precedents for mother-tongue use. Some recent initiatives have come from within, such as Nyerere’s historic promotion of public schooling in Kiswahili, a lingua

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franca3 in Tanzania, bringing basic education to more citizens (Rubagumya, 1990). Other initiatives have come from outside, as donor agencies with experience in educational development have begun to promote mother-tongue instruction as a means to improve educational quality and equity (see e.g. Dutcher, 1995; Sida, 2001). It was half a century ago that Unesco stated ‘It is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his [or her] mother tongue’ (1953: 11), yet implementation of bilingual programmes has not been speedy. Like some of their neighbours have already done, both Mozambique and Bolivia are currently undergoing reforms that address the importance of the language of instruction. Mozambique: With no documented precedents other than some literacy work, a bilingual experiment known as PEBIMO4 began in 1993, running for 5 years with UN and World Bank sponsorship. Monitored by the research branch of the Ministry of Education, PEBIMO worked with four classes in each of two different regions with the corresponding Bantu languages (Xichangana and Cinyanja) along with Portuguese over primary grades 1 through 5 (Benson, 2000, 2001). As part of a wide-scale curriculum reform, bilingual programmes in up to 16 languages have been readied for implementation on a voluntary basis and slated to begin each year since 2000, finally beginning as small-scale piloting in 2003 as part of a system-wide curriculum reform. Bolivia: Scattered efforts in bilingual schooling grew more organised after 1983, when the political and social climate became more conducive to improving ‘indigenous education’ (d’Emilio & Albo´, 1991), and culminated in a largescale experiment known as PEIB5 which had strong international funding, technical support from the German organisation GTZ, and counterpart projects in Peru and Ecuador. PEIB operated from 1990 to 1994 in 140 schools using three indigenous languages (Quechua, Aymara and Guaranı´) along with Spanish over primary grades 1 through 5 (Mun˜oz, 1997; UNICEF, 1998). Findings from the experiment fed into the Educational Reform Law of 1994, which calls for the introduction of all indigenous languages into primary bilingual schooling and includes interculturalism in the curriculum to increase understanding and tolerance between ethnolinguistic groups (Hornberger, 2002). This highly innovative reform policy is undergoing gradual, countrywide implementation but faces many challenges (see King & Benson, 2004) and practically speaking has yet to reach many of the most needy regions. The next section explores the demands put on bilingual teachers in developing countries and the degree to which they are equipped to meet the challenges, based on evidence from Bolivia and Mozambique. The discussion of how bilingual teachers cope is organised according to the different roles they may be expected to play in carrying out their work.

Demands Put on Bilingual Teachers in Developing Contexts At first glance, the challenges faced by bilingual teachers in Bolivia or Mozambique are not much different than those experienced by bilingual teachers worldwide; they must take on various roles such as that of pedagogue, linguist, innovator, intercultural communicator, community member, and even

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advocate of bilingual programmes. However, through this closer inspection of the Bolivian and Mozambican cases, readers from economically advantaged countries will see that the demands on bilingual teachers in developing countries are heavier and their preparation to meet those demands less adequate in some cases, yet more adequate in others. Beginning with the roles that I believe are most challenging in developing contexts, this section explores the demands along with the varying degrees to which bilingual teachers are equipped to meet them, all of which have implications for the training these teachers require. Pedagogue Like their counterparts elsewhere, primary bilingual teachers in developing countries are normally expected to teach all subjects and to be bilingual, so that students can be taught in both the mother tongue (L1) and the official language (L2 or foreign language, depending on the extent of its use outside school).6 Like other teachers in their school systems, bilingual teachers tend to bring little formal training to the task, though they have years of work as well as their own experience as students in L2 submersion-type schooling, where use of the mother tongue has traditionally been prohibited or considered shameful, and where students have to ‘sink or swim’ through repetition and memorisation (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). Teachers who are products of submersion do not have models to imitate in terms of teaching L1 literacy or helping students gain communicative competence in the L2 so that L1 literacy skills can be transferred (as per Cummins, 1999). Some, especially those who have taught adult literacy in the mother tongue, seem to develop an instinctive understanding of how L1 literacy is learned, while others continue to use L2 recitation punctuated by ‘Do you understand?’/’Yeeesss’ exchanges (see Hornberger & Chick, 2001 for an illustrative comparative view of South African and Peruvian classrooms) or what I call unsystematic codeswitching, i.e. bouncing between the L1 and L2 without clear goals (Benson, 2001). In short, there is a need to develop effective strategies for managing both languages in the classroom. Mozambique: The eight teachers in the PEBIMO project had an average of 17 years of experience in all-Portuguese primary schools and received two weeks of training prior to each school year. When my colleagues and I observed them for a project evaluation 5 years after the experiment had begun, we found that they tended to rely on submersion-type practices even where use of the mother tongue should have rendered such practices unnecessary. For example, even though bilingual teachers effectively taught phonics and discussed text themes in the L1, they read L1 texts aloud themselves before allowing students to ‘read’ after them, just as they had done with texts in Portuguese when few understood. In addition, L2 Portuguese was still ‘taught’ through lecturing and memorisation. In our interviews with the teachers, all of them requested more training in language didactics. Their supervisors complained about teachers’ inability to apply L2 methods, but there was no evidence that these methods were fully understood by supervisors or trainers. For example, one PEBIMO manual instructed teachers to demand that students speak Portuguese ‘loudly and individually’, ‘construct complete sen-

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tences’, and ‘repeat the constructed sentences frequently to memorise them’ (Benson, 2001), revealing an orientation toward reciting error-free language rather than practising communicative competence. Bolivia: At an early stage of implementation of the Bolivian Reform, a Swedish fact-finding mission questioned the ability of bilingual teachers to ‘guarantee an adequate conceptualisation of bilingual education’ because of their links to the ‘ideology of castellanisation’ (Hyltenstam & Quick, 1996: 11), referring to teachers’ long-standing role in the process of making students ‘more Spanish’ linguistically and culturally. A few years later, Vice-Minister Amalia Anaya, who was supervising the Reform, admitted that teachers had not received sufficient training to apply new techniques, so that as soon as they experienced doubts about the ‘unknown good’ they regressed to the ‘known bad’ (Archondo, 1999: 43, my translation). Local classroom researchers have noted that appropriate use of the mother tongue has been blocked, for example, by the means by which materials have been developed; according to Arnold et al. (1999), L1 reading texts based on translations of Spanish language materials have led to problems such as the teaching of eight-syllable Aymara words in the first unit of the first module. Working at the central level, Moya (1999) and other technical assistants including myself (Ostro¨m et al., 2001) have expressed concern regarding a disagreement among Reform personnel over whether the same set of Spanish materials can be used for native speakers and second language learners, indicating general lack of experience with second language methodology even at the central level (King & Benson, 2004). Bilingual personnel with whom I worked in 2001 were busy writing supplementary materials for the bilingual teachers, who they felt would be unable without extensive training to make use of the materials to teach Spanish as a second language. These examples highlight the need for teacher training that includes language learning theory as well as demonstrating language teaching methods so that effective practices are modelled and experienced. The leap from knowledge to application of knowledge needs to be assisted, as per Vygotsky (as explained in Baker, 2001). This also implies that teacher trainers and curriculum developers need to be better prepared, since they cannot be expected to teach or write about bilingual methods they have never experienced themselves. Providing didactic inputs at all levels will therefore support the bilingual teacher in the role of pedagogue. Linguist As mentioned above, teachers of bilingual classes must be bilingual, meaning reasonably proficient in both languages. They must also be biliterate (as per Hornberger, 2002) so that they can teach reading and writing skills as well as curricular content in both languages. Of course, biliteracy is also a requirement in economically developed countries, but it is a skill that more teachers bring with them to the profession. In developing contexts, bilingual teachers normally come from the same ethnolinguistic group as their students, since it is rare for those who speak the exogenous language as an L1 to learn an indigenous language as an L2. What further sets these teachers apart from

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their colleagues in rich countries is their historic lack of opportunity to become proficient in the L1 in written form and the L2 in spoken form. To develop literacy in their own mother tongues, bilingual teachers can fortunately benefit from transfer of literacy skills between languages (as per Cummins, 1999), albeit ‘backwards’ since they have been formally educated in the L2. Bilingual teacher training programmes in which I have been involved have devoted relatively little time to mother-tongue development, as it is often seen simply as a matter of learning orthographic representations of the L1 where they are different from those of the exogenous language. However, teachers need to develop a ‘pedagogical vocabulary’ so that schoolrelated themes and all subject disciplines can be discussed comfortably in the L1, something they are rarely accustomed to doing. As for teachers’ own communicative competence in the L2, submersion-type schooling is clearly not the best way to achieve it, as decades of practice in developing contexts have demonstrated. The brief linguistic descriptions of both countries provided above attest to the extent to which access to excolonial languages has been limited, whether by lack of effective schooling or by lack of schooling itself, and bilingual teachers are themselves subject to these limitations. Mozambique: Bilingual teachers were chosen for the experiment based on having solid teaching experience in the all-Portuguese system, as mentioned above, along with demonstrated literacy skills and interest in their mother tongues. Their varied levels of L1 literacy came from contact with missionaries or with adult literacy campaigns using different orthographic conventions, so their main task was to learn the standardised forms being promoted by an organisation of university linguists (NELIMO, 1989). Regarding their L2 skills, even these specially selected teachers, like those studied by Hyltenstam and Stroud, experienced ‘a great deal of anxiety and linguistic insecurity in their encounter with the Portuguese7 used in schools’ due to lack of proficiency in and contact with the language (1993: 99). Four of the seven expressed concern regarding their levels of Portuguese as their students developed, and by grade 5 two relied on their colleagues for the L2 portion of the curriculum (Benson, 2001). Bolivia: Due in part to long-term support of teacher training by GTZ, beginning with the international programme in Puno, Peru in the 1980s and continuing up to present with the Master’s programme in Bilingual Intercultural Education at the University of San Simo´n in Cochabamba, Bolivia, there seems to be a critical mass of teacher trainers and resource people such as linguists who are proficient in the three major indigenous languages of the Reform. A study by Albo´ (1995) revealed that in Andean regions with Quechua- and Aymara-speaking communities, most teachers have the appropriate L1 backgrounds, while in the Amazon region a minority of teachers speak their students’ mother tongues. Unfortunately, faulty teacher placement plagues some districts; for example, a study by Urzagaste (1999) found that a number of speakers of other languages have been working in Quechua-speaking areas, along with Quechua-speaking teachers who are not sufficiently literate in Quechua. In addition, a severe shortage of trained bilingual teachers has resulted in the widespread employment of interinos, or untrained provisional teachers.

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These interinos are typically secondary school leavers and monolingual in Spanish, and they are sent to the most remote and least desirable schools, which not coincidentally are where there is most need for mother-tongue instruction in indigenous languages (Salinas et al., 2001). These examples imply that written and verbal competence in both the L1 and the L2 should be developed through teacher training. As suggested by Stroud (2002) in his review of bilingual programmes, as much of the training as possible should be done in the L1 so that the required pedagogical vocabulary is agreed upon and put into practice. L2 skills should be developed as needed both through direct instruction and practice in L2 teaching methods. In addition, there should be some consideration of the ‘target’ variety of the L2 where the local variety differs considerably from the European native speaker ‘standard’ (Hyltenstam & Stroud, 1993; Stroud, 2002). Development of verbal and written competence in both of the languages used in the programme will support the bilingual teacher in the role of linguist. Intercultural communicator Bilingual teachers in developing countries, again like their counterparts elsewhere, are expected to bridge the home-school culture gap. This gap is common in many contexts (see Ogbu, 1997), but schools in developing countries can be particularly alien and alienating. Moumouni has described African schools as those which ‘destroy cultural values and personality and produce [people] who are foreigners in their own society’ (1975: 65). Ignorance of the home language and culture, according to Okonkwo, has ‘often resulted in educational programmes with only marginal success at teaching anything except self-depreciation’ (1983: 377). Similarly, the express purpose of colonialstyle education in the Bolivian context has long been ‘castellanisation’ or assimilation of indigenous peoples into the Spanish language and culture (ETARE, 1993). Bilingual, intercultural programmes have the potential to combat these destructive forces by promoting the home culture while teaching the second culture explicitly, and bilingual teachers are sometimes uniquely placed to make this instruction effective. As mentioned above, most bilingual teachers in developing countries come from the same ethnolinguistic group as their students, and many are literally from the same communities. This means that teachers and students automatically share a set of understandings upon which they can build in negotiating between home and school cultures. Bridging the gap may not always come naturally to teachers since, as mentioned above, they themselves have gone through an alienating school system which has not prepared them to tailor schooling to their students’ needs. However, most bilingual teachers find that merely by speaking a language that students and their parents understand, a closer and more understanding relationship develops. In addition, mother-tongue use in the official context of school elevates its status and usefulness in the eyes of both speakers and non-speakers alike, which has the potential to improve social relations and political participation as well as education (Benson, 2000, 2002b). Mozambique: Our observations of 64 bilingual and all-Portuguese ‘control’ classes in 1997 demonstrated that bilingual teachers had developed familial-

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type relations with their students and called them by their first names rather than by last names or student numbers as done in ‘control’ classes. One Changana teacher even used his students’ home names instead of the Portuguese names they had adopted when they enrolled in school (Benson, 2001). Bilingual students in one community handed in homework papers by supporting the right arm with the left, showing respect for the teacher as they would an elder from the community. This consistency of values between home and school was greatly appreciated by parents; in response to an open question regarding bilingual schooling, fully half of the 105 parents and guardians interviewed said that valorizac¸a˜o (valorising or valuing) of their language and culture was an important benefit (Benson, 2001). Bolivia: Parent testimonies collected by d’Emilio demonstrate a similar satisfaction with the PEIB experiment. One Guaranı´-speaking mother told d’Emilio that children ‘have to know our culture, our language, so that the culture of our grandparents is not lost. That’s why I think…that Guaranı´ should continue and that they keep studying it past fifth grade, that they become more bilingual’ (2001: 53). An Aymara-speaking father contrasted bilingual intercultural education (EIB) with colonial-style schooling: In my time we were very afraid of the teacher, unlike with EIB, the children share experiences with the teachers. They come to school confident and happy…Before this horizontal relationship with the teachers did not occur, [but now] there is no fear. (d’Emilio, 2001: 51) These shared understandings can be maximised by training teachers to look for ways to bring the home culture into the classroom, including use of parents and community members to share local knowledge and skills (as exemplified in Heath, 1983). Cummins (2000), Genesee and his contributors (1994), and many others have argued that the first culture should be valued in the classroom, and the second culture should be taught explicitly, so that students can express themselves and cope in both languages and cultures. Helping teachers to acquire a repertoire of methods and activities for developing cultural interaction will support them in the role of intercultural communicator. Community member In many developing contexts, especially African ones, there is a history of placing primary teachers in areas where they do not speak the language so that they are forced to use the school language with their students and the community. This has not always worked the way of colonial thinking, especially where a lingua franca has been present or where teachers have been able to learn other indigenous languages; however, in many cases it has created a certain distance between the teacher and the community, making certain abuses possible. Teachers as civil servants and representatives of the prestige language and culture have sometimes taken advantage of their position, requiring for example that students work in their personal gardens or exchange money or sex for passing grades (see e.g. Sida, 2001). The mere act of bringing the community language into the school makes the school, the teacher and the curriculum more accessible and understandable to all. This demystification of the school means that parents can and do

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approach the bilingual teacher to do things like ask for information regarding their children’s progress or offer support, in situations where there was virtually no communication before. Likewise, the teacher can approach the parents, leading to a closer and more productive relationship and more likelihood that the home and school will both support children’s learning; this is a widely cited factor in successful bilingual programmes (Cummins, 2000; Dutcher, 1995). It is also likely that the bilingual teacher will become more subject to social control, which potentially combats abuse. In addition, bilingual teachers are less likely to judge students or generalise if they know the families. For example, bilingual teachers are less likely to generalise that all girls are less able, a common myth, because they have more evidence of what students can do both at home and in school. This may have real benefits for students from marginalised groups and especially for girls, who have been discriminated against in a variety of ways in traditional classrooms (Benson, 2002a). Mozambique: Parents initially resisted the experiment, partly because their children were selected without their knowledge or approval, and partly because Portuguese was not introduced until the second year. However, our 1997 interviews found that virtually every parent or guardian was pleased with the bilingual schooling his or her children were receiving; most parents also felt the bilingual teachers were good representatives of their language, culture and community (Benson, 2001). All PEBIMO teachers knew their students’ parents and facilitated our interviews, and the Xichangana classes even benefited from the spontaneous creation of a parent group that actively supported bilingual teachers and organised field trips and parties for the students. There were strong indicators that bilingual students benefited academically from this closer-than-normal relationship between school and home; for example, bilingual students had higher passing rates than the national averages, which after controlling for other factors was thought to result from improved performance due to use of the mother tongue, or at least improved teacher awareness of student performance (Benson, 2001). There were also indications that positive forces were at work to help girls in school: relatively equivalent proportions of girls and boys were originally enrolled in the experiment, unlike in the national system where fewer girls started school, and bilingual girls remained in school longer with less repetition than girls in the ‘control’ classes and nationally (Benson, 2002a). Bolivia: A wide-scale study of the PEIB programme found that ‘the rural indigenous community has built up a feeling of solidarity with the bilingual school’, which in turn has been ‘reinterpreted and appropriated as a resource for development of the community’ (Mun˜oz, 1997: 112, my translation). Mun˜oz continues that the vertical relationship between teachers and parents has transitioned into a more participatory type of interaction (1997). There are more recent indications that this relationship has produced results; for example, 5 years after the Reform began, a study done in two Quechuaspeaking departments reported the notable success of bilingual schools in improving overall attendance (Urzagaste, 1999: 145), which is a good indicator of parent support. Despite continued use of traditional methods, parents and school personnel told Urzagaste that bilingual schooling ‘strengthens student self-esteem [and] enables identification with their culture, context and people’

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(1999: 157, my translation). The same thing has been heard in other regions of Bolivia, like the Aymara father who said simply, ‘The teachers are good and the children are very fond of the school, the children trust the teacher’ (d’Emilio, 2001: 51), indicating a degree of trust on the part of parents as well. Teacher training programmes could very well include discussions of the teacher’s role in the community. If teachers see parent involvement as helpful and important in building cooperative support for student learning, they are more likely to capitalise on their communication with parents. Discussion of how to cultivate productive relationships with students, their families and their communities will support the bilingual teacher in the role of community member. Advocate In societal contexts where the exogenous language constitutes unquestioned linguistic ‘capital’, parents and communities as well as policy-makers are often more certain of the importance of the ex-colonial language and culture than they are of the mother tongue and home culture. Bilingual teachers themselves may be ambivalent regarding the place of the L1 in formal schooling, having been exposed to hundreds of years of colonial thinking about the lack of value of indigenous languages and cultures (see Callewaert, 1998 for a colourful account of ‘decolonising the mind’ of the Namibian teacher). Like the rest of society they have been exposed to other language myths, such as the idea that the home language (and culture) must be pushed aside to make space/time for the new language. Lack of sufficient information and training may leave teachers without an understanding of the pedagogical and linguistic bases for bilingual teaching; for example, the idea that developing L1 skills will facilitate acquisition of the L2 (Cummins, 1999; as demonstrated by longitudinal studies such as Ramirez et al., 1991; Thomas & Collier, 2002) is admittedly somewhat counter-intuitive and must be explained – or experienced. What does ‘sell’ bilingual schooling to participants are the kinds of relationships promoted by bilingual programmes, along with the evidence in terms of student learning and other positive effects, some of which are discussed here. Bilingual teachers are often the first to see results, and to hear about them from parents and community members. These results, while at times difficult to quantify for decision-makers, are nevertheless real to those who experience them. Most bilingual teachers who have seen programmes function for their students are highly effective advocates for these programmes when policy-makers or less experienced outsiders question them. Mozambique: The PEBIMO teachers were overwhelmingly positive about use of the mother tongue, which they felt ‘facilitated both teaching and learning by making communication possible’ (Benson, 2000: 158). They proudly demonstrated children’s ability to read L1 texts and write their own thoughts on the board or in their notebooks, a process that had been stunted when children were supposed to read and write in Portuguese without understanding, which was how all of the bilingual teachers had previously taught. By the time students were in Grade 5, teachers had also gotten a lot of positive feedback from parents regarding the value of reading, writing and counting in both languages (Benson, 2001). Throughout the programme, PEBIMO teachers were

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instrumental in informing and gaining the support of regional and provincial education authorities, as well as communicating with parents about what was being taught and why. This information helped create a demand for postexperimental bilingual schooling in both regions, where families were reported to have taken in children from relatives or friends in anticipation of their being able to attend bilingual classes in those regions (Benson, 2000). Bolivia: Through the Reform, bilingual schooling has been implemented incrementally but has not always been preceded by information to the community. This lack of information has resulted in rechazos or pockets of resistance, particularly on the part of parents, the main argument being the need for children who speak indigenous languages to learn Spanish. It is the bilingual teachers who meet with community leaders on a regular basis and form the front line of defence; however, those who lack experience require support. This support comes in the form of the asesores pedago´gicos or local teacher trainers, most of whom are former PEIB teachers, who have been instrumental in disseminating information and making parents aware of the benefits of bilingual schooling. Urzagaste’s field study found that the asesores had excellent relations with parents based on their linguistically and culturally appropriate participation in community meetings, and that most parents came to support bilingual schooling ‘as long as L2 Spanish instruction was also promoted’ (1999: 150, my translation). For teachers to be effective advocates, they require information and evidence regarding how and why bilingual programmes work. Wherever possible, they should participate in study visits or practical internships at functioning bilingual schools, perhaps even travelling across national borders.8 Alternatively, staff, parents and even students from bilingual programmes could be brought to speak to teacher trainees regarding their experiences. In addition, teachers should learn about ways in which bilingual students and programmes can be evaluated to investigate the wide range of potential benefits bilingual programmes bring; clearly test scores are not the only means for determining success, and qualitative factors can be important. Finally, access to international studies and information about bilingual schooling could also support the bilingual teacher in the role of advocate.

Summary of the Implications The implications of this discussion can be organised into a number of recommendations regarding the training of bilingual teachers in developing countries, which should ideally capitalise on their strengths while addressing their needs. This training in turn influences the type of preparation needed by teacher trainers and other bilingual professionals so that they can support bilingual teaching. The following are suggested elements for an effective bilingual teacher training curriculum: (1) First and second language learning theory; (2) Modelling of first and second language teaching methods (oral and written); (3) Modelling of methods for intercultural instruction;

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(4) L2 verbal and literacy skills; (5) L1 verbal and literacy skills, including pedagogical vocabulary; (6) Language and programme assessment, including international studies of bilingual schooling, models and evaluations; (7) Study visits and/or practical internships at functioning bilingual schools; (8) Collaboration with parents and community members. Regarding the training itself, there are indications that the L1 should be used for actual instruction during a significant portion of the training to promote pedagogical vocabulary and concept development. It is also clear that teacher trainers, curriculum developers and other professionals need to receive adequate orientation to perform their tasks in line with the curriculum suggested above. Finally, there should be some consideration at the policy level of which variety of the L2, the local variety or the European ‘standard’, or both, should be used in developing instructional materials and at which levels. The final section suggests possible alternatives to current practices in an attempt to address challenges faced by bilingual teachers in developing countries. There are some measures that could be taken immediately to address the most pressing pedagogical demands put on teachers in such difficult contexts.

Alternative Models and Proposals As demonstrated by the examples from Bolivia and Mozambique, while some demands are effectively met by bilingual teachers, there are still a number of challenges to be faced. Thinking creatively and outside of a colonial frame of reference could help developing countries avoid placing unrealistic demands on their bilingual teachers. Team teaching and scheduling language use are two options that could be implemented at any time, while new approaches to teacher education would require more planning. The first proposal is to finally break the mould for the one teacher–one classroom model, which may be just as outdated as the one nation–one language concept. Coordination between teachers at any one school would optimise individual strengths and put the best available person for the job in front of the students. Applied to the languages in a bilingual programme, this means assigning the teacher with the best second language skills (and hopefully an accompanying motivation to teach them to others) to do all of the L2 teaching across classes; meanwhile, another teacher specialises in teaching L1 lessons. This alternative could be effective for a number of reasons, since it functions within the existing teacher pool, allows for students to identify certain teachers with certain languages (see Baker, 2001 on simulating the ‘one parent, one language’ system), saves lesson planning time, and makes inservice training more efficient by directing certain courses toward certain teachers. Admittedly, high teacher turnover would complicate this alternative practice, as tasks and schedules would have to be renegotiated after each transfer, but once a school developed its routines, new teachers could be incorporated more readily. Other models that have been used in established bilingual programmes (as per Baker, 2001) are the use of classroom aides, pair teaching and team teaching. Classroom aides, if used creatively, can support teachers who do not have

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sufficient skills in the mother tongue of the students (see Plu¨ddemann et al., 2000 regarding productive use of parents in this role in some South African schools). The usual difficulties must be confronted, e.g. lack of pedagogical training and lack of opportunities for job advancement for aides, but this could be an important step if the status quo leaves untrained provisional teachers alone with their classes, since aides work in cooperation with trained teachers. Another option is pair teaching as practised in the US, for example, which allows two teachers to capitalise on their relative strengths by teaching the subjects they know best and trading whole classes or groups of students as needed. This has been effectively used in bilingual programmes where the two teachers are proficient speakers of the students’ L1 and L2. A further option in this category of reorganising teaching is work teams (arbetslag) as used in Sweden, for example, where subject teachers, mother-tongue teachers and second-language teachers coordinate their efforts to teach theme-based units where each provides part of the knowledge and skills base. If teachers cannot be exchanged, or if there is only one teacher per school, the different languages can be scheduled in such a way as to promote language acquisition and prevent less effective practices such as unsystematic codeswitching. Alternatives suggested by various bilingual programmes are the alternate day or parallel language models (as per Baker, 2001). Both could help teachers organise instruction more effectively, and neither would cost much more than time for planning at the school, regional or national levels. Separation of languages by subject, by day or by time of day would help teachers and students know which language to work in at any given time, and contribute to a planned curriculum where the L2 is introduced gradually at a level-appropriate pace into new subject instruction, for example. Thinking outside of a colonial frame is something we could all benefit from, but in multilingual societies the next recommendation regarding teacher education is arguably even more valid. As Hornberger explains, the paradox is to ‘transform a standardising education into a diversifying one’ (2002: 30). If we have indeed rejected assimilation and submersion methods, if we actually recognise that the monolingual, monocultural classroom is a relic of the past (if it ever existed at all), and if we truly wish to create pluralistic societies full of bilingual and biliterate people, why is there any monolingual or monocultural teacher training? Multilingualism was a problem for the colonisers, but it is arguably a resource in a global world. All teacher trainees, not just ‘bilingual’ ones, could be learning strategies for working in students’ first and second languages. All teacher trainees could be developing skills in interculturalism, and all teacher trainees could be learning how to promote biliteracy as a desirable outcome of the curriculum for all students. Such a teacher training curriculum could include a strong foundation in theories and methodologies of language development (L1, L2, and beyond) since language is an integral part of teaching in all subjects. The curriculum could also include studies of various bilingual schooling models, teaming and scheduling alternatives as mentioned above. Another theme could be transformative pedagogy (Cummins, 2000), where students are empowered to take control of their own learning as well as their own lives. Finally, the curriculum could include alternative measures of programme effectiveness, so that

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language attitudes and identity questions (see e.g. Cummins’ perspective on empowerment) are seen as no less important than test scores. Future teachers with this kind of training will know how to advocate for relevant and effective schooling programmes, and will know how to talk to parents about their children’s skills and experiences. They will see children’s languages and cultures as resources in the classroom, and will know how to develop these resources to their full potential. This type of programme could help to address many of the needs in developing contexts and serve as a model for the rest of us as well. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Carol Benson, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, Sweden (Carol.benson@ biling.su.se). Notes 1. The 1990 World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand (see Sida, 2001) called for increasing access to basic education, with the goal of serving 100 percent of countries’ respective school-aged populations. Since then, the mandate has been extended to transforming ex-colonial curricula with the goal of improving educational quality and thus student success rates. 2. Even where there have been legislative efforts to provide ‘national’ or even ‘official’ status to indigenous languages, exogenous languages have retained their dominance due to what Alexander (2000: 10) calls in the African context ‘debilitating language attitudes…reinforced by the political economy of the neo-colonial state’. 3. A lingua franca is a language of wider communication (LWC) that is usually spoken as a first or second language by a large segment of the population (Appel & Muysken, 1987). 4. PEBIMO stands for Projeto de Escolarizac¸a˜o Bilingue em Moc¸ambique or Bilingual Schooling Project in Mozambique. 5. PEIB stands for Proyecto de Educacion Intercultural Bilingu¨e or Bilingual Intercultural Education Project. 6. Though only two languages are used as examples here, the linguistic situation is often more complex. Many countries with LWCs such as Tanzania (with Kiswahili) or Malawi (with Chichewa) educate children in ‘close’ second languages, a practice which has mixed results but may be a reasonable compromise given limited resources (see also Benson, 2003 regarding use of a creole in Guinea-Bissau). 7. A further complication in the case of Mozambique is the traditional reliance of the curriculum on the European Portuguese standard rather than the variety of Portuguese spoken locally (see Stroud & Gonc¸alves, 1997). 8. This may be easier to operationalise than it seems. For example, the Mozambican experiment benefited from cross-border collaboration with South Africa (for Xichangana, also known as Xitsonga) and Malawi (for Cinyanja, also known as Chichewa), both of which had more established mother tongue programmes.

References Albo´, X. (1995) Bolivia plurilingu¨e. Guı´a para planificadores y educadores. [Multilingual Bolivia. Guide for planners and educators.] Cuadernos de Investigacio´n 44 (1–2). La Paz: UNICEF-CIPCA. Alexander, N. (2000) English Unassailable but Unattainable: The Dilemma of Language Policy in South African Education. PRAESA Occasional Papers No. 3. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.

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Appel, R. and Muysken, P. (1987) Language Contact and Bilingualism. London: Arnold. Archondo, R. (agosto/dic 1999) La camisa grande de la Reforma Educativa. [The toolarge shirt of the Educational Reform.] T’inkazos 2 (4), 37–46. Arnold, D., Yapita, J. and Lo´pez G.R. (enero/abril 1999) Leer y escribir en aymara bajo la Reforma. [Reading and writing in Aymara under the Reform.] T’inkazos 2 (3), 103–115. Baker, C. (2001) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (3rd edn). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Benson, C. (2000) The primary bilingual education experiment in Mozambique, 1993 to 1997. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 3 (3), 149–166. Benson, C. (2001) Final Report on Bilingual Education. Results of the External Evaluation of the Experiment in Bilingual Schooling in Mozambique (PEBIMO) and some results from bilingual adult literacy experimentation. Education Division Documents No. 8. Stockholm: Sida. Benson, C. (2002a) Bilingual education in Africa: An exploration of encouraging connections between language and girls’ schooling. In M. Melin (ed.) Education – A Way Out of Poverty? New Education Division Documents No. 12. Stockholm: SIDA. Benson, C. (2002b) Real and potential benefits of bilingual programmes in developing countries. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 5 (6), 303–317. Benson, C. (2003) Possibilities for educational language change in multilingual GuineaBissau. In L. Huss, A. Camilleri and K. King (eds) Transcending Monolingualism. Linguistic Revitalisation in Education (pp. 67–87). Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Callewaert, G. (1998) Which way Namibia – to decolonise the colonised mind of the anticolonial teacher? In K. Zeichner and L. Dahlstro¨m (eds) Democratic Teacher Education Reform in Africa – the Case of Namibia. Boulder CO: Westview Press. Cummins, J. (1999) Alternative paradigms in bilingual education research: Does theory have a place? Educational Researcher 28, 26–32. Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy. Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. d’Emilio, L. (2001) Voices and Processes Toward Pluralism: Indigenous Education in Bolivia. Education Division Documents No. 9. Stockholm: Sida. d’Emilio, L. and Albo´, X. (1991) Las lenguas en la educacio´n formal y no formal en Bolivia (Languages in formal and non-formal education in Bolivia). Arinsana 13, 43–63. Dutcher, N. (1995) The Use of First and Second Languages in Education. A Review of International Experience. Pacific Islands Discussion Paper Series, no. 1. Washington DC: World Bank. ETARE (1993) Propuesta de la Reforma Educativa. [Proposal for the Educational Reform.] Cuadernos de la Reforma Educativa. La Paz: Equipo Te´cnico de Apoyo a la Reforma Educativa. Genesee, F. (ed.) (1994) Educating Second Language Children. The Whole Child, the Whole Curriculum, the Whole Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, S. (1983) Ways With Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heugh, K. (2001) A re-take on bilingual education in and for South Africa. Paper presented at the 8th Nordic Conference on Bilingualism, Nov 1–3, Stockholm, Sweden. Hornberger, N. (2002) Multilingual language policies and the continua of biliteracy: An ecological approach. Language Policy 1 (1), 27–51. Hornberger, N. and Chick, K. (2001) Co-constructing school safetime: Safetalk practices in Peruvian and South African classrooms. In M. Heller and M. Martin-Jones (eds) Voices of Authority: Education and Linguistic Difference (pp. 31–55). Contemporary Studies in Linguistics and Education, Vol. 1. Stanford, CT: Ablex. Hyltenstam, K. and Quick, B. (1996) Fact Finding Mission to Bolivia in the Area of Bilingual Primary Education. Education Division Documents No. 2. Stockholm: Sida. Hyltenstam, K. and Stroud, C. (1993) II. Language Issues. Final Report and Recommendations from the Evaluation of Teaching Materials for Lower Primary Education in Mozambique. Maputo: INDE/Stockholm: Stockholm Institute of Education.

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INE (Nov 1997) Encuesta Nacional de Empleo. [National Employment Survey.] La Paz: Instituto Nacional de Estadı´stica. Katupha, J.M.M. (August 1985) Alguns dados sobre a situac¸a˜o linguı´stica em Moc¸ambique e a sua influeˆncia no desenvolvimento rural. [Some data on the linguistic situation in Mozambique and its influence on rural development.] Cadernos de Histo´ria No.2. Maputo, Mozambique: Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. King, K. and Benson, C. (2004) Indigenous language education in Bolivia and Ecuador: Contexts, changes and challenges. In J. Tollefson and A. Tsui (eds) Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. MINED (Sept 1997) Indicadores educacionais: Ensino primario. [Educational indicators: Primary education.] Maputo: MINED. Moumouni, A. (1975) The return to national languages and cultures. Prospects 5 (1), 63–70. Moya, R. (1999) Informe para el gobierno de Suecia sobre la evaluacio´n de la Reforma Educativa de la gestio´n de 1999: Componente de Educacio´n Intercultural Bilingu¨e. [Report for the Swedish government on the evaluation of the Educational Reform during 1999: Bilingual Intercultural Education component.] La Paz: Sida. Mun˜oz Cruz, H. (1997) De Proyecto a Polı´tica de Estado: La Educacio´n Intercultural Bilingu¨e en Bolivia, 1993. [From Project to State Policy: Bilingual Intercultural Education in Bolivia, 1993.] La Paz: UNICEF. NELIMO (1989) Relato´rio do I Semina´rio sobre a Padronizac¸a˜o da Ortografia de Lı´nguas Moc¸ambicanas. [Report on the First Seminar on Standardization of the Orthography of Mozambican Languages.] Maputo: INDE/UEM/NELIMO. Ogbu, J. (1997) Speech community, language identity and language boundaries. In A. Sjo¨gren, (ed.) Language and Environment. A Cultural Approach to Education for Minority and Migrant Students. Botkyrka Sweden: Multicultural Centre. Okonkwo, C. (1983) Bilingualism in education: The Nigerian experience re-examined. Prospects 13 (3), 373–379. ¨ stro¨m, N., Benson, C. and Vargas, G. (2001) Monitoreo de proyectos de UNICEF apoyados O por Suecia en Bolivia. [Monitoring of UNICEF projects in Bolivia supported by Sweden.] Mission report to Ministry of Education, UNICEF/SIDA. Stockholm: Stockholm Group for Development Studies. Palme, M. (1992) O significado da escola. Repeteˆncia e desisteˆncia na escola prima´ria moc¸ambicana. [The significance of schooling. Repetition and dropout in the Mozambican primary school.] Cadernos de pesquisa 2. Maputo: INDE. Plu¨ddemann, P., Mati, X. and Mahlalela-Thuse, B. (2000) Problems and Possibilities in Multilingual Classrooms in the Western Cape. PRAESA Occasional Papers No. 2. Cape Town: University of Cape Town. Ramirez, J., Yuen, S. and Ramey, D. (1991) Final Report: Longitudinal Study of Structured English Immersion Strategy, Early-exit and Late-exit Transitional Bilingual Education Programs for Language-minority Children. Washington DC: United States Department of Education. Rubagumya, C. (ed.) (1990) Language in Education in Africa: A Tanzanian Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Salinas, M., Paca, C. and Albo´, X. (2001) Evaluacio´n del Proyecto ‘Apoyo a la Educacio´n Intercultural Bilingu¨e’ (EIB). [Evaluation of the Project “Support to Bilingual Intercultural Education” (EIB).] Internal report. La Paz: UNICEF. Sida (April 2001) Education for All: A Human Right and Basic Need. Policy for Sida’s Development Cooperation in the Education Sector. Gothenburg, Sweden: Elanders Novum. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1981) Bilingualism or Not: The Education of Minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Stroud, C. (2002) Towards a Policy for Bilingual Education in Developing Countries. New Education Division Documents No. 10. Stockholm: Sida. Stroud, C. and Gonc¸alves, P. (1997) Panorama do Portugueˆs Oral de Maputo. Volume I – Objectivos e Me´todos. [Panorama of Oral Portuguese in Maputo. Volume I – Objectives and Methods.] Cadernos de Pesquisa no. 22. Maputo: INDE. Thomas, W. and Collier, V. (2002) A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language

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Minority Students’ Long-Term Academic Achievement. Santa Cruz CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence. http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/rese arch/llaa/1.1—final.html UNESCO (1953) The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education. Report of the UNESCO Meeting of Specialists (1951). Monographs on Fundamental Education III. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO (2000) Literacy statistics from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Literacy and Non Formal Education Sector. Website address: http://portal.unesco.org/uis UNICEF (1998) Propuesta de Educacio´n Intercultural Bilingu¨e. [Proposal for Bilingual Intercultural Education.] Project document. La Paz: UNICEF. UNICEF (1999) The State of the World’s Children 1999. Education. New York: UNICEF. Urzagaste Pantoja, N. (1999) Levantamiento linea de base: Educacio´n Intercultural Bilingu¨e. [Baseline survey: Bilingual Intercultural Education.] Internal report. La Paz: UNICEF. World Bank (2001) World Development Indicators database. Website address: www.worldbank.org/dataquery.html

Professional Development for Bilingual Teachers in the United States: A Site for Articulating and Contesting Professional Roles Manka Varghese University of Washington, College of Education, Area of Curriculum and Instruction, Seattle, USA Professional development for bilingual teachers has traditionally been viewed as a neutral site for training teachers. In the present study, a professional development for bilingual teachers in the United States is explored through ethnographic methods, specifically focusing on both the content delivery, and the interactions between teacher educators and teachers. The present study shows how professional development can become a site for the articulation and contestation of bilingual teacher professional roles. Specifically, it demonstrates how conceptualisations of the roles of bilingual teachers are often mired with differences and lack uniformity, especially because of the different backgrounds and settings teacher educators and teachers operate within. It points to the need to understand the different perspectives within the bilingual educational community. This research places bilingual teacher education within current understandings of learning and professional development, emphasising the situated nature of teaching and learning. Bilingual teachers and their development must be understood as agents who make choices and have differentiated understandings of their profession, rather than as individuals who replicate the content and way they have been trained. This is especially important when we understand the multifaceted roles of bilingual teachers such as language policy agents and advocates. Keywords: bilingual teachers, professional development, teacher education, teacher learning

Introduction A number of scholars have described the waxing and waning of support for bilingual education in the United States since the inception of the nation as it stands (Cazden & Snow, 1990; Crawford, 1999; Wiley, 2002). As these same scholars have noted, this ebb and flow has mirrored the economic and sociopolitical conditions of the country, and how immigration policies have played out under these circumstances. Ricento (1996) notes that during the peak decades of immigration in the United States, ‘laws and initiatives were passed restricting the linguistic, and in some cases, civil rights of non-English speakers’ (1996: 4). In fact, as Hornberger (1990) states, ‘there can be little doubt that the language-as-problem orientation has been the predominant one in the United States’ public sphere’ (1990: 24). Recently, the discourse surrounding 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 movements throughout the country (17 states have passed English only). In addition, the reauthorisation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 130

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(ESEA), in 2000 by President Bush and the Congress has eliminated Title VII, the Bilingual Education Act, the major funding arm for bilingual education and language education, which had been in existence since 1968. Although Title VII had been increasingly funding ESL programmes (versus native language development programmes) in recent years, in 2000 it was completely replaced by Title III in the new ESEA, which has been established to further English Language Acquisition. Overall, the ideology surrounding bilingual education has been growing increasingly hostile, both at a federal and a state level (Crawford, 2002). The highly politicised and debated nature of bilingual education serves as a determining factor in the formation of the professional roles of bilingual teachers in the United States (Lemberger, 1997; Stritikus & Garcia, 2000), especially, how they are trained, how they view themselves, and what is envisioned for them. Kaestle, a professor of education at the University of Chicago and 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 than educational research in general are the politicisation and mistrust’ (quoted in Schnaiberg, 1998). However, it is also important to see that the positioning of bilingual education entirely to a ‘minority’ status has possibly prevented a full examination of some of the actual dynamics, processes, and perspectives within a bilingual programme. It is revealing that even as discourses have focused on the pro and con arguments for bilingual education, there have always been internal differences within the pro-bilingual movement. These differences were especially evident during the Proposition 227 debates, the voter initiative that outlawed bilingual education in California in June 1998, and which has been the first of other similar initiatives (Donahue, 2002). For example, even strong proponents of bilingual education such as Crawford (1999) and Krashen (1996) have been the first to acknowledge the existence of mediocre programmes1 that Title VII monies have spawned. Although oftentimes bilingual teaching has been viewed as a cohesive and oppositional (to mainstream teaching) profession, in this study I show the differences among stakeholders in how it is understood and configured. For example, as I demonstrate, there are some teachers and teacher educators who believe the goal of bilingual education to be the transition to English while others believe the goal to be dual enrichment of the two languages. I argue the importance of acknowledging such differences rather than assuming an unified a priori understanding of bilingual teaching, so as to assist bilingual teachers in exploring different configurations of their roles and ultimately attempt to create more quality bilingual programmes. Specifically, in this paper I present findings from an ethnographic study to show how a professional development site for bilingual teachers becomes a locale for the articulation and contestation of bilingual teachers’ roles. Through their differing notions of the dimensions of their roles, I show how teacher educators and teachers expressed and contested the specific knowledge base and roles of bilingual teaching during a professional development series. Moreover, the way the content of the training was delivered illustrates the difficulties of

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creating a cohesive, professional community of bilingual teachers and teacher educators. This study shows that there is not an uniform knowledge base and notion of the roles for bilingual teachers. The approach adopted in this study is based on theories of cultural production and practice theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984). In the last 20 years, sociocultural theory has transitioned from the perspective of cultural reproduction where individuals are seen to be deterministically reproduced, to one of cultural production. Cultural production, therefore, views individuals not as ‘faxlike’ but as having motivations and aspirations, even when influenced by larger societal forces. Levinson and Holland (1996) describe cultural production as follows: ‘through the production of cultural forms, created within structural constraints of sites such as schools, subjectivities form and agency develops’ (1996: 14). In the more recent understandings of identity formation and cultural production, it is becoming increasingly important to examine sites where identities are played out and somewhat produced in settings of formal education as Levinson et al. (1996) advocate. Importantly, the focus on local sites enables researchers and educators to escape possibly simplistic understandings of individuals being influenced, and possibly subjugated, by dominant discourses and thereby look at the local meanings created by agents. The present study focuses on the local site of a professional development programme for bilingual teachers. It shows how bilingual teachers escape abstract notions of their roles. Their professional roles are seen to be simultaneously influenced by societal forces, shaped by specific local contexts (their school district, schools, and their instructors), and their own individual, personal histories.2

Methods and Setting This study is based on a professional development series for apprentice/ provisional bilingual (Spanish/English) teachers, which was offered to redress the lack of bilingual preparation for many of the teachers. Significantly, this was the first time since 1969 where professional development for bilingual teachers was formally addressed in this particular district. A contextual feature of importance was also that the district was in the midst of reorganising itself – for example, schools were being organised geographically into clusters. This was an effort to decentralise the district as well as provide continuity to students who would feed from their elementary schools to cluster middle schools and the cluster high school. The professional development (which will be referred to as the PDI, Professional Development Institute) was typical in that as in the case of many other bilingual teacher training programmes in the United States, it was funded through Title VII federal monies,3 and it was provided through a local university. However, it took place in a state which did not offer teacher certification in bilingual education for teachers. Paradoxically there were numerous teaching positions in many schools for bilingual Spanish/English teachers as well as for several Asian languages. Therefore, the protocol to become permanent bilingual teachers was to take a Spanish/English language test after being certified 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 apprentices (had not completed their certification). Due to the state’s ‘emergency’ situation in terms of recruiting ESL and bilingual teachers, the requirements for these teachers were becoming progressively less definite. An ethnographic approach was taken to understand the PDI emically through the perspectives of the different participants, the teachers and teacher educators, in Urbantown,4 a large, urban city in the northeast of the United States. The participants for the study were mainly the instructors of the PDI, Dr Martinet and Dr Loera; a graduate assistant for the PDI, Deborah; the administrator who conceptualised the PDI, Dr Valdez; as well as a group of novice/apprentice bilingual (Spanish/English teachers). These teachers participated voluntarily in this professional development opportunity and could receive three credits per session to use towards either their certification or 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 teacher educators with administrative duties and sitting with teachers during lectures and group activities. The first session consisted of three weekends, the second session consisted of the whole month of July, and the last session consisted of three weekends. Dr Martinet was in charge of the first session, Dr Loera of the second, and in the third session, I followed the action research group headed by Deborah, the graduate assistant of the PDI. I kept field notes for the sessions, conducted structured and semi-structured interviews of teachers and teacher educators during the PDI and after it. The questions I asked focused on what both the teachers and teacher educators sought from the PDI, their perceptions of the PDI and particular topics that came up during the lectures, as well as their backgrounds coming into the PDI. I also collected documentation of teacher journals, implementer handouts, as well as information about the PDI through the administrators and district office. The main process of data analysis was first reading and rereading field notes, interviews, as well as documents, and then summarising these. These data 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 findings section of this article is divided. The content was what actually was taught and how the teachers responded to it. The way the teacher educators and teachers interacted, the ‘form’ of the PDI, both reflected and contributed to the relationships between teacher educators and teachers, as well as the roles of the teachers.

Articulating and Contesting Bilingual Teacher Roles Through the Content of the PDI Bilingual-specific content During the PDI, there were constant attempts to formulate, although not always consciously, what it means to be a bilingual teacher, especially in Urbantown. What was clear from observations and interviews with all participants was the necessity all saw in addressing bilingual-specific concerns,

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although the interpretations of ‘bilingual-specific’ varied according to roles, and also individuals. Most of the teachers felt a greater need for bilingual-specific professional development 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-specific knowledge in terms of classroom strategies and language use. The teacher educators also saw the PDI as a way of providing a bilingual-specific dimension to the teachers. However, for them, bilingual-specific knowledge meant a mixture of a background in the history and models of bilingual education, theories of language acquisition, and a practicum experience for teachers to implement what they had learned. What was also notable in terms of the instructors’ view was that they did not relate local contexts (or even knowing these contexts) to bilingual teacher roles. Therefore, a background in bilingual education for the teacher educators meant courses that were not necessarily related to the settings of the teachers, but that were more general in nature. The teachers during the PDI also sought far more in terms of bilingualspecific content than what they felt had been offered. The action research group that I observed (the third session of the PDI) had a spirited discussion that verged occasionally on despair and frustration on this topic. On the last day of this session, the discussion started with the facilitator, Deborah (the graduate assistant), asking the three teachers who worked in schools in Cluster B for feedback on the first two sessions of the PDI. The teachers explained that they would have liked more activities and content specifically related to bilingual education. One teacher said: So much of our job is just trying to figure out what we’re doing because we want to have bilingual/biliterate students someday, that I would have preferred something that pertains specifically to that. (Teacher, Audiotaped observation, 11/22/96) When the teachers were given the opportunity to talk about their teaching situations and expand on these, many related the bilingual-specific content that they were seeking to district-related issues, such as the lack of guidelines and materials. At many points throughout this discussion, the teachers’ attempts to interrupt each other and the spirited tone of the conversation were direct manifestations of the personal involvement they felt relating to bilingual teaching in the district. The teachers related their confusion over their role (’I wonder what, what am I doing here’) to their specific teaching situation, as the following excerpt shows: Teacher 1: My, my problem with what I’m doing, I wonder what, what am I doing here, the-, I don’t see how, cause bilingual, ok the bilingual education programme is nine years old out here [Teacher 2: hhm] but there’s no structure to it, there’s no guidelines, and you know, which school, and then the excuse is well, we have different populations and the needs at Little Wood are different than the needs at Lewis. We’re teaching bilingual students [Teacher 3: right] and I don’t see how the need [Teacher 3: how much different].

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Teacher 2:- (interrupts) Plus what happens so often is that the Little Wood 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’ conceptualisations of bilingual teacher identities seemed to lie in the contexts both groups experience, i.e. the instructors came from a more academic and decontextualised environment while the teachers viewed their roles as rooted in the classroom and district setting. In the ensuing sections, I take three major strands of the content of the PDI that show how both teachers and implementers emphasised and framed bilingual teacher roles differently. The next section expands more fully on the example of language use that the teachers were seeking and which contributed closely, especially in their eyes, to their role as bilingual teachers. In fact, the issue of language use was one that they grappled with daily in their classrooms and schools. The section after that shows how theory figured largely for implementers’ conceptualisations of bilingual teacher roles, and although teachers saw its importance, they also partially contested it. The last section, before I focus on the interactions between the teachers and teacher educators, is the role of advocacy. Advocacy is an area that is implied strongly in the roles of bilingual teachers, like in many forms of minority education. However, in this study, teachers tended to link advocacy to their classrooms and students, while implementers framed it as a general trait that is intrinsic to bilingual teaching. The role of language use and instruction The most significant but thorny question in the implementation of bilingual education has always been how to structure the instruction of the two languages.5 Not surprisingly, one of the major preoccupations for teachers in their role as bilingual teachers was the area of language use in the classroom. The knowledge and security involved in knowing which languages to use and to what extent played a strong part in how confident the teachers felt in their professional roles. The two following quotes from teachers demonstrated the concern most teachers 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 much English to introduce to them, what to do with the different levels of English in my room. (Teacher, Interview, 02/18/97) I liked last night, how to use languages developed language, my language policy. I will go for partial separation, use 80% Spanish and 20% 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 also shown by the significant number of times questions were asked about it in teacher journals. Institutional factors, especially in relation to language use/language policy in 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 seem to have much knowledge of this dimension of the teachers’ roles. The teachers, on the other hand, were the most emotional and involved during all three sessions 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 brought up. For example, when Dr Martinet initiated a discussion (06/14/96) about the district’s language policy, it was one of the first times there was reciprocal ‘teaching’ from the participants’ side because it was a topic they were more knowledgeable about. This discussion reflected both the perspectives of the teachers and of Dr Martinet of how and why the two languages should be implemented, as well as the teaching realities of the teachers. The most salient issue that came out was the non-uniform ways languages were used across the district, specifically across the two clusters (cluster A and B) of which the teachers were part. It was also made clear in the discussion that there were significant differences in terms of language use between Cluster A and B. Teachers in Cluster A were not as worried about their professional role in terms of language use and implementation because their cluster had been making steps towards institutionalising a language policy. This was in sharp contrast with Cluster B’s lack of articulation between schools and within most of its schools of a coherent language policy. This difference between the two clusters in their language policy was confirmed to me by talking to other teachers and administrators during the following school year (1996–1997). Another significant issue linked to language instruction was that there was not a uniform understanding or belief in what the eventual goal of bilingual education should be in the PDI. For example, after Dr Martinet found out about the varying ways languages were implemented in the teachers’ classrooms, she mentioned over and over her worry that none of the teachers stressed the importance of learning English. She made clear what she envisioned as the goal for bilingual students, which was to mainstream by 7th grade. Her model of bilingualism was therefore more of a transitional one. The following are two contrasting views from the teachers. One teacher had been greatly involved in making sure her cluster, Cluster A, made two-way bilingualism an overt goal, and another teacher wrote in her journal the following: Bilingual educators must not lose sight of the original goals. Personally, I strongly believe it is to teach the children the UNIVERSAL first language: English. (Teacher, Journal entry, 05/22/96) By the teachers’ comments and explanations it was clear that the way languages were used in the classroom depended on various factors to varying degrees. As I learned throughout the course of the study, this seemed to depend on factors such as teachers’ personal beliefs, the language policy in their school, the policy in their cluster, and the configuration of students in their classrooms (whether they were Spanish or English dominant) (Varghese, 2000). Overall, the way teachers and teacher educators responded to the content of the PDI demonstrated the variation in how different stakeholders viewed the way dual language instruction should take place as well as the eventual goal of bilingual education.

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The role of theory The implementers, especially the instructor in session 2, Dr Loera, regarded theory as an essential factor in the development of bilingual teachers. Dr Loera brought up the connection between theory and practice many times both implicitly and explicitly. For example, she became slightly impatient when teachers did not describe the relationship between theory and practice in one of her presentations while she expressed excitement when teachers used terms such as ‘scaffolding’. On several occasions, she emphasised the significance of making the links between theory and practice. For example, she said: You see how to integrate theory and practice – you see you’re doing it already but you don’t know you’re doing this. Interestingly, I observed some teachers starting to incorporate theoretical terms such as ‘scaffolding’ and the notion of ‘activating prior knowledge’ in their classroom discourse as the PDI progressed. An important focus of a professional community and becoming a member is described by Lave and Wenger (1991) as learning to ‘talk within’ (1991: 109). As one learns to do and talk, a participant’s sense of identity as an expert increases and this interacts with his/her motivation. However, it is important to be aware that certain terms and specific types of performance were often demonstrated by teachers on a superficial level. These behaviours may have been exhibited because the implementers expected certain types of responses. In discussing how individuals appropriate discourse and make them meaningful to their practice, Lemke (1997) discusses that ‘performing the practices does not count toward membership unless there is evidence that the practices are performed from the proper motivation’ (1997: 44–45). Although it was important for the teachers to use the discourse of their professional community, it was more relevant for it to be linked to meaningful change in their actual professional role. Related to the issues of theory and practice is also how the teachers were making the links between them. Although certain theories were embraced by instructors, teachers did not fully grasp these theories, and they were not necessarily going to subscribe to these theories in a completely reproductive fashion. However, the implementers approached the series as if teachers would be able to put theories ‘immediately’ into practice. This shows that the instructors of the PDI assumed an unproblematic and automatic view of teaching and learning in relation to the teachers, one where what is taught is immediately learned. This was a manifestation of traditional models of education and learning which involved ways of thinking of learning as transmission, and which seemed prevalent in the actual teaching taking place during the PDI. The role of advocacy Many of the teachers strongly felt that they were role models or expressed that one of the major reasons they had entered this particular profession was to help Latino children. In a survey that I conducted after the PDI, four out of eight bilingual teachers surveyed wrote that the meaning or importance of being 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 in the PDI wrote the following in a journal entry: We have to lift their spirits and reinforce them time after time because they are the reflection of our community, a community in desperate need of reconstruction. (Teacher, Journal entry, 05/17/96) The instructors strongly voiced the advocacy or initiator role for their conceptualisations of bilingual teacher roles. However, this once again was viewed as an automatic process. Dr Loera passionately conveyed her perspective that: We are preparing bilingual teachers to not only teach in a classroom but become advocates of bilingual education because it is so very debated, in the United States, so making it a point to train teachers not just to teach; they need to know the background, the law, the history, the methodology 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 Martinet. In an interview with Dr Valdez, she told me about an incident when a teacher called her up in her office and asked her in an accusatory manner what their office was doing about some of the deplorable things that had been happening in the bilingual educational community. She continued by saying: And so I turned around and said, well, I’ve known of course of those issues for many years and have been trying to do a lot about them without any help, now, what are you, the teachers out there, going to do about it cause you are the ones who have to organise it and so I said, I challenge you to start an organisation where there’s an advocacy going on for some of these issues and I will help support it. (Dr Valdez, Interview, 10/96) As the above quote shows, there was a sense when talking to the implementers that advocacy was often viewed as intrinsic to a teacher, and even if not intrinsic, it could be automatically engendered through increased knowledge on a particular topic. A sense of empowerment and leadership are important qualities for bilingual teachers to possess but the process to develop these are often long-term and complex – it cannot be assumed that teachers automatically have these qualities.

Articulating and Contesting Bilingual Teacher Identities Through the Form of the PDI As intimated in the introduction, the way teaching and learning were shaped and processed during the PDI reflected the contradictory and disparate notions of bilingual teacher roles. This was especially the case in the way that the relationships between the instructors and teachers were framed and established. Minick, Stone and Forman (1993), quoted in Kirshner and Whitson (1997), state that the relationships and nature of the relationships developed in face-to-face interactions during learning situations need to be studied more closely. They call for studies of:

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real people who develop a variety of interpersonal relationships with one another in the course of their shared activity in a given institutional context. Within educational institutions, for example, the sometimes conflicting responsibilities of mentorship and evaluation can give rise to distinct interpersonal relationships between teacher and pupils that have important influences on learning. For example, appropriating the speech or actions of another person requires a degree of identification with that person and the cultural community he or she represents. (Kirshner & Whitson, 1997: 7) It is essential to focus on these ‘degrees of identification’ and ‘conflicting responsibilities’ that surfaced in the interactions of the teachers and instructors, since these seemed to contribute to a less cohesive bilingual professional community. Interestingly, studies of classroom discourse involving children have raised concerns about contradictory models of teaching (Cazden, 1988; Heath, 1983; Lave, 1997) where the importance of collaboration is articulated but traditional practices of transmission actually prevail. In the same way as questions have been raised about the development of students due to such contradictory models, it is important to emphasise the need to raise similar questions about adult learning. Similarly, research in mainstream professional development has contributed to views of teacher learning that conclude that ‘the ways teacher learn may be more like the ways students learn than we have previously recognised’ (Lieberman, 1995: 592), and this greatly influences the roles that teachers adopt. In terms of teachers identifying with the teacher educators of the PDI, the instructors, Dr Martinet and Dr Loera, were both Puerto Rican, like most of the 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 and honoured to be taught by a Puerto Rican scholar’ (06/22/96). Both Dr Loera and Dr Martinet occasionally used Spanish as an in-group marker during the PDI although their main language of instruction was English. Teachers also felt comfortable writing and speaking in Spanish during both sessions. The use of Spanish by the instructors was an example of how the instructors seemed to want to present themselves to the teachers as collaborators. The conflict the instructors felt about their roles as collaborators and guides was shown in the discourse they used. On one hand, Dr Loera and Dr Martinet (as the occasional use of Spanish implied) presented themselves as colleagues and collaborators with the teachers. But this role was sometimes difficult for them. For example, Dr Martinet, when presenting the lesson plan activity in Session 1, first said, ‘I want you to end up with’ and then corrected herself by saying, ‘we want to end up with’, including herself in the goal of the activity, rather than being directive about it. Although conflicted about their role, both the university professors were more directive than collaborative in their approach in most instances. This was very clear when comparing the discourse of the university professors with that of the graduate assistant, Deborah, who was the facilitator of the interpretive community for the action research that I followed. Table 1 summarises the differences between instructors.

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Table 1 Classroom discourse differences among instructors during PDI sessions PDI Topic/ Topic session participant control nomination

Instructor questions

Instructor responses

Teacher questions and responses

Peer talk

1 and 2

Instructor

Instruc- ‘Do you tor understand?’/ or IRE (initiation, response, evaluation) format

‘That’s correct’/ ‘I want you to end up with…’/ evaluation or reconceptualisation (theory)

Nodding/ ‘Can you repeat the definition?’

Share stories (but less than three and closely related to topic)

3

Instructor

Teacher ‘What do you mean with that kind of objective?’ (genuine question)

‘You may want to..’/ ’Have you thought of…?’

‘Is this a personal thing or a fact?’/ ‘This is really hard for me’

Suggestions to each other. Share stories, not closely related to the topic

The analysis summarised in the table uses the major classroom discourse categories based on Mehan (1979) and further developed by Cazden (1988). Mehan (1979) observed that traditional classrooms were structured around the IRE structure where the teacher Initiated the questions, usually in the form of information that the teacher already knew (e.g. what colour is the wall?), the student Responded, and then the teacher Evaluated whether the response was correct or not. For example, during the PDI, in contrast to the instructors who focused on asking questions such as, ‘Do you understand?’ and IRE (initiation, response, evaluation) type questions, Deborah would ask genuine questions, such as ‘What do you mean by this objective?’ Also, the instructor would respond to teachers’ reactions by stating ‘That’s correct’ or instructing them by stating, ‘I want you to…’ while Deborah would use modals and other grammatical structures used for requests and suggestions, such as ‘You may want to…’, ‘Have you thought of…..’ Naturally, the style was also influenced by the type of information that was being provided or negotiated in the action research as compared to the ‘informational’ lectures of the first two sessions. The first two sessions, especially in the group settings were mainly centred around instructor lectures. Dr Martinet, for example, would explain something, and then proceed to say, ‘I’ll model it for you’ and tell teachers that there was a certain product or way of thinking ‘that I want you to end up with’. Deborah, for example, started the first meeting of the interpretive community group that she was facilitating by describing a story of a teacher doing action research:

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I just thought, that just kind of struck me because I think that’s the way some 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 questions together. (Audiotaped observation: 10/96) Deborah, in this instance, put herself in the position of the teachers, and the use of ‘may’ denotes how careful she was not to make assumptions about the teachers’ responses. Researchers in mainstream and second language teacher education (Johnston & Goettsch, 2000) have observed how the different contexts that university professors and classroom teachers operate in impact the development of language teachers. Morgan (this issue) raises the possibility that there are ‘incompatible pedagogies’ that are at work. This section shows how the discourse itself (in addition to the content being delivered, as explored in the first section) used between teachers and teacher educators denotes and contributes to the often hierarchical nature of the relationship between both groups. This potentially plays a significant part in how bilingual teachers see themselves and how they become part of the bilingual educational community.

Conclusions and Implications The overall content and form of the professional development opportunity for bilingual teachers described in this study demonstrate the different conceptualisations that teachers and teacher educators have of the bilingual teaching profession in the United States. Significantly, this points to both the variation within the realm of bilingual teaching and the need to recognise this variation. Too often, there has been an assumption that different stakeholders involved within bilingual education have similar understandings of the profession, leading to a lack of dialogue about the roles of bilingual teachers. Due to diverse contexts of participants and teacher educators involved in the professionalisation of bilingual teachers and because of individual professional contexts and personal histories, it may be difficult to refer to a single community or a role for these teachers. The teachers and teacher educators in this study were involved in diverse paths or networks as bilingual educators. The teacher educators may not have been as prepared to address dimensions of the bilingual teaching profession that were rooted in the particular contextualised practices of the teachers, such as language use and classroom strategies. Moreover, a greater knowledge of the actual teaching contexts of the teachers could have helped the instructors tailor the content, and to be more intentional with certain aspects of the dimensions of bilingual teaching, such as advocacy. In terms of the interactions in the PDI, the instructors presented themselves in many ways as traditional teachers who were imparting knowledge to the participants. Even discussions around bilingual education and bilingual education models in Urbantown were not raised explicitly or were not personalised sufficiently for a level of identification to occur between teachers and instructors. Although this was not the focus of this paper, it is also important to be aware that not all teachers responded in the same way to the training they received during the PDI.

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The findings above lead us to three critical points in understanding teacher training for bilingual teachers in the United States and in other countries where language policies are contested. First, that ideological tensions exist relating to the ultimate goals of bilingual education, even within the bilingual educational community – between furthering the concept of a unified nation state, which for many would be achieved through a focus on learning English, or furthering the protection of the rights of language minorities, which would be helped through an enrichment dual language policy. Second, is the need to understand teacher education as a situated practice, where training has to be linked to the actual classroom practice of teachers in their local contexts. This would require bilingual teacher educators to be deeply cognisant of newer understandings of teacher learning (Bransford et al., 2000; Putnam & Borko, 2000). These approaches are advocating for professional development to move in the direction of both localised and contextualised learning as well as framing professional development as forums for discussion and developing a community of practice (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Putnam and Borko (2000) explain this movement as a product of the new ways by which knowledge and thinking are viewed, that is, the situated perspective. They explain the situated perspective in the following way: ...the physical and social contexts in which an activity takes place are an integral part of the activity, and that the activity is an integral part of the learning that takes place within it. How a person learns a particular set 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 is one that is also being called for within language teacher education – an approach that is ‘against approaches that see language teacher education in purely neutral and technicist terms and that do not engage teacher-learners in issues and dynamics of the sociocultural contexts of schools and schooling’ (Freeman & Johnson, 1998: 409). The last overall point that needs to be made and one that is linked to the first two is that bilingual education and language education in general has been largely dominated by deterministic theories, which do not account for agents’ (in this case that of bilingual teachers) motivations and choices. Some recent studies that have escaped these notions of cultural reproduction are those of Brutt-Griffler (2002), Rampton (1995) and Thesen (1997). For example, Brutt-Griffler (2002) shows how teachers native to the former British colonies around the world have actually been one of the major proponents of the spread of English – this observation runs counter to former propositions that have viewed the spread of English as a purely topdown policy. In the same vein, this study shows how the contestation of language policy and the role of bilingual teachers occurs among teachers and teacher educators within the bilingual educational community – it is not purely a debate or discussion that exists in the larger public arena. This is especially critical if we view the important role that bilingual teachers play in 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 – personnel policy being devoted to the training and recruitment of language teachers. This study, therefore, emphasises the need to discuss within the bilingual research community and teacher training institutes what is expected of bilingual teachers and negotiate these expectations with teachers. Due to the marginalised nature of the profession and the multiplicity of dimensions expected from bilingual teachers (as teachers of language and content, advocates for their students and families as well as of bilingual education) in the country, it becomes even more necessary to initiate this dialogue and exploration of the professional roles of bilingual teachers. This study shows how professional development for bilingual teachers may provide a useful site where to investigate such articulations and tensions. Professional development settings, either in the form of workshops or university programmes, can act as an important initial catalyst for a dialogue about the different evolution and orientations of the various stakeholders involved in bilingual teaching. Correspondence Any 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]).

Notes 1. According to these and other proponents, a major cause of such uneven programmes may have been the lack of political and financial support. 2. The influence 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, 1 4. Pseudonyms are used throughout the study. 5. In this issue, the articles by Toribio and Valde´s address more specific 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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