Bilingual teacher educators as language policy agents: A critical language policy perspective of the Castañeda v. Pickard case and the bilingual teacher shortage

• Published in: Language policy Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 381 - 403
• Main Authors: Hernández, Sera J., Alfaro, Cristina, Martell, Melissa A. Navarro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.09.2022; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Applied Linguistics; Bilingual education; Bilingual Teachers; Bilingualism; Change Agents; Civil rights; Education; Education policy; Educational Policy; Equal rights; Ethnography; Fairness; Federal court decisions; Immigrants; Immigration; Labor shortages; Language Education; Language ideologies; Language policy; Language rights; Linguistics; Multilingualism; Original Paper; Planning; Political Science; Politics; Public schools; Second Language Learning; Social Sciences; Sociolinguistics; Sociopolitical factors; Students; Teacher education; Teacher Educators; Teacher Shortage; Teachers; California; Teacher shortage; Multilingual learners; Bilingual teacher education; Critical language policy
• ISSN: 1568-4555; 1573-1863
• DOI: 10.1007/s10993-021-09607-y

Drawing on decades of lessons from a Bilingual Teacher Education Program (BTEP) in California that has persevered both restrictive and additive federal and state educational language policies, this manuscript provides an ethnographic snapshot of how this BTEP has strategically navigated through and around anti-immigrant ideologies and policies to survive incessant attacks on bilingual education and educational equity for multilingual learners. Utilizing a critical language policy framework, the authors analyze how the Castañeda v. Pickard case and other educational language policies shape the work of bilingual teacher educators as language policy agents. They rely on autoethnographic accounts to illustrate how they navigate the complex relationship between policy and practice and offer a critical analysis of the bilingual teacher shortage. The authors propose that developing critically conscious bilingual educators with ideological clarity may mitigate this larger systemic issue.