Resumen de Exploring diverse educators’ language ideologies: how lived experiences shape understandings of bilingual education goals

Melinda Martin Beltrán, Astrid M. Sierra, Amanda D. Cataneo

• This study explores the ways diverse educators’ lived experiences shape their understanding of dual language bilingual education (DLBE) goals, responding to calls for research to better understand how educator ideologies impact the equitable implementation of program goals. This qualitative case study highlights the voices of DLBE educators who identify as transnational, Latinx and African American and includes data from classroom observations, interviews, focus groups and pláticas. We offer a conceptual framework that reveals how ideologies related to language acquisition, status, and variation are impacted by teachers’ prior schooling/teaching, institutional positioning and understandings of racialization and cultural identity – sociocultural factors that are co-constructed across micro and macro-level discourse. Our findings suggest that through teaching in DLBE programs and reflecting upon their lived experiences, educators’ ideologies are constantly developing and can shift to foreground equity and center multilingual learners in DLBE programs. Our study has implications for teacher education and professional development that recognizes educators’ diverse experiences (e.g. transnational and/or lived experiences related to race/ethnicity and institutional positioning) to support the ongoing development of ideological clarity that has bearing on the realization of DLBE goals in the pursuit of equity.