Resumen de Secondary Chinese teachers’ barriers to developing critical consciousness in Mandarin Chinese dual language bilingual education classrooms

Nuo Xu, Wenyang Sun, Verónica E. Valdez

• This study draws on Critical Race Theory to explore secondary Chinese teachers’ barriers to developing critical consciousness in Mandarin Chinese dual language bilingual education (DLBE) classrooms. Employing a narrative inquiry approach, we explored the general struggles seven Chinese DLBE teachers faced in classrooms, focusing on understanding their barriers to implementing pedagogies fostering critical consciousness. Findings revealed that these Chinese DLBE teachers held the belief that social inequities and critical topics were inappropriate for young middle school students to learn and considered the development of critical consciousness as irrelevant to the curriculum they were responsible for teaching. Teachers were also concerned about complaints from white parents and macro sociopolitical forces including warnings from institutions. Implications for DLBE programs and teachers seeking to create socially just classrooms are discussed.