B-MEIS Webinar: Cultivating Bilingual Education Leaders: Tensions, Successes and Lessons Learned at

Cultivating Bilingual Education Leaders: Tensions, Successes and Lessons Learned at Graduate School Level

This webinar proposal showcases original studies that attempt to recreate the different aspects of a bilingual education program and our participation in it as instructors, mentees, mentors, and direct protagonists of the challenges and tensions we encountered as we worked with novice and seasoned bilingual teachers and engaged in the figured world of bilingual teacher educators (Holland et al., 2001). The authors examine bilingual education preparation programs beyond the induction of future bilingual teachers with a focus on the exploration of its role in the continuous professional development of experienced teachers to become school leaders back to their school districts or to prepare teacher educators and researchers in other higher education institutions in the country. We discuss the tensions we encountered due to contradictory institutional language ideologies and practices, differing stances toward activism, and growth as bilingual teacher educators and researchers.

PRESENTERS

Brenda Rubio (assistant professor - New Mexico State University): Her research and policy agenda focuses on the development of critically conscious educational leadership and community-district-university partnerships for additive transformational education. She examines Academia Cuauhtli as a learning space that promotes curricular recognition of alternative epistemologies and the development of pedagogies that foster students’ culture, language, and funds of knowledge.

Deborah Palmer (professor - University of Colorado Boulder): She conducts qualitative research using ethnographic and discourse analytic methods in culturally and linguistically diverse settings. Her interests include bilingual education policy and politics; critical additive bilingual education; teacher preparation for linguistically and culturally diverse teaching contexts; language, power and identity; and bilingual teacher leadership/agency. 

Blanca Caldas (assistant professor - University of Minnesota, Twin Cities): Dr. Blanca Caldas is a transnational Latina scholar of Quechuan descent. Her research focuses on bilingual teacher education, minoritized language practices, and critical pedagogy. She presents her work in local, national, and international conferences (including ethnographic performances), and publishes in both English and Spanish. 

Daniel Heiman (assistant professor - University of North Texas): Dr. Dan Heiman's research focuses on issues of social justice, equity, and critical pedagogy in Two-Way Bilingual Education and their implications for the preparation of bilingual teachers. His dissertation earned first place in the 2018 Bilingual Education Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association.