Developing holistic portraits : language and language pedagogies in teacher education

Researchers in teacher education are increasingly calling for the dismantling of monolingual assumptions, arguing instead to focus on the everyday languaging practices of multilinguals. Although this focus has been documented in classrooms, little is known as to how teacher educators prepare preservice teachers to take-up, engage with, and enact multilingual pedagogies in traditionally monolingual spaces. In response to this call, in this dissertation study, I use an intersecting framework that combines aspects of critical dialogic education (Kibler et al., 2021) and translanguaging pedagogy (García et al., 2017) to map the ways in which four Early Childhood to Sixth Grade English as a Second Language (ESL) Generalists positioned themselves in relation to language and language pedagogies over time and across contexts. Data was collected over the course of a two-year period and included preservice teacher coursework, language learning histories, classroom artifacts, focus group meetings, and a series of interviews with participants over time. Findings reveal that participants’ inclination to challenge linguistic norms was context-driven, demonstrating a need for researchers to follow preservice teachers as they come into contact with institutional structures and entrenched linguistic norms in classroom and school settings. Findings also reveal that by following preservice teachers over time, teacher educators can create and nourish spaces to understand more about preservice teachers’ evolving roles and positionalities as future teachers of multilingual learners. I discuss implications for teacher education and position this intersecting framework as a pedagogical tool to better foster and sustain commitment to additive language pedagogies in the preparation of teachers and language educators.