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Abstract

This case study explores the experiences of two teacher candidates (TCs) in professional development school (PDS) settings with multilingual learners. While valuing multilingual learner’s diverse linguistic backgrounds and language repertoires by drawing from a toolkit of responsive practices, the TCs embraced but struggled with layering translanguaging into their classroom practices. It also examines the middle grades program that these TCs attended while centering asset-based thinking and culturally responsive practices. Overall, this study shows that teacher education programs must include another critical layer to TCs’ experiences: building the toolkit of middle school cooperating teachers (CTs). This study also serves as a call to action for more research and training focusing on translanguaging in the middle grades and for creating more inclusive spaces for our linguistically diverse students in the middle grades.

Author Bio

Helen Brandon, Ed.D. is an Assistant Professor of STEM and Multilingual Education at University of Illinois-Springfield. Within the middle grades, she was a department chair of multilingual education and taught classes ranging from bilingual mathematics to general education science and has over 20 years of teaching experience in K-12 education. She leads professional development focusing on multilingual education in the STEM fields, especially focused on equity and identity in STEM. Her research focuses on middle grades, multilingual, and STEM education.

Ellis Hurd, Ed.D., is Associate Director and Coordinator of Graduate Programs in the School of Teaching and Learning at Illinois State University. He is also Professor of middle level and bilingual education in the school. He has 25 years of teaching experience in diverse settings across Illinois and Iowa. He has published on teacher, middle grades and bilingual, and urban education, equity and cultural responsiveness, and mixed identities. He is editor of The Reflexivity of Pain and Privilege: Autoethnographic Collections of Mixed Identity, and co-editor of Equity and Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades. He is also co-editor of Middle School Journal and serves as the AMLE SPA Coordinator for Middle Level Teacher Preparation and Licensure/Certification with the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP).

DOI

10.20429/cimle.2024.28202

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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