Overview  Background  Working definition of language minority students  Context: Educational and language policy in the US/ Teacher certification  Pursuits as a teacher educator & researcher  Highlighted literature in language minority teacher education  Current issues/dilemmas/discussion points in U.S. teacher preparation  Definitions and applications of language  Changing teacher role and knowledge base  Social justice/advocacy  My ongoing work  Discussion questions

Working definition  Language minorities:  immigrants (not international students),who speak a primary language other than English at home, and who can be discriminated against on the basis of being a nonnative/outer circle speaker of English (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1992)  often racialized minorities, from immigrant communities and from low-income backgrounds (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez- Orozco, 2003)  studies & theories of Globalization (Block & Cameron, 2005), Immigration (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2003; Suárez-Orozo, Suárez-Orozco & Todorova, 2008), Multilingualism, Critical Race Theory (Yosso, 2005) are weaved into this understanding

Context: Language and educational policy in the US/ Teacher preparation  No Child Left Behind (NCLB) & Title III  Mainstreaming  Restrictive language environments/ Dual language programs  Endorsement – primary or secondary

In pairs: What do you see as the most critical challenges and ways forward in preparing teachers of language minority students?

Pursuits as a teacher educator & researcher  Moving away from prescriptive knowledge base of language minority teaching  Focusing on teacher knowledge, skills, AND TEACHER IDENTITY (Varghese, 2010)  Using various conceptual frameworks (Alsup, 2006; Bourdieu, 1986; Giddens, 1984; Morgan, 2004; Varghese et.al, 2005)  Making links between different disciplines  Engaging in various research settings/pursuing different questions (Motha & Varghese, in preparation; Varghese et al., in preparation; Varghese, 2006, 2008, 2010; Varghese & Johnston, 2007)

Highlighted literature in language minority teachers’ classrooms/work  Research studies on language minority teachers’ professions & daily practice (Creese, 2005; Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Varghese 2006, 2008; Tsui, 2003 Skilton-Sylvester, 2003)  Classroom discourse, academic language development, & instructional moves in language minority classrooms (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Gibbons, 2002, 2006; Moshkovitch, 2000, 2007)  Social justice language minority teacher education (Althanases & de Oliveira, 2010; Hawkins, 2011)

Salient issues/dilemmas/discussio n points in language minority teacher preparation

1) Definitions and applications of academic language  Definitions of academic language (Gutiérrez, 2002; Valdés, 2004)  Applications to teacher preparation  Task-related (Bunch et al., 2001)  Discipline-specific (Barwell, 2005; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Moshkovitch, 2000, 2007)  Scaffolding (Gibbons, 2002, 2006; Walqui & van Lier, 2010)

2) Changing teacher roles and knowledge base  Collaborative teaching  Grade level/mainstream teachers  Language minority teachers (Creese, 2005; English, 2012; English & Varghese, 2010)

3) Social justice/advocacy  Personal backgrounds and experiences of teachers  Teacher preparation (Cochran-Smith et al., 2009; Dubetz & deJong,2011; Telléz & Varghese, in press; Varghese et al., in preparation)

My ongoing work as a teacher educator/researcher  How can we re-frame teacher education to be also focusing on the project of developing teacher identity? (Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Varghese, 2006, 2008, 2010)  How do we create ‘social justice pedagogies’ in our teacher preparation programs and for our student teachers to enact ? (Hawkins, 2011, Varghese & Motha, in preparation)  What types of expertise count and how do we develop these for novice language minority teachers? How are these different for grade-level/mainstream teachers?

Discussion questions  What aspects of the presentation resonated with you as a teacher educator, especially when thinking about the context(s) in which you are teaching? What other issues were not brought up that are relevant about your context(s)?  What expertise does your program help novice language minority teachers develop and how does it do that?  What types of experiences and reshaping would need to be made to make teacher identity a central aspect of your program? To what extent would this be useful or not?