Highly Effective Practices of Three Bilingual Teacher Preparation Programs in US Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)

Abstract

Bilingual teacher preparation programs are opportunities for aspiring teachers or Bilingual Pre-Service Teachers (BPSTs) who have linguistic proficiency and cultural knowledge in two languages that are seen as assets to address the needs for bilingual and multilingual populations in the US. However, there is an evident shortage that has been documented to attest to the high need of hiring bilingual and dual language educators (USDE, 2015). In this article, three bilingual teacher preparation programs housed in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) explore their practices and present highly effective examples for bilingual and dual language teacher preparation. The findings include the process of bilingual teacher identity formation that calls for critical consciousness that includes an awareness of the sociopolitical and sociocultural connections for learning. Other significant findings include support for highly effective pedagogical practices and attention to the socioemotional process that leads to advocacy and agency resulting in a social justice orientation and perspective. A cyclical model is presented as a framework for successful bilingual teacher preparation and the implications provide a future direction in exploring the cyclical model as a recruitment and retention strategy for successful bilingual teacher preparation.