El sendero torcido al español[The Twisted Path to Spanish]: The Development of Bilingual Teachers' Spanish-Language Proficiency

From English learner to Spanish learner: raciolinguistic beliefs that influence heritage Spanish speaking teacher candidates

“…The challenge of maintaining heritage Spanish is compounded if bilingual teacher education programs do not use Spanish as a medium of instruction (Sutterby, Ayala, & Murillo , 2005). In this manner, the interests and status of privileged classes are preserved with the acquiescence of bilingual teachers who are thereby the object of 'benevolent colonization' (Grinberg & Saavedra, 2000;Guerrero & Guerrero, 2013).…”

When a heritage speaker wants to be a Spanish teacher: Educational experiences and challenges

“…These issues and concerns were echoed by participants in this and other studies (Guerrero, ; Sutterby, Ayala, & Murillo, ), who mentioned a sense of linguistic inadequacy that was in fact corroborated by cooperating teachers and Spanish faculty. To that end, a more rigorous linguistics preparation that includes both sociolinguistics, as noted above, as well as metalinguistic knowledge is called for, despite this being a contentious issue in HL instruction.…”

Spanish Language Development and Support in a Bilingual Teacher Preparation Program

“…Pre-service bilingual teachers' concerns about having adequate language proficiency (Guerrero, 2003a(Guerrero, , 2003bHones et al, 2009;Said-Mohand, 2005), acquiring standard Spanish instead of vernacular Spanish (Ducar, 2008;Rosado, 2005), and teaching incorrect forms of Spanish (Guerrero, 2003a) call for an examination of the disparities between English and Spanish as languages of instruction in bilingual teacher education. Among the issues that pre-service bilingual teachers face are these: (a) Constraints on the time they have available to develop Spanish proficiency; (b) Limited instruction in Spanish content-area coursework in bilingual teacher preparation (Sutterby et al, 2005); (c) Increased feelings of inadequacy in their Spanish proficiency; and (d) A required teaching licensure test to demonstrate their proficiency in Spanish Several studies have described how bilingual teachers' K−12 trajectories inform their later classroom language instruction (or lack thereof) in Spanish (Guerrero, 2003a(Guerrero, , 2003bRodriguez, 2007;Sutterby et al, 2005). However, these studies have little to say about the support that home languages receive at schools or about the heritage languages possessed by prospective bilingual teachers.…”

“…Here, heritage-language bilingual teachers-in-training who take Spanish classes in modern language departments face the challenges of being in an academic environment with native Spanish speakers with educational experiences in Spanish-speaking countries-both classmates and instructors. This disparity might lead to perceptions of inferiority regarding their language performance (Said-Mohand, 2005;Sutterby et al, 2005). Spanish instruction in modern language departments is the main source of Spanish support at the university level (Guerrero, 2003a(Guerrero, , 2003bRodriguez, 2007;Sutterby et al, 2005).…”

“…This disparity might lead to perceptions of inferiority regarding their language performance (Said-Mohand, 2005;Sutterby et al, 2005). Spanish instruction in modern language departments is the main source of Spanish support at the university level (Guerrero, 2003a(Guerrero, , 2003bRodriguez, 2007;Sutterby et al, 2005). Furthermore, constraints on students' time to work on Spanish proficiency during content-area coursework, paired with limited Spanishinstruction class offerings (Sutterby et al, 2005), increase the feelings of inadequacy in prospective teachers.…”