SHL Teacher Development and Critical Language Awareness: From Engaño to Understanding

Abstract

This paper offers insights from a study of 17 high school Spanish teachers enrolled in an online graduate course on Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) Pedagogy. The study analyzed the semester-long transformation of teacher attitudes as expressed in discussion board posts following a content analysis approach. Findings show an initial lack of respect for student dialects and knowledge of US varieties of Spanish coupled with a desire to help students improve via the teaching of “academic Spanish”. Many participants expressed a feeling of engaño (disillusionment) toward their previous training, wondering why they had not studied the aforementioned topics sooner (Russell and Kuriscak 2015). By creating a context where teachers themselves became more critically language aware, they also became “…cognizant of the naturalness of language variation and its loading of social, political, and economic power structures…” (Beaudrie et al. 2021, p. 587). This paper underscores the transformation that can occur when teachers investigate bilingual ideologies and practices and linguistic characteristics of US varieties of Spanish. The concrete suggestions offered here aim to answer Leeman’s (2015) call for “destabilizing teachers’ ideologies” (p. 114) in the hopes of creating a more equitable learning environment for future language students.

Evaluating teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in implementing classroom-based assessment: A case study among esl secondary school teachers in Selangor, Malaysia

“…Throughout the literature, the integration of PCK and CBA is recognised as a vital component in developing effective, learner-centred ESL teaching practices. Studies by Mumamad Marzaini et al [52] and Ducar [58], for instance, highlight the intricate relationship between these two elements and suggest that further research is necessary to optimise the alignment of PCK and CBA in ESL contexts. Therefore, the hypotheses of the study can be posited as: H1: "There is a significant relationship between content knowledge and classroombased assessment practices."…”