This paper discusses Texas Examinations of Educator Standards Program Languages Other Than English -- Spanish exam (TExES LOTE - Spanish) and its potential bias, particularly against teacher candidates with Spanish as a heritage language (HL) background. In Texas, most teacher candidates, or college students of Spanish preparing for secondary…

Heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) in the U.S. who seek certification as bilingual teachers must show Spanish language proficiency. The state of Texas requires candidates to pass the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) a test seen as a gatekeeping mechanism (Clark & Flores, 2002) in a field that presents chronic shortage of…

This is an ethnographic case study that explores and examines the translanguaging practices of three bilingual teachers in a rural elementary school in deep south Texas. Translanguaging guides this analysis. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without…

This study explores the linguistic violence of bilingual Latina/o/x adolescents in school settings in Southcentral Texas. In addition, the paper examines how these students see themselves as proficient Spanish/English bilinguals. In doing so, the author uses a language ideologies framework coupled with Anthropolitical linguistics. Within this…

The purpose of this dissertation was to provide teachers, principals, district administrators, and local, state, and national legislators with an understanding of what the perception is of Hispanic American Immigrant parents regarding their access to parental engagement and agency through the American public school system, specifically elementary…

Drawing on life stories and classroom observations, this qualitative study examined how six bilingual maestras enacted and embodied critical biliteracies through bilanguaging love. These maestras were born, raised, and now teach bilingual education on the Texas-Mexico border. Their stories revealed contradictory and complex beliefs about literacy…

This research uses a descriptive quantitative statistical design to examine campus-level results from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR). The focus is on describing the achievement disparities between campuses that implemented Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs and those implementing Dual Language (DL)…

Many students visit writing centers to become better writers in the English language. One issue of considerable debate is whether students visiting writing centers along the border should be assisted in Spanish or English. This pilot study examined writing center tutors' and students' perceptions of speaking Spanish at the writing center. Most…

This article investigates the language practices of a bilingual mariachi instructor teaching mariachi music to Latinx English dominant students. This ethnographic study draws on the concept of chronotope (Bakhtin 1981) to explore the spatiotemporal aspects of learning, particularly in terms of the teachers' selective use of language correction…

Our nation is characterized by diversity in languages, ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures with projected increases in English learners attending U.S. schools. Consequently, it is imperative that we recognize how to maximize the academic and linguistic assets of our English learner student population. This study compared the performance on…

To support the growing number of English learners (ELs) across the nation, professors in the field of bilingual education are being called to prepare highly effective bilingual teachers who not only have linguistic proficiency in English and Spanish but can also successfully perform in academic settings. As a result, we, two bilingual education…

Translanguaging in classrooms opens spaces for multilingual students to engage in learning across the full range of their linguistic repertoire. We argue that one result of translanguaging pedagogy is that it can transform the talk-for-learning in the classroom and create a corriente or flow of ideas that is more free and less constrained than…

This report reflects available information about the native language standardized assessments in use by the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The report reflects the growing interest and commitment of policy makers, state education agencies (SEAs), and the public to provide English learners (ELs) equitable access to…

In this paper, we investigate the effect that parents' language use (English, Spanish-English or Spanish) had on self-perceived proficiency, frequency of use, language anxiety, code-switching and cultural orientation of 206 Spanish-English bilinguals and multilinguals who were students in Texas where there is a strong presence of Spanish, the…

The two-way immersion dual language education program design includes the use of language labels to identify students as either the English speaker or the speaker of a language other than English. This paper examines four focal student and two teacher interviews to consider the ways in which the idea of a 'language expert' transpired during…