Journal of Teacher Education

http://jte.sagepub.com

"Nadie Me Dijó [Nobody Told Me]": Language Policy Negotiation and Implications for Teacher
Education
Manka M. Varghese and Tom Stritikus
Journal of Teacher Education 2005; 56; 73
DOI: 10.1177/0022487104272709

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/56/1/73

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)

Additional services and information for Journal of Teacher Education can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://jte.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

Citations http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/56/1/73

Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005 10.1177/0022487104272709

“NADIE ME DIJÓ [NOBODY TOLD ME]”

LANGUAGE POLICY NEGOTIATION AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Manka M. Varghese
Tom Stritikus
University of Washington

Nationwide and statewide shifts and ambiguity in language education policy have created substan-
tial instability for teachers. Through a cross-case study and analysis of bilingual teachers in two
states, this article shows how these teachers participate in responding to and making decisions re-
garding language policy. This article shows how and why an understanding of language policy and
the decision making involved with it is a crucial dimension of the professional roles of teachers who
have second-language learners in their classrooms. Thus, the authors broaden the discussion on the
teacher preparation for the instruction of English-language-learner students, which has narrowly fo-
cused on an awareness of language and methods, to include the dimension of policy making.

Keywords: language policy; bilingual education; teacher education; teacher identity; bilingual
teachers

INTRODUCTION: TEACHERS AND ternationally and in the United States. The edu-
LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES cation of linguistically diverse students is situ-
I am a bilingual teacher because I believe in bilingual ated in larger issues concerning immigration,
education. I believe everybody has the right to speak distribution of wealth and power, and the em-
their own language, and I believe that if America is a powerment of students (Cummins, 1996, 2000;
free country, then nobody should deny you the right Heller, 1994; Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Recently, the
to get an education in your first language. These chil-
dren are going to be our future leaders in a few years.
sociopolitical context of language education in
What kind of children do you want to make? (Angel- the United States has become more charged. On
ica, second-grade bilingual teacher, Open Valley January 8, 2002, Title VII, also known as the Bi-
Elementary, California) lingual Education Act, was eliminated as part of
Because I’m here, sometimes I feel guilty, and I know a larger school reform measure known as the No
that being bilingual’s great, but sometimes I wonder.
I’m teaching in Spanish, basically the whole day, and
Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) and replaced
the irony is—yes—I want them to be bilingual— by the English Language Acquisition Act. The
yes—I believe that they should keep their Spanish long-standing tension between multiculturalist
but, I believe that they should learn English and then and multilingualist bilingual policies has
I get a little worried, sometimes. (Maria, kindergar- swung once again toward policies favoring
t e n b i l i n g ua l t e a c h e r, M i l l e r E l e me n t a r y,
Pennsylvania)
assimilationists and monolingualist versions of
language policies (Tatalovich, 1995; Wiese &
Language education for immigrant students Garcia, 1998; Wiley, 2002).
is not, and never has been, a neutral process in-

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005 73-87

DOI: 10.1177/0022487104272709
© 2005 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

73
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
 The purpose of this article is to use findings
from two studies of bilingual teachers in Penn-
sylvania and California to understand what fac-
tors influence how teachers respond to lan-
guage policy in their respective settings and
make recommendations for teacher preparation
programs in terms of inclusion of issues around
language policy. As the two above quotes from
teachers in these two studies indicate, these fac-
tors include, among others, an interaction of
their personal beliefs and the policy environ-
ments in which the teachers find themselves.
Language policy has been defined as a course
of action relating to issues of language (Corson,
1995) or as Kaplan and Baldauf (1997) have
described, “a body of ideas, laws, regulations,
rules, and practices intended to achieve the
planned language change in the society, group,
or system” (p. xi). Although there has been an
absence of an official federal language policy in
the United States, both diachronically and
synchronically (across states), there have been
overt and covert policies that have influenced
the educational landscape of the country. The
history of how language policies have evolved
and played out in the United States has been the
work of many scholars, including recently
Crawford (1999), Macias (1999), and Wiley
(2002). These scholars have demonstrated how
the attitudes and environment toward linguis-
tic rights have mostly moved in a parallel fash-
ion to other immigration and minority citizen
restrictions. In addition, as Wiley wrote, “in the
United States, the salience of language rights is
largely derived from their association with
other constitutional protections dealing with
race, religion, and national origin” (p. 40)
because these rights are protected by the Civil
Rights Act.
Several researchers have looked at how these
policies influence students and language
minority communities in general (Crawford,
1999; Stritikus & Garcia, 2003; Wiley, 2002).
Despite this growing knowledge base, there is
also a need to understand how these language
policies influence teachers as well as how teach-
ers simultaneously respond to and influence the
local enactment of such policies. As Datnow,
Hubbard, and Mehan (2002) have argued,
74
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
“teachers are considered by most policymakers
and school change experts to be the centerpiece
of educational change” (p. 71). This is even more
significant in the context of language policy in
the United States because of the historical lack
of specificity in terms of guidelines as well as
the controversy such a policy has always gener-
ated in districts and states. The ambiguous fed-
eral guidelines related to English as a second
language (ESL; Skilton-Sylvester, 2003) and
bilingual education (Cardinale, Carnoy, & Stein,
1999) have made local districts and teachers the
major shapers of language policy and educa-
tional policy for immigrant students. In their
framework of language policy, Kaplan and
Baldauf (1997) viewed it as a bundle of policies,
which include personnel policy (how teachers
are trained), curriculum and materials policy
(what and how language is taught), evaluation
policy (the assessment of the program and of
students), and community (how the commu-
nity is integrated), thereby highlighting the role
of teachers in engendering and framing
language policy.
This article uses findings from two case stud-
ies of bilingual teachers in California and Penn-
sylvania to address the role of teachers in lan-
guage policy. Although the focus of the article is
bilingual teachers, we use this population and
the findings made to make an argument about
including the policy-making role in terms of
teacher preparation for teachers of immigrant
students in general. This argument has been
made elsewhere for ESL teachers by Skilton-
Sylvester (2003). Our question addresses and
adds to the dearth of research on the salient role
that teachers play in what language policy is
instituted in classrooms (Brutt-Griffler, 2002;
Hornberger & Ricento, 1996; Skilton-Sylvester,
2003) as well as the growing research on the role
of teachers as makers of policy (Malen & Knapp,
1997; Woods, 1994). This article breaks down the
artificial boundary between policy makers and
teachers, highlighting the crucial decisions that
many teachers (bilingual, ESL, and content-area
teachers with English-language learners
[ELLs]) make in responding to, enacting, and
creating language policy in their classrooms
and schools (Hornberger & Ricento, 1996).
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
 The major question this article addresses is,
What factors are involved in teachers’ media-
tion and response to language policy?
By drawing from findings from two studies
of bilingual teachers in California and Pennsyl-
vania, we also hope to expand the discussions
about preparing teachers for educating cultural
and linguistically diverse students to go
“beyond the methods fetish” (Bartolomé, 1994),
and the almost exclusive focus on language
awareness (Wong-Fillmore & Snow, 2002) to
include considerations of language policy.
Broadening the discussion would influence
teacher education to reconsider the role and
professional identities of teachers as extending
beyond their classroom role, to include that of
as interpreter and creator of policies as well as
that of advocate for their profession and for
their students (Benson, 2004; Cahnmann &
Varghese, 2004; Varghese, 2004a). Given the
ambiguous and contentious guidelines and pol-
icies relating to the education of ELLs, teacher
educators must begin to seriously consider how
teachers respond to and create language policy,
explicitly preparing teachers to deal with the
social and policy contexts in which their work
will occur.
Conceptual Framework
Although language policy (and educational
policy in general) has traditionally been consid-
ered a top-down process, in this study, as in
other recent research (Skilton-Sylvester, 2003;
Stritikus, 2002; Varghese, 2004b), it is viewed as
being enacted through a sociocultural lens,
mediated by teachers’ personal and profes-
sional histories and their local environments.
Although the decisions that teachers make in
the classroom are influenced by various ideo-
logical factors, they also take shape in policy
contexts in which individual actors play
agentive roles in the translation of policy to
practice. To understand the roles that ideology,
policy, and individual teachers play in enacted
practice for linguistically diverse students, we
suggest that, as Harré and Gillett (1994) have
argued, “understanding of human activity
requires us to interpret the behavior of another
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
according to some appreciation of the self-
positioning of the subject within the complex
structure of rules and practices within which
the individual moves” (p. 20). Drawing on
sociocultural theory, we consider how examina-
tions of teachers’ roles in policy can be enriched
by considering ways teachers’ individual
responses to policy exist in a recursive
relationship with the environments in which
they work.
Sociocultural theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984;
Levinson & Holland, 1996; Rogoff, 1995; Tharp
& Gallimore, 1991) provides a lens through
which to consider the symbiotic relationship
between structural and agentive factors that
contribute to individual actions taken by teach-
ers. Individuals (in this case, teachers) are not
seen as “reproducers” of a particular policy but
are viewed simultaneously as agents who make
specific choices based on their own histories
and their evolving professional lives as well as
being “constrained” or “shaped” to a certain
extent by the contexts in which they find them-
selves. Therefore, teachers’ decisions and
actions are seen as being produced within the
struggle of structural and agentive factors,
where at many points, these factors influence
each other to such an extent that they often can-
not be separated. For example, teachers often
become strong advocates of a particular policy
in a school or district because of the structural
support that they receive, which demonstrates
the intertwined nature of structural and
agentive influences. Another important point of
sociocultural theory is that it attempts to take
into account simultaneously and relationally
the different layers that are involved both in
teacher learning and policy implementation. As
Datnow et al. (2002) have argued, “people’s
actions cannot be understood without under-
standing the sense of setting in which the
actions are situated, and reciprocally, the setting
cannot be understood without understanding
the actions of the people within it” (p. 12). In the
case of this article, some of the layers that are
significant are the larger sociopolitical context
of bilingual education and the bilingual teach-
ing profession, the local school districts’
75
TABLE 1 Summary of Data Collection, Analysis, and Participants in Pennsylvania and California

California Study: Interviews and Observations of Four Teachers

Westway Elementary: English-only school

• Celia: Latina, first-/second-grade former bilingual teacher, 3rd year teaching.
• Connie: Portuguese American, third-grade English language development teacher, 12th year teaching.
Open Valley Elementary: Bilingual school
• Angelica: Latina, first-/second-grade bilingual teacher, 5th year teaching.
• Elisa: Latina, third-grade bilingual teacher, 5th year teaching.

Pennsylvania Study: Interviews and Observations of Four Teachers

Miller Elementary: Bilingual program within school

• Elizabeth: Latina, second-grade bilingual teacher in bilingual program, 2nd year teaching.
• Maria: Latina, first-grade bilingual teacher in bilingual program, 2nd year teaching.
Vargas Middle School: Bilingual program within school
• Francisca: Latina, seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher not teaching in bilingual program, 3rd year teaching in district
but 15 years of teaching experience.
Taylor Elementary: Bilingual program within school
• Ruben: Latino ESL teacher teaching in bilingual program and mainstream program, 2nd year teaching.

configurations and environments, and the
individual teachers themselves.
METHODS, SETTINGS, AND PARTICIPANTS
In this section, the rationale for combining
findings from two separate studies is provided
as well as a summary of the settings and partici-
pants and data analysis involved in the two
studies. A summary chart is provided in this
section (see Table 1).
A major strength of this article is its compara-
tive analysis of two separate groups of bilingual
teachers in the United States. Two settings were
chosen because they had different language
policies in place but displayed remarkable com-
monalities in the host of challenges faced by the
teachers. California had instituted a “repression
policy” (Wiley, 2002), making bilingual educa-
tion illegal (except through parental waivers)
through Proposition 227, a voter initiative, and
Pennsylvania had a “null policy” (Wiley, 2002),
whereby there is effectively an absence of pol-
icy. Interestingly, California had had a long his-
tory of teacher preparation for bilingual teach-
ers through its Bilingual, Cross-Cultural,
Language, and Academic Development
(BCLAD) process, whereas Pennsylvania had
no certification in place for bilingual or ESL
teachers. Although the post-Proposition 227 cli-
mate in California made the atmosphere partic-
ularly charged, it is important to consider that
bilingual education and the bilingual teaching
profession is politically “loaded” in most set-
tings in the United States, and different forms of
restrictionism, even through the quality of
teacher preparation programs and certification
requirements (as was the case in Pennsylvania),
have been salient throughout the history of the
United States.
The focus of the Pennsylvania study was how
and what it meant to be a bilingual teacher in
that particular context (Varghese, 2000),
whereas the focus of the California study was to
understand the impact of Proposition 227 on lit-
eracy instructional practices (Stritikus, 2002).
Findings from both studies that looked at how
teachers responded to and created language
policy were combined. Both studies were
conducted through qualitative, mainly
ethnographic methods. At the core, both studies
employed the perspective that reality is socially
constructed by multiple players in multiple
contexts (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995;
Erickson, 1986). To understand teachers’ work
within the nested contexts of classroom, school,
district, and beyond, both authors collected var-
ious types of naturalistic data at the school, dis-
trict, state, and federal levels. Methodologically,
this implied that rather than searching for

76 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005

Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
causal realities, we attempted to see the primary
components of social process and practice that
influence the nature and context of policy
(Datnow et al., 2002; Erickson, 1986). Through
this methodology, factors influencing teachers’
response to policy have been suggested and
their context specificity have been made salient.
The Pennsylvania Study
The study in Pennsylvania was conducted in
a major urban school district, which is referred
to here as Urbantown. At the time of this
research, in the school district of Urbantown,
11% of the roughly 205,000 students were Lati-
nos, mainly of Puerto Rican origin. The main
changes that occurred in the district in recent
years had involved the district’s decentraliza-
tion of administrative duties to “clusters” and
organization of schools into “learning commu-
nities.” The Latino students mainly attended
schools in two clusters, referred to here as Clus-
ter A and Cluster B, that were situated in the dis-
trict described above. Cluster B, the cluster with
the largest concentration of Latino students
(72%), also had nine of the lowest achieving
schools in the whole district. Cluster A had the
most developed language policy, attempting to
develop a dual enrichment bilingual program
from the elementary schools through the high
school, whereas Cluster B’s language policy
was still in the process of being developed.
In this study, the research focused on 4 teach-
ers in three different schools. These teachers
were chosen because they were part of a larger
study that followed a group of teachers under-
going professional development in bilingual
education. Moreover, these 4 teachers (of 7 who
completed the professional development) con-
sented to be part of the study, and they repre-
sented different grade levels, backgrounds, and
roles in their schools. All 4 of the teachers were
hired in their schools as bilingual teachers. In
the state of Pennsylvania, this involved either
being in the process or receiving primary certifi-
cation, passing the National Teaching Examina-
tions, and then passing a language test in the
two languages. However, this did not mean that
the teachers necessarily ended up teaching in
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
bilingual programs. Two teachers, Elizabeth
and Maria, taught in the same school, Miller
Elementary school in Cluster B. Francisca, the
third teacher, was a social studies teacher at
Vargas Middle School in Cluster B. The fourth
teacher, Ruben, mainly taught ESL at Taylor Ele-
mentary School in Cluster A. All of the schools
roughly mirrored the ethnic and linguistic
makeup of both clusters, with three quarters of
the student population being Latino and more
than half of the students being ESL.
Elizabeth, a second-generation Cuban Amer-
ican, had been a first-grade teacher for a year at
Miller, which had started its bilingual program
in 1995, the same year that she started there. She
followed her first-grade class of 20 students into
the second grade in fall 1996. Maria, a second-
generation Puerto Rican, had also been at Miller
the same amount of time and had followed her
second-grade class of 22 students into the third
grade in fall 1996. They were both certified ele-
mentary teachers who passed their National
Teaching Examinations and had passed the dis-
trict language examinations.
Francisca, a first-generation Dominican, was
a social studies teacher (seventh and eighth
grade, about 25 students in each class) in
Vargas, a middle school with a bilingual pro-
gram. However, Francisca was not teaching in
the bilingual program. She had been teaching in
this school (and the district) for 3 years. She had
passed the National Teaching Examination in
fall 1996, although she was still pursuing her
master’s and certification in elementary educa-
tion by that year. She had yet to take the district
language examination. In his second year of
teaching, Ruben, a second-generation Puerto
Rican, was an ESL/bilingual teacher in Taylor,
an elementary school in Cluster A. He was also
involved in a change in the school’s ESL pro-
gram toward an inclusion model rather than a
pull-out ESL (where the ESL students are pulled
out of their regular classroom), which they were
doing in the past. He was in the process of fin-
ishing his master’s and certification in elemen-
tary education. Subsequent to the period of
Varghese’s visits, Taylor’s new teachers had to
all be bilingual, and Ruben was made the head
77
of one of two small learning communities
within the school starting in fall 1997.
Varghese observed and interviewed these
teachers over the course of 6 months (from Janu-
ary to June 1997). These observations were con-
ducted within their classroom setting in differ-
ent school settings. She also interviewed key
district and school administrators and collected
archival documentation on the district. Data
collection for the whole study took place from
May 1996 to June 1997.
The California Study
The research in this study also focused on 4
teachers and took place at Westway Elementary
and Open Valley Elementary, two elementary
schools in the low socioeconomic status (most
of the students were on free and reduced lunch)
and small rural district of Walton Unified. Most
importantly, this study took place immediately
subsequent to Proposition 227, the voter initia-
tive that outlawed bilingual education in the
state of California. Walton Unified is located in
California’s Central Valley. At each school, the
research focused on 2 teachers who were
selected because they taught in the early pri-
mary grades and were bilingual teachers prior
to the passage of Proposition 227.
At Westway, a school with two-thirds major-
ity Latino population, approximately 33% of all
students were classified as ELLs. The research
at Westway focused on 2 teachers—Connie and
Celia. Connie, a Portuguese American with 11
years of teaching experience, had always been
assigned a bilingual classroom. Because the
structure of the bilingual program prior to Prop-
osition 227 placed native language instructional
responsibility in the hands of teaching aides,
Connie never worked directly with her immi-
grant students in the area of primary language
instruction. During the study, Connie taught a
third-grade, self-contained English language
development (ELD) class of 20 students. In her
3rd year teaching at Westway, Celia, who was
born in Mexico, was the most experienced
native Spanish-speaking teacher at the school.
In her mid-20s, Celia began teaching at the
78
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
school as a district intern. During the study,
Celia taught a self-contained ELD class of 20
first- and second-grade students.
At Open Valley, the second school site in this
study, 90% of the students were Latino and two
thirds of the students were classified as ELLs.
The research there focused on Angelica and
Elisa. A 5th-year teacher, Angelica came to
teaching through her involvement in a migrant
education program as an undergraduate. Dur-
ing the year of the study, Angelica taught a
second-grade, Spanish-bilingual class of 18 stu-
dents. The second-grade students in her class
received language arts and math instruction in
Spanish. The students also received 45 minutes
a day of English language instruction done by
Angelica. Born in Mexico, Elisa was educated in
California and grew up in the Central Valley.
She had been a teacher for 4 years—all of them
at Open Valley and each in a different grade.
During the 1999-2000 academic year, Elisa
taught a third-grade bilingual classroom of 14 to
20 students. All 4 teachers in the study held a
BCLAD credential.
Data Sources
Multiple sources of data were collected to
build a picture of the implementation of Propo-
sition 227 and how teachers responded to it.
Stritikus observed the teachers in a host of dif-
ferent classroom and school settings. In addi-
tion, each teacher and other key participants in
the district were interviewed. Data collection
for the study ran from spring 1999 through
spring 2000.
Varghese, for her study, observed each of the
teachers’ classrooms 10 to 12 times and inter-
viewed each teacher 10 to 12 times, and Stritikus
observed each of the teachers’ classrooms a
minimum of 21 times and interviewed each
teacher 3 times throughout the study. Varghese
relied on scratch notes (Emerson et al., 1995),
and Stritikus used scratch notes and audio
recordings from observations—both used these
to create detailed field notes. Interviews with
teachers and other stakeholders were audio
recorded.
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Data Analysis
After their observations and interviews were
completed, both authors conducted a close
reading of the entire set of field notes looking for
certain words, phrases, patterns of behavior,
subjects’ ways of thinking, and events that
stand out (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992, p. 166). Dur-
ing these initial read-throughs, Varghese cen-
tered on attempting to understand how teach-
ers defined and practiced their professional
roles as bilingual teachers, whereas Stritikus
centered on building an understanding of how
teachers’ beliefs and theories influenced lan-
guage and literacy instruction in their post-
Proposition 227 classrooms (Emerson et al.,
1995; Glasser & Strauss, 1967).
To address each question, analytic commen-
taries grounded in the data were written. The
analytic commentaries served as the basis of the
themes generated from the data and were cen-
tral in the development of codes and data analy-
sis. For this article, both authors used codes
such as the individual beliefs and characteris-
tics (especially in relation to bilingual educa-
tion) of the teachers and the institutional chal-
lenges of the teachers, although for their larger
studies, the authors had additional and differ-
ent codes because each study had a different
emphasis.
FINDINGS
The manner in which the teachers in the
study responded and reacted to elements of lan-
guage policy has crucial implications for the
manner in which we approach the preparation
of teachers to work with culturally and linguis-
tically diverse students. To fully understand
this connection, we examine the specific factors
that we identified were most responsible for the
way teachers responded or created language
policy in their schools and classrooms. After
discussing these specific factors, we discuss the
implications for teacher education.
Both studies found the importance of the fol-
lowing specific factors in how teachers created
or responded to language policy: (a) the lan-
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
guage policy of a particular school/district/
state and the way it was implemented, (b) the
teachers’ sense of their professional identity,
and (c) their personal history and their entry
into their profession. In our narrative, we select
and use specific examples of the actions and
words from some of the teachers in both our
studies to illustrate our points. Table 2 provides
a guide to the beliefs and practices of each
teacher in the study in terms of how they cre-
ated and responded to language policy in their
classrooms, schools, and districts.
Local Implementation of Language Policy
Although the individual qualities of teach-
ers—their educational experiences, their peda-
gogical expertise, and so forth—played a large
role, the local policy environments in which the
teachers work also played a major factor in how
teachers responded to language policy. Teach-
ers who may have had similar individual char-
acteristics often acted differently across differ-
ent contexts. This can be attributed also to the
nature of the policy environment in which the
teachers found themselves and how they
responded to this. For example, although both
Angelica and Elizabeth believed strongly in pri-
mary language instruction and used it in their
classroom, Angelica was a more vocal advocate.
She described her work as “fighting” for the
program. Elizabeth, like 3 of the other teachers
in the Philadelphia study, enacted her belief in
primary language instruction by using it
(almost exclusively) in her classroom and help-
ing to construct her school’s bilingual program
but not getting involved in change at a cluster or
district level.
This point illustrates a major difference of the
context and evolution of bilingual education in
Pennsylvania and California as well as how the
individual school atmosphere had a large influ-
ence on teachers’ roles as policy makers. Cali-
fornia had a more rooted history of bilingual
education and training for bilingual teachers
and therefore a greater sense of how dual lan-
guage instruction was to be implemented.
However, in Pennsylvania, the guidelines in the
79
TABLE 2 Summary of Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Terms of Language Policy in Pennsylvania and California

California Study

Westway Elementary
• Celia: Cautious optimism surrounding move away from bilingual education
• Connie: Strong supporter of the move away from bilingual education
Open Valley Elementary
• Angelica: Strong bilingual education advocate
• Elisa: Strong bilingual education supporter but concerned about how to transition students from English to Spanish

Pennsylvania Study

Miller Elementary
• Elizabeth: Strong supporter of bilingual education but frustrated by lack of guidelines
• Maria: Supporter of bilingual education but worried about students’ knowledge of English
Vargas Middle School
• Francisca: Strong supporter of bilingual education—emphasized the need for all students to learn Spanish
Taylor Elementary
• Ruben: Supporter of bilingual education but concerned about students’ knowledge of English

school district and in many schools were
extremely hazy. Moreover, the state did not
offer teacher certification (and training) for
bilingual teachers. In many instances, this left
the responsibility almost entirely to teachers to
create and institute a language policy for their
schools—teachers who often had not under-
gone specialized training in bilingual teaching.
Even when her principal mentioned plans to
put together guidelines in terms of language
policy for their school in the following year,
Elizabeth did not view that as enough and
believed that the guidelines ought to be coming
from above that level, such as the district.
Although Elizabeth did not get involved
beyond enacting language policy beyond the
classroom level, Angelica was extremely active
as an advocate for bilingual education. Angel-
ica’s actions were supported by a schoolwide
context that had a more defined and longer his-
tory of a language policy, one that supported
native language instruction. After the passage
of Proposition 227, Angelica’s school main-
tained its bilingual education program through
the parental waiver process. Angelica played a
prominent role in securing the parental waivers
that allowed the school to maintain the pro-
gram. The contrast between the actions of Eliza-
beth and Angelica indicates the strong influ-
ence that the local policy context can have on
teachers with similar individual qualities.
In addition, teachers who might have been
supportive of the goals of bilingual education
found themselves in school structures that had
been so changed by Proposition 227 that they
were not able to conduct their classrooms in the
manner in which they felt would best serve their
students. Such was the case with Celia. For
Celia, Proposition 227 implementation was an
ongoing tension. Although she initially greeted
the law with cautious optimism, the local con-
text in which she worked influenced her to
rethink her position. As her disillusionment
with the school’s choice of a scripted literacy
program and English-only grew, her literacy
practice reflected this change. Late in the 1999-
2000 academic year, literacy practice in her
classroom showed her attempt to shield her stu-
dents from the isolation and frustration that she
experienced in school. During the course of the
study, literacy instruction in her classroom
straddled the divide between English-only and
bilingual education.
In the Pennsylvania context, Francisca,
although a strong supporter for bilingual
education, was teaching social studies in an
English-curriculum classroom. She voiced her
fear about rocking the boat in her school and
therefore did not attempt to further her agenda
of teaching in both languages. Francisca
claimed that although her school had a bilin-
gual program, she felt that many teachers and
other staff were not supportive of it. However,
she allowed students to speak among them-
selves in Spanish and used Spanish with stu-
dents who were not proficient in English. Both

80 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005

Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
Celia and Francisca used creative ways to
oppose a school structure that did not support
dual-language education, responding to their
particular contexts.
The actions of these 4 teachers illustrate that
any analysis of the roles of teachers in language
policy mediation must begin with a deep
understanding of the political and professional
contexts in which they work.
Sense of Professional Identity as
Dual-Language Teachers
A second major factor that we identified in
how teachers responded to the policy environ-
ments in their schools and districts was their
perceptions about their own teaching ability
and their confidence in their teaching knowl-
edge of bilingual education. This was also
linked to the coherence of the language policy
that was in place in their particular context.
These interrelated factors reveal the tension that
researchers in policy studies and educational
reform have noted, that teachers often perceive
a particular policy or reform to inhibit their cre-
ativity but at the same time, when there are
loose models, they complain about the amount
of time required to construct their curriculum or
do not display a sense of security in doing so
(Datnow et al., 2002).
Interestingly, in both studies, the area in
which teachers felt the most insecurity was in
the area of transitioning students from Spanish
to English. In many bilingual programs
throughout the nation, students spend the early
years of instruction in their primary language,
and once language and literacy competencies
have developed, they are “transitioned,” with
teachers gradually introducing English. For ex-
ample, in Angelica’s and Elisa’s school, Open
Valley, teachers used percentages of language
use to guide teachers in how the process of tran-
sition would occur. By third grade, students
were to start the year doing half of their aca-
demic tasks in English and half in Spanish. By
the end of the year, they were to transition to do-
ing the majority of their academic work in Eng-
lish. This process deeply confounded Elisa
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
because she felt that the current policy context
and the lack of knowledge about what exactly to
do left her in a very compromised situation and
grasping for pedagogical straws.
I didn’t know exactly what they needed for English
reading. I don’t know if they need practice with the
sounds or can just take advantage of being fluent
readers in Spanish. Nadie me dijó [nobody told me],
Elisa, do this test, and it’s going to tell you if the kids
need to know the sounds. Do this paper, or by talk-
ing to the kids it’s going to tell you if they know the
sounds. Nobody really gave me anything.
Elisa felt a great deal of confusion regarding
her role as the transition teacher, and this led to
significant insecurities regarding her pedagogi-
cal choices. Although she was officially to begin
making the move to English instruction by the
midway point of the year, she did not do so be-
cause she was not sure how develop the next
steps and construct a transition program that
met the needs of the students.
As described in the Methods section, the two
clusters in the Pennsylvania study were at dif-
ferent places in relation to their language policy.
Cluster A (where Ruben was teaching) had a
policy where in fourth grade, the bilingual
classrooms transitioned from Spanish to Eng-
lish. Cluster B’s (where Maria, Elizabeth, and
Carmen were teaching) language policy was
still in development and seemed to be config-
ured differently according to each school. Both
Maria and Elizabeth at Miller Elementary
voiced their frustration about the lack of direc-
tion for bilingual teachers in their school dis-
trict, cluster, and school. Maria often talked
about her confusion and made a comparison of
her situation and those in regular classrooms, as
the following excerpt shows:
I need to know what’s going to happen, and that’s
what I think sometimes, we’re not happy but we’re
just confused. I mean, this is not my—I’m still, this is
my second year, and I’m still—like if I was in a regu-
lar classroom, I’m sure I’d have my problems and my
other things to deal with, but I would know this is
what I’m doing.
Maria exemplified her feeling of being lost and a
lack of control that she found conflicted with the
very core of herself as a teacher. Elizabeth ech-
81
oed Maria’s feeling when she literally talked
about questioning herself and doubting her
role.
I don’t understand how it works in Urbantown, and
I feel very isolated here and I wind up feeling unsuc-
cessful or at least questioning what my success will
be ’cause I don’t know what happens to these chil-
dren . . . so I’m constantly questioning myself and
that really bothers me, it really bothers me. And
sometimes I don’t know that I want to stay in that,
you know?
This was in contrast to Ruben, who used his
own experience to validate the model of transi-
tion from Spanish to English in the fourth grade
that his cluster and school was using:
I did have enough background in my native tongue,
enough skills and strategies, that it took me a year, to,
to get comfortable and, and to go into my second lan-
guage, and I used a lot of those skills that I learned in
one language and applied them in my second lan-
guage once I started picking up language and things,
but that happened in fourth grade so our model is
holding true, you know, personally for me, in terms
of what we’re trying to do, third grade it looks, it’s
too early, OK, fourth grade is just about right, and
that was, it happened, as it so happened, that was my
personal experience.
These examples indicate the reciprocal rela-
tionship that exists between teachers’ profes-
sional identities and their responses to
language policies. In fact, it could be argued that
this relationship lies at the heart of bilingual
teaching, causing teachers to feel more or less
secure about their professional sense of selves.
Personal History and Entry Into the Field
These two factors were interestingly linked to
one another in that it seemed that the teachers
who felt strongly that their primary language,
Spanish, and their culture was put down or
ignored when they were growing up, were the
ones that intentionally chose the bilingual
teaching profession. Angelica, who became one
of the teachers in charge of curricular and pro-
grammatic changes that favored primary lan-
guage instruction, explained that she intention-
ally chose the field of bilingual education
because of the shame and humiliation that she
experienced in English-only schools. She, like
82
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
Elizabeth, saw her actions as a teacher in direct
opposition and response to that experience: “I
wanted to be a bilingual teacher because I
believe that a child’s school experience should
be different than mine.”
Francisca also spoke at length of being dark-
skinned in her home country, the Dominican
Republic, and about the injustices she suffered
when growing up there. Although they taught
in different states and under different policy
contexts, Elizabeth, Francisca, and Angelica
built on their experiences with racism and xeno-
phobia in their own education to be the most
vocal supporters of primary language instruc-
tion. They viewed bilingual education, and spe-
cifically the development of students’ reading
and writing abilities in Spanish, as a key remedy
in addressing current inequalities in education.
In this sense, their past experiences became
powerful explanatory forces in how they
reacted to or created language policy in their
schools.
It was not the case that all teachers in the
study were unequivocal supporters of primary
language instruction. Teachers who had unin-
tentionally entered into the field of bilingual ed-
ucation or whose childhood experiences were
not similar to those of Angelica and Elizabeth
were more likely to support the direction of
changes brought about by Proposition 227, as
was the case with Connie in the California
study, or be most concerned with English lan-
guage student, as was the case with Maria in the
Pennsylvania study. Both teachers also de-
scribed their unintentional entry into bilingual
teaching. Prior to Proposition 227, Connie was
classified as a “bilingual teacher,” but she never
recalls intentionally choosing bilingual
education as her career path.
Basically, I fell into it. I have a lot of background in
other languages. My first year here, 11 years ago, I
was assigned to a bilingual class not even knowing
until I got my class list. I wasn’t asked. I was just put in.
Unintentional entry into the field was identified
in the research of Vulliamy and Webb (1993) as a
key factor in teacher reaction to reform. Because
both Connie and Maria did not intentionally
choose to become bilingual teachers, their com-
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
mitment to the goals of bilingual education did
not seem to run as deep. Their weak commit-
ment to bilingual education was also linked to
how they perceived their educational experi-
ences as ethnic minorities. In Connie’s case, this
resulted in a very strict interpretation of the
mandates of the anti-bilingual education law,
including her attempts to stop students’ use of
Spanish in the classroom and her focus on the
basics of English language and literacy. For
Maria, it meant being very concerned about
whether her students were receiving instruc-
tion in English and providing extra ESL lessons
in her classroom. Thus, the teachers’ motiva-
tions for the entry into the profession and per-
sonal educational experiences played a salient
role in their responses to language policy,
especially their commitment to being involved
in primary language maintenance.
CONCLUSION
In Skilton-Sylvester’s (2003) study of ESL
teachers, she argued that the decisions that
teachers make with regards to the ELLs in their
classrooms is the most powerful type of lan-
guage policy, stating, “Much of language teach-
ing can also be seen as language policymaking”
(p. 7). The cross-case analysis in this article pro-
vides powerful evidence that teachers mediate
and respond to language policy based on an
interaction of their beliefs, their personal and
professional experiences with language and
ethnicity, the language policy (or lack of) that
has been implemented in their district and their
school, and their understanding of their profes-
sional role. By laying out the major factors that
influenced how teachers mediated and
responded to language policy, these findings
demonstrate that crucial decisions involving
ELLs revolve around an interaction of teachers’
personal narratives and policies that are imple-
mented from above. This study supports the
growing evidence indicating that the political
and ideological positions of teachers have
played a significant role in how teachers adopt,
resist, and negotiate elements of a particular
language policy (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-Lopez,
& Asato, 2000; Stritikus & Garcia, 2000).
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
Although these positions stem heavily from
the belief systems of teachers, especially their
views of their education and personal experi-
ences growing up in the United States, the way
such positions are played out also depends on
the school, district, and state environment in
relation to bilingual education and language
policy. As this article shows, it is not only a ques-
tion of whether a school or a state is “support-
ive” of bilingual education that determines
teachers enacting a language policy of primary
language instruction. Support must also be
looked at in terms of what has been put into
place for teachers—for example, in terms of
training they receive and the historical evolu-
tion of a particular language policy. Therefore,
although Proposition 227 outlawed primary
language instruction, the conditions that had
been put into place before—training for bilin-
gual teachers and the institution of primary lan-
guage instruction in many school districts—
ironically offers possibilities for teachers to fight
back and enact native language instruction as
part of their language policy. The lack of an
institutional and historical setup for bilingual
education in the state of Pennsylvania seemed
to make it harder for teachers to put together a
specific language policy in their schools,
although there was not a top-down ban on pri-
mary language instruction, as in California.
Although in both studies it may seem that
teachers were underinformed and underpre-
pared, we argue that these cases are illustrative
of the constant challenges bilingual teachers
have had throughout the history of bilingual
education in the United States in the absence
and ambiguity surrounding language policy in
the country.
Implications for Teacher Preparation for
Teachers of English Language Learners
In a recently edited volume, Minaya-Rowe
(2002) attempts to provide an initial overview of
the professional development of teachers of
ELLs, which she characterizes as “the most
unexamined and overlooked areas of pre-
service and in-service teacher education in the
United States” (p. 2). In fact, one of the major
83
reasons that has been identified for the chronic
underperformance of ELLs in schools has been
the inadequate and haphazard preparation of
teachers (Garcia, 1994; Gersten & Jimenez, 1998;
Padron, Waxman, Powers, & Brown, 2002).
Most recently, there has been an increasing call
for all teachers to have preparation in teaching
culturally and linguistically diverse students,
although the emphases of the two major strands
have been somewhat different—Wong-Fillmore
and Snow (2002) have advocated for teachers to
have a deeper understanding of linguistic fea-
tures of English and their home language, and
scholars in the field of sheltered instruction
(Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2000) have called for
all teachers to be prepared in making academic
content accessible to second-language students
through an awareness of language. Although
these calls have significant merit, one of the
major issues with such approaches has been the
way that they have tended to characterize them-
selves as panaceas to teacher training and
methodology in relation to ELLs.
The most significant recommendation from
this article is that because teachers are never
conduits of a particular policy, teacher educa-
tion and teacher training, especially in relation
to bilingual teachers, must specifically address
the role of teachers as policy makers. Courses in
teacher preparation programs should specifi-
cally address how teachers can respond to,
change, and even create policy—specifically
language policy—at different levels. In fact,
what we suggest and advocate is the multidi-
mensionality of the knowledge base and roles of
teachers of ELLs, incorporating at least the fol-
lowing components, which have been identi-
fied by numerous scholars in other studies: a
deep understanding and awareness of linguis-
tic features and second-language acquisition/
socialization (Wong-Fillmore & Snow, 2002); an
understanding and incorporation of nontradi-
tional teaching techniques, such as cooperative
learning and strategies-based instruction
(Padron et al., 2002); an ability to deliver aca-
demic content (Echevarria et al., 2000); cultur-
ally responsive instruction, which focuses on
84
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
creating conditions in classrooms and schools
that integrate students’ needs and culture; and
critical pedagogy, having students raise ques-
tions about their own immediate conditions
and identify ways to transform these conditions
(Mercado, 2001). A final component that our
study brings out is that of advocacy/policy cre-
ator, encompassing the roles that teachers play
inside and beyond the classroom as decision
makers (Benson, 2004; Stritikus, 2002; Varghese,
2000). Ricento and Hornberger (1996) have
argued that “the most fundamental concerns of
ESL/EFL teachers—that is, what will I teach?
how will I teach? and why do I teach?—are
all language policy issues” (p. 421). With the
growing model of inclusion, this cannot be the
concern only of ESL/EFL or bilingual teachers
but must be the focus for all teachers and their
teacher preparation programs.
The findings of this study also force us to re-
think the way that professional development
must be conducted for teachers. If advocacy and
language policy mediation/agency are viewed
as integral dimensions of teachers’ roles, as we
argue, it must be integrated with the personal
and local narratives of teachers, as this study
shows. Therefore, spaces must be created in
teacher preparation programs, in which teach-
ers’ beliefs, their local settings, and research-
based content need to be discussed. Hiebert,
Gallimore, and Stigler (2002) proposed that a
professional knowledge base can and should be
created from teachers’ “craft” or practical
knowledge because this is the knowledge base
that most teachers draw from. Therefore, lan-
guage policy would not be learned solely as
content or propositional knowledge in the form
of teachers being taught the different types of
language policies that exist but in relation to
teachers’ own local variables and their personal
beliefs. In the work of Cochran-Smith and Lytle
(1999), they formulate that the most effective
way for teachers to learn is through the
knowledge-of-practice conception, where
the knowledge teachers need to teach well is gener-
ated when teachers treat their own classrooms and
schools as sites for intentional investigation at the
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
 same time that they treat the knowledge and theory
produced by others as generative material for inter-
rogation and interpretation. (Cochran-Smith & Lytle
1999, p. 2)
Therefore, language policy would be discussed
by teachers simultaneously as research-based
material and in relation to their own local set-
tings, such as the way policy decisions are made
and implemented in their state, district, and
schools.
Given the political and ideological context of
bilingual education, teacher education needs to
continue to envision ways that future teachers’
personal beliefs play a real and significant part
in their preparation for meeting the needs of lin-
guistically diverse students. Furthermore, this
process needs to be explicitly linked to the
larger social and cultural realities faced by im-
migrant students and their teachers. Reducing
the preparation of teachers to mechanistic and
methodological issues narrowly defines the
context that future teachers face. If we construct
the challenges facing teachers as merely techni-
cal, we will fail to prepare teachers to best meet
the needs of linguistically diverse students in
the current contentious and ambiguous con-
texts in which teachers of bilingual children
work. Bartolomé (1994) eloquently outlined the
danger of such a reductionist view, especially
for the schooling of immigrant children, as
follows:
The solution to the problem of the academic
underachievement [of cultural and linguistically di-
verse students] tends to be constructed in primarily
methodological and mechanistic terms dislodged
from the sociocultural reality that shapes it. That is,
the solution to the current underachievement of stu-
dents from subordinated cultures is often reduced to
finding the “right” teaching methods, strategies, or
prepackaged curricula that will work with students
who do not respond to so called “regular” or
“normal” instruction. (pp. 173-174)
We hope that the understanding of the
policy-making dimension of teachers of ELLs
reconceptualizes and adds to what is envi-
sioned for their professional identities and the
identities that they in turn help their students
forge.
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
REFERENCES
Bartolomé, L. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Towards
a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 27,
229-252.
Benson, C. (2004). Do we expect too much of bilingual
teachers? Bilingual teaching in developing countries
[Special issue]. International Journal of Bilingual Educa-
tion and Bilingualism, 7(2), 204-221.
Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (1992). Qualitative research for educa-
tion: An introduction to theory and qualitative methodology.
Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002). English as an international language:
The remaking of English through language spread and
change. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Cahnmann, M., & Varghese, M. M. (2004). By any other
name: Critical advocacy and bilingual education in the
United States. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Cardinale, K., Carnoy, M., & Stein, S. (1999). Bilingual edu-
cation for limited English proficiency students: Local
interests and resource availability as determinants of
pedagogical practice. Qualitative Studies in Education,
12(1), 37-57.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1999). Relationships of
knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communi-
ties. In A. Iran-Nejad & C. D. Pearson (Eds.), Review of
research in education (Vol. 24, pp. 251-307). Washington,
DC: American Educational Research Association.
Corson, D. (1995). Realities of teaching in a multiethnic
school. In O. García & C. Baker (Eds.), Policy and practice
in bilingual education: Extending the foundations (pp. 70-
84). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
Crawford, J. (1999). Bilingual education: History, politics, the-
ory, and practice (4th ed.). Los Angeles: Bilingual Educa-
tion Services.
Cummins, J. (1996). Negotiating identities: Education for
empowerment in a diverse society. Los Angeles: California
Association for Bilingual Education.
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual
children in the crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual
Matters.
Datnow, A., Hubbard, L., & Mehan, H. (2002). Extending
educational reform: From one school to many. New York:
Routledge Falmer.
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. J. (2000). Making content
comprehensible for English language learners: The SIOP
model. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Emerson, R., Fretz, R., & Shaw, L. (1995). Writing
ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on
teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on
teaching (3rd ed., pp. 119-161). New York: Macmillan.
Garcia, E. E. (1994). Understanding and meeting the challenge
of student cultural diversity. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
85
Gersten, R., & Jiménez, R. (1998). Modulating instruction
for language minority students. In E. J. Kameenui &
D. W. Cardine (Eds.), Effective teaching strategies that
accommodate diverse learners (pp. 256-301). Columbus,
OH: Merrill.
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action,
structure and contradiction in social action. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of a
theory of structuration. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Glasser, B. G., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded
theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.
Gutiérrez, K., Baquedano-Lopez, P., & Asato, J. (2000).
“English for the children”: The new literacy of the old
world order, language policy and educational reform.
The Bilingual Research Journal, 24 (1-2), 87-105.
Harré, R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind. Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Heller, M. (1994). Crosswords: Language education and ethnic-
ity in French Ontario. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hiebert, J., Gallimore, R., & Stigler, J. W. (2002). A knowl-
edge base for the teaching profession: What would it
look like and how can we get one? Educational
Researcher, 31(5), 3-15.
Hornberger, N., & Ricento, T. (1996). Unpeeling the onion:
Language planning and policy and the ELT profes-
sional. TESOL Quarterly, 30(3), 401-428.
Kaplan, R. B., & Baldauf R. B., Jr. (1997). Language planning:
From theory to practice. Philadelphia: Multilingual
Matters.
Levinson, B. A., & Holland, D. C. (1996). The cultural pro-
duction of the educated persons: An introduction. In
B. A. Levinson, D. E. Foley, & D. C. Holland (Eds.), The
cultural production of the educated person: Critical
ethnographies of schooling and local practice (pp. 1-56).
Albany: State University of New York Press.
M a c i a s , R. ( 1 9 9 9 ) . L a n g u a g e po l i c i e s a n d t h e
sociolinguistics historiography of Spanish in the United
States. In J. K. Peyton, P. Griffin, & R. Fasold (Eds.), Lan-
guage in action (pp. 52-83). Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Malen, B., & Knapp, M. (1997). Rethinking the multiple
perspectives approach to education policy analysis:
Implications for policy to practice connections. Journal
of Educational Policy, 12(5), 419-445.
Mercado, C. I. (2001). The learner: “Race,” “ethnicity,” and
linguistic difference. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of
research on teaching (4th ed., pp. 668-694). Washington,
DC: American Educational Research Association.
Minaya-Rowe, L. (Ed.). (2002). Teacher training and effective
pedagogy in the context of student diversity. Greenwich,
CT: Information Age Publishing.
Padron, Y. N., Waxman, H. C., Powers, R. A., & Brown, A. P.
(2002). Evaluating the effects of pedagogy for improv-
ing resiliency program: The challenges of school reform
in a high stakes testing climate. In L. Minaya-Rowe
(Ed.), Teacher training and effective pedagogy in the context
of student diversity (pp. 211-238). Greenwich, CT: Infor-
mation Age Publishing.
86
Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009
Rogoff, B. (1995). Observing sociocultural activity on three
planes: Participatory appropriation, guided participa-
tion, and apprenticeship. In J. V. Wertsch, P. Del Rio, &
A. Alvarez (Eds.), Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 139-
164). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Skilton-Sylvester, E. (2003). Legal discourse and decisions,
teacher policymaking and the multilingual classroom:
Constraining and supporting Khmer/English
biliteracy in the United States. International Journal of
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6(3-4), 168-184.
Stritikus, T. T. (2002). Immigrant children and the politics of
English-only: Views from the classroom. New York: LFB
Scholarly Publishers.
Stritikus, T. T., & Garcia, E. E. (2000). Education of limited
English proficient students in California schools: An
assessment of the influence of Proposition 227 on
selected teachers and classrooms. The Bilingual Research
Journal, 24(1-2), 75-85.
Stritikus, T. T., & Garcia, E. E. (2003). The role of theory and
policy in the educational treatment of language minor-
ity students: Competitive structures in California. Edu-
cation Policy Analysis Archives, 11(26). Retrieved from
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n26/
Suarez-Orozco, M. M. (2001). Globalization, immigration,
and education: The research agenda. Harvard Educa-
tional Review, 71(3), 345-366.
Tatalovich, R. (1995). Nativism reborn? The official English
language movement and the American states. Lexington:
University of Kentucky Press.
Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1991). Rousing minds to life.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Varghese, M. M. (2000). Bilingual teachers-in-the-making:
Advocates, classroom teachers, and transients. Unpub-
lished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylva-
nia, Philadelphia.
Varghese, M. M. (2004a). Professional development for
bilingual teachers in the United States: Articulating and
contesting professional roles [Special issue]. Interna-
tional Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 7(2),
222-237.
Varghese, M. M. (2004b). “They should learn English/Students
have the right to be bilingual”: Unraveling dichotomies
of bilingual teaching. Manuscript submitted for
publication.
Vulliamy, G., & Webb, R. (1993). Progressive education and
the national curriculum: Findings from a global educa-
tion research project. Educational Review, 45(1), 21-41.
Wiese, A., & Garcia, E. E. (1998). The Bilingual Education
Act: Language minority students and equal educa-
tional opportunity. Bilingual Research Journal, 22(1),
1-18.
Wiley, T. G. (2002). Accessing language rights in education:
A brief history in the U.S. context. In J. W. Tollefson
(Ed.), Language policies in education: Critical issues (pp.
39-64). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Wong-Fillmore, L., & Snow, C. E. (2002). What teachers
need to know about language. In C. T. Adger, C. E.
Snow, & D. Christian (Eds.), What teachers need to know
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005
 about language (pp. 7-54). Washington, DC: Center for identity of ESL and bilingual teachers. She received her
Applied Linguistics. Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Woods, P. (1994). Adaptation and self-determination in
English primary schools. Oxford Review of Education,
Tom Stritikus is assistant professor of language, liter-
20(4).
acy, and culture at the University of Washington. His
areas of teaching and research relate to the challenges of
Manka M. Varghese is assistant professor of lan-
cultural and linguistic diversity. He received his Ph.D.
guage, literacy, and culture at the University of Washing-
from the University of California at Berkeley.
ton. Her research focuses on teacher education and teacher

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2005 87

Downloaded from http://jte.sagepub.com at CAPES on May 6, 2009