Bilingual interventionist beliefs and roles: Working with teachers in dialogue, disruption, and transaction

Date

2022-12-01T06:00:00.000Z

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Abstract

Literacy is an important tool for students to challenge education, themselves, and ultimately the world. Dialogue about books can effectively engage middle school and high school students in explicit dialogue, disruption, and transaction; however, educators seldom reach deeply enough to truly engage elementary students. More investigation is warranted to examine the complexities of the teacher’s role in facilitating these deep dialogues with upper elementary students. The purpose of this study was to explore my beliefs and roles as a bilingual interventionist committed to instruction through dialogue, disruption, and transaction, with translanguage. I researched to understand how these beliefs, roles, and interactive processes shaped my work with teachers. This analytic autoethnography centered on my conversations and interactions with third and fourth grade bilingual teachers as we planned and discussed lessons in a nine-week language arts unit that included read-alouds and character study of fictional texts.
There were three primary data sources: the researcher's personal journal, field notes from unit planning sessions with two teachers, and field notes from a discussion with the administrator before and after the unit. I analyzed data using two-cycle coding (Saldaña, 2011) and thematic organization (Attride-Stirling, 2001) to arrive at three global themes. I intentionally triangulated data by using an autoethnographic lens to continuously return to personal journal entries and observations captured in field notes with the teachers and administrator, maintaining an interstitial structure to the data as a whole. Findings are presented as global themes reflecting my evolving belief in giving support and the primary role I played as advisor/consultant. The findings also highlight how my interactions with the teachers changed across the course of the study and influenced my perceptions and actions. Finally, this study revealed a commitment to interactive processes involved in ensuring language access/freedom in learning.

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Keywords

Bilingual education, multilingual education, reading education

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