Melinda Martin-Beltrán

School leaders are key to the success of dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, yet there is limited research on how these leaders develop. In this case study, we examine how a Latina DLBE leader developed liderazgo as she supported her bilingual teachers’ learning. With a critical sociocultural lens conceptualizing development within a collective zone of proximal development (ZPD), we analyzed teacher meetings, co-planning, debriefs, and pláticas. Findings reveal how liderazgo development is a transformational process propelled by three interrelated praxes: commitment to collaborative learning, recognition of systemic inequities, and growing advocacy. Our study contributes to the conceptualization of liderazgo development and offers implications for high-quality and equitable DLBE.

Research has suggested that dual language bilingual education (DLBE) has the potential to improve intergroup relations, reduce discrimination, and lead to societal change; however, studies have also revealed the complexity and adverse consequences of integration that warrant further investigation. This chapter situates the topic of intergroup relations in DLBE in a socio-historical context and reviews seminal scholarly work that has theorized and investigated how stakeholders from different linguistic, cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds interact in DLBE communities. We discuss how the lens of critical consciousness can complement intergroup contact theory in the context of DLBE. We review and synthesize empirical studies as they relate to four intersecting themes: (1) shared goals, (2) status, (3) cooperation, and (4) institutional support. We explore how research has documented challenges and affordances for each of these conditions related to intergroup relations in DLBE contexts. Synthesizing the research, we offer implications for future research and practice to better understand and fulfill the potential of intergroup relations in DLBE.

Although TESOL educators often incorporate autobiographical narrative as pedagogy to develop language and literacy among language learners, research has paid little attention to how immigrant youths’ personal stories relate to advocacy and social justice. This article addresses this gap by investigating and theorizing how student advocacy developed in an autobiographical narrative project, the Immigrant Student Stories Project (ISSP). Using a positioning theoretical lens and an ethnographic approach, the authors focus on students’ participation and voices in their narratives and draw upon interviews and observational fieldnotes across ISSP contexts within and beyond one high school. The authors’ investigation of the ISSP examined what students do with their narratives and how they are positioned both in and outside of a classroom context, which the authors argue have consequences for language learning and social justice. The study found that learners are positioned as legitimate speakers, community members, and advocates when they are afforded opportunities to share their stories publicly, connect their stories with a larger community, and apply their stories as tools for advocacy. This study contributes to TESOL scholarship by exploring student advocacy through the lens of positioning theory and revealing how advocacy, language, and literacy can develop synergistically through storytelling.

This study contributes to research on heritage language learners (HLLs) and peer interaction by exploring the nature of the interactions between HLLs and their linguistically diverse peers, who may defy traditionally discrete language learner categories. Grounded in sociocultural theory, we analyzed video‐recorded peer interactions during Spanish/English literacy activities in an extracurricular, bilingual secondary program. We found that students' interaction patterns and perceived expertise may shift with different interlocutors and language‐related episodes (LREs). Our findings call for future research to refine the conceptual framing and theorizing of peer interactions, especially involving HLLs across an array of peer groupings. We offer implications for educators mediating peer collaboration and incorporating HLLs' multifaceted linguistic expertise to enhance learning opportunities for diverse learners.

This qualitative case study offers a window into one classroom in which one Latinx English language arts teacher and her newcomer high school students tapped into community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) as they engaged in literacy practices to resist oppression, denounce discrimination, and strive for social justice. We draw upon Yosso’s (2005) framework of community cultural wealth (CCW) to understand how teachers can encourage resistance among historically marginalized students within the current racist and xenophobic political climate; and we examine how students respond to the teacher’s invitation to engage and develop their resistant capital through their writing. Data analyzed for this study include student letters, teacher interviews, and fieldnotes from one lesson, which was situated in a year-long ethnographic study. We found that the teacher cultivated resistant capital by tapping into students’ lived experiences to scrutinize oppressive rhetoric and persist in the face of adversity. Students seized the opportunity to resist the dominant anti-immigrant narrative by leveraging their resistant capital through counter-stories, assertions of experiential knowledge, and appeals to a moral imperative. Our study contributes to scholarship on CCW by exploring how CCW is utilized in a previously under-examined context and has implications for educators by offering examples of classroom practices that cultivate CCW and transform deficit discourses that threaten to impede academic success, especially among Latinx students.

This qualitative study investigates peer feedback among adolescent English and Spanish learners writing together in an extracurricular bilingual literacy program. Data sources include audio recordings, writing revision history on Google documents and interviews. This study reveals the complexity of peer interaction, feedback processes, and the potential for mutual growth. Oriented by Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and informed by the concept of languaging (Mercer, 2004; Swain, 2006), this study conceptualizes peer feedback as acts that students take to mediate the thinking, writing, and communication processes while working together on a language autobiography. Findings show that students strategically used dynamic feedback acts mediating the writing and revising process, such as 'Ask questions', 'Give information', 'Make corrections'. We also found the use of translanguaging in the feedback acts expanded opportunities for learning as linguistically diverse peers were engaged in metalinguistic discussions, text co-construction, and language experiments. This study contributes to a new understanding of peer feedback which leverages the cultural and linguistic resources students bring to school.