The intersection of language ideologies and language awareness among in-service teachers of emergent bilinguals

Abstract

Important components of the teacher knowledge base are how aware a teacher is of language (including how it is acquired and best taught), as well as their language ideologies. Because a combination of ideologies and awareness may guide many pedagogical decisions, this mixed-methods sequential explanatory study explored prevalent language ideological orientations of educators in a dual language immersion (DLI) context, their degrees of Teacher Language Awareness (TLA), and the relationship between the two. Findings revealed that participants with high degrees of TLA oriented significantly more positively towards additive language ideologies, while educators with low degrees of TLA were significantly more likely to orient toward deficit ideologies. Data from cases representing high and low degrees of TLA provide an in-depth view of the relationship between teachers’ TLA and ideologies in practice. This study extends an understanding of how language awareness and ideologies interact, along with implications for pre- and in-service teacher professional development.