Chris K. Chang-Bacon

University of Virginia | UVa · School of Education and Human Development

The racial and linguistic diversity of U.S. classrooms has drawn attention to the intersecting dynamics of race, racism, and language learning in teacher education. While most studies in this vein focus on teachers, almost no research has focused on teacher educators themselves. Therefore, this study draws on interviews with teacher educators to do...

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling worldwide, compelling educators, researchers, and policymakers to grapple with the implications of these interruptions. However, while the scale of these disruptions may be unprecedented, for many students, interrupted schooling is not a new phenomenon. In this article, I draw insights from the field of Stu...

Teacher education has redoubled efforts to prepare a predominantly monolingual teaching force for linguistic diversity in U.S. schools. Some jurisdictions are requiring specific teacher preparation, such as mandated Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) endorsement in Massachusetts, the context of this study. Previous research has explored the intersec...

Background/Context After decades of restrictive U.S. language policies geared toward English-only education, recent years have seen a proliferation of dual-language programs, Seal of Biliteracy awards, and bilingual education programming more broadly. The demand for such programming ostensibly suggests growing consensus around the benefits of lingu...

This article reviews and synthesizes empirical literature on critical literacies in English language teaching (ELT), gathering perspectives from international scholarship. Across a range of global contexts, the consistency with which English learning is touted as access to power while acting to marginalize those still learning the language demonstr...

Language difference is often framed through a deficit lens, especially for multilingual student writers. Compounding this issue, teacher candidates (TCs) rarely receive sustained guidance on how to give effective writing feedback. As a result, many TCs perceive the primary purpose of writing feedback to be surface-level error correction. To address...

In the introduction to this special issue, which examines implementations of critical language awareness (CLA) in multilingual classrooms, the authors introduce CLA as a framework for equity in education that operates in tandem with critical and liberatory approaches such as translanguaging, funds of knowledge, youth participatory action research,...

Second language specialists are often called on to advocate for multilingual learners (MLs), particularly in response to deficit views of MLs' writing. Such advocacy necessitates critical language awareness (CLA) in regard to issues of equity, power, and ideology that intersect with the lives of MLs on a daily basis. However, little is known about...

Among inequities faced by multilingual learners, engagement in science education is one of the most persistent. Research suggests leveraging students’ full multilingual repertoires in science education can help address this gap. However, pervasive monolingual norms in schooling may impede multilingual engagement, impacting students’ multilingual id...

Neo-national ideologies are often associated with despots and political extremists. Yet, we argue that neo-nationalist discourses also manifest in everyday TESOL classroom interactions. In English-dominant contexts, teachers send potent messages about who does or does not “belong” in classrooms, largely based on racialized notions of English profic...

Teachers are often positioned as advocates for students, yet little is known about how teachers learn about advocacy. Therefore, this paper documents how ESL endorsement candidates (n = 60) conceptualized and enacted advocacy for linguistically diverse learners. We explored how participants defined advocacy, then analyzed how they enacted these und...

A majority of U.S. states have established a "Seal of Biliteracy" (SoBL) to recognize students' multilingualism. Primarily under the purview of bilingual and world language education, the field of literacy research has remained largely silent on these seals. Yet, the authority these seals grant to state institutions for credentialing literacy has s...

With U.S. classrooms increasingly characterized by linguistic diversity, policies mandating teacher training around English learning have proliferated. Recent federal oversight prompted Massachusetts to implement an initiative to endorse its 70,000+ teachers in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI). While policy research has productively emphasized tea...

Freirean approaches have contributed much to the field of language education. In this chapter, we trace Freire’s influence through self-designated “critical” approaches, including critical literacies, critical language awareness, and critical consciousness in multilingual contexts. Conversely, we also demonstrate the contributions of bilingual educ...

Recent research highlights teachers’ key role as language policy interpreters, yet few studies have explored whether and how teachers learn about policy interpretation. This article explores how language policy interpretation is addressed within a statewide teacher education initiative in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Since 2012, the state has r...

This study documents the notion of unilateral translanguaging–the configuration of translanguaging spaces to disproportionately privilege a dominant language or its speakers. We analyze four teachers’ translanguaging practices in a Portuguese-English two-way immersion (TWI) program in the United States. Rather than focusing on whether and how trans...

Language and literacy research is fraught with contradictions. In our view, critical literacies are inherently multilingual and transnational. Nevertheless, the scholarly literature on implementational and instructional paradigms for critical literacies tends to prioritize publications in English, a trend we recognize is extended by this very chapt...

Research has suggested that U.S. K–12 dual‐language and Seal of Biliteracy programs do not benefit all students equally in their recognition of students’ multilingual competencies. The authors explored the perspectives of high school Seal of Biliteracy graduates: how they conceptualized the seal and the benefits that they had or had not derived fro...

Recent scholarship reveals how English can be disproportionately privileged in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programming (Cervantes‐Soon et al., 2017; Valdés, 1997). Through a program designed to serve Brazilian (im)migrant populations, this study expands the scope of DLBE research. This study took place in the U.S. state of Massachusett...

As the popularity of two-way immersion (TWI) programs increases across the U.S., recent scholarship has drawn attention to inequities in who benefits from these programs and how they are implemented. These findings have drawn the field’s attention to the instrumental part played by particular stakeholders in TWI program implementation. While this r...

In this introductory chapter, teacher education and research in literacy are viewed through a demographic lens that recognizes the racial, ethnic, and linguistic breadth that characterizes children and youth in schools today. Such a lens brings into focus the need for an expansion of methods beyond those that have historically constrained the liter...

This paper critically examines the notion of ‘sheltered’ pedagogies for English language teaching in English-dominant contexts. I specifically explore how the increasingly popular Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) model has been interpreted in certain contexts to further monolingual language ideologies. Drawing on critical and poststructural approa...

Since 2016, there has been a proliferation of discourse around what has come to be called “post-truth.” Much of this discourse references critical literacies as a proposed means by which to disrupt post-truth across educational policy, pedagogy, and methodology. In this paper, I highlight the paradoxical degree of overlap between post-truth and the...

This piece reviews David Gramling’s The Invention of Monolingualism (Bloomsbury, 2016), winner of the 2018 American Association for Applied Linguistics book award. With the prevalence of academic discourse on bi/multilingualism, this book takes on the under-explored notion of monolingualism. Drawing from a range of disciplines, including applied li...

This paper analyzes the poetry of 20 ninth graders in an urban high school. While these students were considered “failing” by the state’s assessment standards, we argue that, through poetry, these students were empowered to write against this "failing" student identity.

This research report documents the nature and impact of a Consortium of 10 school boards a liated with the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE) in leading bold and sophisticated change for today’s students, in one of the highest performing and most culturally diverse educational systems in the world – the province of Ontario in Canada....

This study bridges the dichotomies between the study of multilingualism and multidialecticism to explore the mythologies surrounding what is often called Standard English (*SE). While literacy and teacher education have made progress toward preparing teachers to work with linguistically diverse populations, such preparation is usually geared exclus...

This literature review explored educational change trends as reflected in the first 15 years of the Journal of Educational Change (JEC), from 2000 to 2014. The examination of 52 articles accounting for 61% of the Journal’s historical citations indicated that the JEC has evolved through five periods, which relate to ‘waves of educational change’ bey...