Skip to main content
Article
Challenges for Latino Educators Crossing Symbolic, Cultural, and Linguistic Boundaries: Coming to Voice in Teacher Preparation with Competing Voices
Journal of Latinos and Education (2010)
  • Theresa Y. Austin, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • Jerri Willett
  • Margret Gebhard
  • Agustin Laó Montes
Abstract

This article reports on a teacher education program's preparation of bilingual paraeducators during a period of conflicting educational reform of structured English immersion in Massachusetts. Drawing on nexus analysis of discourses (R. Scollon & S. W. Scollon, 2004), we discuss factors faced by Latino educators. These include competing discourses, historical institutional inequities, and boundaries circumscribing the interactions between university and communities. Through the use of a participant's text as a re-semiotized means of representing the new potentials that bilingual paraeducators bring to the field of teacher education, “cultural bumps” emerge and directions for teacher education are presented.

Keywords
  • discourses,
  • educational reform,
  • para educators,
  • professional education,
  • university-community partnerships
Disciplines
Publication Date
September, 2010
Publisher Statement
DOI: 10.1080/15348431.2010.491040 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15348431.2010.491040#.UrB7bzcnwUw
Citation Information
Theresa Y. Austin, Jerri Willett, Margret Gebhard and Agustin Laó Montes. "Challenges for Latino Educators Crossing Symbolic, Cultural, and Linguistic Boundaries: Coming to Voice in Teacher Preparation with Competing Voices" Journal of Latinos and Education Vol. 9 Iss. 4 (2010)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/theresa_austin/14/