Critical Literacy Pedagogy for Bilingual Preservice Teachers ― Exploring Social Identity and Academic Literacies

This book presents a participatory action research study exploring the social identity and academic literacies of bilingual preservice teachers. It describes the transformative experiences of undergraduate students during their participation in a program specially designed to develop bilingual teachers in Hawaii, USA. Further, it discusses how the curriculum and instruction in the classroom provide a ‘third space’ for facilitating peer interaction and critical reflection on such issues as academic literacy, heritage language education, and teacher identity. In doing so, it connects ideas of social identity and academic literacies of bilingual preservice teachers to the “real work” of mentoring and teaching PreK-12 students themselves.

Hyesun Cho, Ph.D. is an associate professor of TESOL in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at the University of Kansas, USA. She received her MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Prior to her graduate studies in Hawaii, she taught English in secondary schools in Seoul, Korea. She also taught language minority high school and undergraduate students and worked with public-school teachers in Honolulu, Hawaii. Cho is the recipient of the 2009 Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award from the Second Language Research SIG at the American Educational Research Association. Her work has appeared in several book chapters and journals, including Race, Ethnicity, and Education, Language and Education, Computers and Education, Curriculum Inquiry, Teaching and Teacher Education and TESOL Journal. Her research interests include social identity of language learners and teachers, critical literacy, heritage language education, and teaching for social justice.