Deborah K Palmer
Biographic Data
| ID | 201739 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah K Palmer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah K |
| FAMILY NAME | Palmer |
| SIGNATURE | PALMER D K |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4547-1589 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 240 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Trans -ing to Dismantle and Rebuild a Third Space in a Two-Way Bilingual Second Grade: “ Tapar un Hoyo para Destapar Otro ”
Considering teachers as policymakers, we carried out an ethnography of policy implementation with four bilingual teachers—the second-grade team at a 50/50 two-way bilingual elementary school—during the first 7 months of their implementation of a new program model in which children were integrated throughout the day across language groups. Previously, the school taught language and literacy in “home language” groupings, with Spanish-dominant and E…
Trans ‐ing in education to confront polarizing forces in our increasingly interconnected world
Conceptualizing the transformativeness of translanguaging: A spectrum perspective
Translanguaging theory posits that bi/multilingual students have unitary, dynamic repertoires of communicative features and seeks to subvert monolingual norms and language standardization that perpetuate the marginalization of bi/multilingual learners. Yet, some argue that translanguaging research in education fails to live up to its transformative claims. Motivated by these ongoing debates, we conducted a systematic literature review of translan…
Not sure if I would’ve learned that in the States”: Bilingual preservice teachers’ subjectivities Nepantleando in study abroad
Teacher educators’ critical language awareness: Building toward transformation in critically conscious teacher education
Calls to prepare all teachers to effectively teach multilingual learners are not new. Nevertheless, preservice preparation programs continue to fall short of this goal, despite enormous effort from teacher educators and researchers alike. This commentary leverages this IMRJ special issue on Critical Multilingual Awareness/Critical Consciousness in teacher preparation to both interrogate and consider solutions to this longstanding problem. Buildin…
Un Día De Lo Padre: A multigenerational Plática with bilingual pre-service teachers and their elders, sharing perspectivas about translanguaging and bilingual education
In university bilingual educator preparation programs, we frequently discuss issues across and around language, culture, and teaching. Topics inevitably emerge regarding the dialogue first generation college students have with their family members about maintaining the ‘purity’ of a language vis-à-vis navigating the waters of a translanguaging corriente [current]. In this article, we examine these perspectives after having witnessed a snapshot of…
Identity and two-way bilingual education: Considering student perspectives: introduction to the special issue
This special issue explores how children and youth in two-way bilingual education (TWBE) programs negotiate bi/multilingual identities and make sense of complex power dynamics within and outside of
Collaborative Translanguaging and Transmodal Literacies: Learning the Language of Science in a Dual-Language Classroom
Research has shown the benefits of peer interaction to scaffold learning of disciplinary literacies. We extend knowledge in this area to examine peer interaction and the affordances it creates when emergent bilinguals engage with multimodal texts in disciplines to make meaning. Using discourse analysis of the interactions of a small group of third graders carrying out a project in science class, we explored how four emergent bilinguals collaborat…
Research shows: Authoritative discourse in dual language bilingual education across two school districts
In this article, we synthesize ethnographic data from two studies in US school districts that were implementing dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs in order to remediate the standardized test scores of students from Spanish-speaking families. While educators in both districts commonly cited "the research" to justify DLBE implementation, our ethnographic exploration of local research discourse highlights some ideological contradictio…
Selling and resisting English-medium schooling on Milwaukee’s multilingual Near South Side: A typology of choice schools’ marketing strategies
Extant research has emphasized the importance of information to help families of English learner-identified children to navigate school choice structures, and raised critical questions about the information that is made available through school marketing. At a time of increasing tension around school choice and the rapid expansion of certain forms of bilingual education, we argue for the importance of documenting language minoritized parents’ exp…
Three worlds pitfall? A transfronteriza Latina bilingual teacher leveraging literacy to navigate, home, school, and university divides
Integrating Home Care: An Innovative Approach for Simulation Learning
BACKGROUND: The nature of a nurse's job is changing dramatically. Nurses are assuming expanded roles for a broad range of patients in community-based care. Nurse educators have a responsibility to teach nursing students about the needs of patients and families in the home care setting. METHOD: To describe how the creation of a home care video series and a medication reconciliation simulation scenario were used as a teaching strategy in a simulati…
Now it’s all upper-class parents who are checking out schools”: Gentrification as coloniality in the enactment of two-way bilingual education policies
Si no estás defendiendo tus alumnos, que estás haciendo en el salón? A Mexican Immigrant Teacher’s Journey to Critical Consciousness
Currently, there is limited research examining the barriers that immigrant professionals experience when becoming a bilingual teacher in the United States. This study examines the trajectory of a Mexican national, trained as a teacher in his home country, who became a bilingual dual-language educator in a Central Texas school district. Drawing on a critical pedagogy framework and a series of narrative life history interviews, we explore how this …
Speaking educación in Spanish: Linguistic and professional development in a bilingual teacher education program in the US-Mexico Borderlands
This case study examines the pedagogical measures taken for Spanish development for a group of bilingual preservice teachers in a university-based teacher education program in Texas. Classroom language policies were developed collaboratively and deliberately throughout the semester, which included discussion and negotiation between instructor and students about the language demands and expectations. Following the language development of four bili…
Exploring Institutional Processes in a District-Wide Dual Language Program: Who is it for? Who is Left Out
As the number of dual language programs in the U.S. is on the rise, district and school administrators need to pay attention to race as they design and implement these programs to offer equitable access for all students. Utilizing a CRT and raciolinguistics framework, qualitative interview data revealed the ways that whiteness operated in school institutional processes to inhibit access to dual language for African American and Latinx working-cla…
Bilingualism, Biliteracy, Biculturalism, and Critical Consciousness for All: Proposing a Fourth Fundamental Goal for Two-Way Dual Language Education
Two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share 3 core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. This article proposes a fourth core goal: Critical consciousness. Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture and race backgrounds, equity is unfortunatelystill a challenge in TWDL classrooms and schools. We argue that centering critical consciou…
Introduction to the Special Issue: Teacher Agency and “Pedagogies of Hope” for Bilingual Learners (in a Brave New World)
I am in search of hope. I suspect many who read this are too. For those of us who are or who work with immigrant, bilingual, and language/culture/race minoritized youth and their teachers, the current political climate has been an intellectual, emotional and physical challenge more than usual. For this special issue, my intention was to seek out instantiations of hope that might sustain us in the continued struggle for justice in schools, especia…
Supporting Bilingual Teachers To Be Leaders for Social Change: “I must create advocates for biliteracy.”
Teacher leadership has been variously defined but generally understood as expanding teachers’ visions beyond their own classrooms. Bilingual education teachers, working with emergent bilingual students in often marginalized situations and contexts, must develop a critical consciousness to embrace leadership identities. This requires engaging in critical reflexive practice, embracing their own and their students’ cultural/linguistic identities, an…
Combating Inequalities in Two-Way Language Immersion Programs: Toward Critical Consciousness in Bilingual Education Spaces
This chapter reviews critical areas of research on issues of equity/equality in the highly proclaimed and exponentially growing model of bilingual education: two-way immersion (TWI). There is increasing evidence that TWI programs are not living up to their ideal to provide equal access to educational opportunity for transnational emergent bilingual students. Through a synthesis of research from related fields, we will offer guidelines for program…
Who will be bilingual? A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Spanish-English Bilingual Pair
This article presents a basic interpretive qualitative study that examined how two students, a dominant Spanish speaker (Joel) and a dominant English speaker (Carter) used languages during their microinteractions in pair work in a dual language kindergarten classroom. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between language choice and power. Data sources included field notes and video/audio recordings collected during a Spani…
Educator language ideologies and a top-down dual language program
Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs are framed to reflect pluralist discourses (de Jong, E. [2013]. “Policy Discourses and U.S. Language in Education Policies.” Peabody Journal of Education 88 (1): 98–111) and affiliated language ideologies. The continued expansion of DLBE programs not surprisingly brings to light the diverse and ever-changing landscape of educator language ideologies. This survey-based study used inferential statis…
Translanguaging Pedagogies for Positive Identities in Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education
Research suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children’s bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in only one language at a time. Few studies have explored how a translanguaging pedagogy supports the dev…
Dual Language Bilingual Education Placement Practices: Educator Discourses About Emergent Bilingual Students in Two Program Types
This article explores the placement practices of students into different educational programs in PreK–first grade, including two bilingual education programs and an ESL “mainstream” classroom. We then examine the discourse practices of four third-grade teachers and the school principal. Our findings suggest that initial program placement resulted in a perception that students were tracked by ability, and educator discourses on student ability ref…
Teacher and Student Language Practices and Ideologies in a Third-Grade Two-Way Dual Language Program Implementation
This article provides an in-depth exploration of the language ecologies of two classrooms attempting to implement a two-way dual language (TWDL) program and its mediating conditions. Drawing on ethnographic methods and a sociocultural understanding of language, we examined both teachers’ and students’ language ideologies and language practices, including the use of Spanish, English, and code-switching. The English language arts teacher adhered to…
Bilingualism, Biliteracy, Biculturalism, and Critical Consciousness for All: Proposing a Fourth Fundamental Goal for Two-Way Dual Language Education
Two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share 3 core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. This article proposes a fourth core goal: Critical consciousness. Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture and race backgrounds, equity is unfortunatelystill a challenge in TWDL classrooms and schools. We argue that centering critical consciou…
Translanguaging Pedagogies for Positive Identities in Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education
Research suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children’s bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in only one language at a time. Few studies have explored how a translanguaging pedagogy supports the dev…
Race, Power, and Equity in a Multiethnic Urban Elementary School with a Dual-Language "Strand" Program
Dual-language education is often lauded for providing high-caliber bilingual instruction in an integrated classroom. This is complicated, however, when a dual-language program does not include all members of a school community. This article examines a "strand" dual-language program that attracts middle-class white students to a predominantly black and Latino community; yet, only some Latino students and almost no black students are included in th…
Middle‐Class English Speakers in a Two‐Way Immersion Bilingual Classroom: “Everybody Should Be Listening to Jonathan Right Now …”
Two‐way bilingual immersion education, offered in a fast‐growing number of primary schools in the United States, provides primary language maintenance to minority language speakers while simultaneously offering an enrichment “foreign” language immersion experience to English‐speaking children in the same classroom, generally with the same teacher. This fusion of two different groups of children, two different sets of expectations, is controversia…
Building and destroying students’ ‘academic identities’: The power of discourse in a two‐way immersion classroom
Two‐way immersion is a model for bilingual education designed to help language‐minority students develop additive bilingualism while at the same time offering language‐majority students a chance to learn a second language. There is a great deal of rhetoric around two‐way immersion that claims these programs aim to improve overall equity among diverse groups of learners. The article begins with a brief review of the available research on two‐way i…
Race, Power, and (In)equity Within Two-way Immersion Settings
Understanding teachers' professional identity and beliefs in the Chinese heritage language school in the USA
Heritage language education has come to prominence worldwide. Despite the increasing number of Chinese heritage language learners and Chinese schools in the USA, little attention has been given to teachers. This study investigated three heritage language teachers' professional identity and beliefs about curriculum and instructional practices in a community-based Chinese school. A qualitative multiple case study was employed, and multiple data sou…
Now it’s all upper-class parents who are checking out schools”: Gentrification as coloniality in the enactment of two-way bilingual education policies
Team teaching among mixed messages: Implementing two-way dual language bilingual education at third grade in Texas
Code-Switching and Symbolic Power in a Second-Grade Two-Way Classroom: A Teacher's Motivation System Gone Awry
Code-switching is a natural part of being bilingual. Yet two-way immersion programs are known to insist upon separation of languages, discouraging both teachers and students from drawing on both linguistic codes at once. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power, I examine one second-grade classroom in which the teacher instituted a motivation system to discourage code-switching. The children continue to code-switch as they find ways to dra…
Three worlds pitfall? A transfronteriza Latina bilingual teacher leveraging literacy to navigate, home, school, and university divides
Exploring Institutional Processes in a District-Wide Dual Language Program: Who is it for? Who is Left Out
As the number of dual language programs in the U.S. is on the rise, district and school administrators need to pay attention to race as they design and implement these programs to offer equitable access for all students. Utilizing a CRT and raciolinguistics framework, qualitative interview data revealed the ways that whiteness operated in school institutional processes to inhibit access to dual language for African American and Latinx working-cla…
Research shows: Authoritative discourse in dual language bilingual education across two school districts
In this article, we synthesize ethnographic data from two studies in US school districts that were implementing dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs in order to remediate the standardized test scores of students from Spanish-speaking families. While educators in both districts commonly cited "the research" to justify DLBE implementation, our ethnographic exploration of local research discourse highlights some ideological contradictio…
Bilingual development in study-abroad journal narratives: Three case studies from a short-term program in Mexico
A bilingual education for a monolingual test? The pressure to prepare for Taks and its influence on choices for language of instruction in Texas elementary bilingual classrooms
Voices from the Field: Bilingual Educators Speak Candidly About Proposition 227
This paper presents findings from a mini-study on the reactions of California bilingual educators to the implementation of Proposition 227. Overall, the concerns of these educators are consistent with those reported in other studies of educators throughout California. Teachers worry about the erosion of primary language programs, about the imposition of English-only standardized testing, and about the lack of clear leadership on policy and practi…
Si no estás defendiendo tus alumnos, que estás haciendo en el salón? A Mexican Immigrant Teacher’s Journey to Critical Consciousness
Currently, there is limited research examining the barriers that immigrant professionals experience when becoming a bilingual teacher in the United States. This study examines the trajectory of a Mexican national, trained as a teacher in his home country, who became a bilingual dual-language educator in a Central Texas school district. Drawing on a critical pedagogy framework and a series of narrative life history interviews, we explore how this …
Voices from the Field: Bilingual Educators Speak Candidly About Proposition 227
This paper presents findings from a mini-study on the reactions of California bilingual educators to the implementation of Proposition 227. Overall, the concerns of these educators are consistent with those reported in other studies of educators throughout California. Teachers worry about the erosion of primary language programs, about the imposition of English-only standardized testing, and about the lack of clear leadership on policy and practi…
A Dual Immersion Strand Programme in California: Carrying Out the Promise of Dual Language Education in an English-dominant Context
This paper uses ethnographic observation and in-depth interview to look at the ways in which an English-dominant school in California, USA inhibits the fulfilment of the goals of its dual immersion ‘strand’ programme. Taking a Bakhtinian perspective on discourses, and leaning on Bourdieu's concept of ‘linguistic capital’, the paper examines discourses around language, race and power, and discusses the implications of these discourses for the cons…
A bilingual education for a monolingual test? The pressure to prepare for Taks and its influence on choices for language of instruction in Texas elementary bilingual classrooms
Building and destroying students’ ‘academic identities’: The power of discourse in a two‐way immersion classroom
Two‐way immersion is a model for bilingual education designed to help language‐minority students develop additive bilingualism while at the same time offering language‐majority students a chance to learn a second language. There is a great deal of rhetoric around two‐way immersion that claims these programs aim to improve overall equity among diverse groups of learners. The article begins with a brief review of the available research on two‐way i…
Code-Switching and Symbolic Power in a Second-Grade Two-Way Classroom: A Teacher's Motivation System Gone Awry
Code-switching is a natural part of being bilingual. Yet two-way immersion programs are known to insist upon separation of languages, discouraging both teachers and students from drawing on both linguistic codes at once. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power, I examine one second-grade classroom in which the teacher instituted a motivation system to discourage code-switching. The children continue to code-switch as they find ways to dra…
Race, Power, and (In)equity Within Two-way Immersion Settings
Middle‐Class English Speakers in a Two‐Way Immersion Bilingual Classroom: “Everybody Should Be Listening to Jonathan Right Now …”
Two‐way bilingual immersion education, offered in a fast‐growing number of primary schools in the United States, provides primary language maintenance to minority language speakers while simultaneously offering an enrichment “foreign” language immersion experience to English‐speaking children in the same classroom, generally with the same teacher. This fusion of two different groups of children, two different sets of expectations, is controversia…
Race, Power, and Equity in a Multiethnic Urban Elementary School with a Dual-Language "Strand" Program
Dual-language education is often lauded for providing high-caliber bilingual instruction in an integrated classroom. This is complicated, however, when a dual-language program does not include all members of a school community. This article examines a "strand" dual-language program that attracts middle-class white students to a predominantly black and Latino community; yet, only some Latino students and almost no black students are included in th…
The Discourse of Transition: Teachers' Language Ideologies Within Transitional Bilingual Education Programs
Transitional bilingual education (TBE), the most common form of bilingual education in the United States, is too often entrenched in a subtractive, English-dominant ideology. This article explores the conflicting language ideologies of teachers in TBE programs, posing the question, “In what way do TBE teachers' discourses reflect/reinforce and simultaneously confront/counter the ideology of the program model within which they operate?” The articl…
Understanding teachers' professional identity and beliefs in the Chinese heritage language school in the USA
Heritage language education has come to prominence worldwide. Despite the increasing number of Chinese heritage language learners and Chinese schools in the USA, little attention has been given to teachers. This study investigated three heritage language teachers' professional identity and beliefs about curriculum and instructional practices in a community-based Chinese school. A qualitative multiple case study was employed, and multiple data sou…
Bilingual development in study-abroad journal narratives: Three case studies from a short-term program in Mexico
Bilingual development in study-abroad journal narratives: Three case studies from a short-term program in Mexico
Article Bilingual development in study-abroad journal narratives: Three case studies from a short-term program in Mexico was published on October 1, 2012 in the journal Multilingua (volume 31, issue 4)
Teacher Agency in Bilingual Spaces: A Fresh Look at Preparing Teachers to Educate Latina/o Bilingual Children
Reframing the Debate on Language Separation: Toward a Vision for Translanguaging Pedagogies in the Dual Language Classroom
The policy of strict separation of languages for academic instruction dominates dual language bilingual education programming. This article explores the dynamic bilingual practices of two experienced bilingual teachers in a two‐way dual language public school in Texas and contributes to current research problematizing language separation. Data included interviews, field notes, and classroom interaction video in a pre‐kindergarten and a first grad…
Pluralist discourses of bilingualism and translanguaging talk in classrooms
This paper examines student and teacher talk in a first grade classroom in a two-way immersion school in Central Texas. Drawing on audio and video data from a year-long study in a first grade two-way classroom and using a methodology that fuses ethnography and discourse analysis, the authors explore how pluralist discourses are constructed and lived in by bilingual students and teachers. These findings have implications for understanding the ways…
Teacher and Student Language Practices and Ideologies in a Third-Grade Two-Way Dual Language Program Implementation
This article provides an in-depth exploration of the language ecologies of two classrooms attempting to implement a two-way dual language (TWDL) program and its mediating conditions. Drawing on ethnographic methods and a sociocultural understanding of language, we examined both teachers’ and students’ language ideologies and language practices, including the use of Spanish, English, and code-switching. The English language arts teacher adhered to…
Team teaching among mixed messages: Implementing two-way dual language bilingual education at third grade in Texas
Dual Language Bilingual Education Placement Practices: Educator Discourses About Emergent Bilingual Students in Two Program Types
This article explores the placement practices of students into different educational programs in PreK–first grade, including two bilingual education programs and an ESL “mainstream” classroom. We then examine the discourse practices of four third-grade teachers and the school principal. Our findings suggest that initial program placement resulted in a perception that students were tracked by ability, and educator discourses on student ability ref…
Combating Inequalities in Two-Way Language Immersion Programs: Toward Critical Consciousness in Bilingual Education Spaces
This chapter reviews critical areas of research on issues of equity/equality in the highly proclaimed and exponentially growing model of bilingual education: two-way immersion (TWI). There is increasing evidence that TWI programs are not living up to their ideal to provide equal access to educational opportunity for transnational emergent bilingual students. Through a synthesis of research from related fields, we will offer guidelines for program…
Who will be bilingual? A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Spanish-English Bilingual Pair
This article presents a basic interpretive qualitative study that examined how two students, a dominant Spanish speaker (Joel) and a dominant English speaker (Carter) used languages during their microinteractions in pair work in a dual language kindergarten classroom. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between language choice and power. Data sources included field notes and video/audio recordings collected during a Spani…
Educator language ideologies and a top-down dual language program
Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs are framed to reflect pluralist discourses (de Jong, E. [2013]. “Policy Discourses and U.S. Language in Education Policies.” Peabody Journal of Education 88 (1): 98–111) and affiliated language ideologies. The continued expansion of DLBE programs not surprisingly brings to light the diverse and ever-changing landscape of educator language ideologies. This survey-based study used inferential statis…
Translanguaging Pedagogies for Positive Identities in Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education
Research suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children’s bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in only one language at a time. Few studies have explored how a translanguaging pedagogy supports the dev…
Introduction to the Special Issue: Teacher Agency and “Pedagogies of Hope” for Bilingual Learners (in a Brave New World)
I am in search of hope. I suspect many who read this are too. For those of us who are or who work with immigrant, bilingual, and language/culture/race minoritized youth and their teachers, the current political climate has been an intellectual, emotional and physical challenge more than usual. For this special issue, my intention was to seek out instantiations of hope that might sustain us in the continued struggle for justice in schools, especia…
Supporting Bilingual Teachers To Be Leaders for Social Change: “I must create advocates for biliteracy.”
Teacher leadership has been variously defined but generally understood as expanding teachers’ visions beyond their own classrooms. Bilingual education teachers, working with emergent bilingual students in often marginalized situations and contexts, must develop a critical consciousness to embrace leadership identities. This requires engaging in critical reflexive practice, embracing their own and their students’ cultural/linguistic identities, an…
Speaking educación in Spanish: Linguistic and professional development in a bilingual teacher education program in the US-Mexico Borderlands
This case study examines the pedagogical measures taken for Spanish development for a group of bilingual preservice teachers in a university-based teacher education program in Texas. Classroom language policies were developed collaboratively and deliberately throughout the semester, which included discussion and negotiation between instructor and students about the language demands and expectations. Following the language development of four bili…
Multilingual Education and Policy (37 works) · Pedagogy (37 works) · Psychology (33 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (26 works) · Bilingual education (25 works) · Mathematics education (24 works) · Linguistics (23 works) · Political science (21 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (20 works)