Teacher Qualifications

Domains of Bilingual Teacher Competencies

Research drawn from Diane August, Kenji Hakuta, Maria Brisk, Ana María Rodríguez, and others, including theoretical and school-based research and professional judgment, establishes a relationship between bilingual teachers' qualifications and bilingual programs' effectiveness. There are three areas of learning that schools are responsible for in educating language minority students: language, literacy, and content learning. Teachers' levels of expertise with bilingual [Page 817]learners either support or impede the potential of schools to implement bilingual programs through a progressive, sequential curriculum that is theoretically coherent and well-grounded in how bilingual learners utilize their primary language (LI), acquire a second language (L2), and progress through the grades in learning academic skills and subject matter. Effective bilingual classroom teaching requires a high level of theoretical and technical knowledge of approaches, strategies and techniques for designing appropriate curricula, planning a sequence of lessons, organizing the classroom, utilizing and developing instructional materials, and grouping students for learning tasks.

Menken and Antunez state that various sets of standards for bilingual teacher certification and lists of competencies have been compiled by institutions and organizations with a stake in the professional development of bilingual teachers. According to CCTC, the analyses of bilingual teachers' attributes and competencies attempt to be comprehensive and thorough in categorizing and defining the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes of effective bilingual teachers for purposes of teacher-credentialing program design and/or examination. These standards and competencies are based on the premise that bilingual teachers share a set of “generic” competencies that are foundational to effective teaching in any and all contexts. Generally, a second tier of competencies is outlined for all teachers of ELLs without regard to whether the teacher is bilingual in the students' primary language (LI) or monolingual in English (L2) or whether teachers instruct linguistically homogeneous groups of students using their LI as a medium of instruction. A third tier of competencies is articulated for teachers who use the students' LI as a medium of instruction in any of several bilingual education (dual-language) programs targeted for students who speak the same LI and share common cultural characteristics. The three-tiered approach to bilingual teacher credentialing is evidenced in the California Bilingual Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development credential structure (BCLAD) (see Table 1).

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