A space for culturally and linguistically diverse learners?: Using S-STEP to examine world language teacher education

When considering access to broader learning opportunities beyond the core curriculum for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners (CLDLs), the world language classroom is rarely a space that offers such access, despite the fact that CLDLs should have as much access to the development of multilingualism through school curricula as dominant English speakers. In this paper, three teacher educators use a reflective, dialogic method to unpack their work with preparing WL teacher candidates to work with CLDLs. This self-study of teacher education practice examines the sensemaking of 20 world language teachers in a course designed to teach them sheltered English immersion approaches to supporting CLDLs. Findings reveal that teachers had very little notion that CLDLs might take additional languages and little support was available to model excellent practice for them. Questions about whether WL courses can provide genuine spaces for multilingual development and implications for preparing WL teachers to support cultural and linguistic diversity are discussed.