Teacher Leadership for Social Change in Bilingual and Bicultural Education - (Bilingual Education & Bilingualism) by Deborah Palmer (Paperback)

About the Book

Bilingual teachers must advocate for their students. Based on the experiences of Spanish-English bilingual teachers in Texas, this book aims to explore, define and understand bilingual teacher leadership. It examines what it means for bilingual teachers to become leaders, the kinds of support they need, and how they experience leadership.

Book Synopsis

Bilingual teachers must advocate for their students. Based on the experiences of Spanish-English bilingual teachers in Texas, this book aims to explore, define and understand bilingual teacher leadership. It examines what it means for bilingual teachers to become leaders, the kinds of support they need, and how they experience leadership.

Review Quotes

...the book provides valuable and inspiring ways for bilingual teachers to develop their leadership identity. By providing co-constitutive possibilities for bilingual teacher leadership, Proyecto Maestría demonstrates the imperative work of teaching for social change via agency and praxis.

...this book awakens in me a hunger for collaboration, for participation in advocacy, for reflecting on my own practice as an educator, and for exploring my own linguistic and cultural identities so as to better understand the diverse students who fill my university classrooms. Above all, I appreciate Palmer's research for reminding us of what is at stake for emergent bilingual children in contemporary schools, for illustrating a possible path forward, and for providing detailed examples of the collective wisdom and agency of contemporary teachers.

[This book] is important to the field because it places bilingual teachers as leaders and gives them a voice within the larger context of education where bilingual teachers are usually marginalized along with their students. More so, Palmer has now grounded a theory for bilingual teacher leadership that can be used as theoretical framework for future research studies.

I highly recommend Palmer's Teacher Leadership for Social Change in Bilingual and Bicultural Education for use in preparing bilingual teacher leaders. This book is an excellent resource and a source of inspiration for aspirant bilingual teacher leaders as they engage in their own transformational journey and in transforming the world.

Kudos to Deborah Palmer for this timely and engaging account on the development of strong and professional identities among the bilingual teachers whose lives she touched. It captures the development of an enduring Central Texas language ecology in which she was not only deeply involved, but also pivotal in its development. This inspiring text is a must-read for all who seek to cultivate critically conscious teachers.

This book delivers powerful messages and serves as a resource for teachers, teacher educators, administrators,
researchers, and instructors in bilingual/bicultural contexts, and more books like this are needed to further advance teacher leadership for those in bilingual/bicultural education.

This is the first book to deeply examine teacher leadership within bilingual education, making it a must-read for researchers and practitioners alike. Palmer's writing is anchored in ample rich data that she very thoughtfully presents, offering readers new understandings about bilingual teacher leadership as well as a model of teacher leader preparation for others to emulate.

About the Author

Deborah K. Palmer is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. She conducts qualitative research using ethnography and discourse analysis in linguistically diverse settings, with a particular interest in bilingual education policy and politics, critical additive bilingual education, and translanguaging.