ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses critical approaches to teacher preparation that focus on teachers’ development of positive language ideologies to support the academic success of multilingual learners (MLLs). Many teachers, who are monolingual speakers of dominant languages and language varieties, enter the teaching profession with deficit views about minoritized languages and their speakers and about what kind of languages and language varieties are appropriate in schools. These beliefs can lead to the promotion of dominant-language ideologies that de-emphasize the importance of supporting all the languages and identities that students bring with them to the classroom, which in turn may negatively impact MLLs. To provide linguistically responsive instruction that counteracts monolingual, standard language ideologies, teachers should possess critical language awareness, which includes knowledge of language structures and raciolinguistics, value for linguistic diversity, and critical consciousness about the sociopolitical positioning of language. This chapter will provide an overview of the research on the preparation of the teaching force for their linguistically diverse classrooms and how to guide them toward more asset-based approaches to teaching.
