Manka Varghese | University of Washington (original) (raw)
Papers by Manka Varghese
Superdiversity and Teacher Education
Educational Linguistics in Practice
Teachers College Record, 2020
Background/Context: Language-minoritized and emergent-bilingual (EB) students have historically a... more Background/Context: Language-minoritized and emergent-bilingual (EB) students have historically and frequently been underexamined in the context of research on minoritized students' pathways in higher education. Understanding the school to college pipeline for emergent bilinguals (EBs) is becoming a critical area of study to help identify and address the barriers that they experience as they attempt to transition to and navigate postsecondary education. Despite there being a greater knowledge of the barriers experienced by EBs in getting to college, less is known about the resources they bring and their agency, the way they actually mobilize the resources that they possess in negotiating their success to get to and complete college. Purpose/Research Question: This study examines why and how some EB students can successfully navigate their environments in order to apply for, get into and complete a selective four-year college. It is guided by two overarching questions: (1) What forms of capital do first generation immigrant EBs draw on to apply for and navigate selective four-year college? (2) How do first generation immigrant EBs navigate and complete selective four-year college? Research Design: We examined the pathways of EBs through a conceptual framework which frames their college success as being a result of the relationship between what we refer to as their college capital which they have access to and that they draw on, and their constraint agency. Through interviews, this study analyzes 33 first generation undergraduate immigrant EBs' transition to and completion of tertiary education, with further analysis being supplemented with in-depth case studies of five out of the 33 EBs. Additionally, we interviewed 14 university administrators and instructors involved in the admission and instruction of EB students on campus. Conclusions/Recommendations: EB immigrant students drew on different forms of college capital, which included traditional and non-traditional. Students who drew more on traditional kinds of capital participated more in high participatory agentive ways while students who drew more on non-traditional forms of college capital participated more in low
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education
Background Teacher education candidates are in different places in terms of developing their iden... more Background Teacher education candidates are in different places in terms of developing their identities and relationships to equity and social justice. Various approaches have been taken within university-based teacher education programs to engage with candidates, wherever they are in this development. One such approach has been engaging or drawing on teachers’ own lenses, especially through challenging and understanding their racialized selves. Purpose This conceptual article examines how race-based caucuses (RBCs) in one teacher education program attempted to shift candidates’ understandings of their racialized selves as related to their teacher identities. Context RBCs were instituted in one elementary teacher education program to help White teacher candidates and candidates of Color construct critical teacher identities. Candidates were asked to participate in caucuses according to the ways they had been racialized within schools. Facilitators who demonstrated a willingness to s...
Educational Researcher
In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of tea... more In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of teacher subjectivity and recentering Whiteness, especially in its uptake of practice-based teacher education. Whereas teacher subjectivity has been pushed to the margins of recent conversations about teacher education—and has therefore narrowed our understanding of the ideological and practical affordances and constraints of practice-based teacher education—we show that it must be centered in teacher education and understood as fundamental to all teachers’ embodied practice. We draw from literature exploring critical Whiteness studies, raciolinguistics, poststructural understandings of teacher subjectivity, the experiences of teachers of Color and practice-based teacher education. By showing how a raciolinguicized teacher subjectivity has been marginalized, we simultaneously argue for the centrality of the role of subjectivity in shaping teaching and, therefore, in defining critical dimensi...
Journal of Language, Identity & Education
The teaching and learning of languages has been mainly investigated within educational institutio... more The teaching and learning of languages has been mainly investigated within educational institutions, especially by applied linguists. However, religious spaces such as churches and church related programs have historically and contemporarily served as important alternative spaces for such teaching and learning to take place. At the same time, such institutions and the way that language teaching and learning unfold in these spaces necessitates both a critical and empirical examination which makes salient the role and consequences of power. The focus of this special issue is to provide examples of studies which seek to fill this gap. This introduction serves as a way to set up this special issue and the articles within it by making salient the themes of language socialization, language ideology, identity, Christianity, ethnography and systems of power, as well as showing how the four studies in this special issue speak to the aforementioned gap and these themes.
Journal of Teacher Education
Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparat... more Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.
International Multilingual Research Journal
ABSTRACT Drawing on the concept of figured worlds, we examined how four preservice teachers in a ... more ABSTRACT Drawing on the concept of figured worlds, we examined how four preservice teachers in a monoglossically oriented teacher preparation program developed their professional identities and sense of agency as dual language teachers. Figured worlds are socially constructed and culturally recognized realms with a story line and actors who also actively change these story lines in the course of narrating them and participating in them. Drawing on interviews and observations, we showed how four teachers’ personal linguistic, racial, and cultural backgrounds interacted with external affordances, including their own language ideologies and those present in their contexts, leading to the (re)construction of their figured worlds of dual language teaching. These figured worlds were mainly reshaped to include family connections and student empowerment and made salient the limitations of the teachers’ engagement with the centrality of race, power, and immigrant rights in their language ideologies.
Journal of Teacher Education, 2019
Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparat... more Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
As colonial legacies, racial dynamics, lingering discrimination, and even violence against Indige... more As colonial legacies, racial dynamics, lingering discrimination, and even violence against Indigenous people and children, especially the Mapuche people (the focus of this study and the largest Indigenous group in the country), continue in Chilean society, research on how their teachers learn and how they perceive their learning has become even more necessary. Understanding the learning development of educators in Intercultural and Bilingual Education (IBE) preschools for the education of Indigenous peoples is the focus of this study. In this context, the overall research question of this study is: What learning occurs for teachers in IBE preschools in the Metropolitan Region, Chile and how does this learning happen? Using Engestrom's expansive learning model (2001) and an ethnographic approach, this study found peer learning to be a critical but untapped resource for teacher learning in this setting, and also found there to be differences between Mapuche and non Mapuche teachers' understandings of the goals of their learning. Implications point to setting up teacher learning based on a model of peer learning which focuses on Mapuche educators contributing more than they currently do to the learning of non-Mapuche teachers in IBE preschools.
Education Matters the Journal of Teaching and Learning, May 2, 2014
Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 1996
A study examined internal structure of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), a technique used to e... more A study examined internal structure of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), a technique used to elicit data in sociolinguistic research, and effects of systematic modification to its situational prompt on subject response. The DCT is a questionnaire containing situations, briefly described, designed to elicit a particular speech act. Subjects read each situation and respond in writing to a prompt. Three versions of a DCT designed to elicit requests were used: an original that included needed information on requestive goal, social distance, and social dominance; an elaborated version with additional information on interlocutor's gender, role relationship, length of acquaintance, interaction frequency, whether the relationship was optional, and a description of setting; and an elaborated version in which students were asked to reflect 30 seconds before responding. Subjects were 55 native speakers of American English, all university students. Data were analyzed for request strategies of the head act, internal modification of the head act, length of entire request act and internal and external modification, and external modification of the head act. No significant response differences were found in head acts across versions, but significant differences were found across versions on mean length of request act and external modifications. Contains 14 references. (MSE)
Superdiversity and Teacher Education
Educational Linguistics in Practice
Teachers College Record, 2020
Background/Context: Language-minoritized and emergent-bilingual (EB) students have historically a... more Background/Context: Language-minoritized and emergent-bilingual (EB) students have historically and frequently been underexamined in the context of research on minoritized students' pathways in higher education. Understanding the school to college pipeline for emergent bilinguals (EBs) is becoming a critical area of study to help identify and address the barriers that they experience as they attempt to transition to and navigate postsecondary education. Despite there being a greater knowledge of the barriers experienced by EBs in getting to college, less is known about the resources they bring and their agency, the way they actually mobilize the resources that they possess in negotiating their success to get to and complete college. Purpose/Research Question: This study examines why and how some EB students can successfully navigate their environments in order to apply for, get into and complete a selective four-year college. It is guided by two overarching questions: (1) What forms of capital do first generation immigrant EBs draw on to apply for and navigate selective four-year college? (2) How do first generation immigrant EBs navigate and complete selective four-year college? Research Design: We examined the pathways of EBs through a conceptual framework which frames their college success as being a result of the relationship between what we refer to as their college capital which they have access to and that they draw on, and their constraint agency. Through interviews, this study analyzes 33 first generation undergraduate immigrant EBs' transition to and completion of tertiary education, with further analysis being supplemented with in-depth case studies of five out of the 33 EBs. Additionally, we interviewed 14 university administrators and instructors involved in the admission and instruction of EB students on campus. Conclusions/Recommendations: EB immigrant students drew on different forms of college capital, which included traditional and non-traditional. Students who drew more on traditional kinds of capital participated more in high participatory agentive ways while students who drew more on non-traditional forms of college capital participated more in low
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education
Background Teacher education candidates are in different places in terms of developing their iden... more Background Teacher education candidates are in different places in terms of developing their identities and relationships to equity and social justice. Various approaches have been taken within university-based teacher education programs to engage with candidates, wherever they are in this development. One such approach has been engaging or drawing on teachers’ own lenses, especially through challenging and understanding their racialized selves. Purpose This conceptual article examines how race-based caucuses (RBCs) in one teacher education program attempted to shift candidates’ understandings of their racialized selves as related to their teacher identities. Context RBCs were instituted in one elementary teacher education program to help White teacher candidates and candidates of Color construct critical teacher identities. Candidates were asked to participate in caucuses according to the ways they had been racialized within schools. Facilitators who demonstrated a willingness to s...
Educational Researcher
In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of tea... more In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of teacher subjectivity and recentering Whiteness, especially in its uptake of practice-based teacher education. Whereas teacher subjectivity has been pushed to the margins of recent conversations about teacher education—and has therefore narrowed our understanding of the ideological and practical affordances and constraints of practice-based teacher education—we show that it must be centered in teacher education and understood as fundamental to all teachers’ embodied practice. We draw from literature exploring critical Whiteness studies, raciolinguistics, poststructural understandings of teacher subjectivity, the experiences of teachers of Color and practice-based teacher education. By showing how a raciolinguicized teacher subjectivity has been marginalized, we simultaneously argue for the centrality of the role of subjectivity in shaping teaching and, therefore, in defining critical dimensi...
Journal of Language, Identity & Education
The teaching and learning of languages has been mainly investigated within educational institutio... more The teaching and learning of languages has been mainly investigated within educational institutions, especially by applied linguists. However, religious spaces such as churches and church related programs have historically and contemporarily served as important alternative spaces for such teaching and learning to take place. At the same time, such institutions and the way that language teaching and learning unfold in these spaces necessitates both a critical and empirical examination which makes salient the role and consequences of power. The focus of this special issue is to provide examples of studies which seek to fill this gap. This introduction serves as a way to set up this special issue and the articles within it by making salient the themes of language socialization, language ideology, identity, Christianity, ethnography and systems of power, as well as showing how the four studies in this special issue speak to the aforementioned gap and these themes.
Journal of Teacher Education
Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparat... more Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.
International Multilingual Research Journal
ABSTRACT Drawing on the concept of figured worlds, we examined how four preservice teachers in a ... more ABSTRACT Drawing on the concept of figured worlds, we examined how four preservice teachers in a monoglossically oriented teacher preparation program developed their professional identities and sense of agency as dual language teachers. Figured worlds are socially constructed and culturally recognized realms with a story line and actors who also actively change these story lines in the course of narrating them and participating in them. Drawing on interviews and observations, we showed how four teachers’ personal linguistic, racial, and cultural backgrounds interacted with external affordances, including their own language ideologies and those present in their contexts, leading to the (re)construction of their figured worlds of dual language teaching. These figured worlds were mainly reshaped to include family connections and student empowerment and made salient the limitations of the teachers’ engagement with the centrality of race, power, and immigrant rights in their language ideologies.
Journal of Teacher Education, 2019
Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparat... more Reformers are increasingly calling for and adopting practice-based approaches to teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on identifying and centering core practices. In this article, we argue that organizing teacher education around core practices brings its own risks, including the risk of peripheralizing equity and justice. Situating our argument within the broad economic trends affecting labor and higher education in the 21st century, we begin by examining the linkages between the core practices movement and organizations that advocate market-based solutions to education. We then explore how constructs of practice and improvisation and commitments to equity and justice are taken up, and with what implications and consequences, in core practices scholarship and its applications. In conclusion, we consider how work being done around core practices might contribute to a collective struggle for greater equity and justice in schools and in society.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
As colonial legacies, racial dynamics, lingering discrimination, and even violence against Indige... more As colonial legacies, racial dynamics, lingering discrimination, and even violence against Indigenous people and children, especially the Mapuche people (the focus of this study and the largest Indigenous group in the country), continue in Chilean society, research on how their teachers learn and how they perceive their learning has become even more necessary. Understanding the learning development of educators in Intercultural and Bilingual Education (IBE) preschools for the education of Indigenous peoples is the focus of this study. In this context, the overall research question of this study is: What learning occurs for teachers in IBE preschools in the Metropolitan Region, Chile and how does this learning happen? Using Engestrom's expansive learning model (2001) and an ethnographic approach, this study found peer learning to be a critical but untapped resource for teacher learning in this setting, and also found there to be differences between Mapuche and non Mapuche teachers' understandings of the goals of their learning. Implications point to setting up teacher learning based on a model of peer learning which focuses on Mapuche educators contributing more than they currently do to the learning of non-Mapuche teachers in IBE preschools.
Education Matters the Journal of Teaching and Learning, May 2, 2014
Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 1996
A study examined internal structure of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), a technique used to e... more A study examined internal structure of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), a technique used to elicit data in sociolinguistic research, and effects of systematic modification to its situational prompt on subject response. The DCT is a questionnaire containing situations, briefly described, designed to elicit a particular speech act. Subjects read each situation and respond in writing to a prompt. Three versions of a DCT designed to elicit requests were used: an original that included needed information on requestive goal, social distance, and social dominance; an elaborated version with additional information on interlocutor's gender, role relationship, length of acquaintance, interaction frequency, whether the relationship was optional, and a description of setting; and an elaborated version in which students were asked to reflect 30 seconds before responding. Subjects were 55 native speakers of American English, all university students. Data were analyzed for request strategies of the head act, internal modification of the head act, length of entire request act and internal and external modification, and external modification of the head act. No significant response differences were found in head acts across versions, but significant differences were found across versions on mean length of request act and external modifications. Contains 14 references. (MSE)