What strategies are school districts using to build a bilingual teacher workforce in support of effective dual language education?
Research in the field of education for English language learners clearly indicates that bilingualism is an asset to students cognitively, socially, and academically. Beyond the benefits for English language learners, research, as well growing public opinion, points to the benefits of development of bilingualism and biliteracy for students' competitiveness in the 21st century.
This paper identifies the unique and shared conditions of Washington state school districts that support hiring to adequately staff dual language basic education programs. How do state level policies influence implementation at the district level? How does state-level policy influence hiring strategies at the district level, and in turn trends in the teacher workforce?
Through our data analysis and interview coding, we analyzed how statewide policy conditions influence the behavior of agents (teachers and administrators), and how the condition of agents in turn leads or does not lead to effective dual language implementation based on the discretion used by individuals in the overall policy system agents.
As outlined in Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 28A. 630.095, OSPI and the Washington State Legislature have moved that dual language basic education be available to all students in the state of Washington by 2030, but it is not known how individual districts are training a new bilingual teacher workforce to meet the unique needs of dual language education.
Using workforce data, we published a dashboard of Dual Language Programs in Washington State, and a map showing where the workforce is.