Establishing a Transformative Foundation for Dual Language Bilingual Education: Critical Consciousness at the Core

This chapter defines critical consciousness as the foundation for dual language bilingual education (DLBE). Even though bilingual education can be traced to race radical roots and activism, the explosion of DLBE programs and their boutique flavor have contributed to significant inequalities and inattention to students from historically marginalized communities. In turn, scholars have proposed a focus on critical consciousness, originally as a fourth “pillar” to augment the traditional pillars of high academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and cross-cultural competence, and more recently as a foundational goal. This chapter reviews the literature that has taken up this notion, in order to more thoroughly and deeply theorize the process of developing and propagating critical consciousness in DLBE. Empirical studies underscore that praxis in DLBE requires the actions of interrogating power, historicizing DLBE schools and communities, critically listening, and engaging with discomfort, as previously recommended, as well as several additional actions, including affirming identities, acompañamiento, and translanguaging. Ultimately, critical consciousness must be the unsettling, messy, spiritual, ideological, and hopeful foundation and end goal of DLBE.