Responding to the call: Developing and assessing pedagogical Spanish competencies in bilingual teacher education

Bilingual teacher education scholars continue to advocate for the improvement of Spanish language-related teacher preparation practices. However, the field is in need of research on how bilingual teacher educators across the U.S. are addressing this task in their work with future teachers. In responding to this call, I describe an approach and an activity for developing and assessing what I denote as the pedagogical Spanish competencies of prospective bilingual teachers. After emphasizing the value of content-based and task-based strategies for developing professionally relevant Spanish competencies, I provide an assessment of the teaching-specific oral language performance of two future bilingual teachers. To conclude, I identify implications for curriculum design and classroom practice, and invite scholars to participate in the formation of the “Language in Teacher Education Research Network” (LANTERN), a collaborative aimed at conducting systematic research on best practices for developing and assessing/evaluating language competencies in (bilingual) teacher education.