Relationship between bilingual learners, exemplary teachers and literacy practices: A review of empirical studies

Introduction
As the bilingual learners continuously increasing in the classrooms within educational
context, therefore there is a high need for the teachers to prepare themselves for the
cultural as well as linguistic diversity. Hence, this paper elaborates on the relationship in
between the bilingual students, their exemplary teachers and literacy practices as well as
focusing on the impacts of the teaching of exemplary teachers towards the literacy of
bilingual learners. In the context of research literature, this review shall further examine the
empirical studies constituting the two articles- “Cross-language transfer of early literacy
skills: an examination of young learners in a two-way bilingual immersion elementary
school” by (Feinauer et al., 2013) and “Pedagogies of discomfort: shifting pre-service
teachers’ deficit orientations toward language and literacy resources of emergent bilingual
students” by Sharma & Lazar (2014). Both of these articles are based on the subject of
Literacy in challenging context extracted from the Exemplary teachers of students in poverty(
Munns & Cole, 2013).
Literature review-Literacy
In authors of the Literacy in challenging context (Munn & Cole, 2013), have elaborated
on an in dept context where the literacy is very complicated and hence there is a need for
recognizing multiple literacy skills, inclusive of the technology, social aspects, global changes
and the cultural traditions. The authors have further investigated the kind of literacy
practices right from the early learners to later years in context to the Australian educational
system.
The practices of early learners’ literacy begin from the pre-school to the year four. The
pre-school concentrates on the text variety, integration, effective practice in reading, writing,

listening and speaking, as well as developing letter-sound relationships. The practice of
literacy starts from 7 to 8 years in Australia up to middle years. There is also the possibility
for teachers who teach literacy to face challenges. This is because when literacy all over the
curriculum teachers will either work within a particular subject area or on a broad range of
areas. Likewise, in later years the teachers concentrate on integrating literacy learning within
a particular subject.
Shifting the focus from the illiteracies development, the authors have focused on the
issues of social inequity in the Australian education system. The authors have argued that
the students belonging from high socio-economic backgrounds have performed better than
the ones who belong from low socio-economic statuses. The results have shown that there
is a notable gap in the engagement and achievement of the students and hence it plays an
important part in the educational development.
Bilingual learners and bi-literacy
In the article ‘Pedagogies of discomfort: shifting pre-service teachers’ deficit
orientations toward language and literacy resources of emergent bilingual students’, by
Sharma and Lazar (2014), there is used a mixed-method to study the case. About 73 pre-
service teachers who were enrolled in the mid-Atlantic university were the participants. The
study was conducted with an aim of exploring the challenges that the monolingual pre-
service teachers who have limited bilingual proficiency could have to face while their
teaching disposition towards the language diversity and richness in culturally diverse
classroom of the United States.
In this study, 73 participants (5 males and 68 females) were considered in a required
course that is relevant to literacy, culture and language. Researchers have measured that the
teaching attitudes of these participant towards the bilingual students through applying both

pre and post surveys. Secondly, the qualitative data was inclusive of writing responses to the
given open-ended statements. Researchers have gathered their responses firstly, in the
month of January and then again in May. With the same, participants were asked to write a
self-analysis of the teaching experiences regarding the course that they were asked to enroll.
Furthermore, the researchers have also conducted individual interviews with 10 different
participants. However, the results were really surprising. The study suggested that pre-
service teachers demonstrate a positive disposition towards the students in both the
months. In context to the response statements, the capacity and responsibility of the
participants towards bilingual teaching was maximized from the month of January to May.
Overall, it was noted that participants must strengthen their critical understandings of the
literacy practices.
In comparison to focusing on the disposition of the teachers, Feinauer et al. (2013)
have explored the relation in between both the first language proficiency skills as well as
second language acquisition for the K-2 grade students in Spanish-English bilingual
immersion program. The researchers then carried out a study in the elementary charter
school where it included a 50/50 dual immersion framework. A total of 174 candidates were
participated in this study and among them 50% were males and 49.4% were females.
Literacy assessments and parents surveys were the main measurements along with
considering factors associated with home language dominance, family background, as well
as home income and parent education.
For data analysis, there were four groups- the English, Spanish, Bilingual taught in Spanish
and the Bilingual taught in English group were analyzed. The study showed a notable
difference. The English group scored the highest mean of 17.6 that showed that English was
their dominant home language and their parents mostly receives a higher level of education