Countering Gentrification through Critical Consciousness: Recommendations and Success Stories for DLBE Educators

The term ‘gentrification’ in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) is used metaphorically to describe the increasing participation of privileged populations in bilingual education spaces in ways that often result
in the marginalization of language-minoritized students, their families and their communities (Delavan et al., 2021; Valdez et al., 2016). Scholarship examining these trends and the resulting inequalities in DLBE has proposed establishing critical consciousness as the foundation that can help redefine and reorient the goals, practices and policies of these programs (Cervantes-Soon, 2014; Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017; Heiman et al., 2023, Palmer et al., 2019). Fundamental to the notion of critical consciousness is the idea of praxis, a cyclical process that takes place in the context of dialogue with others (including teachers, students, families and any other stakeholders). This chapter offers tools for engaging these actions for praxis in DLBE. To illustrate these actions, we present four real cases (though most names are pseudonyms) in which educators worked deliberately to engage in praxis to counter both literal and metaphorical gentrification. We close with action steps and resources to support efforts to carry out professional development, community building, pedagogy and curriculum that infuse critical consciousness in DLBE classrooms, communities, programs and policies.