Coaching for Agency, Authority and Advocacy in Dual Language Bilingual Education

Abstract

In education broadly, and in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) specifically, advocacy for marginalized student populations is recognized as a teacher’s responsibility. Yet, advocacy represents both an orientation and a skill set that teachers must develop. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how teachers can be supported in developing their capacity to advocate. Approaching advocacy in terms of teacher agency and authority, we look at one form of professional learning support, instructional coaching. In this comparative qualitative case study, we explore how one experienced instructional coach collaborated with four DLBE teachers to help them develop as agentive advocates for their students. We draw on the Vygotsky space theoretical model to understand the four cases and suggest augmentations to the model based on the findings and analysis. Though all teachers made progress in growing as agentive advocates, the constructivist Vygotsky space model highlights the differences in pace, scope, and action among them. The cases also suggest three points in the existing model where the coach appeared to influence teacher growth: Encounter, appropriation, and pre-publication. Insights into coaching, advocacy, and the Vygotsky space model have implications for supporting teachers in agentively advocating for marginalized students in their charge and beyond.

1. Introduction

Teacher empowerment and agency hinges on the ability to act and make decisions based on professional judgment, beliefs, and values (Sherman & Teemant, 2022), particularly when such actions run contrary to contextual forces such as policy mandates and standardized materials. This requires teachers to have a well-developed sense of their authority to decide and act. Authority can be understood as a teacher’s confidence or belief in their expertise and ability as well as their legitimacy. In this way, authority is a confluence of power and agency.

For many teachers, advocacy for students is a crucial part of what it means to teach (Bradley-Levine, 2018) and their beliefs about teaching (Linville, 2016). Advocacy involves taking action within one’s immediate classroom and beyond to reframe the structures and practices of their schools to support students as informed by their expertise (Renn et al., 2024; Sherman et al., 2025). We argue that a teacher’s advocacy proceeds from their authority, and in that way is agentive. Furthermore, by definition, advocacy is undertaken for the benefit of marginalized students, those who are situated in settings and structures that require disruption.

Advocacy is arguably more prominent in educational areas that specifically work with marginalized students. This is the case with dual language bilingual education (DLBE), for which critically conscious advocacy has been identified as a core professional competency (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017; Palmer et al., 2019). Many teachers practice advocacy of some sort, yet it can fairly be asked: How can it be developed? Specifically, how can in-service teachers be supported in developing their authority, agency, and ability to advocate for their students?

One possible answer to this question is instructional coaching, a longitudinal form of professional learning support in which a dedicated professional works with a teacher over the course of a school year (or longer). In general, instructional coaching has been found to an effective form of professional development (Desimone & Pak, 2017; Kraft et al., 2018). Yet, the implementation of coaching in schools is often focused on instructional fidelity to improve student outcomes, irrespective of classroom constitution and teacher background and experience. At the same time, coaching can also be a dialogic process that supports a teacher in developing agentic practice with a focus on transformation (Haneda et al., 2017).

In this comparative qualitative case study, we examine coaching conferences from four DLBE teacher–coach collaborations carried out over two academic years to better understand how these teachers talked about their developing advocacy positions relative to their agency and authority, and how the coach supported this development. The study was guided by the following research questions:

• How does advocacy develop in collaborations between a coach and DLBE teachers?
• How does advocacy relate to agency and authority?
• How can a coach support a teacher as an authority/advocate?

In our findings, we describe four portraits of teacher advocacy development. In our discussion, we situate these portraits by employing the Vygotsky Space framework, a theory that has previously been employed to understand coaching and teacher change (Gallucci et al., 2010; Renn et al., 2024). In doing so, we advance the framework in key ways to improve its explanatory power concerning coaching, teacher change, and the development of teacher advocacy, authority, and agency.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Teacher Advocacy in Language Education

Language learning is inseparable from power, ideology, and agency (The Douglas Fir Group, 2016), and so too is language teaching (De Costa & Norton, 2017). Advocacy is widely held to be a core part of what it means to be an English language teacher. This is supported by the TESOL International professional standards for its teachers (TESOL, 2019), which also informs state-based professional standards for English learner and bilingual teachers (Morita-Mullaney, 2018). The importance of teacher advocacy is established in qualitative and mixed-method research (Norman & Eslami, 2022) and is a core feature of the Douglas Fir Group’s transdisciplinary framework for Second Language Acquisition (The Douglas Fir Group, 2016). Further, teacher advocacy has also been discussed in teacher leadership literature for emergent bilinguals (i.e. English learners aspiring to learn two or more languages, see García (2009)). This body of work largely stems from teachers’ identities, where they locate and call out practices and structures that may impede emergent bilingual students and families’ full access to instruction and related resources (Baecher, 2012; Maddamsetti, 2021; Morita-Mullaney, 2019; Palmer, 2018). Researchers have found that likelihood of language teacher advocacy may be related to personal characteristics such as years of experience and racially or culturally minoritized status that teachers may share with their students (Ybarra et al., 2024; Linville, 2020). Relatedly, advocacy has been understood in terms of teacher beliefs (Linville, 2016, 2020) or convictions (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2007) around equity and justice. Advocacy can also be supported or hindered by contextual factors, such as administration, school culture, and collaborative norms (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2008; Norman & Eslami, 2022).

Yet, regardless of personal or contextual factors, advocacy can emphasize equity and justice perspectives both in and out of the classroom. Dubetz and De Jong (2011), for example, argued that teacher advocacy can take the form of curricular and pedagogical choices, particularly ones that treat the cultures and languages of emergent bilingual students as assets and that actively address historical and systemic inequities of opportunity and access for minoritized students. Advocacy can also be understood in terms of intended impact, with de Oliveira and Athanases (2007) distinguishing between advocacy that ameliorates inequities and advocacy that confronts and seeks to transform or dismantle inequities. Considering these perspectives, teacher advocacy can be understood along two axes: transformative/non-transformative, and in-classroom/out-of-classroom (Dubetz & De Jong, 2011; Haneda & Alexander, 2015; de Oliveira & Athanases, 2007). Regarding the latter axis, Linville (2020) distinguished between instructional advocacy that is focused on schools and political advocacy that goes beyond them. In this study, we consider “out-of-classroom” to refer to advocacy that is still in the school sphere, operating at the colleague and institutional level.

Advocacy can also be understood at the individual or collective level. Harrison and McIlwain (2020) introduced the term ‘transitive advocacy’ to refer to teacher actions connecting them with other change agents to improve their students’ outcomes. In shifting the emphasis of advocacy from the individual (where, for example, classroom choices might be emphasized) to collectives and networks, transitive advocacy highlights how advocacy can be effective when operating across multiple audiences and settings within the school and community. This idea also aligns with relational agency (Edwards, 2005), or the ability to act across and through professional networks.

2.2. Equity and Advocacy in DLBE

DLBE has been conceived as being built on three pillars or core goals: Academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence (Howard et al., 2018). In recent years, scholars have strongly argued for the inclusion of critical consciousness as a fourth pillar (e.g., Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017; Palmer et al., 2019; Scherzinger & Brahm, 2023). To center critical consciousness in DLBE is to center power, resist inequity, and design classroom activities to be representative of cultures and languages of marginalized communities. This can be done by “expanding politically oriented curriculum and instruction that originate in the very knowledges and ways that students from marginalized communities experience language” (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017, p. 418). Critical consciousness thereby embeds advocacy among its teachers to improve conditions for their students and community. Teacher advocacy in DLBE becomes even more important in the face of historical and political suppression of DLBE and attacks upon its legitimacy (Téllez & Varghese, 2013), as well as trends toward the co-opting and ‘gentrification’ of these programs (Delavan et al., 2023; Valdez et al., 2016), where the demands of language majority families de-center families that speak the partner or target language. Teachers, acting as advocates, are one way that these trends can be resisted and reconstituted.

DLBE teachers as advocates encompasses a reach beyond the classroom to address or confront inequity (Dubetz & De Jong, 2011), involving choices that might be considered pedagogical or political (Linville, 2020). DLBE teachers can also advocate through their implementation or reconfiguration of policy, adapting it to address equity in and beyond their classrooms (Zuniga et al., 2018). There remains, however, a need to better understand the relationship and congruence between DLBE teacher advocacy and professional development.

2.3. Coaching, DLBE, and Advocacy

Coaching in education entails a dedicated professional working with one or more teachers over time to encourage and mediate their professional learning. Among the varied approaches to coaching in education are content focused approaches such as literacy coaching (Sailors & Hoffman, 2018). Research on coaching as a form of professional learning support has proliferated in the last decade, with a focus of effectiveness (e.g., Kraft et al., 2018). Though not always the case, coaching has been found to have potential for supporting the development of teacher agency (Haneda et al., 2017; Reichenberg, 2020).

Yet, the connection between coaching and advocacy is not well established. Though coaching is most often understood as impacting individual teachers, some have explored how coaches can be key in school-level systemic reform (Mangin & Dunsmore, 2013, 2015). Coaches have been understood to take advocate roles themselves where teachers are concerned (Kho et al., 2019) and have been found to mediate teacher implementation of policy in such ways that allow for advocacy (Woulfin & Jones, 2018). One study, looking at the cases featured in this paper, looked at DLBE teacher resistance in coaching collaborations, a phenomenon arguably adjacent to, but not synonymous with, advocacy (Sherman et al., 2025).

Further, while literacy coaching has received much attention, very little research has been performed on the coaching of teachers who work with minoritized language learners. One qualitative study explored the experiences of literacy coaches working with teachers in majority language learner schools, finding that knowledge of bilingual education and associated specific strategies were key to coach support (Rodríguez et al., 2014). A study of a coach working with a general education teacher to better support language learners found that such coaching was able to shift the teacher practices and ways of relating to herself and her teaching (Teemant & Sherman, 2022). One qualitative study of a coach working with English learner specialists found that narrative identity work strategies, such as spurring narrative articulation, co-constructing possible selves, and leveraging tensions, were a potential part of coaching support (Sherman & Teemant, 2023).

Studies focused on instructional coaching in DLBE are rare (Renn et al., 2024; Sherman et al., 2025), with most emphasis in that context focused on the testable subjects of English language arts and mathematics (Morita-Mullaney et al., 2020). Because, as we have argued, the foundations of DLBE are designed to be participatory and emancipatory and are focused on students finding agency and voice in their work (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017), a focus on this context is particularly valuable for understanding coaching for advocacy. Thus, this study addresses several needed and intersecting gaps in the literature: Coaching for agency, coaching for advocacy, and coaching in DLBE settings, which we turn to now.

3. Conceptual Framework

The analysis conducted in this paper builds on two key concepts that are explained here: Agency and the Vygotsky Space. These concepts are explained below.

3.1. Agency

The concept of agency is notoriously difficult to navigate, as it has been theorized in many (sometimes contradictory) ways, and has too often been employed without being properly defined at all (Eteläpelto et al., 2013). Agency has been associated with teacher advocacy broadly (Molla & Nolan, 2020) and in the DLBE sphere specifically (Palmer, 2018; Morita-Mullaney, 2019).

In this paper, we draw on a specific articulation of agency from the agentive triad model (Sherman & Teemant, 2022). This model posits agency not as a capacity or ability, but as a quality of action occurring at the confluence of a teacher’s identity (defined as their professional beliefs and values) and power (defined as the range of legitimate action associated with their professional roles). When a teacher’s professional action aligns with their identity, it can be said to be agentic. When a teacher’s action (or lack thereof) conflicts with their identity, it can be said to be anagentively compliant (Sherman et al., 2025). Hereafter, when the terms agency, agentive, and anagentive appear, they refer to this framework and these definitions. Defining agency in this way allows us to make clear connections between teacher and coach descriptions of their actions and circumstances and the development of their authority and advocacy over time.

3.2. Vygotsky Space

To make sense of changes in teacher practice of advocacy over time, we used the Vygotsky space framework. First put forward by Harré (1984) and developed by McVee et al. (2005), this model extends sociocultural principles to theorize the adoption of new practices in organizations. The Vygotskian Space framework (see Figure 1) posits that teachers operate on two axes: public and private, and individual and collective. Within this matrix, there are four stages that teachers may move through in the adoption of new knowledge and practice. These are appropriation, transformation, publication, and conventionalization. Drawing on Gallucci and colleagues (2010), we can describe these stages as follows: Individuals begin with the appropriation, where they express interest in changing specific ways of thinking and acting through interaction with others (in a collective setting). Privately, they transform that thinking and acting, taking ownership of it as they apply it to their own purposes. They can then display their transformed knowledge and practice through publication. As displayed knowledge and practice becomes adopted by peers, it becomes conventionalized, made part of organizational practice.

Importantly, these stages are not linear, can ebb and flow between one stage to the next, and are not guaranteed to advance. With some ideas, teachers might move through stages, whereas with others they may only reach the appropriation or transformation stage, never getting to the stage of public conventionalization.

Gallucci et al. (2010) applied this theory in the context of instructional coaching. Also studying coaching, Renn et al. (2024) posited the addition of a “pre-publication phase” between transformation and publication. The addition of pre-publication suggests a kind of dress rehearsal that a teacher performs with the support of a coach as they recognize their knowledgeable self, guiding their colleagues. There is an anticipated level of risk in moving to publication and thus, the meso-level stage between transformation and publication is pre-publication. It is this latest version of the Vygotsky Space framework that we take as our starting point. We use this framework to make sense of our data, and then use our findings to propose refinements to the framework.

4. Method

This study is part of a larger initiative supporting DLBE teachers in a midwestern U.S. state. The analysis emerged from a separate investigation into coaching and teacher resistance (Sherman et al., 2025). We present a comparative case study of four DLBE teachers at two schools. Following Bartlett and Vavrus’ (2017) articulation of comparative case study as a meaning-focused heuristic rather than a way of bounding context and data, this means cases are theoretically driven by phenomena of interest first and then understood in context. The study follows the phenomenon of advocacy and authority in coach–teacher professional learning relationships, viewed through the lens of agency and identity, at the level of interactions and patterns over time.

4.1. Background and Participants

The cases in this study were drawn from a larger 18-month study in which nine in-service DLBE teachers participated in a seven-course graduate program focused on DLBE and English language teaching. This coursework was built on a decidedly critical perspective, and so likely introduced these teachers to many ideas of agentive pedagogy and advocacy. Participants also partnered with an expert bilingual coach who worked with them, alone or in grade-level pairs, six times over the 18 months of the study (Renn et al., 2024). These six conferences, lasting between 45 and 90 min, were video-recorded and transcribed in full. The coach was a former DLBE educator with over 25 years of coaching experience and familiarity with the content and theory in the graduate courses.

The third author has experience as a district instructional coach focused on improving instructional conditions for identified-English learners. With this overarching goal, she designed the intervention and data collection. As an associate professor, she taught this cohort of teachers in second language acquisition principles and content teaching for identified-ELs and visited their classrooms. Thus, she knew the participants well. The second author is a research faculty member who has worked on this project since its first year. She taught two of the courses in the 18-month online graduate program, a linguistics course and an assessment course. She also observed the participants in their classrooms, giving her insight into their professional contexts. Her professional expertise is in language development and sociolinguistics, which guided her analysis of the data. The first author did not participate in teaching and data collection but focused on data analysis.

Drawing on their familiarity with the data and guided by the theoretical focus of advocacy, the authors identified four teachers to serve as the basis for paradigmatic cases (Flyvbjerg, 2006), or cases that can be considered prototypical or metaphorical of a particular phenomenon. In this study, these four cases (Figure 2) were identified as having potential for being paradigmatic of advocacy in coaching collaborations. The other five cases were less evident of advocacy.

The cases came from elementary schools in two districts, referred to pseudonymously as Mapleton and Silton. Each were identified for having two-way DLBE programs supporting Spanish and English speakers with content instruction in both languages. Silton’s program was established and school-wide, while Mapleton’s had been initiated recently and was a limited part of the overall school programming. Two teachers from each district were analyzed for this study: Joanne and Lydia from Silton and Victoria and Kathy from Mapleton.

4.2. Data Analysis

Once identified, the transcribed data for these four cases (six conferences, twenty-four transcripts total) each was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). In this interpretive and iterative approach, researchers emphasize the subjective creative process of developing, rather than discovering, themes in the data. This approach was chosen as being complementary to Bartlett and Vavrus’ (2017) comparative case study approach and as valuable for developing theory on the cultivation and support of advocacy in professional learning.

Based on the theoretical articulation of advocacy described above, the second author began by identifying critical passages in the transcribed interactional data between the coach and focal case teachers that were relevant to advocacy. These passages ranged in length from one-to-many pages. We then analyzed these passages through the theoretical lenses of (1) agency; (2) authority; and (3) advocacy among DLBE teachers to develop themes from these lenses. We used these analyses to develop portraits, vignettes that present participant experience of advocacy in narrative form (Spalding & Phillips, 2007). We present these portraits below. Next, we traced thematic patterns of like and difference in advocacy, agency, and authority across the collaborations in connection with the Vygotsky Space model. The findings suggest augmentations to the model, which we address in the discussion.

5. Findings

5.1. Portrait One: Joanne

Joanne was a Kindergarten teacher in Silton’s two-way dual language program. She taught almost exclusively in Spanish at the beginning of the school year, and by the end of the year she taught approximately 90% in Spanish and 10% in English. She was in her third year of teaching at the time of the study, and she had taught all three years in the same school and grade.

Early on, Joanne indicated an advocacy position, saying “I love the diversity here so I’m gonna stay and I’m gonna fight for these kids cause that’s what matters. But it’s just hard”. Joanne’s “fights” were often tied to pedagogies that she wished to implement that were either resisted or not adopted by her Kindergarten colleagues. These included translanguaging and subject integration, two ideas she learned about in her coursework.

The conferences bear evidence that Joanne drew authority for her advocacy positions from both her coursework and the coach’s support. The former was evident in multiple references Joanne made to research both in her own practices, such as “I kind of stood my ground a little bit more recently and said, ‘Well, the research says this. So, this is what I’m going to do’”. and as a basis for advocating change amongst her colleagues, such as discussing “bringing in some research and saying, ‘Look. Look at this research. Look at what you’re doing. It’s not wrong. But, you’re halfway there. Now, let’s add this’”. Examples of practices discussed included shared writing, language bridging, and active vocabulary development. The coach specifically talked about Joanne’s implementation of coursework in her teaching. Earlier in the collaboration, she told Joanne, “You’re learning these things in the coursework that doesn’t match the practice that you’re doing right here”. In another conference, she asks “is there one thing from your coursework that you learned that you think ‘I really wanna keep doing this?’”, later adding, “It’s just thinking about what you want to keep”. It appears that the coach supported Joanne in growing in her agentive ability to advocate for her students.

Joanne’s advocacy emphasis appears to have been strongly focused both on her own classroom and colleagues. Referring to subject integration specifically, she said, “now I’ve been really hammering home, like, ‘No, we need to change this’”. In this instance, her focus went beyond her own classroom, as she expanded the scope of her authority and agency to assert her ideas with fellow educators.

One notable strategy employed by the coach in relation to advocacy was to talk about principles rather than practices. The coach described Joanne’s growth in this way, saying “I’ve really seen it in you. Before, we talked about the what and the how. And now, you talk about the why”. The why in this case is the principle behind Joanne’s pedagogical action. The coach went on to say, “Now, you have the why of your pedagogy and who, your identity as an instructor, as a teacher”. This focus extended to Joanne’s relations with her colleagues, with the coach saying, “That could be an interesting conversation to say, like, even with your own team, ‘What is the expectation for Kindergarten? Who are we? What do we believe pedagogically?’” One of the last things the coach said to Joanne as they finished their collaboration was “Everybody’s got a different idea. So, you have to find the one[s] that align with you and your pedagogy and your belief structure”. This last statement can be understood as an example of transitive advocacy/relational agency, action accomplished through connections with others to expand her sphere of influence. Multiple times over their collaboration, the coach encouraged transitive advocacy. In an earlier conference, responding to Joanne’s concerns about the pedagogical climate at her school, the coach encouraged “thinking about how you talk to other teachers.” She went on to say, “I think people who are participating in this [program] are all feeling very similar to you. So you might wanna talk to some other people outside your grade level”. The coach also encouraged Joanne to visit programs in other schools to learn and create connections. When Joanne asks how she could get the time, the coach suggests she draw on the authority of her graduate studies, saying “Blame it on the coursework”.

5.2. Portrait Two: Lydia

Lydia was in her fourteenth year of teaching. Thirteen of those years were at her current school, and 12 were in Grade 3 (her grade at the time of the study). She taught in Silton’s dual language program that employed a one-teacher 90/10 model through Grade 3, so she taught in both Spanish and English. Approximately half of the students were English-dominant and half were Spanish-dominant. She was one of the most experienced dual language teachers in her building, having taught in both one-way and two-way program models over her career.

During her first four sessions with the coach, Lydia was paired with a grade-level colleague who was a close friend1. Likely owing to this, those sessions served more as opportunities to air grievances, and Lydia complained that she lacked authority under her current school leadership. In the coaching sessions, Lydia expressed frustration that they were unable to enact instructional techniques she had learned in the graduate coursework, like bridging between Spanish and English. She reported feeling that her ability to act was stifled and that she was compelled by her school leaders to focus on things like test preparation, which emphasized more time in English. She also shared that, though she felt she was becoming an authority on multilingual learner education, this was ignored and often silenced by leadership. During these conversations, issues related to advocacy rarely arose. The dynamic expressed was one of anagency (lack of agency) and suppressed authority. Lydia appeared to feel powerless to effect change beyond her immediate classroom.

However, in her last session, which was an individual session with the coach, Lydia demonstrated a marked change in her apparent mindset compared to earlier sessions. She responded to the coach’s question of what she would like to “take back” in her classroom with an agentive intention to reintroduce read-aloud activities to increase student engagement. She now referred to her own authority based in her familiarity with research about multilingual learners. With this developed sense of authority, Lydia initiated several discussion points related to advocacy. During these discussions she took a moral stance on what needed to be done in her school, as informed by her coursework and despite resistance from building leadership. The coach encouraged this thinking, asking her “What do you want to do with this year? What’s your thing you want to do THIS YEAR [emphasis added] that you can feel successful at the end of this year and not, because, the trouble is, [the context] isn’t going to change”. In response to this prompting, Lydia was initially tentative but seemed to gain confidence, declaring “speaking up… advocating… maybe even, implementing things that they might question”. This suggests a decisive intention to actively push back, which is a significant shift from her earlier expressions of frustration and powerlessness. Thus, compared to Joanne and other teachers who gradually expanded their spheres of advocacy, Lydia took longer to self-identify as an advocate but ultimately showed signs of embracing that agentive position by the final coaching session.

5.3. Portrait Three: Victoria

Victoria was a Kindergarten teacher in Mapleton’s two teacher two-way dual language program. The program used a 50/50 model, with Victoria teaching two sets of students in English for half of the day, and a partner teacher teaching the same set of students in Spanish for half the day. Victoria was in her third year of teaching, with the last two at her current grade and school. She had an English as a New Language license and was an English as a second language teacher prior to moving to her current school. She came to Mapleton to teach at the then brand new DLBE program. Since dual language was new and a strand in an otherwise general education building, she and three other dual language teachers received external training on DLBE and were treated as local experts by her principal and other district administrators. Her Spanish partner teacher had also taught for three years (two in her current grade and school) but did not have a teaching license and was working on an emergency permit.

Despite being positioned as a local expert, as a new DLBE teacher in a new DLBE program, Victoria initially struggled with her sense of authority. A self-described “people-pleaser”, she shared that although she did not always agree with choices made by her school leaders, she was hesitant to advocate for change by speaking up. She described being “shut down” in the past, making her reluctant to share her ideas with leadership. The coach responded to Victoria’s feelings of low authority by encouraging her to collaborate with colleagues and to reach out to a mentor teacher, Kathy, for support as a form of self-advocacy and relational agency. This approach helped Victoria to develop a stronger sense of agency, authority, and advocacy beyond herself.

Throughout the coaching sessions, the coach consistently built Victoria’s sense of authority by positioning her as an expert. For example, when her Spanish speaking partner teacher was reluctant to make collaborative changes to her instruction, the coach encouraged Victoria to agentively act to move things ahead, saying “Let’s flip it. The way you could address [the teacher’s reluctance], when she makes a comment like that, you could say ‘That’s great. Let’s put it on the calendar, when we can make that happen’”. She also affirmed Victoria’s authority and agency by suggesting she act independently if her colleague was unwilling to work together. This was, in a sense, anti-relational agency, as the coach suggested the teacher act agentively by disregarding rather than drawing on a professional connection. By later sessions, Victoria began refusing to accept established approaches used by her colleagues, instead recognizing her ability, authority, and agency to innovate in her classroom.

Victoria’s longitudinal interactions with the coach illustrate how advocacy can develop over time and in collaboration. Over the course of the six coaching sessions, Victoria exhibited an “arc of advocacy”, starting with self-advocacy, as described above, and gradually expanding her sphere of advocacy to her classroom, her school and, finally, the greater community. During this progression, the coach provided external affirmation of Victoria’s agency and authority, supporting her development as an advocate for herself and her students. After building Victoria’s confidence by supporting her through self-advocacy, the coach helped her think about advocating for her class and the pedagogy of the larger DLBE program. In their final coaching session, the coach asks, “But, we can talk a little bit more about the school today, just to think, really, what is it you guys want to be?” Victoria replies with enthusiasm, referencing content she has learned in her graduate coursework.

Now that I’ve continued my Curriculum and Instruction classes and learned a lot about social justice. And, that’s, just, really hit, like… What does that look like in Kindergarten, to teach social justice? [...] What is appropriate to make them aware of in our society and what’s happened in history? And, what could they understand? […] There’s almost a social justice thing for these kids to understand, that, if we didn’t have this program, [...] for those other classrooms, [inequalities] would continue.

In this exchange, Victoria described the vital role of dual language as a mechanism for social justice in her building and community. She also discussed how she wanted to emphasize the bicultural pillar of DLBE (Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017) by including a unit on “How do I impact my culture and community?” These ideas illustrate her transformation into a strong advocate for her students and their families, a far cry from the teacher who initially described herself as being “at rock bottom” and whose main concern in the first coaching session was not meeting other people’s expectations.

5.4. Portrait Four: Kathy

Kathy was a first grade English language teacher in Mapleton’s 50-50 two-way dual language program, where students were shared with a partner Spanish language teacher. She had been teaching for 35 years at the time of the study, 32 of which were at her current school and 21 of which were in first grade. She was designated as a “mentor” teacher in her school, which required her to observe and evaluate colleagues (including Victoria in portrait three). As a veteran teacher and as someone familiar with the school context, she had the authority of experience. Yet, at the time of the study she was beginning her first year teaching in a dual language program. Like Victoria, her district had paid for her and her partner teacher to receive external training on DLBE. This training strongly advocated the use of a language separation model, where each teacher exclusively used their specific target language in the classroom and translanguaging was discouraged. Her Spanish partner teacher had been teaching for 14 years, nine of those in her current school. It was her partner’s first year teaching both dual language and first grade. As a mentor teacher, Kathy was the de facto literacy expert for her building, and this mapped onto the administration’s expectations of her leadership, even as a first-year English partner teacher in DLBE.

Early in her collaboration with the coach, Kathy talked about changes she wanted to push for. She asked the coach if she had any “big ideas” for new themes for instruction. The coach replied that “...there’s power, there’s equity […], how do we make things fair?” The coach connected these ideas to Kathy’s unit on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kathy recognized this as “…the equity piece. Yeah, equality, identity. It doesn’t matter who, you know, or what you look like.” The coach then built on that, connecting it to making a difference in the world, specifically in learner communities. This culminated Kathy teaching a unit on Cesar Chavez, who shared the same racial and cultural background as many of her students, in tandem with the content on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to make the concept of civil rights more meaningful to members of her classroom community.

As a more seasoned teacher and a leader within her building, Kathy appeared to be more comfortable pushing back on the coach’s suggestions when she felt they were not feasible in her context. In her earlier sessions, there was little discussion of advocacy. Rather, the coach positioned Kathy as an authority in her school and community. As with other teachers, the coach elevated Kathy’s authority and agency by asking what she would like to emphasize in her instruction. When Kathy responded that she would like to focus more on writing, which she valued as a teacher, she expressed doubt that her Spanish partner shared this goal. During this conversation the coach encouraged the teacher to own her authority by moving forward without her partner teacher, if necessary; Kathy tentatively resisted the coach, eschewing “uncomfortable conversations,” despite holding a leadership position within her school.

Coach:

You, you can’t be held back because others aren’t. And I know that’s been a concern [....]

Kathy:

Just have to keep going.

Coach:

Well, I think you have to do more than keep going. You’re gonna have to push. And here might be some uncomfortable conversations. If you were the mentor teacher with your colleague, what would you see?

Kathy:

And those uncomfortable conversations are something that I’m not good at.

In response to Kathy’s seeming unwillingness to push back, the coach responded by taking a different strategy: When a suggestion was rejected, she responded by suggesting a smaller step. For example, in the following exchange, the coach suggests that the program needs a “reboot”. Kathy agrees but responds that they are “at that place” where they cannot move forward, so the coach circles back to this idea later in the session with a more modest proposition: requesting time to plan a scope and sequence.

Coach:

What I hear you talking about is you need a reboot.

Kathy:

Yeah, we do. [...]

Coach:

…I think that reboot is when you talk with [principal name]. Really saying we need to, we have to reboot this. Because you’re getting to the testing year. Next year’s the testing year. And who are we as a community. What does this look like? We can’t just be hiring to hire. We have, and you got cheated.

Kathy:

And unfortunately, we’re at that place right now because there’s not a big pool of Spanish speakers.

 

[...]

Coach:

Ok so with that reboot, what do you feel like are the must talk abouts. Like you cannot leave this year without doing them?

Kathy:

Well, I think having that scope and sequence or what…. Just that whole scope and sequence of what we want, what is expected.

Coach:

Ok. Do you think [principal name] would give you guys a day to do it?

Kathy:

Oh yeah, I think so.

Coach:

Alright, then let’s do that. [...] Alright, scope and sequence. Then the accountability will be because we’ve got it in place.

Kathy:

Exactly. Yes. And we have it and we have to have some way to measure it. And then that will bring that accountability in there.

Later in that same session, Kathy states that “Our program is supposed to replicate the community of [community name] as a whole”.

Over time, the coach’s approach of pushing Kathy to change, but then stepping back and proposing a smaller, alternate action when Kathy resisted proved effective. Over the course of the six sessions, Kathy became more open to embracing her authority and agentively advocating for the growing DLBE program as a mentor and leader. By the end of their final session, the coach encouraged Kathy to “spearhead” the development of their school’s DLBE program. Kathy laughingly acknowledged the truth of this statement, saying that if she didn’t lead the way, “It’s not gonna happen. Yes. And we are aware of that”. In their last session, the coach spoke of advocacy directly, saying,

Going back to that question you said, “What’s best for kids?” If we don’t squeak [i.e., voice concerns], that’s not what’s best for kids. So, that’s, I know that’s not your nature. You’re not squeakers [...] But, sometimes, the advocacy role is what, What’s best for kids is to say, “Wait a minute. We need a program that might… that’s going to address this.”… Or, “We need a different kind of book in our classroom.” Or, “We need books where our kids are represented”.

Importantly, the coach articulated Kathy’s aspiration of reflecting the community and translated that for her immediate classroom by asking rhetorically, “What’s best for kids?” This circular approach of starting with Kathy’s hope of ‘reflecting the community’ and moving back to the classroom, moved discussion within Kathy’s comfort zone while simultaneously encouraging her to consider scale beyond her own classroom with her partner teacher.

Overall, Kathy started from a position of authority based on her experience, but not based on DLBE, demonstrating how authority is not merely mediated by experience. Further, Kathy’s authority did not necessarily translate to advocacy. Over the course of their collaboration (and as Kathy took courses), the coach carefully urged her to increase both her agentive authority as a DLBE teacher and her commitment to advocacy drawing on her established authoritative position.

6. Discussion

The portraits above provide a picture of four DLBE teachers and their journeys to greater agency, authority, and advocacy with the help of graduate coursework and a pedagogical coach. In this discussion section, we will connect agency, authority, and advocacy of these teachers to the theoretical framework of the Vygotsky Space (McVee et al., 2005; Gallucci et al., 2010). We will first apply the framework to these four cases to make sense of these teachers’ journeys as supported by the coach. We will then propose several augmentations to the Vygotsky Space model based on these longitudinal teacher–coach interaction.

6.1. Vygotsky Space as Lens to Understand Portraits

The Vygotsky Space model (McVee et al., 2005) holds that teachers move through four stages in adopting new practices: appropriation, transformation, publication, and conventionalization. This model, which has previously been used to understand coaching collaborations (Gallucci et al., 2010; Renn et al., 2024), provides a framework for understanding the four teachers’ journeys as agentive, authoritative advocates. The framework allows us to see how each teacher’s path to advocacy is distinct, as well as commonalities across the group. Notably, as an originating stage of introducing new practices, all four teachers have examples of appropriation in which they respond affirmatively to suggestions from the coach. Three of the four teachers express interest in publishing newly transformed ideas and practices, placing them in the pre-publication stage of the cycle. In these data, none of the four teachers reached the publication and conventionalization stages of the cycle. These patterns suggest that coaching may take on greater significance in certain parts of the cycle. Despite these similarities, each teacher’s movement within the framework is distinct in terms of timing and pace.

As described in Portrait 1, even in early sessions Joanne, the Kindergarten Spanish teacher in Silton displayed an inclination toward advocacy (suggesting beliefs already resonant with it). Due to this disposition, she responded affirmatively to suggestions by the coach that she would “fight for the kids” or bring translanguaging into her instruction after learning about translanguaging cycles in her graduate courses. Of the four teachers featured, Joanne is the only one who followed up on appropriation topics like these by sharing examples of transformation in her instruction. She provided evidence of this stage of ownership and adaptation by describing integration of content across subjects to support vocabulary development, doing shared writing activities, and focusing on metalinguistic and cross-language connections. She evidenced the pre-publication stage by expressing an agentive intent to expand her scope of action and authority by observing first grade classrooms to support vertical alignment and school-wide implementation of content she had learned in her graduate courses.

Lydia, the Spanish teacher in Silton in grade 3, was not advocacy-oriented in her early joint-sessions with her colleague, but in her final coaching session (which was one-on-one) she expressed multiple instances of appropriation and pre-publication. She responded positively to several of the coach’s suggestions, particularly related to re-introducing read-alouds into her daily instruction. During a discussion about what Lydia would like to “take back” as a teacher, she expresses that after a recent lesson on reading practices in her graduate courses, she is inspired to get her students engaged in reading via interactive read-alouds. She also entered the pre-publication stage of the cycle, sharing her intent to agentively “speak up, advocate”, and do things that her administrators might question as the result of transformed understandings from her coursework.

Like Lydia, Victoria’s advocacy conversations during the coaching sessions were confined to the stages of appropriation and pre-publication (English Kindergarten teacher: Mapleton). A significant difference between the two teachers, however, was that Victoria expressed interest in advocacy-oriented suggestions as early as coaching session 2. In nearly every coaching session, Victoria and the coach discussed ways in which Victoria could advocate for the nascent dual language program in her building. Victoria appropriated many of the coach’s suggestions, including reaching out to a more senior teacher for support, identifying things she learned in her graduate coursework that she would like to incorporate into her instruction, setting up time for bridging, and ways to support the bicultural pillar of DLBE. The coach also nudged her toward publication in session 4, urging her to share what she had learned in her courses with the principal. By session 6, Victoria shared several goals for publication as she became more comfortable viewing herself as an advocate. Within this pre-publication stage, she voiced her intention to incorporate social justice into her Kindergarten curriculum, start the next year with the four pillars of DLBE, and foster a bicultural community with her students and their families. This illustrates her desire to publish her transformed thinking with both colleagues and the greater community.

Kathy, the English partner 1st grade teacher in Mapleton with the most years of teaching overall differed from the others as the only teacher who did not progress past the appropriation stage of the cycle. Moreover, on a few occasions she evidenced resistance to appropriation, voiced her opposition to some of the coach’s suggestions. For example, when the coach encouraged her to push for change in her district’s dual language program, Kathy protested that she disliked “uncomfortable conversations.” Similarly, in session 5, Kathy deflected the coach’s urging to create a shared programmatic vision with her principals and colleagues, moving the conversation to the challenges of finding qualified teachers to teach Spanish as new grades were added to the program. Importantly, this reluctance to appropriate the coach’s suggestions (or in other words, to even enter the cycle of the Vygotsky Space) can be seen as agentive, a move that may be supported by Kathy’s authority as an experienced educator and established presence in the building.

The coach reacted to this resistance to an advocacy stance by suggesting a smaller move rather than dropping the topic. In response to Kathy’s resistance to creating a shared vision for the program, for instance, the coach suggested that Kathy take the lead on scope and sequence for dual language program and ask for a day to do it, creating a more “bite-sized” step forward. Kathy was receptive to this idea and replied that she thought the principal will be supportive. In this way, the coach successfully adapted to Kathy’s agentive resistance and brought her into the appropriation phase, positioning her to continue making progress as an agentive advocate and a local authority within her program.

The above discussion shows how the Vygotsky Space model can help make sense of a coach’s support of teachers as they not only adopt new practices but, to differing extents, develop more agentive positions of authority and advocacy. Yet, as (Renn et al., 2024) showed, there is room to further develop the model, drawing out more nuance and implications for application in professional learning. We now transition the discussion, introducing ways that these cases suggest refinements to the Vygotsky Space model.

6.2. Portraits as Lens to Refine Vygotsky Space

The Vygotsky Space model describes a cyclical process of becoming moving between public and private, individual and collective. As Gallucci et al. (2010) note, it is well suited to understanding teacher change in the coaching process. Having considered how advocacy in coach–teacher collaborations can be understood when viewed through the theory of Vygotsky Space, we can now consider how these cases speak back to the theory and suggest new ways of thinking about it. Thinking of advocacy and agency, we can see the coach and the coaching conversations as points in the Vygotsky Space, and we can locate them in the model. Doing so suggests some intermediary stages in the model and new ways of thinking about the existing stages.

The stage of appropriation is a natural place to begin. Rogoff (2008) defines participatory appropriation as “the personal process by which, through engagement in an activity, individuals change and handle a later situation in ways prepared by their own participation in the previous situation” (p. 60). Notably, for Rogoff appropriation happens in practice, whereas she considers interpersonally mediated processes of communication and coordination to be a different plane, that of guided participation. With coaching, we can consider that the activity in which transformation is meant to occur, teaching, is largely (though not completely) distinct from the activity of coaching, much of which occurs in conferences. We can consider teaching, then, to be the realm of appropriation leading to transformation, and coaching to be guided participation and engagement.

There is, however, a nuance we must consider. Rogoff’s terms are related to apprenticeship models, meaning their orientation has a stronger (though not exclusive) association with transformation as a newcomer becoming part of an established community, mediated by a member of that community. The coaching situation we have described above is different. The teachers are already established members of their communities. The coach is an outsider introducing new ideas, in this case, advocacy. The Vygotsky Space model accounts for transformation of the individual leading to change in the public setting (publication and conventionalization). What these cases suggest is that the coach can fit into the model as an outside actor introducing new ideas and practices, indirectly transforming the setting. To account for this, we propose some new terms and intermediary stages for the model.

First, we argue that a stage is needed that precedes appropriation, more in line with Rogoff’s guided participation. We call this encounter, referring to the encounter of the new. Encounter is an opportunity for disruption and engagement that may or may not be appropriated. It doesn’t presuppose acceptance or resistance but is the point from which these agentive reactions ensue. A teacher might encounter a new practice in a public setting, as part of another teacher’s publication; they might encounter it independently (through a course or a reading); and they might encounter it through a coaching conference. Importantly, encounter helps us consider the potential impact of a teacher’s existing beliefs in accepting or resisting a new idea or practice. These distinctions alone are different enough to justify consideration of encounter as its own stage. We can then look at encounter in coaching specifically. Within the context of the cases, the teachers encounter the idea and practice of advocacy when it is introduced by the coach. In our analysis, we see the encounter of advocacy as being accepted by three teachers (Joanne, Lydia, Victoria) and resisted by one teacher (Kathy).

Notably, the encounter of advocacy is not introduced by the coach as a completely new idea or practice, but rather as a folding in of advocacy into their current practices and values. Their encounters with advocacy, mediated by the coach, are tied to their values, beliefs, and authority as teachers. What they encounter, then, are not mere practices or ideas of advocacy, but advocacy woven into their teaching practice and professional selves. As opposed to the imposition of new ideas, this folding-in seems far more likely to situate appropriation an agentive act, one that is in line with who the teachers are as professionals. We see the coach accomplishing a similar folding-in of theories and practices encountered by their teachers in their graduate studies.

Once teachers have encountered the enfolded advocacy in a coaching conference, they then can (but again, are not guaranteed to) begin privately enfolding it into their own practice, taking ownership of it and transforming it to suit their purpose. This stage is not linear and can take some time. To account for this, we propose another intermediary stage, pre-transformation. As we see in the cases, teachers can continue working with the coach on this process, moving between considering application in their teaching practice (appropriation) which is then discussed in coaching conferences (guided participation). In these cycles of pre-transformation following appropriation, the coach can introduce and nurture a teacher’s perceived need, affordance, and ability to attempt and take ownership of new practices and ideas. If a teacher is successful, they achieve transformation. We saw this with Joanne and, to a lesser extent, Lydia and Victoria.

Proceeding through the cycle, we can look back to the existing models of advocacy that posit it as being transformative and non-transformative and as happening in the classroom and outside the classroom (Dubetz & De Jong, 2011; Haneda & Alexander, 2015; de Oliveira & Athanases, 2007). There is a danger of slipping between different senses of the word “transformative”. In the advocacy model, transformative refers to the impact of advocacy as being significant and foundational or cosmetic and superficial (non-transformative). In Vygotsky Space, transformative refers to foundational transformation in practice or thinking. The common point for these terms is that non-transformative advocacy practices are unlikely to be transformative in the Vygotsky Space sense of the word either. Indeed, we see an emphasis on transformative advocacy practices rather than superficial ones in the coach’s support of advocacy.

Another point of contact between these two models is distinction between advocacy inside and outside the classroom, which aligns with the Vygotsky Space stage of publication. As (Renn et al., 2024) note, there is arguably a pre-publication stage in which a coach can support a teacher in publishing their efforts. What we see in the cases above is the coach supporting teachers in taking their advocacy beyond the classroom, again working with a teacher’s perceived need, affordance, and ability. This, too, appears to be more of a loop than a linear progression. This is another example of guided participation (coaching conferences) leading to a new teacher practice (publication). Further, publication aligns with the idea of transitive advocacy and relational agency, change accomplished with and through others in the setting and community. Just as with appropriation, the cases suggest a loop at pre-publication, as coaches may need to encourage and support a teacher over multiple sessions before they are ready to publish.

The above discussion highlights four places in the Vygotsky Space cycle where the coach has influence, or four potential intervention points: Encounter (introduction of the new, as preceding appropriation), appropriation (folding into practice), pre-transformation (feedback loops preceding transformation), and pre-publication (feedback loops preceding publication). This illustrates how the Vygotsky Space model can be modified (see Figure 3) to guide coaching practice as a way to accomplish transformation of both individual teachers and settings such as schools and communities. Note that this illustration does not include all elements of the original illustration but preserves those that are most relevant to the discussion here.

Importantly, if we seek to cultivate teachers as advocates, we can aim for nothing less than publication. The Vygotsky Space, so augmented, provides a conceptual map for reaching that point. Coaches wishing to accomplish transformation of individuals and settings can consider these four stages as points of intervention where guidance can influence practice.

6.3. Limitations and Future Research

There are a few limitations worth noting in this study. The data we have are limited to coaching conversations. It is notable that these data do not shed much light on the stages of publication and conventionalization. The cases suggest that reaching these stages requires an extended length of time, often placing them beyond the scope of a more limited coaching intervention. Also worth noting is that while all of the teachers had exchanges that fell within the appropriation stage of the Vygotsky space cycle, this was the only area of consistency across all four teachers. This illustrates how the cycle manifests uniquely for each person and perhaps that what each teacher chooses to share in coaching sessions is dependent upon the teacher’s needs. Further, though this study focused on teacher growth in terms of advocacy, it is likely that there is much to learn about the coach’s growth in this area as well. Future studies may take this focus.

As this study is limited to interactional data, we only have insight into what the participants talked about, but not what they actually did in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Thus, a future study that paired observation of classroom practice with analysis of interactional data from coaching conferences would be valuable for confirming or challenging the model both in terms of advocacy and teacher change in general. Beyond this, future studies exploring the suggested feedback loops of pre-transformation and pre-publication, as well as the folding-in of appropriation, would likely be of great value for informing practice.

7. Conclusions

Teacher advocacy is a form of empowered practice arising from authority and agency that benefits marginalized learners in particular. It is important for DLBE teachers, and for all teachers, to have the agentive ability to advocate. Coaching has great potential as a form of professional learning support to help teachers develop their authoritative and agentive ability to advocate.

In this paper, we have looked at a collective case study of four DLBE teachers who worked with a coach in conjunction with graduate coursework and, to differing extents, developed their inclination and ability to advocate. We have presented these cases in terms of authority, advocacy, and agency, and have made sense of the professional learning journeys of these four teachers through the lens of the Vygotsky Space model. In applying this model, we have suggested some augmentations that have potential for developing a better understanding of how coaches can influence and support teacher practice and growth at different points in the cycle.

The empowerment of teachers is a laudable goal, especially when it is meant to ultimately benefit marginalized learners. Yet, it is far from given that coaching in education is an empowering process. The cases examined here, emerging from the informed practice of one experienced coach, present an example of how coaches can support teachers in developing an agentive stance and practice for emergent bilingual students.