The impact of regional differences on elementary school teachers' attitudes towards their students' use of code switching in a South Texas school district/ El impacto de las diferencias regionales en las actitudes de docentes de primaria respecto a la alternancia de codigos por parte de los estudiantes en un distrito escolar del sur de Texas

This study focused on investigating whether the teachers' geographical distribution influences their attitudes towards their students' use of code switching. The study was guided by the following research question: Are there differences between teachers' opinions of the north elementary schools and teachers' opinions of the south elementary schools, which are predominantly Hispanic, towards their students' use of code switching? If so, why? A twenty-item structured survey was utilized. The population consisted of 279 elementary school teachers at seven Northern and seven Southern schools in the same South Texas region. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. Findings showed that Southern teachers had more prejudices towards code switching than those from the North, who were more receptive to this socio-cultural and linguistic phenomenon due to the ethnic makeup of their classrooms. Key words: Code-mixing, code switching, language maintenance, language shift, transitional programs. En esta investigacion se busco indagar si la ubicacion geografica de los maestros de primaria influia en su percepcion acerca de la alternancia de codigos de los estudiantes de un distrito escolar del sur de Texas. La pregunta central fue: ?Existe alguna diferencia entre la opinion de los maestros de escuela primaria del sur y aquellos maestros del norte, quienes son principalmente hispanos, en cuanto al uso de la alternancia de codigos de sus alumnos? En caso afirmativo, ?por que? Se uso un instrumento de 20 reactivos. La poblacion estudiada fueron 279 maestros de 7 escuelas primarias del norte y 7 del sur de la misma region. Se uso un metodo de estadistica descriptiva para analizar los datos. Los resultados muestran que los maestros del sur tienen mas prejuicios acerca de la alternancia de codigos que los del norte. Estos ultimos se caracterizan por ser mas receptivos a este fenomeno sociocultural y linguistico debido a la conformacion de sus aulas de clase. Palabras clave: alternancia de codigos, cambio linguistico, mantenimiento de la lengua, mezcla de codigos, programas de transicion.