Resisting Epistemological Exclusion: Inserting La Clase Mágica Into State-Level Policy Discourses

• In Event: La Clase Mágica: Generating Transworld Pedagogy

Abstract

Objective:
This paper centers on the politics of education policy and the limits and possibilities of research-based initiatives in informing political debates at the state level. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we will provide an example of the politics involved in the education of emergent bilingual students in the state of Texas; and second, we will provide an example of the concept of engaged policy as praxis and its potential to bring together, rather than close off, political actors.
Theoretical Framework: According to Adams, Shore, Feldman, and Lanthrop (2005), an understanding of the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of policy help us to unmask the disenabling discourses, mobilizing metaphors, and underlying ideologies at play. Dating back to 16th century France, the term policy, or “policie”, a verb, meant “to policy; to organize and regulate the internal order of,” and “how policy aids the state in shaping, controlling, and regulating” (Adams et al., 2005, p. 35). When used as an adjective modifying a noun like “policy proposal” or “policy agenda,” policy connotes “elegancy, refinement, culture, and civilization” (Adams et al., 2005, p. 35). Today, the concept of policy is “laden with often quite contradictory meanings… that can be coded and decoded to convey very ambiguous messages” (Adams et al., 2005, p. 36). Because policies can govern and regulate the conditions of our daily livelihoods and entire existences, a critical task for those studying policy, is to expose the political aspects that infiltrate policy processes that consequently cast people and problems in ways that actively frame and (re)create marginalizing categories and definitions of individuals.
Methods: This paper will draw from qualitative techniques, specifically participant observation, informal conversations, and written correspondences from October 2008 to June 2009. The data generated from direct participation will be complimented by primary source data collected from public hearings, policy texts, public forums, and stakeholder meeting discussions. Together, these data provide a textual representation of the politics involved in the process of inserting LCM into state-level policy debates in the form of House Bill 4122.
Results & Scholarly Significance:
At the end of the 81st Session of the Texas State Legislature, none of the bills in the bilingual education policy packet would find their way into statute. Nor would the goals of these bills find expression in House Bill 3, the state’s new system of accountability and college readiness. Our findings demonstrate the dire need to increase communities’ awareness of policies and regulatory processes, both governmental and non-governmental entities and persons. Based on our participant observations of the policymaking process, we argue that researchers must be mindful of the larger political context into which policy suggestions enter. Because so much of what it means to be educationally successful relies on reductive measures like standardized test scores and school ratings, it is easy to lose sight of how these very outcomes are so deeply internally referential. That is, these are the artifacts of regulatory processes that differentially situate students within the larger system of accountability.

Authors

• Patricia D. Lopez, The University of Texas - Austin

• Angela Valenzuela, The University of Texas - Austin