English Language Learner Leaders Borrowing Power: Something Borrowed, Something New, Something Other So We Are Blue

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Subject Matter in Mathematics, Physical Education, and English Language Learning: Curriculum Among Teachers, Children, and Youth

Abstract

English Language Learner (ELL) leaders struggle to impact decisions related to instruction, assessment and student services, experiencing a marginalization that other school administrators do not experience. This study addresses the gap in educational research aimed at critically understanding the ways ELL leaders are positioned by witnessing to their narratives.
Supported by critical theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Foucault, 1978; Gramsci, Hoare, & Nowell-Smith, 1971), feminism (Smith, 1999; Valenzuela, 1999) and narrative theory (Clandinin, 2007; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Riessman, 2008), this study describes the stories of ELL leaders borrowing power, working on the periphery to have influence for their ELL programs while combatting the co-option they sense as they center their advocacy around ELL students and families.

Author

• Trish Morita Mullaney, Purdue University