The Impact of Massachusetts's Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners Policy on Preservice Teachers

• In Event: 65.074 - Policy to Practice and Back Again: How Policy Influences Teachers and Teachers Influence Policy

Abstract

In 2002, Massachusetts (MA) Ballot Question 2 essentially restricted bilingual education and established English-only as state language policy. A decade later, the United States Department of Justice and Office of Civil Rights ruled that the Commonwealth of MA was violating the civil rights of English Language Learner (ELL) students by inadequately training teachers in ELL methodologies, thereby providing an unequal education for language minority students. The Commonwealth responded by creating Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL), a policy establishing mandatory training in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) for all core academic teachers. This new policy continues to have a significant impact on districts, schools, teacher education programs, and classroom practice.
This study is an investigation of how pre-service teachers in a MA teacher education program experience and make sense of the RETELL policy in general and the course in particular. Specifically, the study seeks to investigate three central questions: first, what do pre-service teachers know and understand about the RETELL policy? Second, how do they experience the implementation of this policy, both as it affects their university training and in terms of practice in their field sites? Finally, what impact does the policy have on pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the “target population,” i.e. ELLs themselves?
This paper employs a theoretical approach of anthropology as policy to explore these questions in social, cultural, and political context (Shore & Wright, 1997; Wedel, Shore, Feldman & Lathrop, 2009). Here, the policy text itself is used as a data source that provides crucial insight to cultural and political context as well as deep-seated assumptions about English language learners themselves (Ball 2003, 2006). In addition to the policy text-related state and district official documents, and public debate in the media, data for this paper emerges from qualitative interviews with a sample of 15 pre-service teachers enrolled in early childhood, elementary, and secondary education courses at a comprehensive state university.
Preliminary findings from this study-in-progress suggest that pre-service teachers had little involvement in the design of this federally mandated policy. However, teachers have been deeply involved in the implementation of the policy, both in terms of careful reflection about its relevance to and impact on their students, as well as in the form of active resistance and “pushback” (Giddens, 1984; Knapp et al, 1998; Lipsky, 1980). Finally, early data indicates that the RETELL policy has motivated complex and thoughtful discussion around the role of language policy, the provision of “equal” education in an English-only context, and the education of ELLs as a whole (Stone, 1988).
This paper seeks to contribute to the small body of scholarship examining pre-service teachers as active agents in the design and implementation of educational policy. Using a critical anthropological lens, it seeks to highlight teacher involvement in and responses to a top-down policy mandate in the context of considerable federal pressure, emphasizing the impact of policy on teaching and learning.

Author

• May Hara, Framingham State University