"Two Schools Within a School": Tensions Perceived by Dual Language and Non–Dual Language Teachers

• In Event: 16.015 - Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o-Latina/o Students: A Decade of Critical Race Feminista Praxis

Abstract

Dual language (DL) is an effective form of bilingual education growing rapidly across the United States (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2016). DL uses English and a second language to provide content instruction with the goal of developing bilingualism, biliteracy, biculturalism and high academic achievement (Baker, 2011). Most DL programs are established as strands in regular schools and there remains little research exploring perceptions and tensions on DL programs as perceived by DL and non-DL teachers. This was the case in the school in which the Adelante Partnership operated. Although universities have the potential for supporting DL programs in equitable ways, there is still a need for showing how university partnerships that have an explicit social justice agenda (Clifford, Millar, Smith, Hora, & DeLima, 2008; Marullo & Edwards, 2000) can be established as culturally relevant partners in urban settings (Ford, 2004, 2011). This study analyzes the perceptions that teachers working within a DL program posses, and the tensions that arose from the social justice work of Adelante. Using a critical sociocultural theoretical framework, I conceptualize language as a social practice (Rogers, 2004) and analyze how various social contexts may conflate with language and power (Lewis & Moje, 2003). Ten teachers participated in the study - two teachers self-identified as Latinas and eight as White females. Data collected are part of the larger longitudinal investigation of the work of Adelante. Interviews were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed for analysis, and emergent coding (Saldaña, 2009) resulted in four thematic clusters of DL and non-DL teachers’ perceptions on the tensions that arose from social justice work. Major themes include: perceptions of elitism tied to student access to the DL program; elitism based on the benefits offered by the DL program; perceptions of increased separation/divisiveness between the DL program and the rest of the school due to the social justice work of the Partnership focused on the DL program, and jealousy due to perceptions of increased resources provided to the DL program by the Partnership. This study contributes to the literature on teacher perceptions, DL education, and the work of social justice partnerships. While there are important bodies of literature in these fields, there is little research the centers on teachers’ perceptions of a DL program influenced by a social justice partnership.

Author

• Juan A. Freire, Brigham Young University