Dual-Language Education in the Southeast: Paths, Tensions, and Opportunities in Constructing Neoliberal, Multilingual Subjects

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Dual Language Education Explosion: A Critical Analysis of Policy Making Across the States

Abstract

Objectives
A recent emphasis on developing “global skills” and a simultaneous boom of the Latinx population in the U.S. South in the past two decades, has helped create new conditions favorable for the development of a variety of dual language (DL) programs despite the long-lasting tradition of English-only policies for the education of language minoritized students. The ironic contradictions of this context have given way to various tensions and opportunities around these confluences. This paper explores those tensions and examines how populations served by DL both gain, are positioned, and might be better positioned, based upon underlying and sometimes conflicting motives.

To this end, we analyze and compare the paths taken in response to these conditions in Georgia and North Carolina where the Latinx population more than doubled from 1990-2010 (Ennis, Ríos-Vargas & Albert, 2011). Since the early 1990s, both states have struggled to educate language minoritized students and are currently among the ten states with the lowest ELL graduation rates in the country (Sanchez, 2017). Nevertheless, with the exception of Virginia, GA and NC also have the highest numbers of two-way immersion programs in the Southeast (CAL, 2016) – a model that integrates English speakers and speakers of a minoritized language to promote biliteracy for all.

Theoretical Framework
Our analysis draws on critical theory and concepts from critical race theory in education (Ladson Billings & Tate,1995) and LatCrit (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001) to capture the obvious neoliberal knowledge economy (Patrick, 2013) and unspoken racial dimension framing the implementation, power relations, and conditions of DL in these states (Author, 2014; Author et al, 2017; Authors, et al. 2017). These frameworks help us recognize that there are often unspoken undercurrents of advocacy for language minoritized students and analyze possibilities for transformation within the current political contexts of the socially conservative U.S. South and its complicated and lingering histories of racialization.

Methods and Data Sources
We conducted critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013) of publicly available policy documents and media from both states to explore the ways public discourses were framed in Georgia and North Carolina. The texts were identified through web searches, educational research databases, online news sources, and social media. Through a cross comparative analysis we identified similar and differing themes and made connections to contextual factors.

Findings and Significance
Our analysis reveals discourses that highlight the creation of globally competent subjects as a direct result of participating in dual language education. However, this knowledge economy is not framed for all students equally. While DL for English speakers is an opportunity for cosmopolitanism, DL for language minoritized students is used to solve achievement problems or comply with federal policies. Nonetheless, current conditions have also opened up opportunities to disrupt English-only policies for language minoritized students through DL and reconstruct notions of cosmopolitanism, diversity, and minoritized students’ rights to bilingual education.

Authors

• Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon, Arizona State University

• G. Sue Kasun, Georgia State University

• James Arthur Gambrell, Kennesaw State University

• Wenyang Sun, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill