"Social Justice Is Access and Discussion": Contexts for Regulatory Learning in a Dual-Language Classroom

• In Event: Critical Conversations: Social Justice Practices for Overcoming Psychological Barriers in K–12 Settings

Abstract

Using an ethnographic qualitative case-study approach and a sociocultural theoretical perspective, support for self-regulatory learning in an elementary Spanish-English immersion classroom was documented. The classroom was composed of 33 dual-language learner (DLL) students acquiring their home language, Spanish, and a new language, English, at school. Inductive and deductive thematic coding analyses were used to characterize the teacher’s communicative practices as they related to student self-regulatory learning of the two languages. Findings suggest that certain learning contexts coupled with communicative tasks provide DLLs with opportunities to become more regulated-language learners of English and Spanish. These results have implications for practice, informing educators about instructional methods that support self-regulated learning in bilingual environments.

Authors

• Janet Cerda, University of California - Los Angeles

• Alison L. Bailey, University of California - Los Angeles

• Margaret Heritage, WestEd