A Tale of Two Schools: Individual Teacher Leaders' Agentive Power to Disrupt Racial and Linguistic Hierarchies

• In Event: 45.059 - Educational Equity for Bilinguals: Leveraging Agentic Actions to Disrupt "Truths" in the Post-Truth Era

Abstract

This study examines the critical role of teacher leaders as language policy arbiters who utilized their agentive power to implement meaningful transformations in rural and suburban bilingual education contexts in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. We use comparative discourse analysis of two ethnographic investigations. These teacher leaders appropriated overt and covert policies ultimately shifting local orientations towards an affirmative bilingualism stance. Enactments of resistance actively pushed against systemic barriers that reify racial and linguistic hierarchies to establish alternative reclamation pathways. We argue the impact of individual arbiters is far reaching and should serve as a source of hope and possibility.

Authors

• Kristen L. Pratt, Western Oregon University

• Maria E. Dantas-Whitney, Western Oregon University