Disrupting Discourses of Exclusion in Dual-Language Bilingual Education

• In Event: 15.032 - Democratizing Evidence by Documenting the Gentrification of Dual-Language Education: Language Allocation, Metaphors, Images, and Teachers' Perspectives

Abstract

The rise in popularity and unprecedented top-down expansion of dual language bilingual education (DLBE)–academic programs that promote the goals of student bilingualism and biliteracy–has prompted researchers to ask difficult questions about who these programs serve and why. DLBE has the potential to empower historically marginalized, linguistically minoritized emerging bilingual students alongside the possibility to reproduce systemic inequalities and disproportionally serve the interests of privileged, English-speaking students (Cervantes-Soon, 2014; Valdés, 1997). This study examined educator perspectives on the participation structures in DLBE, defined as access to and participation in the program, across two highly distinct bilingual education contexts, Texas and Utah. In Utah, a state-level top-down model, the programs are generally designed for initially English-dominant speakers, whereas, in Texas, a district-level top-down model, the programs are predominantly designed for initially Spanish-dominant speakers. Observation that inequities appeared to exist within the participation structures of DLBE across these two highly distinct DLBE contexts motivated this study. The central research questions guiding this study were: (a) What inclusionary and/or exclusionary discourses emerge when educators are asked to reflect on and discuss DLBE participation structures? (b) Which language ideologies emerge and operate in educator discourses about which students the program serves?
This investigation builds from a critical language perspective (Fairclough, 1995; Jaworski & Coupland, 2014) and draws from multiple methods (survey [Texas N=323; Utah N=91] and interview [Texas N=20; Utah N=20]) to comparatively analyze educator discourses regarding participation structures in DLBE. The analysis was a multiple-step process involving independent coding of each data set with a second coder, and a side-by-side analysis to reveal overlapping themes. Discourse analysis tools included questioning what the comment was trying to do or accomplish, what was not being said, what was taken for granted, and what assumptions were being made with the goal to surface naturalized ideologies (Gee, 2014).
Educators articulated three broad discourses regarding student access and participation in DLBE: (a) DLBE programs serve all students (inclusionary); (b) context determines who program serves (interactive); and (c) DLBE programs not fit for all students (exclusionary). The discourse that DLBE programs are not suited for all students was embedded with ideologies of linguistic purism, ability, elitism, giftedness and enrichment. The study reveals the multitude of possibilities in the way context, educator ideologies, and the interplay between the two can construct varying degrees of student access to DLBE. For the presentation, I will share two cases of educators who capitalized on spaces for interpretation (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007) within exclusionary state educational policy to promote and implement a more inclusive DLBE model. These educator stories reveal strategies to use knowledge and empirical research to impact educational practice. As new top–down DLBE initiatives continue to emerge and spread across the country it is imperative that, at a minimum, emerging bilingual students are discursively constructed as participants for this educational opportunity.

Author

• Kathryn I. Henderson, The University of Texas - San Antonio