Policy and Discursive Slippages Toward Fiftyfication: A Critical Technical Approach to Dual-Language Gentrification Strategies

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

Abstract

Objectives. We coin fiftyfication as a term for the growing preference for the 50:50 model at the expense of other language allocation models that yield better results. This study examined states that have adopted fiftyfication as a gentrification strategy that consciously or unconsciously caters to students and families privileged on the basis of race, language, and socioeconomic status. In this presentation we have two objectives. First we lay out three arguments for using a critical lens on language allocation rather than simply a technical one. Second, we look for evidence of a potential national trend in policy that marginalizes the choice to allocate more than 50% of instruction to the non-English partner language.

Theoretical Framework. Situated in the field of critical language policy (Tollefson, 2006), we use what we call in this paper a critical technical approach that refuses a false binary choice between the technical and the critical. Within our theoretical framework, we discuss why the influential Utah model, known for being a 50:50 and a one-teacher model, has served as a gentrifying strategy that prioritizes the interests of privileged families.

Methods and Data Sources. First, we used internet research and contacts with officials in each state in the U.S. to determine which have a centralized state-level policy and whether that policy included language allocation restrictions on models other than 50:50. Then we gathered the policy documents from qualifying states—Delaware, Georgia and Wyoming—and used content analysis (Krippendorff, 2012) to code them for references to language allocation. We then performed critical discourse analysis (Rogers, 2004) to look for patterns of discourse that justified the language allocation stipulations and connected them to the example of the Utah model.

Results. There are three main findings in the policy documents of Delaware, Georgia, and Wyoming. First, we found discursive and policy slippage: Documents produced at a higher institutional level called for programs with “at least 50%” non-English language instruction, but documents produced at lower levels sometimes let that policy slip toward prescribing the sole use of the 50:50 model. We also found state documents focused on the promotion of the 50:50 model and the two-teacher model for practicality considerations while they silenced the existence and research findings on the 90:10 model and one-teacher model as an option. Practicality, we theorize, is a problematic discourse because more conservative systems of rules are often more “feasible” in the sense that they are less complex or more to the liking of those in power. Lastly, we found reproduction of standardizing discourses from Utah DL policy and promotional strategies in their policy documents.

Scholarly significance. This national study shows current and significant trends in the field of DL education regarding macro language allocation models and their implications from an equity perspective. We point out the irony that Utah has now changed its policy to permit other language allocation models and we call on these states to emulate Utah in that regard as well.

Authors

• Juan A. Freire, Brigham Young University

• Garrett Delavan, California State University - San Marcos