Undoing Teachers' Racist and Raciolinguistic Ideologies: Expanding Conceptions of Latinx Equity Within Dual-Language Education

• In Event: Intersectionality of Language, Race, and Class Within Urban Classrooms: Resisting Hegemonic Whiteness in Language Education

Abstract

In a Midwestern community, dual-language advocates “guaranteed” that two-way dual-language (DL) programs would mitigate the achievement gap of Latinxs (who comprised DL English learner population). They asserted that research proved these claims and declared that the program was culturally relevant and met Latinxs’ needs by developing bilingualism, biliteracy, and sociocultural competence.

Given the local discourse and that teachers saw DL as for Latinxs, teachers expected improved Latinx outcomes. Teachers, however, were disheartened that Latinx underachievement endured. Hearing their dissatisfaction, I explored: How do DL teachers understand DL provides Latinxs a culturally relevant and equitable education? How do teachers make sense of what they perceive as Latinxs’ underperformance in DL?

Rationale. Teachers’ perceptions of DL’s equity goals and their explanations for persistent racial disparities influence practices and proposed solutions. Educators and researchers should learn about these ideologies to inform teacher preparation, frame programs’ goals, and suggest equitable solutions.

Frameworks. I use the framework critical consciousness to conceptualize an equitable education as one that enhances marginalized youth’s critical consciousness. I draw from raciolinguistics to intersect language and race in my analysis of teachers’ ideologies and their effect on Latinx education.

Methodology. This two-year critical ethnography was in DL classrooms which consisted of the Spanish-dominant half made up of Latinx students, and the English-dominant of mostly White students. I conducted two one-hour interviews of 13 DL teachers (7 middle; 6 high school teachers) and had informal discussions after classroom observations. Data analysis: I coded in a three-stage, recursive/iterative analytic process: inductively during fieldwork, deductively immediately after completion of data collection, and deductively-theoretically after time away from data collection.

Findings. Teachers conceptualized DL as equitable and “culturally relevant” because it offered Latinxs biliteracy and cultural representation. For example, responding to how the program addressed Latinx equity, a teacher stated, “just by virtue of the fact that we do privilege Spanish, we privilege Spanish speakers, I think that in and of itself is a very powerful message to kids[…]about justice and equity just in that.” Teachers generally did not consider that for DL to be equitable for Latinxs it had to explicitly incorporate teaching that attempts to enhance youths’ critical consciousness.

Teachers’ rationalizations for Latinx underperformance focused on language issues, and varied from blaming teachers’ training to the program’s inconsistent Spanish-instructional time to insufficient academic-language input to explicitly racist ideas. For example, one teacher reasoned, “I don’t know if IQ and intelligence is got a genetic factor where maybe the parents themselves.” Teachers wanted fidelity to program model implementation, meaning, providing academic language and adequate language allocation.

Implications. This study uncovers the problematic ways teachers’ raciolinguistic ideologies influence perceptions of disparities and limit the imagined solutions. The study supports expanding conceptions of educational equity in DL to include the development of critical consciousness for teachers and youth as part of its goals.

Author

• Laura Carolina Chavez-Moreno, University of California - Los Angeles