"Dá aqui que eu faço": Negotiating Language Status in a Portuguese-English Dual-Language Program

• In Event: Humanizing Subaltern Voices, Knowledges, and Language Practices in Dual-Language Bilingual Education

Abstract

Purpose
Recent research documents how English can be disproportionately privileged in dual-language bilingual education (DLBE). This study explores these dynamics in a Portuguese-English DLBE program, asking how do pedagogical moves and student responses reinforce or disrupt inequitable language status dynamics?

Theoretical Framework: Language Status
The language status framework was developed to analyze macro-level language policies around minoritized languages (Hornberger, 2006). Increasingly, language status research has documented inequitable prioritizations of one language over another (May, 2014). We argue that research on language status cannot focus solely on the status of a language while overlooking the status afforded to students themselves. Thus, our study documents how language status can be (re)produced onto students in DLBE classrooms.

Methods and Data Sources
Our data stem from a two-year ethnographic study of a Massachusetts public elementary school. We focused on 84 students (60 1st and 2nd generation Brazilian students and 24 non-Brazilian students) and their four teachers in two kindergarten and two 1st grade classrooms. Data sources included (i) field notes from biweekly classroom observations (600 hours to date) and (ii) interviews with staff members, and parents/community stakeholders (29 participants). Data analysis combined inductive and deductive coding (Maxwell, 2013) through cross-case comparison, a search for discrepant data, and an emphasis on recurring patterns (LeCompte & Schensul, 2012) resulting in the thematic categories reported below.

Results
Language status of Portuguese in the community. While dual language teachers highly valued instruction in Portuguese, not all community stakeholders viewed Portuguese as a valuable language, accentuating inequalities in the experiences of children in the classroom. The tensions around the status of the Portuguese language posed a significant challenge for the Brazilian educators who led Portuguese instruction, namely a newfound fear that they were not appropriately serving English-dominant students. Teachers feared English-dominant parents would retaliate against the DLBE program.

Language status of children during Portuguese instruction. Portuguese-dominant children in these classrooms constantly performed the role of language and cultural brokers. They modeled the language of instruction and also addressed their English-dominant peers’ struggles with Portuguese. “Da aqui que eu faço, let me show you” were constant refrains in the classroom. Thus, the Portuguese-dominant children, usually assumed to be beneficiaries of the program, became facilitators in the classrooms but did not enjoy the same attention and support from the teachers that their English-dominant peers experienced. Finally, Brazilian students' participation in Portuguese‐led lessons was not conducive to further development of their advanced Portuguese knowledge.

Significance
This study documents specific pedagogical moves by which inequitable language status can be maintained in DLBE. Awareness of these dynamics can inform further DLBE program design, allowing educators to accept educational responsibility for these dynamics. In addition, this study explores these dynamics in a unique context of Portuguese Latinx Immigrant experience that has been largely unexplored in bilingual education research. In accepting educational responsibility for educational inequities in DLBE settings, these findings have implications for exploring the ways in which equity and inequity are navigated in DLBE contexts and language education for immigrant populations more broadly.

Authors

• Mariana Lima Becker, Boston College

• Chris K. Chang-Bacon, University of Virginia

• Gabrielle Oliveira, Harvard University