Chican@ and Latin@ Head Start Teachers as Language Policy Makers

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eighteen
  In Roundtable Session: Centering and Sustaining Diverse Multicultural and Multiethnic Literacies (Table 17)

Abstract

Drawing data from a multistate ethnography of policy studies, we analyzed how local Head Start classrooms serving multilingual learners (MLL) responded to a 2007 policy. Teachers have long been recognized as crucial actors influencing how policies are interpreted, negotiated, and re/made. Rarely, however, has research recognized HS teachers in this role. Our comparative analysis of teacher interviews demonstrates that macro policy and educator and student demographic similarities did not result in similar instructional practices in the classroom. Instead, teachers' policymaking varied considerably in each nexus, and classroom policy emerged intertwined with teacher education discourses, state and local pressures, and grantee structure. However, factors influenced inconsistent and, in some cases, inequitable practices across the six sites for the youngest MLLs.

Authors

• Allison Sterling Henward, Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Kiyomi Umezawa, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
  Presenting Author