Determined to Build Equitable and Quality Education for English Learners: Guadalupe Valdés's Lifelong Ecological Approach

• In Event: Truths and Consequences: Guadalupe Valdés's Contributions to Pursuing Equity for Multilingual Students, Families, and Communities

Abstract

One of the most enduring aspects of Guadalupe Valdés’s copious and influential work has been her concern for viewing the education of minoritized students, especially Latinx students, not as composed of entities in need of being addressed in isolation. Instead, in her constant search for educational and social quality and equity, Valdés’s contribution to the field can be considered as encompassing all educational aspects existing within a complex, evolving system: an ecology. These open subsystems and their components, theories that drive actions, definitions of language and literacy development, policies, students and their communities and the ways in which they are myopically conceptualized and classified, curricula, and pedagogies are all viewed as dynamic and interrelated.

In this paper I review Dr. Valdés’s overall commitment to equity and justice for Latino students drawing from an analysis of her work and studies based on her work. I set this review of sociolinguistic (Fishman, 1980), sociocultural (Swain, 2006; and bilingual education perspectives (García & Woodley, 2014; Menken, 2006) against an ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1983; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1984; van Lier, 2004, 2011; de Bot, 2005; Ableser, 2012) to highlight the mutual impact of diverse spheres of learning and development, all aspects which she has so deliberately attended to.

The ecological framework used in the paper has at the center, at the level of the micro-system, the student, interactions with teacher, classroom, and peers, pedagogy and the nature of curricular materials used. Valdés’s early work on the need to transform the teaching of Spanish to Spanish-speaking students, shifting it from a conceptualization of foreign language teaching to literacy, oracy, and literary development starts here. However, the conceptualization and enactment of these courses is equally impacted by interactions with meso-system elements as it considers school programmatic issues, and with macro and exo-system policies and ideologies.

Using these four dimensions of ecological systems we illustrate how Valdés moves away from a simplistic understanding of proposed “solutions” to the education of Latinx and other minoritized students. We highlight other several impactful contributions, including 1) her recognition that within their variability, some multilingual students are gifted as demonstrated by their ability interpret in interlingual situations, an ability that is recognized by their family and community but not necessarily by policy, nor practice (Valdés, 2003); 2) her committed work with teachers; 3) her contestation of the value of all dual immersion programs for minoritized students, without considering power relationships; and 4) her conceptualization of equitable and quality curriculum. Across all these dimensions Valdés’s work has problematized apparent happy, isolated solutions to complex, evolving issues, and thus has contributed to the field in immense, visible and invisible ways.

The work of Valdés has brought a richer and analytical understanding of how intricately connected all aspects of the education of minoritized students are interconnected. Undoubtedly, she was a language ecologist before the concept became popular.

Author

• Aida Walqui, WestEd
  Presenting Author