Interrogating Hierarchies of Language: Language Ideologies and Access in a Bilingual Tutoring Program

• In Event: Teachers' Beliefs and Ideologies in Bilingual Education Settings

Abstract

This study explores language ideologies within a bilingual tutoring program. We analyze the perspectives of bilingual university-students (n=49) who were trained as tutors and paired with high school-aged bilingual learners. The program was designed to reduce educational inequalities by providing students with the opportunity to learn academic content in a preferred language. We documented tutors’ beliefs on the purpose, successes, and challenges of bilingual tutoring. Our results show that language ideologies played a key role in how the tutoring was conceptualized and utilized, often in ways that reified monolingual orientations to education, even within a bilingual-oriented tutoring program. These results have implications for the design and implementation of bilingual tutoring, student language access, and language ideological research writ large.

Authors

• Chris K. Chang-Bacon, University of Virginia

• Christopher Hu, University of Alabama

• Isabel Vargas, University of Virginia

• Lucy Montalvo, University of Virginia

• Nina R. Schoonover, University of Virginia