Multilingual Education Policy (Mis)Alignments and Complexities Among Teachers and Administrators: Operationalizing Justice for Multilingual Learners?

• In Event: Multilingual Learners and Bilingual Education: Language Policy Perspectives

Abstract

As multilingual education programs have grown in recent years (ARC, 2021), new policies have been developed at the state, district, school, and classrooms levels across the U.S. to govern their implementation. Given the potential of such policies to disrupt injustices faced by multilingual students (Heiman & Yanes, 2018), along with the central role educators play in policy enactment (Gazzola et al., 2023), this mixed methods study examines the (mis)alignments among educators’ policies across multiple levels in Massachusetts, where policy change has enabled the expansion of multilingual education. Specifically, this research draws on survey and case study data to explore how educators in varying roles understand and take up multilingual policies to shape multilingual students’ experiences of multilingual education.

Author

• Jesse Rubio