Translanguaging and Racialized Multilingual Children: Envisioning Dual Language Education for Working-Class Students of Color

• In Event: Educational Possibilities Amidst the Gentrification of Dual Language Bilingual Education: Solution-Oriented Research

Abstract

Objectives

This conceptual paper articulates a vision for centering multilingual children of color in dual language bilingual education. Drawing inspiration from our longitudinal ethnographic research, we advance a conceptual argument in favor of moving beyond current conceptualizations of dual language education that rely on the enrollment of white students and that subordinate the everyday translanguaging of simultaneous multilingual children to dominant ideologies and elite notions of sequential bilingualism.

Perspectives or Theoretical Framework

This paper builds on a growing body of critical scholarship has drawn renewed attention to issues of equity and access in dual language education (Cervantes-Soon, 2014; Cervantes-Soon et al., 2017; Delavan, Valdez, & Freire, 2016; Flores, 2016; Valdez, Freire, & Delavan, 2016). In particular, these scholars have interrogated what Valdez, Freire, and Delavan (2016) call the gentrification of dual language education, highlighting the ways in which current policies and practices privilege white and wealthy students while marginalizing poor racialized students. In this paper, we situate these current dual language education trends in relation to broader approaches to educational reform that posit ‘proximity to whiteness’ as a theory of change.

Modes of Inquiry

The primary mode of inquiry for this theoretical paper is the retrospective analysis of relevant literature and the second author’s experiences supporting a small, public, dual language school in Los Angeles, California that has focused exclusively on educating working-class, multilingual children of color.

Evidence

While this is not an empirical research report, we share details related to the founding of this school, discuss ongoing efforts to promote educational justice at this site, and highlight lessons to be learned from this context in which working-class students of color have been the sole focus of dual language education, and in which non-Latinx students learn Spanish and English from—and along with—their Latinx peers.

Results or Substantiated Conclusions

In contrast to the underlying assumption that proximity to whiteness necessarily promotes equity, we argue that educational inequality is actually inevitable when the interests of poor racialized students are tethered to those of white students, and we suggest that educational justice in dual language educational contexts is possible only if we begin to center working-class students of color. In schools such as this one, where ‘proximity to whiteness’ is both impossible and irrelevant, we suggest that educators have the unique opportunity to explicitly ground curricula and instruction in their respective demographic and sociolinguistic realities. Building on this local example, we argue that educators and researchers can begin to imagine possibilities for educational justice in dual language education if we look to examples of contexts in which racialized multilingual children are already centered.

Scholarly Significance

This paper challenges normative understandings of dual language education grounded in elite notions of sequential bilingualism. By highlighting a racially heterogeneous dual-language school with no white students, this paper also offers concrete implications for dismantling racial injustice and envisioning justice-oriented educational possibilities for working-class, multilingual students of color.

Authors

• Ramon Antonio Martinez, Stanford University

• CoCo Massengale, Stanford University