Dual Language Immersion for Whom? Interrogating Practice Through DisCrit Lenses and Envisioning Model Inclusiveness Potentialities

• In Event: Bilingual Special Education for the 21st Century: Reimagining the Future

Abstract

Dual language immersion (DLI) programs are hailed nationwide as the way forward out of dominant American monolingualism. Based on research, this rapidly spreading formula promises academic achievement, cultural awareness, and multilingualism (Howard et al. 2018). However, we must ask who those promises are for, and who participates in this way forward. Emergent bilinguals with disabilities (EBWDs) and their families encounter consistent barriers and obstacles to their legitimate engagement in multilingualism (Cioé-Peña, 2017). These barriers both implicitly and explicitly promote fixed, ableist prototypes of the communication that “counts” for “the model” (Muñoz-Muñoz et al., 2022). Focusing on California’s context, we engaged with diverse educators at the intersection of multilingual and dis/ability to gather the traits of these multilevel, structural obstacles that preclude inclusivity, especially for minoritized populations, from legal structures, to resources, to linguistic ideologies. In this presentation we propose a reframing of DLI, based on the critical analysis of its foundations and reference literature as well as the analysis of the empirical data obtained from our research participants.

Authors

• Eduardo Rafael Munoz-Munoz, San José State University

• Marcella Cardoza McCollum, San Jose State University

• Matthew L. Love, San Jose State University