Understanding the Origins of Bilingual Education in Georgia: A Literature Review and Preliminary Analysis (Poster 16)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 4:55
  In Invited Poster Session: 2024 AERA Undergraduate Fellows Research Poster Fair

Abstract

Dual language immersion (DLI) is a form of language education that intends to develop bilingual and biliterate students. Scholarly literature has also shown that the emergence of DLI programs in American education has contributed to the commodification of language and, as a result, the gentrification of these programs by white affluent families. This presentation is one aspect of an ongoing senior research project examining how language policy for DLI programs is enacted in Georgia. Beginning from a historical-structural approach to understanding language policy issues, this paper focuses on how bilingual education emerged in the state of Georgia. The author investigates this through a review of secondary sources consisting of academic articles, dissertations, news articles, and webpages, in addition to a review of primary sources such as state policy documents, district-level policy guidance, and recordings of district board meetings. Preliminary findings suggest that state-level policy actors such as the Georgia Department of Education contested the early adoption of bilingual education when it was connected to serving migrant Latinx students. In contrast, the later state-led expansion of Dual Language Immersion (DLI) in 2012 was motivated by business interests that saw bilingualism as a method for monolingual students to become competitive within the global economy. Despite the existence of 83 DLI programs in Georgia today, there is a lack of written policy on implementing them. This suggests that individual school districts, and individual teachers are central language policy makers. As such, the next steps for this research project involve conducting semi-structured interviews with in-service teachers employed at Spanish dual-language immersion schools in a Georgia school district that enrolls primarily Latinx families. Through these interviews, the researcher intends to explore how teachers interpret and act upon top-down state policy and how, through their actions, they become central actors in the language planning process.

Authors

• Andrés Villalba, University of California - Los Angeles

• Charles L. Lowery, Virginia Tech