Principal Agency Fifty Years After the Lau Decision: Building and Sustaining Bilingual Education Programs for Asian Languages

• In Event: Reconciling Erasure Within Lau: Asian and Asian American Reparations in Multilingual Education

Abstract

Objectives
This study investigates the under-researched area of leadership in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs for Asian languages, particularly within the context of evolving language policies following the Lau decision. It seeks to understand how principals of these programs in California interpret and negotiate policy shifts, manage the associated opportunities and challenges, and contribute to the emerging field of Asian American school leadership by examining the unique experiences and strategies of principals of Asian descent.

Theoretical Framework
Agency, the ability to act and effect change, operates at the macro, meso, and micro levels of language policy planning (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996). Principals inhabit meso-spaces, exercising agency as policy interpreters and implementers to determine when, where, and how policy change is initiated, implemented, and expanded upon (Menken & Solorza, 2015). However, a principal’s environment can have an impact on their ability to create equitable school environments. This study draws upon DeMatthews and Izquierdo’s (2018) social justice leadership framework, examining agentive leadership through three phases: foregrounding and engaging, planning and implementing, and evaluating and sustaining. The framework offers a multi-dimensional social justice perspective, addressing students’ unique learning needs, valuing parent engagement, and centering the cultural and linguistic assets of students and their communities.

Methods
This study employs qualitative interviews (Maxwell, 2009) to explore how three veteran principals of Asian language DLBE programs—Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin—in California navigated oscillating language-in-education policies following the Lau decision. This method centered the voices and experiences of principals, providing an in-depth understanding of convergent and divergent issues in Asian language bilingual education development. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using an iterative deductive and inductive coding method (Saldaña, 2012). Principal agency within a social justice leadership framework (DeMatthews & Izquierdo, 2018) was adopted as the lens for deductive analysis, with thematic coding for sub-data under each phase.

Findings
Findings reveal that the success of DLBE programs goes beyond overarching language policies intended to enable bilingual education; rather, it hinges on the bottom-up commitment, collaboration, and resilience of principals, teachers, and parent communities. State-level blanket policies affecting DLBE schools often overlook Asian languages and the unique needs of Asian teachers and communities in these schools, limiting the conditions for principal agency. Despite these constraints, principals consistently engaged in advocacy across various phases, including teacher recruitment, hiring, work distribution, curriculum design, and assessment, to support the growth and sustainability of their programs. Principals played multiple essential roles: demonstrating expertise in DLBE research (immersion guru), performing agentive moves to strategically interpret and navigate policy changes (immersion overseer), and grounding themselves in local communities to advocate for the specific needs of teachers, students, and parents (immersion proponent and agent of change) (Rocque et al., 2016).

Scholarly Significance
By elevating these principals’ experiences and perspectives, this study reflects upon the politicized path to bilingual education fifty years after the Lau case and contributes valuable insights to inform future implementational research, policy, and practice, ensuring the continued flourishing of Asian language bilingual education for the growing constituency of Asian-identifying students in the United States.

Authors

• Zhongfeng Tian, Rutgers University - Newark

• Kevin M. Wong, Pepperdine University