Reproduction or reinvention: Whither the bilingual renaissance?

• In Event: A Bilingual Renaissance: Remedying and Repairing Monolingualism Through Critical Multilingual Education Research, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

This paper explores two possible paths that may result from the current bilingual renaissance in U.S. schools and academic scholarship: the reproduction of existing educational inequities, or a reinvention of bilingual education. Focusing on California and Arizona as two state contexts in which to examine this bilingual renaissance, we consider potential negative repercussions that may result in the further marginalization of racialized bi/multilingual students before exploring possibilities for the reinvention of bilingual education towards promoting educational justice for marginalized communities.
We utilize a raciolinguistic perspective on bilingual education (Rosa & Flores, 2017) to frame schools as sites of policy interaction (Menken & García, 2010) and to explore how the implementation of bilingual education programs has historically marginalized many racialized bi/multilingual learners. Despite the proliferation and predominance of monolingual and monocultural ideals and ideologies, we invoke the notion of “pockets of hope” (Horton & Freire, 1990) to signal what is possible when educators and other stakeholders commit to implementing equity-oriented educational policies and practices, and to explore the possibility of bilingual education being leveraged to create social change.
To examine the impact of the recent expansion of bilingual education in California and Arizona, we utilize a narrative review (Jimenez-Silva et al., 2014; Hemingway & Brereton, 2009) to examine statewide policies, legislative bills, scholarly literature, and other documents (i.e., artifacts from the respective state departments of education). Ethnographic data stem from two larger ethnographic studies on the educational experiences of Latinx bi/multilingual students in two schools: one in Los Angeles, CA, and one in Tucson, AZ. For the Los Angeles study, the researcher collected data as part of a longitudinal ethnographic study that shadowed a cohort of multilingual students as they advanced from kindergarten through 12th grade at a small, public dual language school. For the study in Tucson, the researcher conducted observations for a total of 60 school days from August 2022-May 2023, audio-recording and taking field notes of interactions in first-, third-, and fifth-grade classrooms in a public dual language school.
Drawing on ethnographic data from our respective studies in Los Angeles and Tucson, we document the tendency for relevant policies to exacerbate inequalities for multilingual students of color in working-class communities and highlight the tendency for schools to reproduce monoglossic language ideologies and practices that stigmatize the everyday translanguaging of these students. As specific examples, we point to the gentrification of bilingual education programs and to the ways in which the expansion of the Seal of Biliteracy has functioned to further marginalize racialized multilingual students. Despite such trends, however, we argue that the current bilingual renaissance might be leveraged as a unique opportunity to advocate for more just educational futures for these students, locating hope in these two local examples in which stakeholders have consciously and deliberately pushed for a reinvigoration of bilingual education as liberatory practice. Consistent with this year’s conference theme, this paper offers concrete implications toward remedying educational inequality and promoting educational justice for racialized multilingual learners.

Authors

• Ramon Antonio Martinez, Stanford University

• Neida Basheer Ahmad, Loyola Marymount University