Instrumental Rationality in Dual Language Contexts: Administrator Discourse and Praxis

• In Event: Gentrification 3.0 in Dual Language Bilingual Education: A Districtwide Analysis of Equity for Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Purpose
Elitist trends in DLBE (Flores & García, 2017) are mediated by principals who manage multiple interests and demands from their stakeholders which may contribute to DLBE gentrification (Authors, 2021; Authors, 2022). In this case study of one school’s administrators, we asked: How did administrators’ discourses benefit or gentrify structure and praxis for emergent bilingual (EB) families?

Theoretical Framework
Our research is grounded in Bourdieu’s (1984) instrumental rationality: the logic of a practice or policy focused on supposedly noble or altruistic aims befitting all (Kalberg, 1980). Through this lens, examples include global human capital, referencing the potential of an individual to contribute economically on a global scale; English hegemony, which describes the ideologies (discursive) and the structures (programmatic) that support the privilege of the English language; and reproduction, the propensity for powerful individuals and institutions to perpetuate existing social hierarchies.

Methods
Using a case study approach (Merriam, 2007), we examined the leadership practices and discourses of two DLBE administrators: the principal and assistant principal of Castleville, a district-wide magnet school. Data collection consisted of (a) field notes during a site visit, (2) two semi-structured interviews with each participant, the second of which involved leadership artifacts chosen by participants. We used deductive analysis to examine two forms of DLBE gentrification: (1) discursive, where inequitable ideological underpinnings are evidenced through their spoken logics (such as the logic of instrumental rationality) and (2) programmatic, where the model, structure, pedagogy, or other policies of the program are adjusted to cater to the interests of the privileged.

Results
The principal foregrounded her identity as an elective bilingual and acknowledged linguistic power differentials in various ways. She revealed how privileged White-parents in her school often mistreated the Spanish-speaking teachers. Yet she unquestioningly touted her school’s “reputation” in the community, its “waitlist,” and its eye-catching architecture as markers of status for those families able to enroll in it. She did not fully problematize discourses of global human capital, English hegemony, and the instrumental rationality of English-testing.
The assistant principal, an English monolingual, used highly gentrified discourses to describe the school. During the tour and interviews she gave more examples of—and was more celebratory of—elite/elective bilingualism than the folk/circumstantial bilingualism of multilingual families. She consistently constructed DLBE as “economically advantageous” while also highlighting the school’s “high test scores,” and even her own wealthy nieces’ career benefits.
The assistant principal’s instrumental rationality focused on economics, deleting and abstracting mention of current student constituencies. In contrast, the principal demonstrated an instrumental rationality of seeking programmatic structures that were more student-focused, but her vision lacked specific centering of EBs.

Scholarly Significance
Our study is the first we know of to apply instrumental rationality in this way to DLBE. This study calls for the disruption of instrumental rationality through a reflexive process with administrators that explicitly examines their ideologies. In this process, administrators can be compelled to identify which constituents are discursively and programmatically foregrounded within DLBE.

Authors

• Kelly J. Farkas, Purdue University

• Samarnh Pang, Purdue University