How Transnational Histories shape Educational Futures: Understanding Parental Ideologies and Parent-School Relations in DLBE Schooling

• In Event: From Margins to Models: Sustaining Heritage & Dual Language Education in Less Commonly Taught Languages

Abstract

Objectives
This study explores the ideologies and aspirations that help explain Pakistani American parents’ decision to enroll their children in a heritage Urdu-English Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) program in the US. The presentation contributes new understandings about the dynamic forces shaping parents’ expectations for DLBE’s purposes and outcomes, contributing knowledge that supports improved parent-school relations.
Theoretical Framework
While DLBE research increasingly recognizes parents as ideological agents, most studies have focused on programs in Spanish or Mandarin, often in gentrifying contexts with socially divided communities (e.g., Burns, 2017; Chaparro, 2020; Watson, 2025; Zheng, 2020). By contrast, this study examines a community seemingly unified by heritage language goals—while also interrogating the tensions that emerge beneath that surface.

Methods
The project is part of a long-term partnership initiated in 2022 with the only Urdu-English DLBE program in the country, a one-way, k-5 program in North Carolina. We used a mixed-methods design, gathering survey data (quantitative and open-ended) and conducting semi-structured online interviews with 12 parents (about 10% of families). We also drew on field notes and analytic memos. Coding followed an iterative, thematic approach (Saldaña, 2025; Mayring, 2022), supported by regular collaborative analysis.

Results
The survey responses revealed the top four reasons for parents choosing the Urdu DLBE program were heritage language maintenance, heritage cultural connectedness, the asset of multilingualism, and supporting religious education. Parents also identified their children’s increased sense of belonging as a powerful DLBE benefit—specifically, as global citizens, local community members, Americans, and Muslims. Interview data further revealed ideological diversity, which our analyses showed to be rooted in dynamic influences flowing from parents’ histories and ideologies back in Pakistan (Abbasi et al., 2025; Author, 2023; Fatima & Nadeem, 2025; Haidar, 2019; Manan, 2024; Syed, 2024) into their present-day views on language as heritage versus commodity now in the US. All parents were acutely aware of English’s dominance, but their responses bifurcated. Some sought to protect Urdu, emphasizing cultural and religious enrichment and prioritizing academic literacy in Urdu; they expected structured Urdu instruction and benchmarks for progress. Some voiced skepticism toward the program’s efficacy or relevance; citing the dominance of English in both the US and Pakistan, they ultimately prioritized English. Our findings show that parents' hopes and beliefs—shaped by both neoliberal language ideologies and enduring cultural traditions—drew on their transnational family histories and lived experiences in both the U.S. and Pakistan. Educational choices thus become sites where emotional, cultural, religious, and political belonging are negotiated.

Scholarly Significance
The study contributes to a better understanding of school-parent relations in DLBE programs in the US that serve heritage languages occupying precarious places vis-à-vis dominant English. Schools must cultivate critical awareness of transnational parents’ historicized ideologies if parent-school relations are to thrive and robust parental support for bilingual education is to be garnered. Looking back to histories and communities is a way to look forward and ensure futures for bilingual education and meaningful community civic engagement in our country.

Authors

• Hina Ashraf, Georgetown University

• Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University