Children as Language Policymakers through their Translanguaging Practices in a Dual Language School

• In Event: Translanguaging as Embodied Language Policy in Critical Inquiries about Linguistic Justice Across Generations and Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
As part of a greater qualitative study, I used ethnographic methods to understand how children play a role as language policy ‘do-ers’ (Anzures Tapia, 2020) in the language ecology of a bilingual school in Florida. I argue that emergent bilinguals, through translanguaging as their everyday, dynamic bilingual practice, implicitly direct and ‘make’ classroom and school language policy in a bottom-up language policy orientation rather than a top-down, teacher to student approach.

Theoretical framework
I drew from Hornberger and Johnson’s (2007) language policy framework represented as layers of a language policy onion (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996) to understand the language policy making process in a school. The direction in which language policies are implemented are usually understood to come from a top-down approach, meaning administrators to teachers, then to students, especially if policies reinforce English dominance and subtract students’ heritage languages, as typically seen in non-dual language contexts and even bilingual programs (Valdés, 1997, Menken & Solorza, 2014). Wiley & García (2016) and Sánchez et al. (2018) suggest an alternative way to analyze language policy, opposing the top-down approach and, instead, arguing that linguistic practices of students drive language policy from the bottom up. To this end, students are arbiters of language policy.

Methods
In the present study, I conducted classroom observations in three fifth-grade classrooms and interviews with administrators and fifth grade teachers at Zamora Elementary, as well as focus groups with five fifth grade students during the fall of 2023. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed, then triangulated with field notes data from classroom observations for analysis.

Data sources
Semi-structured interviews addressed questions about the history of language policy at Zamora, as well as teachers’ ideologies towards language policy. I conducted focus groups with students in which our conversations centered on their language ideologies, their language use in and out of school and with their friends, all while documenting their own language practices. I also had focal students draw language portraits (Gogolin & Neumann, 1991) where they identified parts of their bodies they associated with languages they spoke.

Results
All three focal teachers expressed how the [English-dominant] curriculum was challenging for students of all language backgrounds. While teachers appropriated language policy from this standpoint, findings suggest that the fifth grade students influenced teachers’ language policy appropriation. Newcomer students’ language practices and experiences motivated teachers such as Ms. Alvarez to teach bilingually even though she didn’t have to. Mr. Delgado translanguaged with students to connect with their cultural and linguistic practices. While educators do play a powerful role in language policy appropriation, my findings show that students at Zamora are not recipients of language policy, but are themselves language policy do-ers.

Scholarly significance
Students overall showed agency in acknowledging their bilingual identities and using their dynamic bilingual practices in the classroom. Teachers can understand this and leverage students’ dynamic language practices through intentionally designed translanguaging and culturally sustaining pedagogies to transform the educational experiences of Latinx students.

Author

• Daniel Garzon, California State University - Los Angeles