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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Taking a justice-oriented approach to language education, this symposium centers the struggles and resistance among communities of multiple marginalized or less commonly taught languages, including Vietnamese, HMoob, Arabic, and Urdu. These language communities—often excluded from mainstream bilingual education research and practices—have endured histories of war, displacement, racialization, and cultural/linguistic erasure. These papers explore how racialized educators, families, and communities resist structural inequities and systemic exclusion while advancing linguistically and culturally sustaining education in their everyday practices. Grounded in AsianCrit, Critical Refugee Studies, Intersectionality, and critical community-based research, the symposium offers a collective narrative of what educational success means for multiple marginalized language communities: racial solidarity, community resistance, and community-based design that seek to sustain cultural and linguistic pluralism.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Bilingual Education Research

Chair

• Alisha Nguyen, Lesley University

Papers

• Vietnamese American Educators Navigating Racial and Political Conflicts in Vietnamese DLBE Program - Alisha Nguyen, Lesley University

• Lub Zej Zog Project: HMoob Educators Coalitions’ use of sib hlub si pa(a)b and participatory design research (re)claim linguistically and culturally sustaining education - Jenna Cushing-Leubner, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• “Nothing belongs to us”: The Spatial Precarity of Heritage Language Education in Mainstream Public Schools. - Rima Elabdali, University of Tennessee

• How Transnational Histories shape Educational Futures: Understanding Parental Ideologies and Parent-School Relations in DLBE Schooling - Hina Ashraf, Georgetown University; Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University

Session Organizer

• Alisha Nguyen, Lesley University

Discussant

• Ester J. de Jong, University of Colorado - Denver