Social Construction of the English Learner Label and Their Needs in a Suburban School

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 16. Im/migration, Language and School Compositional Change

Abstract

Current English leaner (EL) research is language-focused—exploring how to practice multiple languages to optimize learning—or policy-focused—measuring the consistency and consequences of policy implementations. Such work takes for granted the idea that EL’s needs are indeed distinct from those of non-ELs, and these needs are only language-based. Sociologists, on the other hand, with the exception of LatCrit (Latinas/os and critical race theory), have not attended to the unique positions occupied by ELs, a fast-growing population in the U.S.—many of whom are U.S.-born with at least one immigrant parent and oftentimes are racial minorities in the U.S. context. This dissertation examines the process by which policies and educators construct ELs’ needs, and how social factors shape such a process, as well as how ELs experience school. The commonsensical understanding of what an EL needs academically as well as how an EL is responding to the complicated social conditions at school, has not been interrogated from a sociological perspective. I attempt to connect literature on bilingual education and policy, to the sociology literature. I use ethnographic observations of ELs and their educators at a suburban high school to analyze the process of needs construction and how ELs are experiencing a white space. I ask: How do educators understand what EL students’ needs? How do EL students experience their school?

Author

• Jienian Zhang, University of Wisconsin - Madison