Disrupting the Educational Malpractice and Advocating for Racial Justices for Emergent Bilingual and Multilingual Learners

• In Event: Confronting the Raciolinguistic Injustices Recycled in Early Childhood Spaces: Advocating With a Feminist-Abolitionist Approach

Abstract

What are the status quo realities for emergent bilingual and multilingual learners (0-6 years old) in the USA? These learners are mostly immigrants or refugees, inclusive of “those who speak different languages at home than at school” (Fyfe et al., 2023, p.4). Research has shown that these learners have been miseducated due to the following reasons (Delpit, 1995; Fyfe et al., eds, 2023; Milner, 2015):
A lack of educational opportunities that validate these learners’ intersectional identities, particularly racial, ethnic, and linguistic varieties and family literacy practices;
A lack of awareness of colorblind racism, whitewashedness, and racial microaggressions that happen on a daily basis;
A lack of ethnic studies, linguistic and cultural instructional strategies in teacher education that affirm the learners’ and their families’ diverse worldviews.

Continuing the cycle is a categorical “educational malpractice” (Abel, 1974). This paper aims at confronting the racial injustices by offering an anti-fascist, transformative lens that is developed from the research data collected in Italy and the USA.
Since the world-famous Reggio Emilia approach in Italy was translated and adopted for 0-6 years old children in the USA, it had been criticized as being “Americanized” (Li and Chen, 2023), with assimilation and neoliberalism ideologies (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). From a Chinese-American mother-scholar perspective, it is heart-wrenching and a disservice if we perpetuate the same ideologies in early childhood settings for multilingual children.
In 2019, eleven educational researchers conducted an IRB approved study in Italy and the USA. The qualitative study collected observation notes written by the researchers, surveys completed by U.S. early childhood educators in Italy (n=76), and follow-up interviews with the U.S. early childhood educators (n=8). Open and axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was employed, and themes emerged from the data were analyzed.
The survey data, observation notes, and followup interviews were collected and analyzed. The data tables and findings will be shared at the symposium. Seventy-six survey responses were collected and analyzed, eight follow-up interviews were conducted, and the observation notes were cross-referenced when themes were reviewed by the researchers.
The findings of the study confirmed a pattern of disconnect between early childhood educators and the learning needs of the emergent bilingual and multilingual learners. Despite the fact that the majority of the respondents have graduate degrees and more than ten years of experience; 41 languages were identified as spoken by the early learners but not by the educators; 39% of the educators responded that the early childhood programs did not have an intentional approach for creating educational opportunities for these children (Reyes & Yu, 2023). The themes reveal monolingual imperialism towards the use of English as the standard, and systemic racism that perpetuates and recycles white supremacy.
Scholarly significance: 1) it recognizes the systemic racism that recycles white supremacy, 2) it confirms the disconnect between early childhood educators and the learning needs of these children, and 3) it creates a new movement towards affirming the rights of these learners by confronting colorblind racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2006) and whitewashedness (Lee-Johnson, 2023).

Author

• Yin Lam Lee-Johnson, Webster University