Language policies in medical schools of Puerto Rico: Normalized translanguaging in a high prestige field

• In Event: Diverse Perspectives on Language Planning and Policies

Proposal

As a colony of the United States, medical students in Puerto Rico are required to pass the same standardized tests, offered in English, as their peers in the US. These high stakes exams are required of Puerto Rican medical students despite majority using Spanish as their dominant language. As a result, programs catering to students pursuing medical degrees use a combination of Spanish and English to teach course content. This qualitative study, framed within sociocultural theory and a language as a resource orientation (Ruiz, 1984), seeks to shed light on how institutional language policies influence language use in the different stages of studying medicine on the Island-.

The multilingual language practices of those studying medicine in Puerto Rico provide a classic example of what García and Li Wei (2014) describe as translanguaging. Nevertheless, for majority of Puerto Rican students, English proficiency serves as a barrier to entry into the field of medicine. This lack of access to quality bilingual education becomes an issue of social justice and a way to level the playing field among students on the island.

This study combines interviews with more than 10 recent doctors of medicine and current students of medicine in different medical schools in Puerto Rico with classroom ethnographies of two pre-medicine courses to better understand and document language policies and the role that language plays in the success and failure of Spanish-dominant Puerto Ricans studying medicine on the Island. In addition to adding to the relevant literature on multilingual higher education (van der Walt, 2013) and translanguaging in higher education (Mazak and Carroll, 2017), the paper provides concrete suggestions on how to improve access to aspiring doctors in Puerto Rico who come from environments where bilingualism is not the norm.

Author

• Kevin S Carroll, University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras