Current Issue
Volume 35
Editors-in-Chief: Jay J. Lee and Karla M. Venegas
Editors’ Note (PDF)
Heritage Language Loss of Asian American Youth: Racial Ideologies in Language Policy Implementation (PDF), Cheryl Lee
The Implementational and Ideological Spaces of the Seal of Biliteracy for World Language Education (PDF), Amy Schindelman
Redefining Who Belongs in Multilingual Classrooms and Communities: The Conscious Construction of the Midwest School District’s Two-Way Immersion Program (PDF), Lauren McAuliffe
Multilingualism or Marginalization? Syrian Refugees and Layers of Language-in-Education Policies and Practices in Lebanon (PDF), Amy Guillotte
Status Planning and Language Education Policy in the Commonwealth Caribbean: The Case of Jamaica (PDF), Sarah-Lee R. Gonsalves
Dual Language Education in New York City and Philadelphia: A Comparative Analysis Looking Within and Beyond Language Policies (PDF), Peizhu Liu
Note From the Field: Centering Student Teachers’ Perspectives Through Collaborative Inquiry (PDF), Kristina B. Lewis
Note From the Field: Chronicles of a Shitty Ethnography (PDF), Aldo Anzures Tapia
Editors’ Note (PDF)
Heritage Language Loss of Asian American Youth: Racial Ideologies in Language Policy Implementation (PDF)
Cheryl Lee
In 2016, the state of California voted in favor of Proposition 58, reinstating the power of local education agencies to determine the types of language education programs over which they administer and to permit the creation of bilingual and dual immersion programs in California public schools. The legislation seeks to address language diversity and promotes the bilingual acquisition of California students. In repealing English-only instruction policies, the proposition enables alternative language education pathways for the over 2.5 million California students who speak a language other than English at home. An examination of current school district programs and policies, however, reveals that Asian language bilingual programs are often lacking in number, or simply non-existent, even in large school districts that serve significant Asian American student populations, and this presents adverse implications for language maintenance and identity formation. This paper draws on language policy and critical theory frameworks to deconstruct the documented heritage language loss of Asian Americans through the triangulating forces of institutional language policy, language environments at the local school district level, and racialized ideologies about Asian Americans.
Published online November 20, 2020
The Implementational and Ideological Spaces of the Seal of Biliteracy for World Language Education (PDF)
Amy Schindelman
Since its 2011 legislative enactment in California, the Seal of Biliteracy (SoBl) has emerged as a policy tour de force in language education across 37 states and the District of Columbia. As SoBl policies show large variation from state to state, district to district, and school to school, questions arise as to what the SoBl award means for various stakeholders in a nation where world languages have historically taken a back seat. This paper first takes an ecological approach in identifying, situating, and tracking the trajectories of primary discourses produced through advocacy efforts and adaptations of the SoBl. I, then, consider how these discourses work to develop implementational and ideological spaces—which interact with one another in both collaborative and confrontational ways—in the contexts of world language educational policy, curriculum, and instruction.
Published online November 20, 2020
Redefining Who Belongs in Multilingual Classrooms and Communities: The Conscious Construction of the Midwest School District’s Two-Way Immersion Program (PDF)
Lauren McAuliffe
The growth in the U.S. Latinx population, in conjunction with residential isolation of African Americans, has resulted in hypersegregated schools that disproportionately serve English Learners (ELs) and Black students. A long-standing incompatibility between federal legislative protections has forced these populations to compete for access to educational resources, such as dual language programs. Though bilingualism confers an array of instrumental benefits, it has, heretofore, been offered to ELs at the exclusion of their Black peers. Such language education programs thus reproduce raciolinguistic ideologies of antiblackness (Sung, 2018). I suggest that two-way immersion (TWI) programs have the potential to enlargen the pie (Valdés, 2002) insofar as they integrate and provide bilingualism to Latinx and Black students. I contend, however, that such programs must be locally constructed. This paper will analyze how the Midwest School District (MSD) designed a language planning initiative in response to their communities’ unique context. Leveraging multi-scalar alliances, actors in MSD cultivated implementational spaces in which multilingual classrooms and communities were redefined to include Black students and families.
Published online November 20, 2020
Multilingualism or Marginalization? Syrian Refugees and Layers of Language-in-Education Policies and Practices in Lebanon (PDF)
Amy Guillotte
This paper explores supranational, national, and local layers of language policy and planning (LPP) that affect education for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. By applying Hornberger and Johnson’s (2007) concept of approaching multilingual LPP as a multi-layered onion, disconnects among supranational, national, and local layers of LPP are critically examined using Tollefson’s (1991) historical-structural approach and Dryden-Peterson’s (2017, 2019) framework of possible futures. In this case study, I conclude that multilingual language-in-education policies in Lebanon often create structural barriers for refugee learners to access and persist in the national education system. The potential benefits of multilingualism often are not realized in implementation and multilingual policies exacerbate educational inequalities and fail to prepare refugees for a variety of possible futures.
Published online November 20, 2020
Status Planning and Language Education Policy in the Commonwealth Caribbean: The Case of Jamaica (PDF)
Sarah-Lee R. Gonsalves
The subject of language education policy has been the source of highly contentious debates in Jamaican media, in recent years, as there have been numerous calls for and against the inclusion of Jamaican Creole in the education system. Advocates for Jamaican Creole argue that its exclusion risks the marginalization of a significant portion of the school population, while opponents of Jamaican Creole express concern about reducing the quality of education offered to students in the name of linguistic rights. Using an interpretive policy analysis approach, and by examining de facto language policies, a draft language policy, and newspaper articles, this paper seeks to determine the discourses informing status planning and mediating language education policy in Jamaica. The findings suggest that discourses about the evolution of post-independence Jamaican identity and notions of progress through education and literacy are the most influential.
Published online November 20, 2020
Dual Language Education in New York City and Philadelphia: A Comparative Analysis Looking Within and Beyond Language Policies (PDF)
Peizhu Liu
TThere has been a steady growth in the number of dual language (DL) programs in the U.S. However, there is an uneven development of DL programs across cities/states. This paper focuses on New York City (NYC) and Philadelphia, where the number of DL programs differs drastically. Specifically, this paper examines the DL policies at the federal, state, and local level, respectively, with the goal of discovering how the difference in policy influences the development of DL education in NYC and Philadelphia. I conclude that policies at the federal level do not favor DL education explicitly, but allow ideological and implementational spaces (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007) for the development of DL programs. It is primarily the differences in policies at the state and local levels that seem to contribute to uneven implementational spaces for DL programs in NYC and Philadelphia. This paper makes a call for continuing ethnographic research on DL education policies and programs across the country.
Published online November 20, 2020
Note From the Field: Centering Student Teachers’ Perspectives Through Collaborative Inquiry (PDF)
Kristina B. Lewis
In this Note From the Field, I describe the intentional decisions I made to center the perspectives and sense-making of student teachers themselves in my research on student teachers’ learning and identity development during a practicum semester in Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). I explore a critical incident from the practicum seminar that emerged as particularly salient to student teachers, tracing the ways student teachers navigated its meaning over time and across contexts. I argue that attending to student teachers’ experiences and insights raises challenging questions that all teacher educators must consider.
Published online November 20, 2020
Note From the Field: Chronicles of a Shitty Ethnography (PDF)
Aldo Anzures Tapia
This Note from the Field is an invitation to education ethnographers to see the important role of everyday aspects—such as shit—as we investigate the role of language learning and schooling, as well as the ways in which everyday aspects impede formal education and schooled learning to happen. This Note argues that leaving everyday activities outside of our scope of research might hinder us from discovering places where languages are practiced and are typically underexamined by academic work.
Published online November 20, 2020
