Constructing deficit from diversity: assessment and placement networks and the raciolinguistic enaction of ESL

Abstract

The category of ‘English as a Second Language’ or ‘ESL’ student is no longer a label of someone in the process of learning English. Rather, linguistic categorization is a complex social processes of ascribed identity formation that positions students as deficits and others, circumscribing them out of belonging to both academic settings and a nation-state, and implicated in racialization. Research that investigates policies for multilingual students often take language-proficiency based categories like ‘ESL students’ as an a priori condition, thus ignoring the key role institutional practices such as assessment and placement play in the construction of these categories. In this study I utilize Actor Network Theory (ANT) to examine assessment and placement practices through which categories and categorization of ESL and developmental students are enacted. Examining how groups and anti-groups are generated reveals that the enaction of ‘ESL student’ is highly mediated by the local campus context, language ideologies and the perceived differences between their student populations. Assessment and placement networks are embedded in racializing processes that position and define diverse students as deficits, as not belonging, thus reinforcing raciolinguistic hierarchies.

Keywords:

• Actor-Network theory
• assessment
• community college
• multilingual learners
• raciolinguistics

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the funding for this research, which was made possible by the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Ford Foundation and The International Research Foundation for English Language Education. The author acknowledge the principal investigators of the RICC project who provided the data for this study – Carola Súarez-Orozco, Marcelo Súarez-Orozco, Robert Teranishi and Margery Martin – and the team of graduate students who collected the data and contributed to the analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).