A teacher’s facilitation of Mexican immigrant students’ border crossings in a dual-language classroom

ABSTRACT

This ethnographic study utilized border theory to examine how a bilingual Latinx teacher created equitable instruction for Mexican immigrant second-graders in a 50–50 dual-language (DL) classroom in the U.S. Midwest. Approximately half the students in the DL classroom came from Spanish-speaking, working-class homes, and half from English-speaking, middle-class homes. The teacher reduced linguistic borders when she drew from her personal experiences and knowledge of bilingualism to forbid linguistic discrimination, separated students’ second-language mastery from their conceptual understanding, and facilitated translanguaging (bilingual individuals’ use of integrated linguistic resources). She promoted class border crossings when she intentionally grouped students and told the English-dominant students that they were disrespecting their Spanish-dominant classmates when they refused to speak Spanish. Borders that the teacher could not change were the high status of English at the school and the English-dominant students’ expectation that the Spanish-dominant students would help them with their Spanish but that they did not have to reciprocate. Educational implications included training DL teachers so that they know how to reduce the privileges of the English speakers and how to support translanguaging. A call for more classroom research to address the power dynamics between language-minority and majority students in DL classrooms was made.

KEYWORDS:

• Border theory
• translanguaging
• dual language
• emergent bilingual students
• Mexican immigrant children

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María G. Lang

María G. Lang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Bilingual Education at Baylor University. Her areas of interest include sociocultural approaches to bilingualism and biliteracy, mainly focusing on the language and academic development of Spanish-dominant Latinx emergent bilinguals. Her work looks at the intersections of language, class, documentedness, religion, and gender that shape the academic, language, and social outcomes of working-class children of Mexican immigrant families.

Georgia Earnest García

Georgia Earnest García, PhD, is Professor Emerita in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign. Although retired, she continues to work with bilingual students, teachers, and schools, and conduct and publish related research. She was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2019.