Dual-language engagement: Concerted cultivation of Spanish use among students, teachers, and parents

ABSTRACT

Exploring parent, student, and teacher language moves is essential to develop and implement strategies that cultivate Spanish use in support of dual-language engagement. We used Lareau's concerted cultivation framework to explore language use at a K-8 dual-language immersion school. A case-study design integrating content analysis was used to analyze parent, teacher, and student interview and classroom observation data. Concerted cultivation of Spanish was evident across students’ organization of daily life, language use, and institutional intervention. Parents and teachers’ shared messaging revealed a synergistic dimension of concerted cultivation; serving as a model for supporting children’s dual-language engagement.

Acknowledgments

We would first like to thank the students, parents, and teachers who invited us into their classrooms and homes in support of this work. We would also like to thank the reviewers for giving this work a platform. Finally, we would like to thank the Orange County Education Advancement Network and U.S. Department of Education for providing the funding that made this project possible. Findings expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Orange County Education Advancement Network or the U.S. Department of Education.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Code-switching and translanguaging are listed as examples of the types of language moves bilinguals make to access their language resources. They are not equivalent types of language moves and are based on differing conceptualizations of bilingualism and bilanguaging (Wei, 2021).

2. While Ms. Rosa refers to Quechua both as a language and a dialect, Quechua is an indigenous language family spoken by Quechua peoples living in Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador (Cerrón-Palomino, 1987).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the Orange County Education Advancement Network and the U.S. Department of Education, Personnel Preparation Leadership Grant. Integrated Research Training: Language and Literacy Disabilities [H325D190031].

Notes on contributors

Yenda Prado

Yenda Prado, Ph.D. is a Community Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. She studies inclusive instructional practices at the intersection of language, literacy, and technology for linguistically and developmentally diverse children. Her current work centers on the ways and means that families, communities, and schools support children’s inclusion, language, and literacy engagement across diverse instructional contexts. She has 10 years’ experience as a literacy specialist and English as a Second Language instructor.

Michelle N. Ramos

Michelle N. Ramos is a PhD student in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine and a certified speech-language pathologist. Her research interests focus on effective methods for identifying and treating speech and language disorders in bilingual children as well as developing collaborative systems of support for students’ language development within the school setting.

Elizabeth Peña

Elizabeth Peña, Ph.D. is a professor in the School of Education at UCI. She is a certified Speech- Language Pathologist and is a Fellow of the American Speech Language Hearing Association. Her research focuses differentiating language impairment from language difference via dynamic assessment and standardized test development. Current work focuses on potential similarities among typical monolingual and bilingual children as well as differences in bilingual children with developmental language disorder.

Jenny Zavala

Jenny Zavala is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at El Sol Academy. During her tenure at El Sol, she has taught at the primary and secondary level and mentored emerging and experienced teachers on curriculum development, instructional best practices, and induction. She is an instructional leader and a certified Tier III GLAD® Trainer. With more than a decade of experience in dual-language education, she believes in the importance of supporting and building strong teachers as a pathway for all students to achieve proficiency.