Challenging Damaging Ideologies: Are Dual Language Education Practices Addressing Learners’ Linguistic Rights?

Abstract

The Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1968 to address the challenges faced by emerging bilingual students in U.S. schools. Fifty years later, ideologies promoting bilingual education persist with a discourse of “one nation, one territory, one language nationalism.” The bilingual and multiple language repertoires necessary for students to become fully participating citizens of an increasingly globalized world requires that educators invent a pedagogical framework that fosters students’ critical language awareness and provides affordances for utilizing their linguistic rights. Such a pedagogical approach is explored in this article. The objective is to examine promising, rather than damaging, ideologies intentionally or nonintentionally promoted in dual language education. From our joint research analysis, we offer several encouraging practices for consideration by bilingual teachers and bilingual teacher educators.

Notes

¹ See Wiley (2007) for detailed descriptions of types and objectives of language programs following the implementation of the Bilingual Education Act.

² Teacher names are pseudonyms.

³ This particular discourse segment was initially analyzed in Fránquiz et al. (2013) in relation to an ethic of caring rather than to illustrate the dynamics of translanguaging.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María E. Fránquiz

María E. Fránquiz is a professor at University of Utah.

María G. Leija

María G. Leija is an assistant professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Cinthia S. Salinas

Cinthia S. Salinas is a professor at The University of Texas at Austin.