Shifting language orientations: impact of state-mandated assessments on dual language educators’ language ideologies

ABSTRACT

As educators can open and close implementational and ideological spaces for bilingualism, they are language policy agents. Concurrently, their language ideologies are also informed and shaped by dominant discourses such as the discourse of accountability and neoliberalism. Inspired by ethnographic studies, this qualitative study explored the interplay between midwestern dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program educators' language ideologies and their interpretation of state-mandated assessments. Qualitative data analysis was complemented by critical discourse analysis for observation and interview data collected over three months. Findings reveal that DLBE educators perceived Spanish instruction as invaluable for emergent bilingual education, demonstrating language-as-resource orientation. However, their language orientation often shifted when confronted with testing pressure, as students' performance on state-mandated assessments was used to evaluate the educators. The findings highlight that different language orientations are expressed simultaneously, indicating that the ideological orientation of language-as-problem, language-as-resource, and even language-as-right are not detached paradigms. The findings also suggest that state-mandated assessments are a powerful language policy tool, perpetuating a monoglossic ideology. A close examination of language-as-resource orientation revealed that the monoglossic ideology in bilingual programs serves the interest of white English-speaking families, which calls for critical evaluation of the orientation in future studies.

KEYWORDS:

• State-mandated assessments
• language policy
• language ideologies
• dual language bilingual education
• critical discourse analysis
• language-as-resource

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the educators in the school district of Riverview, who have been devoted to bilingual education.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

GoMee Park

GoMee Park is a postdoctoral scholar working at the University of Iowa, where she earned her Ph.D. in Foreign Language and ESL Education. Her research interests include language assessments (linguistic complexity), teacher education, bi/multilingual education, and language planning and policy (especially critical language policy). Her dissertation, which investigated how dual language (DL) program educators’ understanding of state-mandated assessments and their use impact DL educators’ decisions and classroom instructions, received the 2022 Outstanding Dissertation Awards from the National Association for Bilingual Education.