Co-editors’ introduction: Gaps between research and policy and practice compromise the education of English Learners

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data consistently show that the average math and reading scores of English Learners (ELs) are lower than those of their non-EL peers (Kena et al., 2016). In 2015, the math achievement gap was 25 points at grade 4 and 38 points at grade 8; in reading the gap was 37 points in fourth and 45 points in eighth grade. These gaps are not measurably different from NAEP scores reported since the mid-1990s. Of concern is that these trends persist despite a robust body of literature identifying the characteristic of effective schools for English Learners (e.g., August & Hakuta, 1997; Gold, 2006; Montecel & Danini, 2002; Scanlan & López, 2015; Thomas & Collier, 2002). In schools that meet, or exceed, language proficiency and academic achievement standards, building leaders articulate a clear mission and vision for special language programs and provide the support and resources needed for consistent, cohesive program implementation. Ongoing, targeted professional development ensures that educators have the expertise crucial to the success of English Learners. Educators hold high expectations for English Learners and engage them in culturally and linguistically responsive instruction, both in the native language and in English. Recognizing that English Learners are not a homogenous population, teachers differentiate instruction to accommodate students’ language proficiency(ies), cultural backgrounds, prior schooling, and knowledge and skills. They use assessment data to plan instruction and monitor student progress, directing or redirecting instruction and providing specialized interventions, as needed, to ensure student success. Collaboration and communication among school staff, coupled with alignment of curriculum and assessment, result in well-articulated instructional programs across grades. In effective schools, parents are engaged in their children’s education because they feel welcomed and respected by school staff.

Given the availability of formulas for ensuring the success of English Learners, why is it that schools struggle to meet federal and state accountability standards for this population? The answer is, at least in part, that education legislation, laws, and policies often contradict, or ignore, the research base on best practices in the education of second language learners. In addition, the articles in this issue of the Bilingual Research Journal illustrate that the education of English Learners is compromised by significant gaps between research and practice in such areas as special language program implementation, assessment and instruction, and the preparation of educators who serve English Learners.

Policy contradictions

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 includes important guiding principles for the education of ELs: (a) equal opportunities for English Learners to develop the conceptual understandings and sophisticated uses of language that college- and career readiness requires of all students; (b) access to appropriate, high-quality instruction and supports that meet the needs of ELs; and (c) meaningful accountability programs (Hakuta & Linquanti, 2016). However, the Act focuses almost entirely on achieving language proficiency and achievement standards in English and is virtually silent on the value of bilingualism and dual language instruction.

PK–12 accountability systems are driven by results of assessments of English achievement. Consequently, schools oftentimes increase the amount of time dedicated to instruction in English as a strategy for increasing the likelihood that ELs will pass high-stakes tests. Yet research has shown that native language instruction and one-way and two-way bilingual education programs produce the highest achievement levels for English Learners and that students enrolled in these programs have the lowest drop-out rates (Thomas & Collier, 2002). In contrast, the lowest performance results from instruction that is provided entirely in English. Students acquire splintered skills in English because they lack the proficiency to follow instruction, but they lose critical opportunities to develop native language proficiency.

Research to practice gaps

Differentiation is a hallmark of instruction that meets the needs of every student. However, differentiation guidelines do not typically include strategies for accommodating the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of English Learners.

Historically, bilingual education teachers have been admonished to separate native language and English instruction (García & Li, 2014). More recently, research has shown that, rather than treating each language as a separate system and assessing language proficiency in each language independently, educators should consider a student’s entire linguistic repertoire as a unified system (García & Li, 2014). Doing so acknowledges that English Learners draw upon all of their native language and English linguistic skills in the process of developing proficiency in two languages. Maintaining strict language separation in instructional delivery contradicts the natural process of second language acquisition and communicates to students that monolingualism is more valuable than bilingualism. Thus, it is important that teachers incorporate translanguaging strategies such as code-switching and translation to affirm and validate students’ linguistic resources (Gort & Sembianti, 2015; Palmer, Mateus, Martínez, & Henderson, 2014).

Guerrero and Guerrero, in this volume, focus attention on the importance of native language proficiency, but from the perspective of the preparation of bilingual education teachers. As indicated previously, students in Pre-K–12 education are frequently denied access to native language instruction. As a result of factors such as English-only policies, parent denial of bilingual education services, and premature exit from dual language programs, achieving native language proficiency is dependent on the language learning opportunities students experience at home and in the community, rather than a product of their schooling. This create a dilemma for higher education in recruitment of prospective bilingual education teachers who have the academic language proficiency required to teach skills and content in a language other than English. As a result, teacher preparation programs are forced to provide supplemental language instruction so their graduates can pass the language-proficiency tests for bilingual education teacher certification. Depriving English Learners opportunities to achieve advanced proficiency in their native language contributes to the continuing shortage of highly qualified bilingual educators.

These issues cannot be resolved until federal and state legislation and policy clearly articulate the value of bilingualism and provide enhanced support for programs in which ELs graduate high school proficient in two (or more) languages. Ideally, this would be the goal for all students. Teacher education programs would be an obvious beneficiary, but society at large would reap the benefits of students better prepared for our global economy.

The articles in this issue of the Bilingual Research Journal elucidate barriers to the education of English Learners, but they also provide excellent suggestions for overcoming these barriers and improving the education of English Learners.

In “Competing discourses of academic Spanish in the Texas-Mexico borderlands,” Michael D. Guerrero and Maria Consuelo Guerrero present a descriptive study of a university faculty’s efforts to prepare a cohort of preservice bilingual education teachers to pass a newly adopted state certification test of academic Spanish. To understand why these efforts fell short, they examined dominant Discourses associated with academic Spanish. Their findings suggest that the dominant Discourse associated with academic Spanish, at both the national and state levels, is designed to undermine the acquisition of academic Spanish by prospective bilingual education teachers.

“‘El pasado refleja el futuro’: Pre-service teachers’ memories of growing up bilingual,” a study by Kyle Miller, examines the school memories of a cohort of bilingual preservice teachers who experienced school as English Learners and contrasts those memories with a predominantly White and monolingual preservice cohort. As part of a course assignment, 37 participants described a memory from elementary school and later used that memory to reflect on its future impact on their teaching. Data analysis yielded themes that captured the struggles and promise of growing up as English Learners, including: (a) the vulnerability associated with school transitions, (b) embarrassing moments in the classroom, (c) language barriers, (d) turning points in students’ education, and (e) preservice teachers’ call to teaching. Each memory-related theme was linked to anticipated dispositions and actions as bilingual teachers.

Translanguaging, the complex, dynamic, and integrated linguistic practices of bilinguals, is a pedagogical strategy that can facilitate learning in bilingual classrooms. “Translanguaging in bilingual teacher preparation: Exploring pre-service bilingual teachers’ academic writing,” reports results of a qualitative case study conducted by Sandra I. Musanti and Alma D. Rodríguez at a university on the Texas-Mexico border. Findings revealed that Latina preservice bilingual teachers creatively leveraged their Spanish and English linguistic repertoire to produce meaningful Spanish writing. Moreover, preservice teachers created translanguaging spaces through writing in multiple ways, showing the potential of translanguaging as a practice in action and as a pedagogical tool that can be used to defy the prevailing monolingual tradition in bilingual teacher preparation.

In their article, “Dual language teachers’ stated barriers to implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy,” Juan A. Freire and Verónica E. Valdez delineate barriers preventing the implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy in their urban classrooms as identified by eight elementary Spanish-English dual language teachers. Drawing on critical sociocultural theory and using pláticas as a method, they identified four primary barriers: lack of time, lack of culturally relevant materials, lack of knowledge, and the belief that social justice topics are inappropriate for young children. The individual and contextual issues surrounding these barriers are described, and implications for teacher educators and those involved in dual language education are discussed.

Translanguaging pedagogy offers a way to differentiate between students’ varying linguistic repertoires when embedding an additional language across the curriculum. Marianne Turner’s article, “Integrating content and language in institutionally monolingual settings: Teacher positioning and differentiation,” draws on positioning theory to show the relevance of teacher positioning to translanguaging pedagogy and differentiation. Differentiation is discussed in relation to qualitative data drawn from two Australian secondary schools. In one school, a Japanese language teacher collaborated with a History teacher on a History unit, and in the other school, three Japanese language teachers jointly taught a Geography unit. The different ways teachers positioned their students influenced students’ use of the target language. Further, teacher positioning was found to lead to student differentiation in the first school but not in the second.

“Differentiated rates of growth across preschool dual language learners,” by Richard G. Lambert, Do-Hong Kim, Sean Durham, and Diane C. Burts, presents an empirically developed model of preschool DLL subgroups. Differences in standard scores were detected between DLL subgroups and non-DLLs at the beginning and throughout the preschool year. Initial and growth rate differences also were found among classrooms having varying concentrations of DLLs. This highlights the importance of classroom composition to the development and learning of all children. Policy makers and administrators should strive for classrooms that represent balanced diversity considering DLL status, race, ethnicity, economic status, and children with special needs.

This volume of the Bilingual Research Journal also includes reviews of two books that will prove to be valuable resources to those interested in leadership preparation for English Learners and those who work with newcomer students.

Jessica Somerville reviews Leadership for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Schools, written by Scanlan and López (2015). This text offers key principles to guide school leaders in transforming their schools into educational spaces where the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students are met and their academic achievement facilitated. Based on their review of relevant empirical research, Scanlan and López identify three major dimensions of meeting the needs of these students: improving their sociocultural integration, developing their language proficiency, and improving their academic achievement. In addition to describing relevant research and related principles, the authors lay out specific processes for helping school leaders achieve these principles.

Kip Austin Hinton reviews Louise Kreuzer’s (2016) book, The Newcomer Student: An Educator’s Guide to Aid Transitions. This introductory, practitioner-oriented text provides a helpful overview of the needs of refugees and other newcomers, from their arrival, to social adjustment, to the development of English literacy, and may be particularly helpful to teachers who are not familiar with the experiences of displaced children in schools. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a summary of the traumas, policies, and bureaucracies involved in the life of refugee students; chapters 3, 4, and 5 cover social adjustment, family engagement, and cultural misunderstandings. In chapter 6, Kreuzer focuses on promotion of newcomers’ home languages and admonishes that one of the best actions that can be taken to advance English proficiency is to “outspokenly value and actively encourage heritage language preservation” (p. 84). The remaining chapters (7, 8, and 9) address effective instructional practices.

In summary, this volume of the BRJ elucidates the complexities involved in serving the needs of English Learners and the importance of addressing the interplay among the factors that contribute to their success or failure. These factors include student and teacher variables and a complex web of societal, institutional, legal, and political factors. The Bilingual Research Journal plays a critical role in continually focusing attention on what research says about best practices in the education of English Learners and advancing a common vision and philosophy for English Learners, one that values bilingualism for all and views individual differences as assets, not deficits.