Co-editors’ introduction: Challenges to the success of English learners in the context of language instruction educational programs

There are significant benefits associated with bilingualism, including cognitive flexibility, divergent thinking, problem solving, creativity, and perspective-taking skills (Kroll & Dussias, 2017). Because they can relate to alternative world views and can communicate cross-culturally, bilingual individuals are better prepared to live and work in an increasingly multicultural society (Gándara, 2018). Unfortunately, English learners (ELs) do not always reap the benefits of their bilingualism. Many ELs experience widespread academic underachievement, which results in disproportionate representation in remedial and special education programs (Ortiz & Robertson, 2018). The literature reviews included in the articles in this issue of the BRJ (Volume 42, Number 1) identify a myriad of factors that prevent English learners from achieving their maximum potential: among others, deficit views of linguistic diversity, ineffective assessment and instructional practices, and inadequate expertise among teachers and leadership personnel. These challenges to success are present not only in general education programs but in bilingual education and English as a second language (ESL) settings as well. Contributing authors provide excellent recommendations for addressing these challenges and helpful guidance for the design and implementation of effective programs and services for ELs.

Deficit perspectives and unequal power relationships

A growing body of research indicates that native-language instruction contributes positively to students’ acquisition of English and promotes English achievement (August & Shanahan, 2006; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2005; Goldenberg, 2008; Thomas & Collier, 2002). In fact, bilingual approaches (e.g., one-way and two-way dual-language programs) produce greater achievement gains than do English-only approaches such as traditional pull-out ESL programs (Thomas & Collier, 2002). Given this, why do teachers, administrators, policy makers, and the general public ignore this research, preferring instead English approaches to the education of ELs? According to Cummins (2000), the answer lies in how power relations in broader society are represented in school settings. Schools can disempower students by requiring them to lose their native language and culture as a condition of school success, or they can empower them by building on their cultural capital, the body of knowledge, material, resources, and social relations that students accumulate in their homes and communities (Bourdieu, 1984). How educators define their roles—reinforcing coercive relations of power versus promoting collaborative relations of power—determines whether English learners succeed or fail (Cummins, 2000).

This issue of the BRJ highlights many examples of deficit orientations toward linguistic and cultural diversity and of unequal power relations between English learners and educators. For example, although research confirms that translanguaging (i.e., the use of two languages within a single utterance or across utterances) is a natural phenomenon in bilingual communities (Hopewell & González/this volume), a commonly held view is that translanguaging signals linguistic interference or lack of proficiency in either language. This leads to instructional policies and practices that privilege English, as is the case, for example, when educators adopt strict language separation policies as a way to increase the amount of time available for students to listen to and practice English. Roman, Pastor, and Basaraba (this issue) found that bilingual education teachers, who are the experts in native and second language acquisition and instruction, interpreted features of translanguaging and code-switching as “errors” and felt responsible for correcting these forms. Lang (this issue) reports that teachers’ conceptualization of “safe spaces” led them to segregate ELs to minimize language anxiety, a decision that limited opportunities for students to develop English-language and literacy skills. Wong and Neuman (this issue) found that media programs marketed as supporting dual-language development gave primacy to English and provided much less exposure to the other language, much like the hegemony of English prevalent in society at large. Equity and access in educational opportunity for ELs cannot be achieved unless educators prioritize effective instructional strategies and challenge deficit orientations and unequal power relationships.

Effective instruction

Effective instruction for ELs begins with systematic assessment of students’ strengths and needs. Bilingual education and ESL teachers need access to results of achievement and language proficiency assessments, in the native language and/or in English, depending on the program model in which students are enrolled (i.e., ESL vs. bilingual education; Ortiz, Robertson, & Wilkinson, 2018). Language data are essential in planning lessons and activities to achieve content standards and in selecting scaffolds for students with varying language proficiency levels. However, Morita-Mullaney (this volume) found that decisions about how to address the needs of ELs, including those experiencing learning difficulties, were often made solely on the basis of achievement data—that is, without specific information about the students’ current level of English proficiency. Without language data, teachers cannot rule out lack of adequate language skills as the primary cause of learning problems. They also have no way to evaluate the results of decisions related to changes in program approaches (e.g., shifting from bilingual education to English approaches) or the results of changes in the amount and quality of native language and/or ESL instruction.

All of the articles in this issue of the BRJ identify strategies that are effective in developing ELs’ language proficiency and academic achievement. Among the most frequently cited are student-centered learning; peer interaction and collaboration; experiential learning; and personalized, differentiated support. Strategies for ensuring high levels of language proficiency(ies) include consistent exposure to the language(s) of instruction, flexible language use, native-language instruction and/or strategic use of the native language when instruction is in English, scaffolds (e.g., visuals, advance organizers, repetition and review), explicit vocabulary instruction, and a focus on developing metalinguistic awareness and transfer of skills across languages. Carhill-Poza (this issue) and Wong and Neuman (this issue) stress the need for greater integration of technology to support language and content instruction for ELs. Multimedia tools are particularly effective for second language learners because they incorporate many of the aforementioned features of effective instruction, including contextual cues and scaffolds (e.g., video, sound, and text).

Teachers must have access to professional development that familiarizes them with effective instructional practices for ELs, includes modeling and demonstrations of implementation, and provides coaching and mentoring to help teachers integrate the practices in their own classrooms and to increase their sense of efficacy in teaching ELs. Carhill-Poza (this issue) recommends the creation of Communities of Practice (COP) to support English learners. In COPs, educators share responsibility for improving the achievement of ELs and for ensuring quality and equity of educational opportunity. They jointly identify successful instructional practices, as well as barriers to the success of ELs, and share their knowledge and expertise as they select and implement instructional approaches to improve student achievement. However, for COPs to work, teachers must be afforded time to learn, practice, implement, and reflect upon new strategies that facilitate changes in their practices. To that end, the support of school building principals is key.

Program leadership

For ELs to have access to high-quality educational opportunities, building principals must have expertise specific to the needs of ELs. Morita-Mullaney (this volume) proposes that administrators with specializations in emergent bilingualism are in the best position to implement language instruction educational programs that promote the achievement of English learners. Because they are “believers,” they promote the benefits of bilingualism and the positive academic, social, emotional, and economic advantages that accrue to students who receive dual-language instruction. Unfortunately, few states require that administrators have bilingual education or ESL licensure or expertise; as a result, administrators often focus on compliance issues associated with program implementation rather than the larger goal of advancing equity and access for ELs. Developing depth of knowledge about ELs (e.g., second language acquisition, cultural influences on learning, effective instruction/intervention, and assessment), and collaborating with EL staff who have such expertise, are important steps principals can take to become effective leaders of EL programs.

The articles in this issue of the BRJ provide important resources for principals and teachers to better understand the diversity of the EL population and to overcome challenges encountered in designing and implementing language instruction educational programs. They also offer excellent recommendations for improving programs and instructional practices.

In their article “Internal Linguistic Discrimination: A Survey of Bilingual Teachers’ Language Attitudes Toward Their Heritage Students’ Spanish,” Diego Roman, Alberto Pastor, and Deni Lee analyzed the reactions of 84 bilingual education teachers to audio utterances reflecting specific linguistic features of Spanish varieties of the United States. They found that teachers reacted negatively to aspects such as code-switching and the use of overt pronouns and were inclined to correct these structures. Bilingual education teachers seemed to have a narrow conception of bilingualism and what constitutes “appropriate” language use, suggesting that teachers embraced purist language policies. The authors conclude that internal linguistic discrimination can negatively affect students’ self-esteem and contribute to language loss among Spanish speakers.

Ideally, emergent bilingual program leaders combine knowledge of leadership and their specialization in bilingualism to address the needs of emergent bilinguals (EBs). In her article “At the Intersection of Bilingual Specialty and Leadership: A Collective Case Study of District Leadership for Emergent Bilinguals,” Trish Morita-Mullaney reports the results of a study that documented the preparation and experiences of 11 district-level EB leaders and the types of programs for which they had oversight responsibilities. Data were analyzed to determine how preparation and leadership pathways informed participants’ beliefs and practices about bilingualism and language programs. Findings indicated that historic building principals who become district-level leaders have an ascribed status and are able to work within an institutional network of symbolic capital that in turn informs a managerial form of leadership and thus a subtractive view of bilingualism. In contrast, district-level leaders who moved from teacher-specialist to EB program leader possessed cultural capital and were able to negotiate the needs of EBs and bilingual teachers. The specialist-leader was more likely to have additive orientations toward bilingualism and to work through teacher networks while simultaneously working around principals and other administrators. These additive orientations toward students did not always map onto a heteroglossic performance within their leadership. Dually prepared emergent bilingual leaders invoke the leadership of creativity, resistance, and advocacy—the intersection between leadership and bilingual specialty. Implications for teacher and leadership preparation, research, and related policy are discussed.

Educational media are ubiquitous in the lives of young children, promising high-quality programming to equip them with vocabulary knowledge and school readiness. To meet the needs of preschool-aged dual-language learners (DLLs), many educational programs are marketed to promote vocabulary learning in two languages. In “Learning Vocabulary on Screen: A Content Analysis of Pedagogical Supports in Educational Media Programs for Dual-Language Learners,” Kevin Wong and Susan Newman report results of a content analysis that examined: (a) the extent to which educational media programs focus on vocabulary in two languages, (b) dual-language instructional supports used in media, and (c) the quality of words taught on screen. Fifty episodes from five leading dual-language educational programs were analyzed. Using a flow chart and an iteratively developed codebook, the authors identified vocabulary clips and screen-based pedagogical supports used in these programs. Results indicate there were strikingly few vocabulary clips in the videos analyzed. Moreover, most of the clips were of simple vocabulary words taught primarily in English rather than Spanish or Mandarin. The most prevalent screen-based pedagogical supports included repetitions, visual supports, and demonstrations. However, there were noteworthy differences in the types of supports by program and language. Findings suggest that the dual-language appeal of programs may serve more as a marketing tool than an instructional tool for vocabulary development. Implications for research in dual-language vocabulary instruction are discussed.

Nora W. Lang investigated structural features of a newcomer program housed within a comprehensive high school and language practices among newcomer students and their teachers. Findings, reported in “Teachers’ Translanguaging Practices and ‘Safe Spaces’ for Adolescent Newcomers: Toward Alternative Visions,” indicate that teachers tried to provide newcomer students with “safe spaces” for language and literacy development in English and Spanish and access to rigorous content. Structural features of the program paired with one teacher’s translanguaging practices, however, resulted in the prioritization of safe spaces, conceptualized as a physically separate classroom that sought to minimize language anxiety. Ultimately, by interpreting translanguaging as a way to avoid discomfort rather than to leverage newcomers’ dynamic bilingualism, this particular conceptualization of safe space afforded limited opportunities for the development of English language and literacy practices. Findings include implications for the design of newcomer programs and teacher preparation.

Flipped learning has gained traction in diverse classroom settings over the past decade as a student-centered form of blended learning that allows teachers to focus class time on interaction while extending learning opportunities outside the classroom. Despite its compatibility with current approaches to teaching ESL, little is known about how flipping the classroom is enacted with English learners in K–12 settings. Avary Carhill-Poza used Delphi interviews to better understand flipped learning in ESL and sheltered classrooms in an urban secondary school. Findings reported in “Defining Flipped Learning for English Learners in an Urban Secondary School” show that this community of practice understood flipped learning as a dynamic student‐centered approach to teaching diverse students that may draw on technology to support student learning, participation, and assessment. Classroom practices were analyzed with the school community to understand how they embodied the affordances and limitations of flipped learning for English learners at this school.

“¿Por Qué Estamos Code-Switching? Understanding Language Use in a Second-Grade Classroom,” by Susan Hopewell and Patricia Abril-González, combines a multilingual perspective on translanguaging with humanizing pedagogies in a qualitative linguistic ethnography that examine how, and for what purposes, a second-grade teacher and her students used Spanish and English in support of language development during a literacy-based English Language Development block within a paired literacy bilingual education model. Data analyses included deductive and inductive coding of multilingual exchanges, specifically drawing upon Baker’s overlapping purposes for code-switching. Findings reveal that the teacher and students employed seven of Baker’s 13 purposes: add emphasis, express a concept that has no equivalent, reinforce, clarify, ease tension/inject humor, interject, and language of commerce. However, data revealed three additional purposes: (a) respect and terms of endearment, (b) excitement, and (c) intentional pedagogical use to expand metalinguistic awareness. The authors discuss pedagogical implications for biliteracy instruction.

Finally, Mitch Ingram provides a review, in Spanish, of the book, Educación y política en el norte del sur: Una experiencia de formación en gestión social comunitaria, authored by Danay Quintana Nedelcu. The book describes how Nedulcu collaborated with a group of Cuban and Argentinian volunteers on a project designed to promote education and social transformation and to help address two pressing problems identified by the community: illiteracy and health. The book is organized in three parts. In the first is the author’s thoughts about the intimate links between society, politics, and education and how the negligence of any one of these leads to the degradation of the other. Nedelcu reviews theories, focusing primarily on the work of Paulo Freire and Ignacio Martin-Baró, to describe how domination and distribution of power through an educational system preserve the structure of social classes. In the second part of the text, the author explains the literacy project, Yo, Sí Puedo, which included a literacy course that addressed literacy needs but also communicated that the participants were valued as people under an oppressive system of government. This approach might be described in the United States as having a social justice orientation. The valuation of knowledge and experiences of marginalized groups is a functional and effective way to promote fairness and equity in educational systems. Nedulcu provides details of the literacy course in the third part of the book. She concludes that one can “promote emancipatory educational practices that increasingly involve their participants as individuals who govern their own actions as the best way to live and build a liberating social system” (p. 89). The plan developed by Nedelcu and her team has significant implications for the American school experience in terms of linguistically and culturally diverse populations and provides a framework for pursuing social justice in the education of historically marginalized groups.