The danger of the dual-language enrichment narrative: Educator discourses constructing exclusionary participation structures in bilingual education

ABSTRACT

Researchers have identified inequities in dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) student participation, and with large-scale DLBE expansion, equitable student access is an increasingly important issue. In this study, I used a multimethod, multisite, comparative analysis to critically examine educator discourses addressing student participation in DLBE from two highly distinct bilingual education contexts (one in which the programs are generally designed for initially English-dominant speakers [Utah] and one in which the programs are predominantly designed for initially Spanish-dominant speakers [Texas]). This article explored how educators’ discourses and embedded language ideologies reinforced or reinvented the set of cultural rules and power relations regarding student access to DLBE. Teachers’ inclusionary and exclusionary discourses created distinct DLBE participation structures. Context and ideologies worked in tandem to discursively construct a more open or closed-off program to particular students with different academic, linguistic, and sociocultural backgrounds. Students that were perceived by educators to struggle academically and/or linguistically were discursively discouraged or closed off from program participation. This article demonstrates how the DLBE enrichment narrative and embedded discourses of ability and elitism can be problematic and may ultimately exclude students who have much to gain and lose from program participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual-language bilingual education
• critical language policy
• discourse
• language ideology
• bilingual