Agency, identity, and power : bilingual Mexican American children and their teachers talk about learning English in school (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
This dissertation reports on a study about five adult Hispanic immigrants learning English in a major city in central Texas and their identity and agency negotiations as English speakers in their English class as well as in other contexts where English was spoken. In this chapter, I present a general overview of the research topic, the conceptual framework, and the need and purpose of the study. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE RESEARCH TOPIC In English-speaking contexts, knowing or not knowing English has direct consequences on immigrants' lives-from being able to find better jobs, to having English-speaking friends, being able to explain more clearly who they are and what they can do at work, or having the opportunity to know what their children are learning at school. Moreover, what people can or cannot do with the language they are learning has a direct impact on who they are, on how they perceive themselves, and on how other people perceive them. The ways in which language learners are positioned or position themselves in different social contexts (i.e., language learners, immigrants, undocumented immigrants, a person who speaks English with an accent, a nonnative speaker of the language, a person who speaks broken English, etc.) directly influences their identities (
Language ideologies in a bilingual fourth grade classroom : a research proposal and reflections
2013
Gonzalez (2005) defines language ideologies as belief sets thatare connected to our social status, in which the exercising of power and the reproduction of inequitable social relations are implicated. Linguistic ideology can also be understood as a process in which tensions arise between multiple conceptualizations, creating contradictions in individuals' beliefs and the need for community contestation (Woollard & Schieffelin, 1994). Ruiz (1984) documents a history of a language-as-a-problem orientation in language planning in the United States, connecting this pervasive orientation to the Bilingual Education Act and the creation of Transitional Bilingual Programs in order to solve the 'problem' of language differences in the United States. The language-as-aproblem orientation includes a range of deficit ideas regarding language users of languages other than English, posing bilingualism as a 'need' for subordinate language users, as well as associating these language users with social problems. Current literature reveals Ruiz' (1984) language paradigms to still be relevant. Escamilla (2006) contends that this language-as-problem orientation has become institutionalized by school policies and practices and is responsible for the pervasive belief that Spanish-speaking emergent bilinguals' supposed underachievement is caused by the Spanish language. Garcia and Torres-Guevara (2010) note that the U.S. Latino students are commonly viewed as linguistic problem. Thus, the ways in which U.S. Latino students utilize their bilingualism are deemed non-standard and are stigmatized. Consequently, students' complex, bilingual practices are cognitive and educational resources that are largely undervalued and underutilized by educators.
Conflicting ideologies of Mexican immigrant English across levels of schooling.
This article explores how language ideologies-beliefs about immigrant students' language use-carry conflicting images of Spanish speakers in one New Latino Diaspora town. We describe how teachers and students encounter, negotiate, and appropriate divergent ideologies about immigrant students' language use during routine schooling practices, and we show how these ideologies convey different messages about belonging to the community and to the nation. Although the concept of language ideology often assumes stable macrolevel beliefs, our data indicate that ideologies can vary dramatically in one town. Elementary educators and students had a positive, "bilinguals-in-themaking" ideology about Spanish-speaking students, while secondary educators used more familiar deficit accounts. Despite their differences, we argue that both settings tended toward subtractive schooling, and we offer suggestions for how educators could more effectively build upon emergent bilinguals' language skills and practices.
This ethnographic and longitudinal study examined how the language practices of emergent bilingual students in a two-way immersion classroom, dual language (TWDL) program contributed to the co-construction of their and each others’ identities. I drew from theoretical frameworks related to the concept of identity specifically: sociocultural linguistics, figured worlds, and positioning theory. Key findings suggest that the strategies teachers used to promote language learning played a role in the ways students were positioned. Additionally, a critical curriculum opened up spaces in the classroom where children could draw from their linguistic repertoire despite the strict separation of the language of instruction in TWDL programs. Finally, when teachers modeled flexible bilingualism they promoted the use of both Spanish and English, at times simultaneously, and the academic content became the focus. As a result, students engaged in deeper conversations about social inequities experienced by minoritized language communities. The findings have implications for our 1st and 2nd generation Latino immigrant students learning alongside language-majority students, particularly in the areas of teacher education, research, and language policy in TWDL programs.
This review poses an increasingly common—and increasingly urgent—question in the field of teacher education: How can teachers best be prepared to educate Latina/o bilingual learners? The answers that we offer here challenge some of the prevailing assumptions about language and bilingualism that inform current approaches to teacher preparation. To work effectively with bilingual learners, we argue, teachers need to develop a robust understanding of bilingualism and of the interactional dynamics of bilingual classroom contexts. Unfortunately, the conceptions of language and bilingualism portrayed in much of the teacher-directed literature fall short of offering teachers access to such understandings. In this review, we will make the case for developing materials for teachers that reflect both more up-to date theoretical understandings of language practices in bilingual communities and a more critically contextualized understanding of the power dynamics that operate in bilingual classroom contexts. We recognize that helping teachers come to these more robust understandings of bilingual language practices and the interactional dynamics of bilingual contexts implies an ideological shift for educators—and teacher educators—in the United States.
Latino students' educational success is central to America's prosperityin traditional immigrant destinations and in New Latino Diaspora locations, previously unfamiliar with Latinos. Implicated in this success is the reception young immigrants receive, especially the ways in which they are identified in schools. We describe findings from six years of ethnographic research in a high school and an elementary school in the New Latino Diaspora and describe divergent ideologies of Mexican immigrant Spanish circulating in each context. We show how monoglossic language ideologies in the two schools frame teenage immigrants as deficient and younger immigrant children as proficient. These ideologies influence both elementary and high school decisions about how to serve immigrant students, and they shape students' own language practices, which have implications for their learning opportunities and future trajectories. We argue that attention to these divergent language ideologies...
Competing Language Ideologies in a Bilingual/Bicultural After-School Program in Southern California
Journal of Latinos and Education, 2007
This article looks at the competing language ideologies that preschool children negotiate in Mi Clase Mágica (MCM), a Spanish–English bilingual/bicultural after-school program in San Diego. It examines children's language choice in interactions with peers and adults taking place at computer and tareas (homework) activities. Data comes from long-term participant observation; audio- and videotaping; field notes by adult participants; and interviews with MCM coordinators, volunteer mothers, and schoolteachers. Findings indicate that MCM children are processing competing language frameworks from home and school and revealing emergent language ideologies in their daily interactions with peers and adults. The study reveals the complexity of Latino children's language choices in informal educational settings and draws implications for pedagogical practices in multilingual classrooms.
Spanish and English Language Attitudes and Values of Latino Adolescents
In his influential book, Imagined Communities (1982), Benedict Anderson proposes that language is more than a marker of identity and has much more than a semiotic sense. Language, Anderson says, has a rhetorical meaning, and thus is capable of generating imagined communities and of constructing particular identities. This volume, imagined and produced by graduate students in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, draws from the work of students across the college--bilingual education, international educational development, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, teaching of English, teaching English to speakers of other languages, applied linguistics, reading and language arts, speech and language pathology--and the larger university. In so doing, it reflects the multiple perspectives in which the study of languages in society is negotiated across Columbia University, particularly at Teachers College. The volume thus reveals the academic breadth and diversity of a scholarly community interested in the role of languages in communities and in education, across academic departments and disciplines. It is our hope this collection of papers will contribute towards creating a central place for the study of multiple languages and literacies in communities and schools, highlighting the important role that non-dominant languages and discourses play in the lives of many.
2022
This study explores the linguistic violence of bilingual Latina/o/x adolescents in school settings in Southcentral Texas. In addition, the paper examines how these students see themselves as proficient Spanish/English bilinguals. In doing so, the author uses a language ideologies framework coupled with Anthropolitical linguistics. Within this overarching perspective, the author also utilizes a raciolinguistics lens to support his findings. Using a fluid ethnographic approach, the author collected data through class observations, interviews, focus groups, and students' artifacts. Findings were grouped into two main categories with some subsections: (1) linguistic violence; (a) marginalization of Spanish and its speakers; (b) legitimizing varieties of the Spanish language; and (c) language loss and blocking biliteracy, and (2) languacultural identity: (a) bilingualism is our language. Implications for teachers, school administrators, and teacher preparation programs are discussed. This study contributes to the field of bilingualism, language violence, and identity of marginalized adolescents.