Language policy and multilingual identity at home and in school

At the time of this writing, the US Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights are investigating roughly 49 civil rights claims spread across the United States of violations of equal educational opportunity for students labeled as English Learners (ELs) in the public school system. Over 40 years ago, in the Lau v. Nichols (1974) decision, the Supreme Court ruled that EL students’ civil rights are violated when they are “foreclosed from…meaningful education.” Today, the number of ELs served in US public schools has risen to more than one in ten and the education system still wrestles with meeting these demands. Meaningful education for EL students cannot be understood, much less achieved, without accounting for how educational language policies (the implicit and explicit mechanisms that regulate how languages are used, taught, and learned) structure access to educational participation for multilingual students and families. This research examines the intersections of language policy and social identity development for newly arrived, multilingual families in a Midwest public school district to address these pressing issues and promote increased access to opportunity for participation in education.

The 24-month critical ethnographic study examines the educational language policies implemented in a Midwest public school district. Like many districts across the US, it has a rapidly growing, newly arrived EL population. Data collection is carried out utilizing ethnographic methods, including participant observation, insider accounts, and document collection across administrative offices, schools, homes, and the surrounding community. The study explores how the creation and implementation of the district’s language policies, both explicit and implicit, interact with the social identities and educational access of the students and parents in three newly immigrated, Spanish-speaking families. Language policies in the district range from the structure of EL services, to access to interpreters and translations for school meetings, to policies about special education services for multilingual students. The study maps the social forces involved in policy creation and negotiation, tracing them through lived experiences to understand how these language policies structure access to educational opportunity.

The goal of the work is to bring new theoretical and practical dimension to the conversation about educational equity for EL students. This study offers a deeper look at how language policies structure social identity development for multilingual students and families by combining data from administrators and educators with detailed accounts of how students and parents experience policy. In addition, it is poised to make contributions to current theory and practice in the field of multilingual education and the field of education as a whole. Existing research has focused on policies for language education programming; however, this work provides a holistic look at the various language policies at work in a school district, tracing their impacts on teaching and learning as well as access to the educational system. The potential insights from this study will help to inform researchers, policymakers, educators, and families as they work for equity in education.