A Critical Look at Bilingualism Discourse in Public Schools: Autoethnographic Reflections of a Vulnerable Observer

Abstract

A bilingual elementary school teacher and mother of a bilingual child, the author questions the presence of specific bilingualism discourses in two Southeastern public schools. Despite research that shows the acquisition and development of two languages actually augment language processing and problem solving skills, the perception of children's brains as buckets preprogrammed for the development of a single language is still commonly employed in these schools and serves to support the placement of English language learners in special education classes. In this study, Critical Narrative Analysis, a hybrid of critical discourse analysis and conversational narrative analysis, is applied to meld a macro and microanalysis of the author's own teacher journal entries and the narratives of a veteran special education teacher. The article shows how the bilingualism discourse continues to reflect a deficit orientation.