Language-in-Education Policies in a New Immigration Country: Enabling and Disabling Local Leadership in a Multilingual School in Italy

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the multilayered relationship between macro and micro Language Education Policies (LEPs) for immigrant students in Italy—a new European immigration country (Azzolini, )—by presenting the results of a preliminary investigation of a long-standing Italian as a Second Language (ISL) program in an experimental middle school in Rome. The study examines local contexts of program creation vis-à-vis supranational and state policies regulating the education of Italian immigrant students. Employing a critical sociocultural framework (Johnson, ; Levinson, Sutton, & Winstead, ) and a scalar analysis approach (Blommaert, , ) to LEP research (Hult, , ; Wortham, ), local and national LEP texts, along with teacher and student interview data, show a non-linear relationship between local enactments and macro-level LEPs. Scalar analysis uncovered the ways local leaders made sense of current and past practices, unveiling the interconnectedness of local enactors’ appropriation, interpretation, and resistance to state mandates. School leaders also based LEPs on local needs and experiences, showing ontogenetic LEP processes (Hurdus & Lasagabaster, ) in the absence of comprehensive state policies. The study presents an example of how school leaders can be creative policy agents supporting language minority students and how scalar analysis can strengthen education policy research focused on vulnerable student populations.