Legal Discourse and Decisions, Teacher Policymaking and the Multilingual Classroom: Constraining and Supporting Khmer/English Biliteracy in the United States

Abstract

This paper looks at the ways US English-language policies at the micro and macro levels have influenced the development of Khmer biliteracy for children and adults. It shows the power of teacher policymaking and the role of the legal system in shaping what is possible in multilingual classrooms in the United States. By focusing on ESL teachers in four multilingual classrooms, the analysis shows that it is not just that legal decisions have shaped the realities of schools, but that the discourse of the legal system has become part of students' and teachers' perspectives on what is possible in the classroom and, further, reifies and legitimises commonplace assumptions about assimilation, subtractive bilingualism, and the relative value of some languages over others. Even so, the analysis of four teachers and four classrooms show the ways that teacher policies can contest these assumptions and provide support for Khmer language and culture in the classroom. The paper ends with a call for educators to engage not only in micro-level policymaking as teachers but also more in macro-level policymaking as voting and engaged citizens in order to create emancipatory multilingual classroom ecologies that support linguistic diversity.