“We need you to hear us”: the compounded emotion labor of multilingual teachers of Color in dual language bilingual education

Background/Context: As dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs expand nationwide, parental feedback becomes crucial in evaluating their effectiveness and ensuring equitable access. Understanding the perspectives of diverse parental groups, including marginalized and privileged communities, is essential for developing inclusive and equitable language programs that serve all students. Furthermore, the changing demographics of students and their families with transnational experiences, along with the growing diversity in non-Spanish DLBE languages, highlight the need for research that documents diverse DLBE programs and contexts. Considering this context, acknowledging parental views on Korean programs is meaningful in valuing the opinions of parents with rich transnational experiences in one of the less-commonly taught language programs in the country. Korean dual language programs are also under-researched in the DLBE literature, despite their unique spaces where different power dynamics emerge compared to Spanish or Chinese DLBE programs. Objective and Research Question: This study aims to investigate parents’ evaluations of DLBE programs, their plans to enroll their child until the secondary level, and potential reasons for leaving DLBE programs. First, the researcher explores parents’ evaluations of Korean dual language programs (KDLPs) and examines how parental evaluation is associated with other aspects of parents’ views and characteristics, such as their demographic features, parental satisfaction with their child’s language development, integration experiences among both children and parents, and parental involvement in the program. Next, the researcher investigates whether parents plan to enroll their child in KDLPs until the secondary level (grade 8 or 12) and examines the relationship between their plan and program evaluation. The study also probes the association between parental commitment plans and other variables related to parents’ views and characteristics. Finally, the study explores potential reasons that could spur parents to leave KDLPs. Research Design: This quantitative study used survey data collected from a sample of over 450 parents of students in seven KDLPs at the elementary level in Southern California. This study employed multilevel modeling, accounting for the nested data structure of respondents within schools. The parental evaluation variable was explored by multilevel ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a cubed form of program evaluation value as the dependent variable to explore parents’ evaluation. For examining parents’ program commitment plans, multilevel logistic regression analysis was employed. To examine the difference between Korean and non-Korean parents in potential reasons for leaving the program, this study used the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test. Conclusions/Recommendations: The results show that parental evaluation of KDLPs is positively linked with satisfaction in bilingualism, biliteracy, academic rigor, and sociocultural competence variables, with satisfaction in the target language (Korean) and academic rigor having the most significant impact. The study also reveals that parents’ likelihood of enrolling their child in a secondary KDLP is influenced by the length of their child’s enrollment, satisfaction with academic rigor, and integration among children. Interestingly, program evaluation does not significantly affect enrollment decisions. The integration issue that children did not get along with students of different races and cultures was the most influential reason for leaving the KDLPs for both Korean and non-Korean parents. Non-Korean parents also cited challenges with target language instruction as a potential reason for leaving the program. In summary, the results reveal the complex nature of parental perceptions and highlight the values that parents prioritize when assessing the programs. These insights have important implications for future research on KDLPs and DLBE programs more broadly, in terms of both advancing theoretical discussions and informing empirical investigations. By shedding light on the complexities of parental evaluations, this study also proposes the need for a distinct ideological framework in Asian language programs to better understand individual experiences and promote equity and justice in those programs.

Drawing on a raciolinguistic and AsianCrit lens, we analyze the voices of first-generation Chinese immigrant parents regarding their decisions on whether to enroll their children in Mandarin Chinese dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs. Our findings reveal Chinese immigrant parents’ lack of confidence in DLBE programs as a space created for them or a program that can effectively serve their children’s English learning and academic needs. Also evident was Chinese immigrant parents’ agency in promoting Chinese as a heritage language outside DLBE spaces for their children. This study highlights the marginalization of heritage language-speaking children’s interests in DLBE programs and the need to incorporate language-minoritized families’ needs and voices in DLBE spaces.

Dual language bilingual education programs have been applied in Indonesia for a long time, especially in Islamic boarding schools. Drawing to classroom language policy, this paper aims to explore language ideologies of pre-service English teachers in implementation of dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program in the classroom and to what extent do their language ideologies affect their DLBE implementation before and after-class reflection. This article uses an ethnography case study in describing and exploring individual phenomena to find out the natural data from individual daily activity. Interview and observation will be used as a data collection. The participants of this study are four pre-service English teachers represented in different race, native-language and gender categories. The focus use in this study on DLBE when students learn more than one language. Languages are separate and distinct when bilingual speakers are compared to monolingual speakers. Therefore, different language ideologies of pre-service teachers which are influenced by race, gender, and native language will affect the implementation of DLBE itself.

Unlike most research on Chinese-English Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programs, which primarily centers around one-way DLBE programs serving mostly English-dominant, middle-class children (e.g. Tian, Z. 2020. “Translanguaging Design in a Mandarin/English Dual Language Bilingual Education Program: A Researcher-Teacher Collaboration.” Doctoral diss., Boston College. Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global; Zheng, B. 2020. “Neoliberal Multilingualism and ‘humanitarian Connections’: Discourses around Parents’ Experiences with a Mandarin Chinese Immersion School.” Language and Education 35 (1): 78–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2020.1828451.), my research takes place in a different context – an all-minority student program in New York City. In this seemingly ideal program designed to serve emergent bilinguals, challenges, inequalities, and marginalization persist in less obvious ways. Through my ethnographic research at the DLBE program, I identified the often-unnoticed raciolinguistic ideologies embedded in the Chinese Language Arts (CLA) and Mathematics curricula and assessments. More specifically, such ideologies are evident in the curricula and evaluation methods that significantly prioritize English over Chinese. These raciolinguistic ideology-embedded curricula and assessments have detrimentally impacted teaching and learning by disproportionately skewing the instructional focus toward English and excluding students in need of extra academic support. In light of this, I discuss the implications of fostering inclusivity within DLBE programs and transforming them into an educational space that genuinely challenges the hegemonic function of English that is so prevalent within the United States.

Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programs have expanded rapidly in a large Northeastern urban school district in the United States in recent years, but multilingual families, particularly those from immigrant backgrounds, receive limited information about program offerings from school websites. In this qualitative study, utilizing critical discourse analysis, 21 websites of district schools with DLBE programs were reviewed. Findings suggest there was limited information overall about DLBE offerings such as the program model, principles, and values on school websites, even in programs recognized as ‘district model programs’. More professionally done websites with vibrant photos, videos, and detailed information about bilingual education, in multiple languages, were most often found in gentrified communities, but the information was not tailored to the needs of low-income and immigrant communities and did not actively promote multilingualism. Most of the websites that did provide information about DLBE focused on cognitive, academic, and sociocultural goals rather than economic benefits and family and heritage connections which have been found to be attractive to immigrant parents. Using an equity lens, implications and recommendations for schools and policymakers are discussed.

This article highlights the institutional harm that many dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs can impose upon Black American children. By uncovering the ways that bilingual education is often complicit in educational injustice for Black children, this article argues for a closer interrogation of unquestioned DLBE policies and practices through an analysis that gives centrality to race and intersectionality. In this piece, a composite counterstory is crafted using African American Language to powerfully facilitate a Critical Race Theory-informed critique of DLBE's institutional structures and practices that detail the experiences of many Black children in DLBE programs. A recommendation for intersectional approaches to DLBE that center, support, and advocate for intersectional consciousness across all Black identities is offered.

This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of school administrators on implementing structured English immersion (SEI) and dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) programs serving emergent bilingual learners at one urban Arizona elementary school. Using a sociocultural policy perspective, I analyzed findings from a series of interviews examining the ways the participating administrators navigated and implemented restrictive language policies, while simultaneously providing pathways to DLBE opportunities for emergent bilingual learners. I found there was ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies. In addition, there were differences in how the administrators positioned emergent bilingual learners as a good or bad fit for the DLBE program at the focal school site. The results and discussion underscore both the continued challenges of SEI policy in Arizona and the role of educational leaders in fostering spaces for biliteracy development.

This article documents and interrogates top-down district-wide implementation of a two-way dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program in a large urban district. We carried out a language policy ethnography to explore the way two schools’ teams of third grade teachers worked together to negotiate the intersection of DLBE implementation and high stakes accountability pressures. There appears to be inherent tension between preparing children for monolingual standardized tests, and meeting DLBE program goals of bilingualism, biliteracy, high academic achievement and cross-cultural competence. The pressure to prepare children for high-stakes testing ultimately led to the dismantling of the DLBE program in both schools. Lack of training, insufficient materials and conflicting curricular mandates were further obstacles at both schools. There were important contextual differences, however; in one school, teacher agency and collaboration led to far more enriched educational experiences for children, while in the other rote test preparation took over. We recommend investment in teacher professional development and teacher agency. Ultimately, for DLBE programs to succeed, high stakes testing must give way to multiple-measure accountability that matches language program goals.

In response to a growing call for developing flexible, multilingual spaces in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, this paper explored how [Sánchez, M. T., O. García, and C. Solorza. 2018. “Reframing Language Allocation Policy in Dual Language Bilingual Education.” Bilingual Research Journal 41 (1): 37–51.] translanguaging allocation policy could be strategically and purposefully implemented in a Grade 3 Mandarin classroom in a U.S. Mandarin-English DLBE program where the majority of the students were English-dominant speakers. Taking the form of participatory design research [Bang, M., and S. Vossoughi. 2016. “Participatory Design Research and Educational Justice: Studying Learning and Relations Within Social Change Making.” Cognition and Instruction 34 (3): 173–193.], I (as a researcher) and a Mandarin teacher worked together to co-design translanguaging spaces within and across three content areas: Chinese Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Data collection included classroom and design meeting recordings, observational field notes, and teacher and students’ artefacts and interviews throughout one whole school year. Inductive and deductive coding were adopted for data analysis. Findings revealed that it was a balancing act to create translanguaging spaces while maintaining the language-minoritized space and privileging students’ use of Mandarin. Translanguaging spaces took many shapes based on contextual factors such as different learning objectives and curricular demands of each content area. Students were able to demonstrate a fuller picture of their academic performance, develop deeper content understandings, build cross-linguistic connections, and become more aware of their bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural identities.

New York City offers an example of the national trend to expand dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, yet only a small proportion of multilingual learners are enrolled in these programs in city schools. Our examination of new DLBE programs in three city schools builds on research about the “gentrification” of DLBE. Specifically, our findings show how school leaders opened DLBE programs to re-engineer the demographics of their student population by enrolling more White, privileged students in the name of “school turnaround”—namely, to increase enrollment and popularity in a school choice context and improve performance on accountability measures.

Traditionally strict language separation policies in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs reflect parallel monolingualism and have been criticized as failing to recognize the sociolinguistic realities of bilingual students (García, Ofelia & Angel M. Y. Lin. 2017. Translanguaging in bilingual education. In Ofelia García, Angel M. Y. Lin & Stephen May (eds.), Bilingual and multilingual education, 117–130. Cham: Springer International Publishing). To recognize the dynamic nature of bilingualism and leverage bilingual learners’ full semiotic and linguistic repertoire as a resource, this study looks at how to strategically and purposefully develop flexible and multilingual educational spaces in a third grade Chinese Language Arts (CLA) class in a Mandarin-English DLBE program in the New England area, U.S. Drawing upon Sánchez, María Teresa (Maite), Ofelia García & Cristian Solorza. 2018. Reframing language allocation policy in dual language bilingual education. Bilingual Research Journal 41(1). 37–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2017.1405098, translanguaging allocation policy framework, the researcher and the teacher co-designed and implemented translanguaging documentation, translanguaging rings, and translanguaging transformation spaces in the CLA class throughout the school year of 2018–19. Taking the form of participatory design research (Bang, Megan & Shirin Vossoughi. 2016. Participatory design research and educational justice: Studying learning and relations within social change making. Cognition and Instruction 34(3). 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2016.1181879), this collaborative inquiry demonstrates that translanguaging pedagogies could promote student engagement, contribute to their academic learning, and build home-school connections. It aims to provide authentic, sustainable knowledge for both researchers and practitioners to better serve bilingual learners in DLBE programs.

The purpose of this study was to examine Mexican and Mexican-American mothers’ perspectives about the construction of two-way dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs in the context of an urban area in South Texas and to analyze the factors that contribute to their decision about their children’s participation in such programs. Our main data sources included 14 interviews, two personal narratives, field notes, and audio recordings from school and district meetings. We found that in addition to the general goals of DLBE programs (i.e., academic achievement, bilingualism, and biculturalism), there are additional factors that DLBE programs need to consider to better serve Mexican and Mexican-American communities. These factors include: a) bilingualism for heritage sustainability, social integration, and occupational inclusion; b) school-community building; c) meeting families’ basic needs; and d) attention to the dissemination of program information and misinformation. DLBE must adopt these components in order to foster a social justice stance as a central program tenet.

Measures of 31 Latinx students’ attitudes in a Grade 5 Spanish dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program were compared with those of the same students four years prior. Twenty-one mainstream English students comprised a comparison group for the same time period. Some statistically significant changes occurred for students in DLBE related to loss of enthusiasm toward Spanish, but this loss was attenuated for ELLs; similar changes occurred for mainstream English students, with a few exceptions. Measures related to multiculturalism increased marginally for students in both programs. Implications are discussed regarding equitable spaces to nurture the sociocultural competence of bilingual students.

This mixed-methods study investigates how second-grade Spanish-English bilingual children develop both linguistic and sociocultural competence in a dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program. It focuses specifically on their early biliteracy and bilingual identity development across school and home contexts. Participants included 37 students and four teachers. Data sources included student and teacher surveys and interviews, standardized language assessments, and school records. The fsindings revealed strong cross-linguistic associations between Spanish and English, particularly between reading and writing. Children’s bilingual identities and aspirations were also positively linked to language proficiency in both languages. Notably, aspirations toward biliteracy showed stronger and more consistent associations with proficiency than oral-language goals. These findings underscore the critical role of literacy in supporting bidirectional cross-linguistic transfer. Despite this, both children and families appeared to inadvertently prioritize oral fluency over literacy, reflecting gaps in both perception and access to resources. This highlights a need for DLBE programs to broaden family engagement and reframe understandings of biliteracy. Given that identity-affirming experiences at home and school appear to support biliteracy development, sociocultural competence might be more intentionally integrated into instructional goals alongside linguistic and academic goals to better promote the holistic development of bilingual learners.

In recent years, neoliberal interests in U.S. Chinese/English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs have emphasized white, English-speakers’ use of Mandarin for economic and political gains. Such interests reify white supremacy and contribute to the erasure of Chinese and Chinese American voices, histories, and cultures in curriculum and instruction. While early literature on Chinese DLBE contexts examined program success based on students’ academic achievement and biliteracy development, there has been limited attention to cultivating critical consciousness to resist the commodification of language and multiculturalism for capitalist enterprise. Therefore, we propose a cohesive programmatic framework informed by Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit) for Chinese DLBE programs to cultivate critical consciousness as a foundational educational goal. In this conceptual paper, we apply the seven tenets of AsianCrit to U.S. Chinese DLBE contexts to reimagine a community-based, historically-situated, and equity-oriented educational space. We hope this proposal will inform efforts toward just and innovative Chinese DLBE pedagogies and inspire new lines of critical research in the field of bilingual education.