Dual Language Bilingual Education Program Research Articles

Exploring Latinx and non-Latinx families’ experiences of dual language Catholic schools: A national survey of parent engagement and satisfaction

ABSTRACT Parent involvement is often cited as an essential component of effective dual language bilingual education (DLBE), yet we have limited understanding of the ways parents participate in DLBE or how parent experiences differ between Latinx and non-Latinx families, who often have different reasons for enrolling their children in bilingual programs. Addressing these gaps, this article presents findings from a national survey of parent engagement and satisfaction for Latinx and non-Latinx parents whose children attend DLBE programs in Catholic schools. Findings revealed that parents viewed their involvement as important, although they reported being more involved in participation-oriented activities (e.g. volunteering in the classroom) than engagement-oriented activities (e.g. co-developing academic initiatives). Latinx parents reported similar or higher levels of involvement than non-Latinx parents in all areas except for school leadership. Parent satisfaction was extremely high, with Latinx parents expressing slightly higher satisfaction than non-Latinx parents. While parents were largely satisfied with school communication, many reported that certain communication was only available in English. These findings led researchers to conclude that high levels of reported satisfaction, particularly from Latinx parents, might obscure equity issues and that DLBE schools must look beyond satisfaction to understand parent experiences and to cultivate more equitable parent engagement.

Missed opportunities and implementational spaces for developing critical consciousness: Three case studies in secondary Mandarin Chinese dual language bilingual education

ABSTRACT In response to the call for centering critical consciousness as a foundational goal in dual language bilingual education (DLBE), this article explores secondary Chinese teachers’ instructional practices in Utah Mandarin Chinese DLBE programs and how their instructional practices reflect the missed opportunities and implementational spaces for developing critical consciousness in the backdrop of anti-Asian sentiment. Drawing on theoretical constructs of critical consciousness and using a narrative inquiry approach with ethnographic methods, this study focused on three secondary Chinese DLBE teachers’ reported and observed classroom practices concerning the development of critical consciousness. Findings reveal the different ways in which three Chinese DLBE teachers addressed critical topics in classrooms shaped by their attitudes toward the importance of promoting critical consciousness. Their classroom practices demonstrate the missed opportunities as well as implementational spaces to cultivate critical consciousness within the Mandarin Chinese DLBE curriculum. This study provides examples for DLBE teachers to implement critical pedagogies toward the critical consciousness goal and has implications for teachers, educators, families, and communities to support critical consciousness actions in and out of the classroom.

“Puro English and a little bit of Spanish”: Bi/multilingual kindergarteners’ language ideologies in a dual language bilingual class during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aims: The goal of the study is to examine bi/multilingual children’s language beliefs and their contributions to school and family language policies in a two-way dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program in the United States while participating in online schooling from home. Methodology: We report from a larger critical ethnographic study with a Title I K-8 school in Arizona. The data for this study are based on ethnographic fieldwork during the 2020–2021 academic year with a DLBE kindergarten cohort. Data and analysis: We conducted semi-weekly class observations and individual semi-structured interviews with 12 bi/multilingual kindergarten children. Data analysis entailed a multi-step thematic analysis through several rounds of focused coding. Findings: Our findings show that the children were deeply aware of the languages they spoke, their proficiency in each, how they chose to express those proficiencies, and the way they identified with each language. We identify ways that children agentively used language to transcend separative language policies by using language fluidly. Originality: The study contributes to the literature on young children’s language policymaking and their reproductive and resistive forms of agency. Our child participants were 5 and 6 years old, an underrepresented age in research that connects school and family language policies. Furthermore, this group’s linguistic, racial-ethnic, and cultural diversity allows for a deeper glimpse into how bi/multilingual children develop complex identities. Implications: The study has implications for the importance of pedagogical and linguistic flexibility with young children in DLBE programs. The study shows the importance of how young bi/multilingual children respond to the processes of implementing a program by highlighting the role and position of each language in their home and school environments.

The Conflation of Dual Language Bilingual Education With Gifted Programs in New York City Schools

As neighborhoods across New York City gentrify, Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) has become a big draw for gentrifier families. Our research contributes to growing literature on DLBE gentrification by examining how a racially diverse group of parents in two communities perceived DLBE as a school choice option. We found that schools with DLBE programs screened potential students via academic screening tests or school choice processes to determine admission into DLBE programs. This screening process has contributed to a) the conflation of DLBE with the city’s gifted programs, and b) a focus away from admitting and centering emergent bilinguals. While this screening served to further advantage gentrifier families, some parents resisted the opportunity hoarding behaviors of their peers through their alternative school choices and advocacy efforts. In this way, we show how all parents are constrained and impacted by the neoliberal logics of contemporary DLBE policy and school choice.

Following Indigeneity to unbuild inequities in teaching for multilingualism: restoring relationship with the Land

ABSTRACT This theoretical article explores how Land-based education could help decolonize language education, starting from the case of dual language bilingual education (DLBE) in the United States. We invoke other scholars’ metaphor of basements versus boutiques to understand how such programs have often either been colonially marginalized into basements or colonially gentrified by middle-class White students. We extend this DLBE problematic beyond and beneath the human-made buildings implied in the basements and boutiques metaphor toward the decolonizing potential Land offers. We analyzed relevant literature on Indigenous language and culture revitalization programs in North America, calling on their expertise and leadership in how to center Land-based thinking and ways of knowing across DLBE. We argue that Land-based pedagogy’s critiques of settler colonialism and Mother Earth’s destruction by humans can help DLBE expand its equity focus toward societal transformation that goes beyond human-centered and language-centered thinking. We theorize what it would mean to bring Land to the heart of non-Indigenous DLBE programs, including six actionable recommendations for a Land-based reframing of DLBE that can further unbuild the coloniality of basements and boutiques.

Pre-service Teachers' Language Ideologies of Dual Language Bilingual Education Program : A Discourse in Language Education Policy

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.

Cultivating a critical translanguaging space in dual language bilingual education

ABSTRACT An area of ongoing debate among bilingual scholars and practitioners is the extent to which instructional languages should be separated in dual language bilingual education (DLBE). This article contributes to and extends this effort by proposing critical translanguaging space as a conceptual lens to guide the design of translanguaging pedagogies in DLBE programs. This concept is grounded in spatial understandings of languaging and learning and comprised of three interrelated dimensions: (1) dynamic languaging, (2) heteroglossic ideologies, and (3) critical consciousness. After outlining these central tenets, I concretize this approach through a case study of a researcher-practitioner collaboration aimed at fostering a dynamic languaging space in a DLBE classroom that had previously enforced strict language separation. Findings reveal the ways in which this project reflected the aims of a critical translanguaging space, including by affirming students’ dynamic bilingual repertoires and identities, reframing linguistic expertise, fostering practice-based understandings of bilingualism, and creating opportunities for interrogating issues of equity. At the same time, the project fell short of cultivating students’ critical consciousness, as critical inquiry was largely relegated to students’ small group conversations. I conclude with a discussion of findings and implications for future efforts at fostering critical and flexible bilingual learning spaces.

Not for us: Chinese immigrant parents’ perspectives on Mandarin Chinese dual language bilingual education programs

ABSTRACT 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.

What is visible and invisible: the portrayal of dual language programs on school websites

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.

“There Was Nothing Here”: School Leaders Using Dual Language Bilingual Education Programs as a Formula to Re-Engineer Student Populations for School Turnaround

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.

Mexican and Mexican-American mothers’ visions and decisions amidst dual language bilingual education expansion

ABSTRACT 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.

Beyond Grades: A Holistic Parental Report Card for Korean Dual Language Programs

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.

Dual Language Bilingual Education as a Pathway to Racial Integration? A Place-Based Analysis of Policy Enactment

ABSTRACT Across the United States, cities like St. Louis may be perceived as predominantly Black/White and monolingual. In such places, there are often few state resources and expertise driving the new growth of dual language bilingual education (DLBE)—that is, policies and programs that aim to develop students’ bilingualism and biculturalism from an early age. Moreover, research rarely explores how DLBE programs develop within particular racial and political contexts, despite their goals to integrate diverse youth. This study focuses on the city of St. Louis to examine how DLBE policies are enacted within particular localities, especially for children from racially and linguistically minoritized backgrounds. Framed by theories of policy enactment, this analysis is part of three multiyear partnerships focused on language education in St. Louis and two school districts in similar state contexts. We found that DLBE enactment in each school system was shaped by community histories, changing demographics, and local education policies focused on racial desegregation and school choice. While each space created racially integrated schools, their enactment was shrouded by Whiteness, especially the history of magnet schools and (White) parental choice as essential for schools’ development. We conclude that place-based research and communal partnerships must carefully consider the unique factors shaping education reform, to recognize for and by whom new programs are truly created and to work toward more socially just, transformative educational contexts.

Students’ attitudinal development in a dual language bilingual education program from Grade 1 to Grade 5

ABSTRACT 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.

Sustainable translanguaging pedagogy in support of the vulnerable language: honoring children’s ways of ‘Showing’ and ‘Telling’ in an early childhood dual language bilingual education program

ABSTRACT Show-and-Tell activity provides emergent bilingual (EB) children with an opportunity to engage oral language skills to support their developing bi/literacy. In dual language bilingual education (DLBE) preschool programs, teachers utilize translanguaging practices to facilitate communication, scaffold learning, and encourage participation. Using a sustainable translanguaging lens, we explore English- and Spanish-language model teachers' pedagogical choices in Show-and-Tell in support of children's Show-and-Tell purposes and practices. Video data were analyzed for discourse- and content-related codes to examine teachers' discursive and translanguaging choices and presenters' languaging practices during Show-and-Tell. Qualitative analyses revealed that teachers' translanguaging choices vary in response to the language context (i.e. teacher's designated language of instruction and the target language of the Show-and-Tell) and to children's languaging practices (i.e. choice of language, amount of unprompted talk, purpose of presentation, degree of peer involvement). Given the vulnerable status of Spanish as the minoritized language in an English-majority culture, teachers sustained the use and modeling of Spanish in Spanish Show-and-Tell while integrating Spanish as a supportive resource in English Show-and-Tell. Findings suggest implications for how teachers can protect minoritized languages within DLBE preschool programs while valuing children's authentic translanguaging practices and building on children's understanding language functions and forms in each language.

Translanguaging Views and Practices of Indiana Dual-Language Bilingual Education Teachers

As of fall 2018, the United States had 5 million English language learners (ELLs) in the public K–12 education system (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Within this population, ELL students in Indiana number over 50,000, or 5.9% of all public K–12 students in the state. Dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) programs often neglect the strategy of translanguaging in the classroom, disadvantaging ELLs. Translanguaging is defined as drawing “on all the linguistic resources of the child to maximize understanding and achievement” and is demonstrated in the natural switching of languages in bilinguals (Lewis et al., 2012). Further, translanguaging attempts to correct past English-only ideals for the equity of ELL students. Th is case study aims to answer two questions: (1) What are the translanguaging views and practices of elementary school teachers in DLBE classrooms? (2) Are there differences in translanguaging views and practices between bilingual native Spanish speakers, bilingual native English speakers, and nonbilingual native English speakers? Data was collected from the course data of seven elementary school teachers who are part of DLBE programs in two schools in Indiana to better determine the correlation between DLBE teachers’ linguistic backgrounds and their views and practices of translanguaging in their classrooms. Results found a connection between teachers’ own bilingualism and an increased use of translanguaging practices in their classrooms, which can help off set decades of inequity between English language learning students and their monolingual peers.

Challenging the ‘Dual’: designing translanguaging spaces in a Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education program

ABSTRACT 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.

Conscripted into thinking of scarce, selective, privatized, and precarious seats in dual language bilingual education: the choice discourse of mercenary exclusivity

ABSTRACT This multimodal critical discourse analysis is part of a larger equity audit of how the websites of 11 of the largest U.S. school districts discussed access to dual language bilingual education (DLBE). Prior research has frequently documented how administrators utilize DLBE programs to compete with one another for the supposedly necessary resource of privileged students, while deprioritizing language-minoritized students in ways that resemble gentrification. This study assessed how website content of these large (and thus influential) districts reflected or contradicted this pattern. Findings showed DLBE programming was linked frequently and strongly to themes of the school choice movement and exclusive tracking or within-school segregation. The themes were (1) a normalized scarcity of seats, (2) the privatized responsibility for transportation to those seats, (3) a discourse of having to earn one’s seat, and (4) the potential to lose one’s seat. We theorize this framing of DLBE policy as based in what we term mercenary exclusivity, which inequitably benefits privileged populations by inviting stakeholders to see their participation through a competitive, warlike lens. We offer equity recommendations for scholars and policymakers and call for the adoption of countervailing peaceful discourse and praxis for the benefit of language-minoritized and racialized students within DLBE.

“It's like they don't see us at all”: A Critical Race Theory critique of dual language bilingual education for Black children

AbstractThis 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.

Language proficiency and competence: upper elementary students in a Dual-Language Bilingual Education program

ABSTRACT Building on research that has demonstrated the benefits of Dual-Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programmes on students’ bilingual, academic, and cross-cultural development (Lindholm-Leary and Hernández 2011), this study examines the links between dual language proficiency and competence in elementary students enrolled in a Cantonese DLBE programme in the U.S. Specifically, we examined the relations between (a) children’s bilingual (English and Cantonese) language proficiency in four dimensions (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and (b) their competence in academic, peer relationships, activities involvement, and classroom behaviour domains with a group of 60 fourth and fifth graders enrolled in a Cantonese–English DLBE programme. Multiple regression results show that both Cantonese speaking and writing proficiency had significant main effects on academic competence. These effects remained significant even after controlling for students’ English speaking/writing proficiency. Moreover, both Cantonese and English writing proficiency were positively related to students’ classroom competence. Additionally, higher English reading proficiency was positively associated with peer competence. Results highlight the different beneficial roles of Cantonese and English proficiency on positive self, peer acceptance, and prosocial behaviour. The current study generates new insights into the role of bilingual proficiency and has implications for DLBE programme curriculum and policy. 本文探讨了在美国就读英粤语双向式双语课程的小学生的双语熟练程度及其能力发展之间的关系。 我们研究了60名就读该课程的四及五年级儿童的 (a)英语和粤语语言能力 (阅读、写作、听力和口语) 和他们的 (b) 学术、同伴交往、活动参与课堂自我管理能力之间的关系。结果表明, 粤语口语和写作能力对学业能力具有显著的影响。粤语和英语写作能力与学生的课堂能力呈正相关。此外, 较高的英语阅读能力与同伴交往能力呈正相关。本研究反映了粤语和英语能力对积极的自我观念、同伴接纳和利社会行为的有益作用, 并为双向式双语课程和政策的发展提供了参考。