Emergent Bilinguals Research Articles

Bilingualism for students with disabilities, deficit or advantage?: Perspectives of Latinx mothers

ABSTRACT While access to bilingual education programs is on the rise, Emergent Bilingual Learners Labeled as Dis/abled (EBLADs) continue to experience English-mostly educational placements. Analysis of interviews with ten Latinx mothers of EBLADs revealed that educators recommended their children be placed in English-only instructional programs to avoid linguistic confusion. The mothers first resisted, but subsequently internalized, educators’ deficit-perspectives about their children’s language skills and accepted decisions to provide special education services to EBLAD children in English-only settings. Findings suggest that bilingual educators have contributed to the shift from perceptions of bilingualism as a deficit to bilingualism as an advantage and from bilingual education as a right to bilingual education as a privilege. These shifts have negatively impacted the education of EBLADs by limiting their access to multilingual instruction. Bilingual educators must advocate to safeguard bilingualism as a basic human right of EBLADs.

Contingency in Context: A Study of Exemplary Reading Teachers’ Use of Planned Scaffolds in Secondary English Classes with Emergent Bilinguals

Planned instructional scaffolding—the temporary use of materials, routines and structures to support students in doing challenging academic work—is a critical component of English-language reading instruction with emergent bilinguals (students formally categorized as English Language Learners). Although scholars describe how scaffolds should be used to support language and literacy development in classes, no extant research describes how teachers actually choose and use a range of scaffolds that are responsive to the varied skills and needs of larger, diverse groups of emergent bilinguals, all within the complex and dynamic environment of a classroom. Drawing on Walqui’s conceptual framework for use of scaffolds with emergent bilinguals and Corno’s theories of adaptive teaching, this comparative case study of three exemplary teachers’ reading instruction in middle school sheltered English classes focuses on how teachers selected and used instructional scaffolding contingently, by adapting the support to the needs of an individual or the group. Following the call by van de Pol et al., this research also investigates how the teachers’ use of scaffolds was shaped by their immediate context. Data, which include 30 video-recorded reading lessons and 9 teacher interviews conducted over one school year, were analyzed using qualitative methods. Findings show that the teachers’ use of a range of whole-class and small-group planned scaffolds was shaped by their understandings of their class context, namely the heterogeneity of their classes and their adolescent students’ socioemotional needs. The study’s implications for teacher educators, coaches and researchers are discussed.

Facilitating culturally sustaining, functional literacy practices in a middle school ESOL reading program: a design-based research study

This paper explores how Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (CSSFL), a theoretical and pedagogical approach, facilitates emergent bilingual (EB) students’ engagement in explicit, equitable literacy practices within the unique context of a middle school intensive reading classroom. This design-based research (DBR) study documents the literacy practices and routines of EBs in a culturally and linguistically diverse intensive reading classroom, what CSSFL-informed lessons comprise when created in response to students’ cultural and linguistic affordances, and how students’ genre-based language knowledge was supported in these lessons. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Systemic Functional Linguistics informed analysis of data collected from observations, student samples, researcher reflections, and video/audio-recordings. Findings indicate that while there were missed opportunities for culturally sustaining practices and explicit language instruction in the reading classroom, designing and implementing a CSSFL-informed and curriculum-aligned lessons facilitated students’ enthusiasm and active participation, community building and shared experiences, and use of translanguaging and multimodal practices to heighten metalinguistic awareness.

Exploring New York City elementary school principals’ language ideologies

School principals are street-level bureaucrats whose sense-making about language policies makes them de-facto policy makers. In turn, their language policy-making is mediated by their language ideologies and contexts. Using a case study methodological framework, this article explores the language ideologies of 11 New York City elementary school principals with high numbers of Emergent Bilinguals. It attempts to answer Ruiz’ call to make language ideologies clear and obvious in order to provide the level of transparency needed to enlighten the process of language policy creation and practice (Ruiz 1984). Analyses of the participating principals’ narratives revealed the existence of three different language ideologies: Resource Instrumental Mobility (RIM), Resource Integrative Democratic (RID), and Language as a Problem (LAP). This paper is an exploration of the RIM and RID language ideologies, which consider language as a resource, but do so for intrinsically different reasons. Thus, the findings expand on Ruiz’ (1984) Orientations in Language Planning by complicating and providing nuance to the concept of Language-as-Resource.

Social Identities and Bilinguals’ Language and Literacy Development

This is a qualitative case study that investigates bilinguals’ language and literacy practices on the intersection of social identities, speaking and writing learning, and translanguaging in a Spanish-English two-way classroom.[1] The study proposes that certain bilinguals’ language and literacy learning is closely related to the performance of their social identities, along with the language and literacy practices that they performed in school and home contexts, including translanguaging practices. Two cases of Spanish-English emergent bilinguals’ and two cases of English-Spanish emergent bilinguals’ speaking and writing practices are presented from a qualitative sociocultural and poststructuralist (Davis H Peirce, 1995; 2016) theoretical perspectives. Findings show that certain emergent bilinguals’ speaking and writing practices are closely associated with their identities that they constructed in school and at home. Specifically, the way the emergent bilinguals were positioned on the continuum of the classroom social networks, from central to peripheral influenced their diverse ways of learning to speak and write, as well as the other way around. Further findings show that the ways how emergent bilinguals were invested in language and literacy practices in Spanish in classroom as well as in the literacy practices that they performed at home directly influenced the processes of social identity construction. In this way, these findings confirm the assumption that additional language learning can be reinforced when the linguistic, emotional and social dimensions of their developing identities were legitimized applies for certain emergent bilinguals’ language and literacy learning.[1]This is one chapter of my doctoral research on translanguaging and identities.

Raciolinguistics and the Education of Emergent Bilinguals Labeled as Disabled

In the primary grades, decisions regarding the language/s of instruction for emergent bilinguals labeled as disabled (EBLADs) are often made entirely by school representatives with little to no input from the child or the family. These decisions, which often result in a monolingual placement, not only impact the linguistic practices of EBLADs in school but also at home—often leading to a decline in home language use for the child. While monolingual placements for EBLADs are often the result of teachers’, administrators’ and monolingual service providers’ erroneous perceptions and misunderstandings regarding language function for students with disabilities, these decisions can also be reflective of bias grounded in the student’s racial, ethnic, linguistic and dis/abled identity. Using a raciolinguistic stance and qualitative data from an ethnographic study of Spanish-speaking Latinx mothers and their EBLAD children, this paper presents the ways in which mothers of EBLADs understand/view school-based language decisions as racially motivated as well as the ways in which those decisions impact language practices in the home. This paper will also present the understanding that EBLADs themselves have regarding the impact that their monolingual English educations have on their linguistic development and on their mother’s ability to support their academic development. Lastly, possibilities for how these understandings can be explored at the classroom and policy level, as a way to destigmatize bilingualism for students labeled as disabled as well as to empower EBLADs and their families, will be shared.

Fifth graders’ use of gesture and models when translanguaging during a content and language integrated science class in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Translanguaging in science includes the use of semiotic repertoires complete with non-linguistic modes of meaning (e.g. gesture, tactile) that until recently have gone unnoticed in research into content language integrated learning (CLIL). Currently, there are calls for classroom research in CLIL settings that examines the semiotic processes in the spontaneous translanguaging of emergent bilinguals. In response, this study aims to expand bilingualism research by investigating the ways in which fifth-grade emergent bilinguals’ draw from their semiotic repertoires when translanguaging in content-based science lessons. Multimodal transcriptions made from video recordings of the lessons allow a cross-case analysis of the emergent bilinguals’ shifts from oral to gestural or tactile modes during a biology and physics unit. Findings illustrate that emergent bilinguals use non-linguistic modes to aid their science discourse in four distinct ways: replacement, support, demonstration and imitation. For instance, gestural and tactile meanings replace unknown everyday words and science language during demonstrations. A fine-grained analysis of the semiotic units shows that tactile moves, gesticulations, pantomime and imitation each play a role in the semiotic processes involved when translanguaging in a content-based science class. They allow the expression of ideas, the mediation of language and the unaided flow of discourse.

Contesting math as the universal language: a longitudinal study of dual language bilingual education language allocation

ABSTRACT In this study, we used a quasi-experimental, longitudinal design to examine the English language arts (ELA) and mathematics test scores of emergent bilinguals (EBs) in DLBE 50:50 models versus English as a second language (ESL) models in Indiana over four academic school years. With a focus on the midwestern U.S., we bring attention to a less-studied area where the EB population is more recent, but quickly growing. Results show that students who attended a DLBE program rather than an ESL program, scored significantly higher on ELA tests, but the association between program type and mathematics outcomes was more complex. The discussion and implications caution the English as a second language, bilingual, and dual language bilingual education fields to conduct a comprehensive analysis of content allocation and content complexity in relationship to language designation, instead of solely focusing on the overall language allocation of the DLBE program model.

Constructing My World: A Case Study Examining Emergent Bilingual Multimodal Composing Practices

An extensive focus on written language in early literacy instruction and assessment for emergent bilinguals places students at a disadvantage since they are learning English as a new language. Typically, classroom instruction has a narrow view of literacy and is dominated by a focus on tested skills, with little emphasis on the diverse backgrounds and experiences of today’s students. In order to value the rich meaning-making process that emergent bilinguals bring with them to the classroom, this article explores the ways in which technology affords multimodal composing opportunities. A case of one emergent bilingual, Alon, whose home language is Tagalog, is presented to showcase his text productions as responses to children’s literature. The findings help extend an understanding of articulating meaning through talk, contributions of written language, and the importance of the visual mode. This case helps educators see the need to take into account a cohesive portrait of composing processes as a way to make sense of the strengths of emergent bilingual students in English-only classrooms.

Dis/ability as Mediator: Opportunity Encounters in Hybrid Learning Spaces for Emergent Bilinguals with Dis/abilities

BackgroundThough there has been some attention to how emergent bilinguals learn in relation to languages and cultures, very little research to date has examined similar processes in emergent bilinguals with dis/abilities, including how to understand dis/ability as a source of strength.PurposeIn this article, I explore how dis/ability can mediate learning. To do so, I examine how emergent bilinguals with dis/abilities engage with learning activities in a hybrid space in terms of ability, language, and culture; and how these children's learning is mediated in such a hybrid space.Research DesignThis qualitative study documents how 15 bilingual Latinx children with mild dis/abilities in the second through third grades, along with eight bilingual teacher candidates preparing to teach in inclusive bilingual contexts, worked together in a two-year hybrid after-school program.Findings/ResultsChildren were able to demonstrate the ability to “compensate” for perceived “weaknesses” and learn in what I characterize as nepantla (in-between) spaces in four different ways: (a) resisting the learning activity; (b) shifting the direction of the learning activity; (c) repositioning the content (within their own knowledge); and (d) using external artifacts.ConclusionsOpportunity-centered encounters attending to language, culture, and ability, built on hybridity theory, allowed for shifting perceptions of children's academic identities. The study highlights an asset-based perspective on dis/ability that rejects ableism. Implications include the need for careful planning and constant nurturing of the bilingual child's multiple fluid identities.

Building Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Spaces for Emergent Bilinguals: Using Read‐Alouds to Promote Translanguaging

AbstractMultilingual students arrive in classrooms with rich language knowledge and funds of knowledge. Educators must recognize that emergent bilinguals speak multiple languages. They have one unitary language system; their language is bilingualism. Whether in a monolingual classroom setting or a multilingual setting, when working with emergent bilinguals, it is important that all of the students’ linguistic resources are welcomed into the classroom. The author describes how, as a first‐grade dual‐language (Spanish–English) teacher, she used children's literature and translanguaging to support her emergent bilinguals in using all of their linguistic resources to make meaning and build a linguistically sustaining space. The use of the text created a space for the teacher to model translanguaging and for the students to use all of their linguistic resources.

“Wait! I don’t get it! Can we translate?”: Explicit collaborative translation to support emergent bilinguals’ reading comprehension in the intermediate grades

ABSTRACT Throughout our targeted approach of explicit collaborative translation during small-group reading instruction in a bilingual education classroom, fourth grade emergent bilinguals employed the strategy to comprehend narrative text in a range of ways, similar to middle school students in reading instruction research. As students acknowledged the usefulness of their translation skills in constructing meaning with text, they also demonstrated increased initiative to engage in reading across classroom literacy events. Findings from this exploratory inquiry, including initial evidence of students’ developing bilingual identities of competence, suggest further research is warranted on explicit collaborative translation as part of a growing corpus of evidence-based translingual practices in bilingual classrooms.

Alternatives to Traditional Language Sample Measures with Emergent Bilingual Preschoolers.

The aim of this article was to evaluate the use of alternatives to traditional language sample analysis (LSA) measures with bilingual preschool-aged children. A database of 184 bilingual preschool children, including children with developmental language disorder (DLD), was used in this study. The goals of the study were to establish the convergent validity between traditional language sample measures and alternative measures of clinician-observed and parent-reported longest utterance, compare groups across traditional and alternative measures, and establish to what extent alternative measures predict language status (typical or DLD). Results indicated that alternative measures may be useful in describing the language of preschool bilingual children, but none of the measures alone would provide adequate diagnostic information to make a determination of DLD status.

Culturally Responsive Teaching through the Lens of Dual Language Education: Intersections and Opportunities

Students benefit from culturally responsive teaching (CRT). CRT is central to dual language (DL) education - an additive approach that is effective for educating emergent bilinguals and closing the achievement gap. Students' achievements in DL education models are higher than in any other type of language learning pedagogy – ESL, Bilingual and Monolingual. The purpose of this research was to identify the CRT practices that are employed in DL classrooms; so that teachers in other educational settings (i.e. mainstream, ESL, bilingual) might implement similar practices and improve their effectiveness with diverse students. Using survey responses from Dual Language teachers (N = 151), this study examined the intersection of CRT practices and DL teachers self-reported practice. This empirical study reveals that three out of the eight features of Gay's CRT framework were present in DL teachers' practices: validating, multidimensional, and empowering. DL teachers validate students' experience through speaking affirmations, offering texts that represent and reflect students' culture, differentiating instruction, and providing cooperative learning experiences for students. The CRT practices that are multidimensional involve establishing a welcoming and safe climate and including performance assessment to authentically evaluate students' learning. Finally, DL teachers empower their students by offering instruction that facilitates independence in learning. These study findings provide a unique window into DL teacher practice, which can be leveraged by administrators and mainstream teachers to improve the achievement of diverse learners in every classroom.

Co-learning in the High School English Class through Translanguaging: Emergent Bilingual Newcomers and Monolingual Teachers

ABSTRACT There is a growing chasm between the instruction of secondary emergent bilinguals (EBs) and research illustrating the benefits of adolescent EBs using translanguaging practices for academic engagement and gains. Specifically, this qualitative study purposes to understand how monolingual teachers enact a translanguaging pedagogy in a high school classroom where English language acquisition is the focus. Findings indicate the primary resource the teachers used in their translanguaging pedagogy were the students themselves, and suggest that teachers’ willingness to participate as co-learners with adolescent EBs is crucial. Co-learning has been found to be an appropriate pedagogical tool with teachers of multilinguals due to the rich experiences it can foster and this study supports such literature. Additional study findings revealed tensions students and teachers felt through these practices, specifically in regards to translating, technology use, and students’ desire to learn the L2.

Reading Comprehension Strategies for Students With Learning Disabilities Who Are Emergent Bilingual

Teachers of students with learning disabilities (LD) who also are emergent bilingual (EB) are tasked with meeting students’ individual learning needs and developing academic language. Teachers require specialized knowledge in second-language acquisition and the specific learning strategies to support students’ learning disabilities. Reading comprehension skills are the foundational skills that students with LD who are EB most often need to improve. When working with students, research-based reading strategies to support their reading comprehension skills are critical, but must also support students’ developing English proficiency. This article identifies research-based reading comprehension strategies supportive of developing English proficiency that may be implemented for students with LD who are EB in the elementary grade levels. A self-evaluation tool is provided to guide teachers in helping their students to improve their reading comprehension skills while supporting their language development.

Instructional practices for scaffolding emergent bilinguals’ comprehension of informational science texts

ABSTRACT In the telling case presented here, the instructional practices an exemplary teacher used to scaffold fourth-grade emergent bilinguals’ comprehension of a challenging informational science text are identified, analyzed, and discussed. Data sources included observation field notes, video and audio recording of 11 hours of instruction, the teacher’s post-teaching written reflection log, and two interviews. The findings yielded from systematic, iterative qualitative data analysis and constant comparative methods suggest that in the context of text-based discussions with informational texts, teachers can employ an array of instructional practices to scaffold emergent bilinguals’ construction of conceptual understanding. In particular, iterative readings, explicit attention to language, and engagement with multimodal representations of core concepts can create multiple opportunities for students’ analysis of both the language and meaning in informational science texts.

Bridging the gap between learning and evaluation

The use of non-dominant linguistic repertoires is often not valued in educational practices, let alone in educational assessment. The competences of multilingual learners are traditionally assessed by tests designed for monolinguals that do not represent the true capabilities of multilingual pupils, because their level of language proficiency in the text language does not reflect their wider abilities. Assessment needs to shift from evaluating a pupil in only the language of schooling towards assessment where the full multilingual repertoire can be used to demonstrate knowledge and competences. In this study, assessment preferences of multilingual pupils are explored, both in assessment accommodations for large-scale testing and in classroom-based assessment that is aligned with assessment for learning. Interviews with 35 pupils in fifth-grade of primary education (age 10–11) in Belgium were conducted. Results indicate that accommodations that use pupils’ first languages are not necessarily the most popular ones, that pupils are in favour of portfolios and oral assessments and that they need more feedback. The findings of this study suggest the need for instruction and evaluation to become more integrated, which would be beneficial for all pupils and could be more inclusive of emergent bilinguals rather than treating them as a separate group.

Pushing against hegemonic practices: emergent bilinguals respond to children’s literature

ABSTRACTThere is a need to gain insight into the ways technology positively impacts the literacy development of young children learning English as a new language given public scrutiny about the use of technology in early childhood classrooms. When thinking about the future, being multiliterate is important and requires learners to make, remake, and interpret signs in multiple modes [Rowsell and Harwood, 2015. “‘Let it Go’: Exploring the Image of the Child as a Producer, Consumer, and Inventor.” Theory into Practice 54 (2): 136–146]. This study builds on understanding communication from a multimodal perspective that sees the child as an active agent in their own learning. Twelve second-grade (ages seven and eight) emergent bilingual students responded to children’s literature through video posts over the course of a school year. The findings indicate the essential role of semiotic resources in terms of student agency, feedback, identity, and digital play. The types of interactions that emergent bilingual students engage in using technology impacts literacy learning and pushes back against school curricula with a print-centric focus.

What’s the Point? Emergent Bilinguals’ Understanding of Multiple-Meaning Words that Carry Everyday and Discipline-Specific Mathematical Meanings

Multiple-meaning words may pose acute challenges to young learners, especially those who speak a home language other than English. The goal of this study was to investigate Emergent Bilinguals’ (EBs) knowledge about words that convey both specific mathematical meanings as well as everyday meanings (e.g., the volume of a triangular prism and the volume of an Iphone). We selected 12 multiple-meaning words for their importance in learning mathematical concepts and procedures. Two studies were conducted sequentially with populations representing distinct profiles of EB learners in US schools: 28 middle schoolers from several cultural and linguistic backgrounds in Study 1 and 32 Spanish-English bilingual fourth graders in Study 2. Given scholarship on challenges associated with academic language, we hypothesized that everyday meanings would be more familiar than mathematical meanings for both populations of EB learners. However, this hypothesis did not play out in either context. We found no significant differences between knowledge of everyday and mathematical meanings for Spanish-English EBs, though there were notable differences by target word. More surprisingly, the population of EBs from multiple language backgrounds demonstrated a greater understanding of mathematical senses of the target words. We examine how knowledge of multiple-meaning words relates to language and literacy skills as well as contextual factors. This study demonstrates the importance of taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the EB population for supporting language and mathematics development of multilingual students.