Two-way Bilingual Education Research Articles

Designing Critical Multilingual Multiliteracies Projects in Two-Way Immersion Classrooms: Affordances and Impacts on Students

Language separation policies in two-way bilingual education (TWBE) reflect ideologies of double monolingualism (Heller, 1995) and ignore the sociolinguistic realities of bi/multilingual students (García & Lin, 2017). This case study investigates the design and implementation of collaborative multilingual identity text projects (Prasad, 2018) in a Spanish-English two-way immersion (TWI) school. Identity text pedagogies (Cummins & Early, 2011) that engage bilingual students in creating dual-language multimodal texts have been taken up across a wide variety of contexts. Few studies in the United States, however, have examined how TWI teachers can use multiliteracies pedagogy (New London Group, 1996) with a critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) focus to move beyond the frame of Spanish-English through the creation of collaborative multilingual and multimodal class books. A thematic analysis of classroom data from our case study demonstrates that implementing critical multilingual multiliteracies projects fostered students’ CMLA while building positive bi/multilingual identities, leveraged students’ linguistic repertoires beyond the language of instruction, and encouraged linguistic risk-taking. This empirical study highlights the possibilities for adopting a collaborative, critical, and creative multilingual multiliteracies approach in TWI settings.

Integration in TWBE

Abstract Integration is a defining feature of two-way bilingual education (TWBE), yet the integrative dimension of TWBE has received relatively little attention. Over time, scholars have raised concerns that the integration of English speakers and speakers of other languages may not effectively support minority students in the program and in fact, reinforce the inequalities that exist outside of the program or school. This paper discusses the rationale for integration and critical issues of integration and equity as they have emerged at the classroom and program level. The authors provide a conclusion proposing ways forward and what is needed to realize the potential of integration as a transformative third space within TWBE.

“Research shows that I am here for them”: Acompañamiento as language policy activism in times of TWBE gentrification

Two-way Bilingual Education (TWBE) programs are currently experiencing gentrification processes that are displacing the original beneficiaries of these programs. These gentrification processes have led to a whitening of bilingual education (Flores and Garcia in Ann Rev Appl Linguist, 37:14–29, 2017) marked by inequities and the dangerous potential to erase Latinx communities and voices. These troubling processes have led to a fourth fundamental goal in TWBE, the development of critical consciousness for all stakeholders (Palmer et al. in Theory into Practice, 58:121–133, 2019). This article examines a fifth-grade TWBE teacher’s (Michelle) centering of the fourth goal and Latinx families being impacted by gentrification and explores: How did Michelle accompany Latinx families and students in the midst of gentrification processes at the neighborhood and school levels? Findings revealed that Michelle’s language policy activism of acompanamiento mitigated and interrogated gentrification processes that were pushing these families out of the neighborhood and schoolwide processes that were now focused on new customers. The discussion points to why a language policy activism of acompanamiento should count as language policy and its succinct connection to TWBE’s fourth goal. We argue that another crucial element of the fourth goal is the enactment of a language policy activism (Flores and Chaparro in Lang Policy 17:365–384, 2018) of acompanamiento; actions and practices in support of communities that experience injustices guided by fellowship and being in relationship with the oppressed.

“Now it’s all upper-class parents who are checking out schools”: gentrification as coloniality in the enactment of two-way bilingual education policies

Bilingual education as a whole has been gentrifying, as more privileged students replace Transnational Language Learners (TLLs) in bilingual education spaces and policies (Valdez et al. in Educ Policy 30(6):849–883, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904814556750 ). We argue this is an extension of coloniality (Mignolo in Local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000/2012): as two-way bilingual education (TWBE) policies are enacted, they are shaped by globalizing, neoliberal, and monoglossic discourses that have a history of dispossessing and erasing minoritized peoples and languages. Taking a critical constructivist grounded theory approach, this study brings together three unique data sets from the US Midwest, Southeast, and Texas to question: How does gentrification manifest in TWBE across policy scales and contexts? And how are stakeholders responding to or resisting gentrification and its underlying coloniality? Regardless of the varying state policy and local contexts, each TWBE program in our study experienced gentrification. Specifically, TLLs and their Spanish language(s) were replaced or diminished as TWBE policy enactment intersected with district and state policies, particularly those shaping enrollment, transportation, course scheduling, and teacher and student recruitment. While the analysis focuses on gentrification processes through policy enactment, we also detail spaces of consciousness where stakeholders recognized and resisted them and conclude with a discussion on how coloniality is both manifested and can be challenged in language policy enactment.

“Two schools within a school”: Elitism, divisiveness, and intra-racial gentrification in a dual language strand

ABSTRACT With most elementary dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs being implemented as strands within schools, tensions related to inequities, unequal distribution of resources, and academic quality and demographic differences often arise. Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study and two interview phases with DLBE and mainstream teachers, this study analyzes teachers’ perceptions and discourses regarding tensions related to the Spanish-English two-way bilingual education program at their urban elementary school. Findings from a thematic analysis approach pointed to teachers’ discourses of elitism and divisiveness in relation to the DLBE strand based on racial tensions and school inequities, including what we call intra-racial DLBE gentrification. These findings are based on how educators experienced tensions regarding this bilingual program related to (a) the composition of the student body in terms of perceived quality and quantity, (b) cognitive and academic benefits, (c) resources provided by a university partnership, and (d) parental involvement. Implications for administrators and teacher preparation programs toward equity and school integration with DLBE strands are discussed.

Identity and two-way bilingual education: considering student perspectives: introduction to the special issue

This special issue explores how children and youth in two-way bilingual education (TWBE) programs negotiate bi/multilingual identities and make sense of complex power dynamics within and outside of...

Two-way bilingual education programs and sense of belonging: perspectives from middle school students

ABSTRACT This exploratory study examined the experiences of middle school students in an urban two-way bilingual education (TWBE) program. Through the lens of students’ sense of belonging, the study examined how middle school students described their experiences being enrolled in a TWBE program at the primary and secondary level. Data sources included a survey (n = 68) and six small group interviews with twenty middle school students. Using four dimensions of belonging (relationships, place, agency, and inclusion) to analyze the data, the study found that students experienced a sense of belonging through a culture of care, peer relationships, and community-building activities. Translanguaging practices supported students’ identities as bilinguals and were a way to include students whose language proficiency was still in the emerging stages. Strong TWBE program cohesion appeared to positively mediate the transition from primary to secondary school. However, students experienced monolingual attitudes and ideologies outside the program, undermining their sense of belonging in school. The study concludes that TWBE programs are uniquely situated to engage in practices that support students’ sense of belonging and, through these practices, create, open up, and sustain identity options for bilingual learners in middle school.

“Yeah, Things are Rough in Mexico. Remember We Talked About Hard Times?” Process Drama and a Teachers Role in Critically Engaging Students to Dialogue About Social Inequities in a Dual Language Classroom

The majority of dual language education programs in the U.S. context include children coming together with the long-term goal of becoming bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate (Christian in Two-way bilingual education: students learning through two languages. Educational Practice Report: 12, 1994; Howard et al. in Trends in two-way immersion education: a review of the literature. Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR), Report 63, 2003). It is urgent that practitioners and scholars who see the value of the TWDL model continue to explore methods that address social inequities that arise in highly contested contexts such as an urban public school classroom. Drawing from a critical consciousness (Freire in Harv Educ Rev 40:499–521. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.40.3.h76250x720j43175 , 1998) framework and discourse analysis methods this paper explores how one dual language teacher critically engaged students to dialogue about undocumented immigration through the implementation of process drama. Findings indicate that students will engage about social inequities when teachers facilitate discussions by pushing students for further inquiry, to provide contextual information, giving students a voice, or affirming their responses. The urgency to raise critical consciousness in two-way bilingual education contexts also emerged as these dual language programs continue to be gentrified across the nation (Palmer et al. in Theory Pract. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1569376 , 2019; Valdes in Harv Educ Rev 67(3):391–429, 1997; Valdez et al. in Urban Rev 48(4):601–627, 2016).

Troubling the “two” in two-way bilingual education

ABSTRACTThere is ongoing debate within the field of bilingual education concerning the extent to which instructional languages should be separated. However, neither side has sufficiently addressed how language practices and policies shape the ideological space of the classroom, and the concomitant implications for student learning and sense-making around bilingualism. This article interrogates how programmatic binaries within a second-grade two-way bilingual education (TWBE) classroom emerge in and through classroom discourse in ways that (re)enforce the ideological construction of “two” languages and “two” groups of learners. Drawing upon microethnographic discourse analysis and positioning theory, I conduct a close analysis of one illustrative classroom language event, revealing how students are discursively positioned as either Spanish-speakers/Latinos or English-speakers/Anglos. Through this analysis, I demonstrate the complexity of identity positioning in TWBE, revealing how the reification of binaries affirms Latinx student identities while simultaneously reinforcing monoglossic framings of bilingualism and overly simplistic understandings of students’ linguistic identities. Findings point to the need to critically reimagine how two-ness is constructed and negotiated in TWBE and to better account for the interrelation among classroom practices, language ideologies, and student identities.

“It Was Like a Magnet to Bring People In”: School Administrators’ Responses to the Gentrification of a Two-Way Bilingual Education (TWBE) Program in Central Texas

This critical ethnographic study investigated how gentrification processes shaped an elementary school’s community and two-way bilingual education (TWBE) program in Central Texas. Findings revealed how these gentrification processes impacted the principal and vice principal at the ontological and epistemological levels, as their ways of being and knowing around their TWBE program were altered as a dual gentrification process pushed in new customers thirsting for bilingualism and pushed out Spanish-speaking families due to rapidly rising rents. Implications highlight the urgency for administrators to develop critical consciousness around the original race radical vision of bilingual education.

Cross-National Comparison of Parental Choice of Two-Way Bilingual Education in the United States and Israel

This article presents a comparative analysis of a metasynthesis of Israeli and US studies on parental choice of two-way bilingual education. My analysis reveals that the reasons majority-language a...

“Los Dos Son Mi Idioma”: Translanguaging, Identity, and Social Relationships among Bilingual Youth

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes language practices that 5th grade students in a two-way bilingual education (TWBE) program used to position themselves relative to peers and to transcendent scripts (Gutiérrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995; Reyes, 2006) about ethnicity and ability (academic and linguistic) that attach themselves to students through their various classifications (McDermott, Golden, & Varenne, 2006). The study relies on analysis of data collected through ethnographic observation as well as transcribed recordings of student interactions and semi-structured interviews to show how students reject, take up, or impose stereotypes connected to identity dimensions. I rely on an analytical framework of translanguaging (García, 2009) to show how students leverage their multilingual and multimodal communicative competencies to forge alliances, tell stories, and reject stereotypes. This work adds to an emerging literature on translanguaging that thus far has largely focused on classroom learning and academic tasks.

Translanguaging Pedagogies for Positive Identities in Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education

ABSTRACTResearch suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children’s bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in only one language at a time. Few studies have explored how a translanguaging pedagogy supports the development of positive identities when learning through two languages. This article explores the co-construction of identities of emergent bilingual children whose teacher embraced dynamic bilingualism. We carried out a close discourse analysis, drawing on the sociocultural linguistic framework of Bucholtz and Hall of children’s interactions in a two-way bilingual education classroom. Our data revealed that translanguaging offered equitable, empowering educational and language learning opportunities to minoritized, bilingual students. A translanguaging pedagogy resulted in greater metalinguistic awareness, while developing bilingual identities.

Book Reviews: Becoming Biliterate: A Study of Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Education

Book Reviews: Becoming Biliterate: A Study of Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Education

What Do Parents Think of Two-Way Bilingual Education? An Analysis of Responses

Three hundred sixty-six parents of children enrolled in a school-wide English-Spanish two-way bilingual program participated in this study. They were asked to answer a survey that attempted to elicit information about their degree of satisfaction with the program, as well as the reasons that led them to select it, and their perception of and support for Spanish. In their responses, the parents showed strong support for the program, valued its academic and linguistic emphasis, had positive opinions about Spanish, and created home environments that facilitated their children's development of literacy skills in this language.

Strategic codeswitching, interliteracy, and other phenomena of emergent bilingual writing: Lessons from first grade dual language classrooms

This qualitative study investigated the writing processes of eight emergent bilingual children as they composed stories in two languages in a Writing Workshop (WW) context. The research was situated in two grade 1 classrooms in a Spanish/English Two-Way Bilingual Education program in the north-eastern USA. For six months, researchers observed students in Spanish and English WWs, interviewed students about their writing behaviors and understandings, and collected samples from all stages of the writing process. Cross-case analyses of individual bilingual writing profiles revealed similarities and differences in students’ cross-linguistic skills, as well as patterns of transfer. Patterns of bilingual writing related to strategic codeswitching, positive literacy transfer, and interliteracy led to the development of a preliminary model of bilingual writing development for English-dominant and Spanish-dominant bilingual learners.This model presents phenomena unique to bilingual writers, relates these to bilingualism and biliteracy, and proposes anticipated expression of the phenomena for developing Spanish-dominant and English-dominant bilingual writers.

Book Review: Becoming biliterate: A study of two-way bilingual immersion education

Book Review: Becoming biliterate: A study of two-way bilingual immersion education

Differential Outcomes of Two Bilingual Education Programs on English Language Learners

This study investigated the effects of two types of bilingual programs (two-way and transitional) on the academic performance and attitudes of fifth-grade students who entered kindergarten or first grade with different levels of English proficiency. A mixed methods design with both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses phases was employed. Quantitative data analyses indicated no significant differences in standardized measures of English achievement, although significant differences were found in other measures, including measures of oral language acquisition in English, Spanish-reading ability, students' attitudes, and perceived levels of proficiency in English and Spanish. Qualitative data analysis indicated that the students in two-way bilingual education programs were more likely to express positive attitudes towards bilingualism. Based on the mixed data, it is concluded that despite some similarity in the effects, each of the bilingual programs also has unique effects. Policy decisions should be made on the basis of relative importance, value, and the costs of these unique advantages and disadvantages.

Assisting Parents of Bilingual Students to Achieve Equity in Public Schools

This article provides school-based consultants with an overview of the English language learner (ELL) student population and common programs available to ELL students (such as English-only programs, pull-out English as a second language [ESL], content-based ESL, transitional bilingual programs, maintenance bilingual programs, and two-way or dual language bilingual education programs). Past and current research examining bilingual education programs and guidelines and recommendations for the application of bilingual education knowledge to consultative practice with school personnel and culturally and linguistically diverse parents are discussed. Because of the paucity of research regarding school-based consultation related to bilingual education issues, guidelines and recommendations are presented within the larger framework of multicultural and cross-cultural consultation. Recommendations for future research regarding school-based consultation related to bilingual education issues are provided.

Narrowing the Gap: Effects of a Two-Way Bilingual Education Program on the Literacy Development of At-Risk Primary Students

Children with limited English proficiency are known to be at higher risk of school failure than their peers. Risk starts early, and the achievement lag of these children often widens with age and progression in the educational system. This study attempted to determine the effects of a 2-way bilingual education program on the literacy development of at-risk kindergarten students who had lower English proficiency and were in a higher failure risk bracket than a comparison group who had higher initial English competence and participated in regular education. Students in the experimental group were instructed in English approximately 70% of the time and in Spanish approximately 30% of the time. At the end of the 1st grade, no statistically significant differences were found between the 2 groups on the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) or a combination of 6 other indicators of English literacy development.