Troubling the “two” in two-way bilingual education

Hamman-Ortiz, Laura

doi:10.1080/15235882.2019.1686441

Cited by 23 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…A preference for English was reported by some teachers and observed among students during unstructured times, suggesting that English is the dominant language even in this TWI setting (Uzzell & Ayscue, 2021). This outcome could be attributable to the 50/50 language distribution (Freire & Delavan, 2021) and could be addressed by replacing the binary approach with a bilingual program that is more sensitive to the needs of emergent bilingual students (Hamman-Ortiz, 2019). Such a program could still foster integration and may be even more culturally sustaining because it would accept forms of language, such as Black English, that have been less accepted in the TWI context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The program has been critiqued for continuing to privilege English through policies that support equal distribution of instructional time (50/50), rather than equitable distribution catered to student needs (Freire & Delavan, 2021). Others have suggested that TWI fails to capture the complexities of bilingualism by enforcing a separation of languages and categorizing students as native speakers (Cervantes-Soon et al, 2017; Hamman-Ortiz, 2019). Because most TWI programs are Spanish immersion and rely on Spanish-speaking Latinx students as language models, they may focus too much on what Latinx students can provide for non-Latinx peers, rather than on centering and supporting Latinx ELs (Cervantes-Soon, 2014).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Teachers and Leaders Facilitate Integration in a Two-Way Dual Language Immersion Program

Ayscue

Uzzell

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context: Public school enrollment in the United States is becoming increasingly racially and linguistically diverse; however, school segregation continues to intensify across the nation. Within this context, two-way dual language immersion (TWI) programs, which intentionally strive to balance English learners and English speakers, may create a natural opportunity for integration. Research Question: How do teachers and leaders facilitate integrative interactions among students of different racial and linguistic groups in a TWI program? Research Design: This qualitative, holistic, single case study explores the TWI program at Silverthorne Elementary School (pseudonym), a K-5 traditional public school in the southeastern United States. Silverthorne is in a rural community on the outskirts of a large metropolitan area that is a new immigrant destination. At the time of data collection, Silverthorne’s TWI program was in its seventh year of implementation. Participants include 12 teachers, one guidance counselor, and one school leader. We conducted semi-structured individual interviews with all participants, observed eight classrooms, and analyzed supplemental documents. We used inductive coding and ultimately generated four themes to describe how TWI teachers and leaders facilitate integration. Findings: Silverthorne’s TWI program provides an opportunity to facilitate integration among students from different racial and linguistic backgrounds. The nature of these integrative experiences is shaped by the structure of the TWI program, the teachers’ conceptualizations of diversity, the teachers’ pedagogical and curricular decisions, and the school leader’s support of the TWI program. Conclusion: Although teachers and leaders in the Silverthorne TWI program have promoted integration in numerous ways, they also have missed important opportunities to facilitate greater integration. Nonetheless, this TWI program illustrates the potential of TWI to provide opportunities for students from different racial and linguistic backgrounds to learn together in a truly integrated environment. Findings suggest the need for enhanced professional development regarding how to facilitate integration in diverse classrooms as well as future research to understand how, if at all, integration is considered when districts and schools are designing and implementing TWI programs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Teachers and Leaders Facilitate Integration in a Two-Way Dual Language Immersion Program

Ayscue

Uzzell

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Closely tied to liberation is personal identity, and schools play an important role in the ways that children understand themselves and others (Hamman-Ortiz, 2019). To attend to the historical practices of las escuelitas, we do not aim to situate their practices within a specific paradigm but to highlight the competing paradigms.…”

Section: Situating Biliteracy As Critical Literacy On the Bordermentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Learned How to Read in Spanish”: A Genealogical Analysis of Biliterate Subjective Possibilities in South Texas Escuelitas and Beyond

Degollado

Bell

Harvey‐Torres

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context: Historically, the literature on access to quality education for Mexican Americans has been wrought with injustices committed on them because of the racist and deficit thinking of the time. This includes, but is not limited to, access to literacy in English and Spanish. This article focuses on las escuelitas, or little schools, as sites of resistance that fostered Spanish literacy as an extension of the home before official schooling in all English public schools. These little schools were community-based initiatives that taught Texas Mexican children Spanish literacy and Mexican culture from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s in the borderlands. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Drawing on nepantla and border thinking as theoretical frameworks, we argue that biliterate subjectivities emerge(d) from geographically contingent ideologies rooted in colonizing codes of power. We asked: (1) How do participants describe their early literacy experiences in las escuelitas? (2) How do the discursive characterizations of participants’ early literacy experiences inform our understanding of emerging discursive biliterate subjectivities? Research Design: Employing a Foucauldian genealogical analysis, this article examines the experiences of nine escuelitas attendees. Oral histories were collected form a group of Mexican Americans who attended las escuelitas in the 1940s and were from the same graduating high school class, though they did not attend the same escuelita. Alongside their narratives, we draw on historical accounts of las escuelitas and broader Mexican American history of education of the southwestern United States. Other data include poems and textbooks provided by the participants themselves. Foucauldian genealogical analysis offered a more nuanced story in which to situate their narratives. Findings/Results: The findings demonstrate how biliterate subjectivities were produced ideologically as the participants lived and made meaning in a time when official biliteracy was not only inconceivable, but effectively outlawed by English-only laws governing public schools. We go on to consider the clandestine biliteracy of escuelita attendees of the early 20th century, in contrast to the growing popularity of official forms of biliteracy for (some) contemporary students in schools today. To do so, we detail how participants engaged in complex and contradictory discursive characterizations that revealed their nepantla and border thinking as a way of reading and writing the world. Thus, las escuelitas provide historical insight into not only the ingenuity of communities to resist English hegemony, but also how present-day bilingual education often reinscribes marginalization. Conclusions/Recommendations: The discursive narratives demonstrate the complexity of forming subjectivities in relation to biliteracy. We reveal the ways in which their biliterate subjectivities of reading the word informed the ways in which they also read the world. Thus, their subjective formations emanated nepantla and border thinking as a facet of their biliteracy. We also find that their biliteracy stories echo present discursive formations of who is considered biliterate through official manifestations like the Seal of Biliteracy. Finally, their stories indicate that biliteracy as a subjective possibility has always been rooted in communities of color whose lives and knowledges often go unrecognized.

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“…Our use of scare quotes here is intentional, as we seek to problematize the assumption that language(s) can be so clearly bounded and that students can be easily assigned to one language group or the other. On the contrary, a substantial and growing body of research has demonstrated that bilingualism is dynamic (García and Sylvan 2011;Sayer 2013;Pontier and Gort 2016) and that student identities are far more complex than such binary labels might suggest (Hamman-Ortiz 2019;Seltzer 2019). In this special issue, we focus particularly on this latter point concerning student identities, as we consider how students across different grade levels and sociolinguistic contexts are experiencing TWBE classrooms and negotiating a sense of self and other within these power-laden spaces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Hamman-Ortiz

Palmer

2020

International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

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Troubling the “two” in two-way bilingual education

Cited by 23 publications

References 57 publications

How Teachers and Leaders Facilitate Integration in a Two-Way Dual Language Immersion Program

How Teachers and Leaders Facilitate Integration in a Two-Way Dual Language Immersion Program

“I Learned How to Read in Spanish”: A Genealogical Analysis of Biliterate Subjective Possibilities in South Texas Escuelitas and Beyond

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

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