Combating Inequalities in Two-Way Language Immersion Programs: Toward Critical Consciousness in Bilingual Education Spaces

Search 1: Analysis of Inequalities in TWI

The first question sought to examine manifestations of inequalities/inequities demonstrated in studies of TWI. Following an interpretive approach to research synthesis that incorporated elements of metaethnography (Noblit & Hare, 1988), we first searched for relevant papers using terms such as “two-way immersion,” “dual language,” “dual immersion,” and “bilingual immersion.” From this literature, which was not limited by any date range and informed by Valdés’s (1997) seminal cautionary note, we selected studies that revealed that students or communities from minoritized groups were experiencing marginalization or were not benefiting equally from programs as much as White English speakers/communities. While prior reviews on TWI education are widely cited and offer important insights (e.g., Howard, Sugarman, & Christian, 2003; Lindholm-Leary, 2005a; Parkes & Ruth, 2009), our selection of scholarship purposefully sought to identify empirical studies and conceptual papers that captured inequalities in TWI contexts that may go unrecognized when concentrating on conventional measures of success. This approach was necessary given that scholarly accounts of TWI’s benefits—rather than research that critically analyzes limitations—have been the cornerstone of TWI program proliferation.

Notably, while not excluding quantitative studies, most of the empirical work from this search used qualitative approaches. An examination of 80 papers and six books yielded five potential areas of inequality that served as initial thematic codes for analysis: (1) student access and experiences; (2) classroom pedagogy, curriculum, and linguistic choices; (3) teachers’ preparation, background, and orientations; (4) parents and community engagement; and (5) district- and state-level policies, economic contexts, and politics. We created a database with these categories where we classified meaningful units of data, including key metaphors, themes, or concepts from each study as well as descriptors for the type of paper/book, methodology, insights for equitable practices, and our own questions. After this initial coding, we reorganized and refined codes by looking for relationships and overlapping themes or concepts, examining contradictions, and building general interpretations. This led to our final identification of the three areas of inequality and respective subcategories presented in the analysis that follows.

Search 2: Cross-Disciplinary Discourse Analysis

Our second search specifically sought to identify prominent discourses framing TWI across disciplines: anthropology of language, bilingual education, foreign language/world education, immersion education, international multilingual education, teaching English to speakers of other languages, and child development. We selected one leading journal from each area, identified by its impact factor/number of citations and reputation, and conducted a search using the same terms previously noted. Recognizing that disciplines are not static and discourses evolve over time, we limited the article selection in this search to the most recent perspectives framing the expansion of TWI in the past decade (2005–present). This was not an exhaustive search but rather a purposeful one, to gain insight into common, current discursive trends defining TWI. We conducted an inductive, interpretative analysis similar to the process described above, coding 141 studies for their definitions of TWI/dual-language education, purpose of research, purpose of TWI/language education, and discourse on TWI/language students. Secondary analyses noted particularities within and across the disciplines.

Several papers went through a dual analysis as they were captured in both searches. Finally, while our analysis is based on an examination of all selected scholarship, due to space we limit our discussion to the studies that best reflected or illustrated the themes that emerged in the analysis.

Notes on Terminology

Because the literature on TWI uses various terms, defining our terminology is necessary. First, although “dual language” and “dual-language immersion” are commonly used, we prefer TWI because it specifies the integration of two languages (as in the case of all “dual-language” programs) and students from two different language backgrounds. Meanwhile, DL programs can encompass “one-way immersion” programs designed primarily for one language group, often the “dominant” one (e.g., English; Tedick & Wesely, 2015).

Second, in line with this volume, we usually use the term inequality but interchange this at times with inequity. We conceptualize inequalities in a way that includes a call to fairness, much like equity, with both concepts “advocating for equality and giving people who have been historically excluded, segregated, and discriminated against, what they need and deserve” by fully acknowledging their unequal histories (Horsford, 2015, p. 23).

Third, recognizing that labels problematically categorize individuals and deny their rich experiences and identities (Kibler & Valdés, 2016), we prefer using terms that highlight either people’s strengths/diversity or the power structures that frame their lives. For example, when writing about children from immigrant families in TWI programs, we refer to them as “transnational” or “emergent” bilinguals rather than “English Learners;” these terms indicate that they have traversed cultures, have one or more foreign-born parents, and speak language(s) other than, or in addition to, English at home. We use the term minoritized, to indicate racial, ethnic, or linguistic groups that may be labeled minority by whitestream society (Urrieta, 2010) but who are by no means “minor.”

Inequalities in TWI’s Sociopolitical Context

In this section we review research documenting how borders of race, class, and social status and a neoliberal logic frame the sociopolitical context of TWI. We highlight how such borders and frameworks have resulted in inequalities in TWI implementation.

Inequalities Related to Teachers’ Backgrounds, Orientations, and Preparation

As “policymakers” in the classroom, teachers are crucial agents with the most power to directly influence students’ relationships, experiences, and learning (Menken & García, 2010). Our review reinforces a growing understanding that teachers’ linguistic backgrounds, training, ideologies, and orientations influence TWI classroom dynamics, often resulting in an exacerbation of inequalities between student groups in the classroom.

On the one hand, TWI programs often rely on monolingual English-speaking teachers for English-medium instruction (Amrein & Peña, 2000), as well as filling positions as librarians, coaches, substitute teachers, counselors, “specials” teachers (art, PE) and leaders of extracurricular activities (Fitts, 2006). This leads to linguistic imbalance across a student’s school day and, in turn, to inequalities in communication norms and language status: English is the only nonnegotiable language. Furthermore, while bilingual teachers can allow students access to their entire linguistic repertoire, monolingual English teachers can only build on English skills (Amrein & Peña, 2000). With training that focuses on mainstream students, teachers often lack the preparation to support language-minoritized students’ access to the English curriculum (Fitts, 2006). This dynamic opens up greater opportunities for the centering of English-dominant children. For example, Palmer (2009) reported that while the bilingual TWI teacher worked to balance students’ status and power, monolingual English-speaking teachers tended to allow White English-dominant children to interrupt, delay lessons, and dominate learning processes.

However, recruiting bilingual teachers is a challenge, particularly in contexts lacking bilingual teacher certification. Only 25 states and DC have bilingual education certificates, and only seven states require TWI teachers to have such certification (Boyle et al., 2015). Even as more states develop credentials, there remain questions about who is considered bilingual. Guerrero (1997) argued that in the case of Spanish, most locally grown bilingual teachers themselves experienced a “subtractive schooling” (Valenzuela, 1999), significantly hindering the development of their academic Spanish skills. Five TWI principals in Ramos, Dwyer, and Pérez-Prado’s (2013) study indicated that their teachers’ command of Spanish was adequate for informal conversations but not for teaching academic content in upper elementary grades; they also lacked the cultural knowledge to apply in their lessons. Korean parents in Lee and Jeong’s study (2013) similarly complained that their bilingual Korean teachers’ proficiency levels were appropriate to teach English speakers but not Korean-dominant children.

In response, some TWI programs recruit teachers from Latin America, Spain and other places, particularly in regions of the country where bilingual teachers are scarce (Cervantes-Soon, 2014). These international teachers might be deemed more authentic, cosmopolitan, and proficient speakers of the minority language. However, they may be underprepared to work with children from different class, race, and ethnic backgrounds, with little understanding about the United States’ complex race relations and challenges (Valdés, 2002). Moreover, as highly educated, elite bilinguals, they might not identify with students from marginalized groups (de Mejía, 2002; Smith, 2001). This emphasis on prestige may privilege rigid ideologies of linguistic purism and elite cosmopolitanism that devalues language-minoritized students’ everyday language practices, experiences, identities, and knowledges (Martínez, Hikida, & Durán, 2015). Moreover, as Flores and Rosa (2015) posit, racialized subjects’ standardized language practices are perpetually constructed and perceived as deficient regardless of how closely they follow “standardized” norms precisely because these norms are determined by the White English-speaking subjects (Martín-Beltrán, 2010). Thus, students and teachers from marginalized groups are often viewed as insufficiently bilingual and biliterate.

Importantly, we should consider how teachers’ ideologies and orientations shape program implementation and their views and treatment of students (Martínez et al., 2015; Menken & García, 2010). For example, while teachers in one study endorsed a color-blind orientation toward social differences, some used language as a proxy for race, articulating students’ linguistic differences as an obstacle for learning (Juárez & McKay, 2008). In another study, teachers believed Latino children were raised to be quiet and submissive, an assumption that naturalized English speakers’ dominance in classroom discourse (Cervantes-Soon & Turner, 2017).

Guerrero (1997) noted that many bilingual teachers face tension as their own instructional practices collide with the effects of assimilationist language ideologies that they experienced growing up. For example, Puerto Rican teachers in Freeman’s (2000) study at a Philadelphia middle school used code-switching practices in the classroom that implicitly sanctioned students’ local language practices, yet they also expressed fears that Spanish instruction might be detrimental for their Puerto Rican students. Similarly, Korean teachers in California were uncertain about the meaning of Korean American biculturalism (Lee & Jeong, 2013).

In conclusion, TWI teachers experience wide-ranging challenges given their linguistic backgrounds, training, and ideologies, as well as the realities they face in maintaining classrooms in minoritized languages (Amrein & Peña, 2000; Lee & Jeong, 2013). To combat inequalities, TWI teachers should possess the necessary pedagogical skills, be bilingual, and have critical understandings of what it means to serve students within TWI’s inherent diversity and complexity (Palmer & Martínez, 2013).

Inequalities in TWI Classrooms

TWI classrooms are figured worlds where people are positioned in relation to each other through culturally constituted activities (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). Specifically, encounters between students from minoritized and dominant groups—mediated by pedagogical practices and larger ideologies—frame students’ sense of self and agency. The research reviewed in this section demonstrates how curriculum, instruction, and classroom discourse/identities in TWI often privilege English-dominant students (Fitts, 2009).

The Rationale for TWI: Discourses of Globalization and Neoliberalism

The rationale for TWI programs often starts with a declaration that increased transnational flows and global commerce mean that students need bilingualism for instrumental reasons: to compete for future jobs and be “globally competitive students in the 21st century” (Rhodes, 2014, p. 116). While many scholars, parents, and children have also mentioned “integrative” reasons for bilingualism and bilingual education—to build identities and multicultural competencies—such notes are usually placed alongside, or secondary to, the instrumental focus (Boyle et al., 2015; Dorner, 2015; Tedick & Wesely, 2015).

This privileging of an instrumental rationale flows from globalization and neoliberal discourses (Cervantes-Soon, 2014). In turn, such rationales position diverse TWI students quite differently. Global migrants or transnational bilinguals, who are moving across borders to the United States, are viewed as needing a new language (English) in order to survive, whereas middle-class English-dominant youth are positioned to become “cosmopolitan” as they prepare to join global businesses (Collins, 2012; Kibler & Valdés, 2016; Morales & Razfar, 2016). Most poignantly, these discourses neglect the knowledges and experiences that transnational youth already have, positioning them as empty vessels rather than as individuals with rich linguistic repertoires and unique literacies rooted in the navigation of at least two cultures (Skerrett, 2012). They also depoliticize and ignore the original goals of bilingual education (Flores, 2016).

TWI Students as Outcomes: Discourses of Accountability

While many studies reviewed earlier used critical and ethnographic approaches to understand the experiences and perspectives of youth in TWI programs, the larger discourses around education and policymaking still view students primarily as outcomes. Due to accountability pressures, educators and policymakers must study and report students’ performances on academic assessments. While such research importantly has found that TWI students typically outperform their peers over time (e.g., Lindholm-Leary & Hernández, 2011), outcome-based studies often use imperfect categorizations and the monolingual English speaker as the standard against whom bilingual learners are measured. For example, in child development, studies almost exclusively examine students’ growth and achievement (e.g., Han, 2012). Meanwhile, across the fields of language education, researchers compare groups, using such classifications as English/Spanish speakers, language majority/minority groups, or L1/L2 (first and second language), even while noting that such terms do not reflect the complexity of individuals’ sociolinguistic realities (Cook, 2002; de Jong, 2016; Hopewell & Escamilla, 2014). In comparing groups using cross-sectional models, they also often neglect selection bias (Steele, Slater, Li, Zamarro, & Miller, 2013). Large-scale funding agencies have encouraged these foci, as they push researchers to categorize children for the purpose of experimental designs that aim to prove causality (Kibler & Valdés, 2016).

Outcome-oriented, problem-focused questions and categorizations are inevitable in education research. However, we assert that these frames fail to account for the knowledge that children actually have, the ways they experience the world, and the ways in which policies, curriculum, instruction, and schools could change. In turn, we still need more research on the everyday interactions that occur in dynamic bilingual contexts (Martín-Beltrán, 2010), so we could better describe students as “users” of languages or active transnational learners, rather than merely “outcomes.” Such perspectives better highlight youths’ complex, negotiated movements (Skerrett, 2012) and the micro-level foundations of political structures that they encounter.

Languages in TWI: Discourses of Monolingualism and Standardization

Related discourses about bilingualism as two separate monolingual systems and a focus on a “monoglot” society also undergird the inequalities found in TWI programs (Gort, 2015; Morales & Razfar, 2016). That is, monolingualism has long been the ideological “standard” in the United States, situated within the history of the nation state (Flores & García, 2013). In turn, discourses of monolingualism have defined how individuals imagine, define, and design educational programs toward bilingualism as the development of two separate and standardized monolingual systems. Such discourses have likely shaped the strict separation of instructional languages in TWI and the study of distinct language development in particular categories of students (e.g., L1 vs. L2).

The notion of “bilingual hegemonic Whiteness” (Flores, 2016, p. 2) brings attention to the historically racialized processes embedded in institutionalized forms of “additive” bilingual education like TWI. Insisting that students become bilingual only in standardized forms of English and another language reinforces hegemonic Whiteness—or the commonsense ideal of the White subject in opposition to racialized others—and continues to construct students from low-status minoritized groups in deficit terms by marginalizing their everyday bilingual practices. Despite current conceptions of plurilingualism that reframe humanity’s linguistic experiences as dynamic, situated, and ever-changing (García & Sylvan, 2011; Hornberger & Link, 2012; May, 2013), our institutions and policies are still shaped in mostly White, monolingual, standardized terms (Kibler, Valdés, & Walqui, 2014). We must interrogate these discourses to confront the inequalities found in TWI education.

The Fourth Pillar for TWI: Critical Consciousness

To define critical consciousness as a foundational pillar of TWI, we turn to critical pedagogies (Bartolomé, 2004; Darder, 2015; P. Freire, 1970; Ladson-Billings & Tate IV, 1995), border pedagogies (Cervantes-Soon & Carrillo, 2016; Giroux, 1988), and critical bilingual/language studies (Crump, 2014; McCarty, Collins, & Hopson, 2011). Critical consciousness involves the process of overcoming pervasive myths through an understanding of the role of power in the formation of oppressive conditions (P. Freire, 2007). TWI teachers, students, and parents can take part and take action only to the extent that they problematize the history, culture, and societal configurations that brought them together. TWI children, parents, teachers, and school leaders must work toward critical consciousness in order for the programs’ integrated groups to result in cross-cultural understanding and greater equality; each stakeholder must interrogate his or her own position, privilege, and power. By reframing TWI spaces as problem-posing (P. Freire, 2007), we can raise critical consciousness around the discourses, macro-level inequalities, and power relations that shape TWI practice, pedagogy, and policies.

We use the word “position” purposefully here, as it draws attention to interactive relationships in which TWI participants are positioned relative to others; it goes beyond the self and one’s current moment in time. As Reyes and Vallone (2007) argued, TWI’s third goal—to develop positive cross-cultural attitudes—originally foregrounded one’s understanding of others, thus neglecting an examination of TWI’s potential to shape one’s self and cultural identities. They argued convincingly that there are intimate links between language and identity, which TWI programs must address (though they do not usually do so). Subsequently, Feinauer and Howard (2014) agreed that this area is undertheorized but concluded that “self” was actually included in the third goal, as multi/cross-cultural competencies begin with understanding one’s identity within diverse TWI classrooms. Crump (2014) then argued for the recognition that identities are not unidimensional; they are “imposed, assumed, and negotiated” (p. 209). Although the categories reviewed earlier (e.g., English/Spanish speakers, L1/L2) are certainly imperfect, they do discursively exist, and so we must question them, in order to break them down (Souto-Manning, 2010). However, there is a danger of understanding identity as a depoliticized process, an “unproblematic affirmation of student experience” (Giroux, 1988). TWI students from different language/cultural backgrounds are “invited to because bilingual,” so TWI programs could be “considered transformational. However, whether or not power relations are ever formally explored is up to the pedagogical stance of the particular teacher and the particular school” (Reyes & Vallone, 2007, p. 8).

Therefore, we propose the use of border pedagogies (Giroux, 1988) to bring together interrogations of the self (identity, agency) and others (culture, society, structures), to examine one’s position, how it is “read” and how it relates to power in the word and the world by encouraging each individual to locate her or his identity within particular histories of power, colonization, imperialism, and difference. Simultaneously, such work will challenge the limits of individual perspectives and develop abilities to act against oppression. Furthermore, border pedagogies push us to uncover the voices and knowledges of the subaltern by decentering hegemonic Whiteness and individualist notions of success and instead centering the experiences, languages, and worldviews generated by those in the margins (Cervantes-Soon & Carrillo, 2016). In short, TWI students, parents, and educators must study the effects of power relations in language education in order to transform pedagogical stances, positions, and curricula. The next two sections explore how we can bring critical consciousness to TWI programs and research, first with a focus on children and then with adult stakeholders.

Children’s Translanguaging and Knowledges

Child-centered studies are central to inform critical consciousness, particularly ones that consider children’s lives in the present moment, the shaping of identities, and the subaltern knowledges in TWI classrooms. Scholars across many fields are increasingly employing concepts like translanguaging, which highlight dynamic bilingualism and language as a social practice/activity (Gort, 2015). A blend of languaging—language as something people do, the constant adaptation of meaning and use of varied linguistic resources in social interactions—and transculturación, translanguaging “is a product of border thinking, of knowledge that is autochthonous and conceived from a bilingual, not monolingual, position” (García & Sylvan, 2011, p. 389). It is the communicative norm of multilingual speech communities; it includes children’s and teachers’ full range of linguistic repertories and the “complex discursive practices” that they use “to ‘make sense’ of, and communicate in, multilingual classrooms” (García & Sylvan, 2011, p. 389).

Translanguaging as a lens and developing critical language awareness with students (Alim, 2005; Fairclough, 2001; Martínez, 2013) will reshape TWI’s focus on what children do with language, rather than how teachers must develop a particular “standard” of language for students (Crump, 2014). First, studies with children will help educators recognize that language is an active, dynamic tool; translanguaging is the creative language play, complex negotiations, and brokering that occur in plurilingual settings (Dorner & Layton, 2014; Gort & Sembiante, 2015; Martín-Beltrán, 2010; Zentella, 1997). Second, because languaging processes are not void of power relations, infusing a border pedagogy within translanguaging practices may help reframe and reimagine TWI spaces through fostering critical consciousness. This type of pedagogy may involve implementing Freirean “culture circles” with young students (Souto-Manning, 2010), making space for students’ fears and embracing their complexities (Osorio, 2015), working to understand the relationship between language and power and redefining terms like Spanglish with students (Martínez, 2013), and developing multilingual learning spaces by following children’s leads in love and play (Orellana, 2016).

In summary, translanguaging is part of a transformative (Gort, 2015) and critical border pedagogy (Cervantes-Soon & Carrillo, 2016) that decenters Anglo-centric knowledge. Working with children and documenting their translanguaging, educators will have deeper knowledge of their students and their multilayered linguistic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. In turn, together they can recognize and rework the artificial separation of languages and sociopolitical contexts in TWI classrooms. Educators will better understand how “official” discourses work alongside subaltern ones, which can actually better support the development of academic discourses for TWI students (Gort & Sembiante, 2015).

Humanizing Research With All Stakeholders

Humanizing research—where children, parents, teachers, and researchers work alongside each other—is likewise crucial to dismantle TWI inequalities. Humanizing studies build “relationships of care and dignity and dialogic consciousness-raising for both researchers and participants” (Paris & Winn, 2014, p. xvi). Such work requires recognizing how traditional research and approaches to TWI programs can be “dehumanizing,” that is, as they imagine students as outcomes or critique teachers for their own lack of language. Researchers and practitioners alike must be critical of their work, rethink previous writing and assumptions, analyze their own linguistic/political histories, and engage with a range of TWI stakeholders in collective ongoing critical reflection; in turn, they can develop new curricula and work toward social justice goals (Bartolomé, 2004; Palmer, 2010).

Already, a few TWI studies have employed humanizing methodologies, highlighting the potential of the proposed pillar of critical consciousness. For example, framed as a critical collaborative action research project, a researcher-teacher and eight TWI teachers charted their transformations and challenges, as they worked to employ culturally relevant pedagogies (J. Freire, 2014). Hadi-Tabassum (2006) worked with a fifth-grade class to document TWI students’ and teachers’ efforts to grapple with discourses of race, class and gender inequities as they learned language and content together. Heiman (2017) has collaborated with parents and a fifth-grade critical educator in a rapidly gentrifying TWI community, documenting critical responses to issues of power/class.

These approaches may also promote the development of new curricula. Our review suggests that the conditions of TWI call us to consider the pitfalls of simply teaching mainstream curriculum in two languages. Teaching for critical consciousness and human connection requires that whitestream curriculum is decentered for all students. Future research alongside children and families could develop new content, based on communities’ rich linguistic repertoires and transcultural/transfronterizo (border crossing) experiences (de la Piedra & Araujo, 2012; Mateus, 2016; Zapata & Laman, 2016). This work would promote an understanding of the histories of colonization, imperialism, forced migration, racism, and neoliberalism, which are reflected in our language practices. Such curricula, which need to move beyond literacy/language arts and into all the content areas, have the potential to combat utilitarian and disembodied purposes for language learning.