Hegemonic discourses of assimilation in multilingual educational policy: Educators as negotiators for social justice

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Abstract Summary

In primary and secondary education in the United States, where multilingual policies have recently expanded, tension has emerged between discourses of plurality aiming to center linguistically, culturally, and racially minoritized communities on one hand and hegemonic privileging of white, English-dominant communities on the other. Drawing on a conceptualization of language policy as heterogeneously resourced and scaled, this study investigated how educators negotiate dialectical discourses of multilingual education and perceive its implementation across the state of Massachusetts, where recent policy change has enabled the growth of multilingual policies. Data included survey responses, which were collected using an instrument measuring educators' beliefs about language and language policy, as well as interviews, which were conducted with educators working with multilingual populations. Qualitative data analyses used critical discourse analytic methods, and factor analysis was used for quantitative data. Findings indicate that the critical aims of multilingual education may be realized as educators implement practices and policies that center minoritized communities, yet hegemonic discourses and policy mechanisms often inhibit such attempts. Despite these powerful processes of subjugation and assimilation and the ideologies they discursively embody, evidence also suggests that state-sanctioned support of local social justice-oriented discourses and policies may transform multilingual education.

Submission ID :
AILA387
Submission Type
Argument :

In recent years, multilingual education has expanded in K-12 contexts throughout the United States. Paradoxically, this expansion of pluralist language policy has been linked to neoliberal aims that often result in the gentrification of multilingual education by white, English-dominant communities (Flores, 2016). At the same time, the potential of multilingual policies to center and support the empowerment of the linguistically, racially, and culturally minoritized students they were meant to serve remains prominent (Heiman & Yanes, 2018). Given this tension between often superficial discourses of plurality in multilingual education and its transformative potential, it is crucial to interrogate the policy processes through which practices and discourses that reproduce oppression persist in conjunction with social justice efforts.

Drawing on a conceptualization of language policy as heterogeneously resourced and scaled (Mortimer & Wortham, 2015), this study investigated how educators negotiate dialectical discourses of multilingual education and perceive its implementation across the state of Massachusetts, where recent policy change has enabled the growth of multilingual programming. Data were collected using a survey measuring educators' beliefs about language (Fitzsimmons-Doolan et al., 2017) and specifically about language policy in Massachusetts, as well as through interviews conducted with educators working with multilingual populations. To better understand which and how educators were taking up multilingual discourses, practices, and policies, qualitative data from the survey and interviews were analyzed using critical discourse analysis (Wodak & Fairclough, 2010), and quantitative data were analyzed using factor analysis (Brown, 2015).

Findings suggest that while educators who serve multilingual students in their professional roles support the critical aims of multilingual education and attempt to implement policies that center minoritized communities, several barriers impede its full realization within the ideological and policy context of Massachusetts. Educators identified specific affordances of state-level support of multilingual education, such as the symbolic recognition of multilingualism as an asset and the enactment of more inclusive practices locally. However, they also described a lack of resources and guidance, as well as assimilationist forms of resistance through competing policies and underlying beliefs, community discourses, and accountability linked to monolingual curricula and assessment.

Discussion will focus on connections between specific discourses of assimilation and plurality and oppressive as compared with transformative policies in multilingual education and will suggest means for disrupting barriers therein.


Brown, T.A. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research (2nd ed). New York: Guildford Press.

Fitzsimmons-Doolan, S., Palmer, D., & Henderson, K. (2017). Educator language ideologies and a top-down dual language program. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 20(6), 704–721.

Flores, N. (2016). A tale of two visions: hegemonic whiteness and bilingual education. Educational Policy, 30(1), 13–38.

Heiman, D., & Yanes, M. (2018). Centering the fourth pillar in times of TWBE gentrifcation: "Spanish, love, content, not in that order." International Multilingual Research Journal, 12(3), 173–187.

Mortimer, K., & Wortham, S. (2015). Analyzing language policy and social identification across heterogeneous scales. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 160–172.

Wodak, R., & Fairclough, N. (2010). Recontextualizing European higher education policies: The cases of Austria and Romania. Critical Discourse Studies,7(1), 19–40.

Postdoctoral Fellow
,
University of Massachusetts Boston

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