ERIC Number: EJ1472411
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Dec
Pages: 29
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0161-4681
EISSN: EISSN-1467-9620
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Brokering and (Re)Membering: Immigrant Children's In/Visible Work of Implementing a Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education Program and Educators' Perceptions
Mariana Lima Becker1; Gabrielle Oliveira2
Teachers College Record, v126 n11-12 p3-31 2024
Background: Guidelines for the successful implementation of two-way dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs foreground the role of program leadership, hiring and preparing culturally and linguistically competent teachers, family involvement, and the alignment between curriculum, assessments, and instruction in both languages. Absent in this framing for program implementation and success are the voices, lived experiences, and everyday contributions of immigrant children who take part in such programs. Focus: Grounded in a critical orientation to immigrant childhoods, this article explores how a group of 70 Brazilian immigrant children (ages 5-7) navigated a new two-way DLBE program (Portuguese-English) in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. By looking into how the children interacted and participated in class, we foreground how they contributed to the maintenance of the program as two-way DLBE implementers. Research Design: This article draws from a larger ethnographic research study conducted over three school calendar years (2018-2021). It leverages field notes from weekly classroom visits in the two-way DLBE program and semistructured interviews with 18 school staff members. Data sources were coded using thematic analysis, with attention to how immigrant children's actions contributed to teachers' instruction and how these contributions were perceived by educators and other staff members. Findings/Conclusions: Brazilian immigrant students in K-2 classrooms contributed daily to the implementation of their two-way DLBE program through language brokering across Portuguese- and English-medium classrooms, facilitating peer participation in class, and invoking transborder memories in ways that complexified the ongoing classroom discourse. However, two-way DLBE educators and other staff members characterized newcomer students from Brazil as bringing key linguistic assets to school while positioning the children born in Brazilian immigrant households in the United States as "caught in-between" languages and undermining the program implementation. These findings suggest the need for a holistic focus on immigrant childhoods in two-way DLBE programming.
Descriptors: Immersion Programs, Immigrants, Latin Americans, Portuguese, English (Second Language), Kindergarten, Elementary School Students, Grade 1, Grade 2, Student Participation, Program Implementation, Teacher Attitudes, Elementary School Teachers, Student Role
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Kindergarten; Primary Education; Grade 1; Grade 2
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Massachusetts
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Educational Theory and Practice, Mary Frances Early College of Education, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; 2Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA