ERIC Number: EJ1475937
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jun
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1568-4555
EISSN: EISSN-1573-1863
Available Date: 2024-12-07
The Expansive Language Access Framework: An Integrated Approach to Addressing Oppression in Language Education
Language Policy, v24 n2 p373-394 2025
While language education programs were created with an equity stance in mind--with the goals of increasing access and facilitating academic success for ethnically and linguistically marginalized students--the larger educational context has compromised access for multiply marginalized students. Recognizing a need for more complex understandings of language access, scholars have turned to intersectionality; however, intersectional theory is often applied to individual encounters rather than systemic issues. In this conceptual paper, we showcase how this unitary and unidimensional approach manifests in policies, programs, and conceptualizations of languages and language practices that perpetuate the systematic marginalization of multilingual learners with disabilities (MLwDs). We illustrate how policy and programming have centered language while omitting critical perspectives of race and disability. By focusing on MLwDs, we demonstrate how MLs who are racialized and pathologized through language have been systematically ignored in ways that sustain systems of oppression. The "expansive language access framework" provides a structure for understanding what it would mean to attend to race, language, and dis/ability at the policy, program, and practice levels, and can thus serve as a tool for stakeholders (e.g., scholars, policymakers, educators) to critically examine, evaluate, and rethink their role in perpetuating and disrupting institutional oppressions that multiply marginalized students encounter. Ultimately, we hope the framework empowers stakeholders to identify opportunities for growth and expansion to increase access to more holistically responsive language programming.
Descriptors: Power Structure, Second Language Instruction, Second Language Learning, Multilingualism, Students with Disabilities, Intersectionality, Public Policy, Access to Education, Race, Educational Policy, Language Variation, Disadvantaged, Language Usage, Academic Achievement, Language of Instruction, Native Language
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1University of Pennsylvania, Educational Linguistics, Graduate School of Education, Philadelphia, USA; 2Rowan University, Critical Literacy, Technology, and Multilingual Education, College of Education, Glassboro, USA; 3Lehigh University, Department of Education and Human Services, College of Education, Bethlehem, USA