Lisa M. Dorner, Ph.D.

teacher, researcher, life-long learner

Equity in Bilingual Education is Possible!

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Cover Art for Critical Consciousness in Dual Language Bilingual Education

Together with Drs. Deb Palmer, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Dan Heiman, and Emily Crawford-Rossi — and our amazing cover artist, Martha Samaniego — I am excited to post that our new edited volume has been published! Critical Consciousness in Dual Language Bilingual Education: Case Studies on Policy and Practice (2022) is now available. If you want to see what the book’s about, the introductory chapter is FREE on this page – just click on “Preview PDF” in the upper-right-hand corner! And if you’re interested in buying the book, please use the code AERA2023 at Routledge, for a 30% discount (good til May 31, 2023)!

In our introduction, we noted that this book came to being “amid challenges that feel insurmountable: millions of people from Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Yemen fleeing their homes due to unprovoked and civil wars; countless Central Americans pleading for asylum in the United States; and an on-going pandemic disproportionately killing people of color. Black, Brown, LGTBQ+, and other marginalized communities continue to experience violence and inequity across our educational, legal, and civil institutions time and time again.”

But then, we continued: “there is hope and love in the world too. People are welcoming refugees into their homes, youth are committing their lives to activism against racism, and new organizations are working to fairly distribute life-saving medical care. We know how to fight back against oppression. But it takes opening our hearts and minds, developing our consciousness of inequities, and figuring out how to take action.” 

This is the heart of our new edited volume. In showcasing examples of equity and positive action in bilingual education and dual language programs, we hope to provide inspiration for educators and families alike, especially those working in primary and secondary schools in the United States. At the heart of each case study is the question: how can we ensure equity in bilingual education? Now, we share the volume with you, so you may ask this question of yourself and your community.

We truly look forward to your feedback on the ideas and stories presented in the book. Whether you are a student, teacher, principal, parent or community member working with bilingual schools, please contact us any time. You can find me at dornerl @ missouri.edu.

New Conference on Bilingual Education in the Midwest

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Do you work in a dual language program that serves bilingual and bicultural students? Are you interested in developing more equitable programs and enhancing educational opportunities at your school?

Building Raciolinguistic Justice in Midwestern Dual Language Programs through Research-Practice Partnerships is a year-long project supported by the Spencer Foundation; coordinated by me, Trish Morita-Mullaney, Deborah Palmer, and Amy Young; and implemented in partnership with many other bilingual educators and scholars. The project is designed to enhance and develop critical consciousness in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) in the US Midwest.

What is DLBE and why is critical consciousness important for it? Dual language bilingual education is a unique educational approach where teachers provide content instruction in English and another language, aiming to develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism for a diverse student body. Yet despite the fact most programs integrate and serve students from various backgrounds, DLBE continues to face persistent challenges with equity, especially for students of color and youth who speak languages other than English (see here). This is true in all program models regardless of the label (one-way, two-way, 90/10, 50/50, etc.). In turn, we must build critical consciousness, that is, processes to study such inequities and take action to disrupt them.

The project has three main goals:

  1. Document and more deeply understand how Midwestern DLBE programs serve diverse students, especially children of color from bilingual and bicultural homes.
  2. Develop research-practice partnerships and new research agendas for understanding and addressing equity challenges through critical consciousness.
  3. Foster a community of practice and network of researchers and practitioners to build antiracist, equitable DLBE programs across the region.

We invite DLBE educators to join our webinar series this June! Partnering with the Cambio Center and CARLA, these four webinars will develop an understanding of DLBE challenges and opportunities across Midwestern DLBE programs. The webinars are organized around four actions that enhance critical consciousness:

  • Historicizing Dual Language Communities and Ourselves—Tuesday, June 14
    Learn about deconstructing mainstream explanations of the past and foregrounding individuals’ and communities’ local histories.
  • Critical Listening in Dual Language Education—Thursday, June 16
    Explore ways of engaging students, educators, and families with others for meaningful and transformative connection through developing curiosity and attention, sharing, caring, reciprocity, and responsivity.
  • Embracing Discomfort in Dual Language Spaces—Tuesday, June 21
    Experience and learn from the inevitable unsettled feelings one might have in recognizing, reflecting on, and acting against the ways in which our own privilege, sense of entitlement, or silence reify and reproduce social injustice.
  • Interrogating Power to Develop Equity in Dual Language Programs—Thursday, June 23
    Examine ways of calling out oppression, and working to push those in power to take note of injustice and to transform systems.

All webinars will take place on Zoom from 4–5:30 p.m. (Central Time).

For More Information

Change…& Bilingualism for All?

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Exactly one year ago today, I sat at work and saw email after email announce the closing of schools, the pausing of travel, what felt like the shutting down of society: change was certainly upon us. The COVID-19 pandemic had shuttered school buildings, forced learning (or the attempt at learning) to go online, and entirely changed our ways of life, from shopping to working to gathering with friends. And then came more reports of Black men killed by police, not to mention further injustices and inequities to various marginalized groups laid bare by the pandemic: higher rates of COVID infection and death among low-income, Black and immigrant populations, and less access to educational opportunities in urban and rural districts across the country as the pandemic spread far and wide.

In the midst of all of this, I had the opportunity to re-analyze data collected about the development of language immersion schooling in the Midwest for an edited book titled, Bilingualism for All? Raciolinguistic Perspectives on Dual Language Education in the United States by Nelson Flores, Amelia Tseng, and Nicholas Subtirelu. I see this book as part of broader conversations about educational and racial equity happening across the country right now, as we considered who has access to bilingual programs and how they work or not for marginalized populations.

Historically, the phrase “bilingual education” brings to mind specialized programs for children from immigrant families who speak languages other than English at home. In the past 20 years, however, there has been widespread development of what is now called “dual language” education, which ideally (though with many challenges) brings bilingual education to a wider group of students. Some programs aim to purposefully integrate immigrant/transnational youth who speak a shared home language (e.g., Spanish) with English-dominant youth. Other programs are designed to support bilingual and biliteracy development in children who come from mostly monolingual, English-speaking homes. This is the kind of program I followed for nearly 10 years.

I have to say, it was an amazing school and educational opportunity for a very diverse group of students. This program was designed by a bilingual African-American woman and met its main aim to bring bilingual education to Black youth whose families had never had this kind of opportunity before. However, as I discuss in the chapter of Bilingualism for All?, state and federal policies that focused on English language arts development promoted a slow shift in the school away from their founding aims. After many years of reportedly low standardized test scores, the school was pressured to change its approach to language education; as part of this, they decided that students needed to perform proficiently on English exams before they could be taught content material in another language. Essentially, this positioned Black youth in the school as “language-less” – as not even being competent in their own native language of English – completely neglecting the actual multilingual and multiliterate capacities that Black youth have and do bring to school. (For more on the richness and history of Black language in the U.S., check out the Black Language Syllabus and Marcyliena Morgan’s work.)

The change at this school was slow; it was subtle. But it had real material consequences in terms of whether and how Black youth from this city could continue to access and develop bilingualism in a way that has been possible for students who live in more advantaged circumstances. In future work with schools and educators, this underscores the importance of studying change itself, of asking why and when do we change our educational approaches, and what are the outcomes of doing so? What new policies or practices cause us to position a certain group of students in a certain way? Does this result in inequities of access or opportunity? How can we advocate for (re)changing those policies to (re)position youth and instead recognize and center their capacity and creativity?

For sure, the only lasting truth is change. The hopeful news is that if we inquire into our circumstances, if we consider a range of perspectives and unintended consequences of the policies around us, we may be able to bring about helpful rather than hurtful change. How have our current circumstances changed you? And what change do you want to bring about?

What’s Dual Language Education?

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What’s a dual language (DL) program and how can you start one? This is a serious question across the United States (and world), as more and more schools are recognizing the value in preserving families’ home languages and working toward bilingualism for all students. There are many models, though a good majority of DL bilingual education programs in the U.S. mix students from two language backgrounds (for example, English and Spanish). By providing content instruction in students’ languages, DL programs develop students’ bilingualism, biliteracy, high academic achievement and cultural competencies. While it’s difficult work (see my earlier posts), we know a lot about how to create equitable programs. At a recent conference sponsored by Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, I devised a workshop focused on how to build a dual language program and simultaneously enhance equity for transnational students designated as English Learners. Here are my slides from that workshop – happy planning! Whats a DL Program 2019

Critical Consciousness in Two-Way Immersion Education

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From research studies to school websites, it is often written that two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share three core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural or intercultural competence. Colleagues (Deb Palmer, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, and Dan Heiman) and I have been thinking: this isn’t enough! Building upon our research review (RRE 2017), we proposed a fourth core goal: critical consciousness.

Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture, and race backgrounds, equity is unfortunately still a challenge. We argue that centering critical consciousness—or fostering among teachers, parents, and children an awareness of the structural oppression that surrounds us and a readiness to take action to correct it—can support increased equity and social justice in TWDL education. In our most recent publication in the journal Theory Into Practice, we elaborate four elements of critical consciousness: interrogating power, critical listening, historicizing schools, and embracing discomfort. We illustrate these elements with examples from TWDL research and practice. In addition, we describe how such consciousness impacts and radicalizes the other three core goals, in turn supporting the development of more successful, equitable, and socially just TWDL schools.

Please take a look and let us know your ideas: how might these ideas work in your bilingual school or classroom? How can this help create more equitable and welcoming educational experiences, especially for children from immigrant families?