Urban schools are becoming increasingly linguistically diverse. However, principals are not adequately prepared to address linguistic variation, and in particular, issues related to African American Language (AAL). This study explores the language ideological voices of urban school administrators. Focus group sessions were conducted with 15 administrators of predominantly African American schools about the function of AAL in their students’ lives. Participants demonstrated variation in views toward AAL and struggled to name the language. These discussions were mediated by multiple, even competing, language ideologies, as they attempted to converse about the use of AAL in schools.
Socioeconomic status (SES) has been widely used as a determining factor to explain educational processes and outcomes such as mathematics academic achievement. Research has documented the links between SES and mathematics academic achievement. However, further understanding the complex relationship between contextual factors, such as policy, and its implications for these processes within an ideologically patriarchal society is paramount. After decades of United States school policy and reform-with the most recent focus on Common Core Standards-there continue to be inconsistent notions of what the ''real'' issues are and how to address those issues. This paper sets out to explore one specific case-House Bill 2281 (HB 2281) and, in effect, the banning of the Mexican-American Studies program in one school district in the US-in understanding the implications of policy in the shaping of the public education system. Implications for mathematics education research are explored.
Drawing on three years of data, we show how an embedded university research team and eleven K-8 educators reorganized learning and negotiated innovative curricular activities for English learners (ELs) in spite of restrictive curricular mandates in an urban Midwestern district. We analyze how participating teachers appropriated theoretical constructs such as cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), third space, funds of knowledge, as well as using discourse analysis to design curriculum aimed at improving language learning through mathematics, science, and community-based problem solving. The learning of teachers was purposefully designed to develop new professional identities. The learning was also designed to move teachers from deficit views of multilingualism to dynamic stances grounded in polyglot language ideologies. We examine the challenges and opportunities of participants' movement from resistant, procedural, and ethnographic identities towards teacher researcher identities.
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