“Eu sei, I know”: Equity and Immigrant Experience in a Portuguese‐English Dual Language Bilingual Education Program

Abstract

Recent scholarship reveals how English can be disproportionately privileged in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programming (Cervantes‐Soon et al., 2017; Valdés, 1997). Through a program designed to serve Brazilian (im)migrant populations, this study expands the scope of DLBE research. This study took place in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, which has just emerged from a 15‐year period of English‐only legislation. It explores language status in a context of Portuguese Brazilian (im)migrant experience that has been largely unexplored in the TESOL literature. The researchers argue that there are three main dynamics of equity and language practices that need examination. While dual language teachers highly valued instruction in Portuguese, not all community stakeholders viewed Portuguese as a valuable language, accentuating inequalities in the experiences of children in the classroom. Brazilian immigrant children actively positioned themselves as experts during Portuguese instruction, however, often, they did not enjoy the attention and support that their English‐dominant peers experienced. Finally, Brazilian immigrant students' participation in the Portuguese‐led portions of the day was not conducive to further development of their advanced Portuguese knowledge. Through the combination of these dynamics, Brazilian immigrant children elevated the status of the language in their formal instructional environment, but were not themselves afforded a similarly high status.

“I’m Brazilian, Not Brazilian American”: The Experiences of Second-Generation Brazilian Adolescents Preserving Their Heritage Language and Resisting Assimilation

“…While Sales and Loureiro (2008) analyzed the insertion of first-generation adolescents in Massachusetts into American society through school and work, Mota (2008) examined immigrant families' perspectives on their past and present language behavior in Brazil and the United States, respectively. Although Oliveira recently conducted studies on Brazilian immigrant children in an elementary public duallanguage school program in the northeastern United States (Oliveira et al, 2020a;Oliveira et al, 2020b;Oliveira et al, 2021a;Oliveira et al, 2021b), few studies have addressed second-generation adolescents' experiences with HL and culture preservation, particularly outside educational settings. As Sales and Loureiro (2008) indicated, it is significant to study children of Brazilian immigrants who are U.S.-born to understand their experiences acculturating or assimilating into American culture.…”

“…Previous studies have explored Brazilian immigrants' racial and religious identities, encounters with discrimination, cultural representations and behaviors, motivation for immigrating, and experiences of undocumented status in the United States (see Brinkerhoff et al, 2019;Cebulko, 2014Cebulko, , 2018Cebulko, , 2021Cebulko & Silver, 2016;Fazito & Soares, 2013;Jesus, 2020;Joseph, 2011Joseph, , 2015Marcus, 2009;Marrow, 2003;Merçon-Vargas & Tudge, 2019). Most studied immigrant or 1.5generation adults in California, New York, or Massachusetts (which has the largest Portuguese-speaking population in the country) (see Cebulko, 2018Cebulko, , 2021Ferreira, 2005;Margolis, 1993;Martes, 2007;Oliveira et al, 2020a;Oliveira et al, 2021a). However, this immigrant population remains understudied in Florida, the state with the largest concentration of Brazilian immigrants.…”

Safety and Belonging in Immigrant-Serving Districts: Domains of Educator Practice in a Charged Political Landscape

“…A growing body of research has deepened our understanding of the impact of immigration policy in classrooms (Dabach et al, 2018; Gallo & Link, 2016; Oliveira et al, 2020; Turner & Mangual Figueroa, 2019). As Ee and Gándara (2020) put it, immigrant-origin students are “terrorized by fear of losing their families, absent from school due to upheaval at home, or facing homelessness or food insecurity because their parents have lost their jobs due to immigration raids.” (p. 481).…”

Sound, Sentience, and Schooling: Writing the Field Recording in Educational Ethnography

“…Data for this track stemmed from a larger, longitudinal ethnographic study aimed at understanding the educational aspirations and experiences of newly arrived immigrant Brazilian children to U.S. schools (Oliveira et al 2020). Participant observations, interviews, and field recordings were collected in four classrooms at one public elementary school.…”