Monolingual Language Ideologies and the Massachusetts Sheltered English Immersion Endorsement Initiative: A Critical Policy Analysis

Abstract

With U.S. classrooms increasingly characterized by linguistic diversity, policies mandating teacher training around English learning have proliferated. Recent federal oversight prompted Massachusetts to implement an initiative to endorse its 70,000+ teachers in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI). While policy research has productively emphasized teachers as policy interpreters within such initiatives, almost no research exists on the role teacher educators play in the policy interpretive process. Therefore, this study documents how teacher educators across Massachusetts interpreted and operationalized the SEI endorsement policy. Drawing on document and interview analysis, findings highlight key experiences, contextual factors, and ideological dispositions that informed participants’ policy interpretations. Instructors navigated tensions between their own goals to affirm linguistic diversity and the monolingual orientations produced through the state’s recently overturned English-only policy. These findings demonstrate the affordances of examining the role of language ideologies in policy interpretation, with implications for large-scale language policy initiatives and educational policy interpretation more broadly.

Reimagining Preparation For Teachers Of Designated English Learners

“…To that end, we took an explicitly critical stance to SEI instruction, characterized by a “constant questioning of normative assumptions” about language and its relationship to power, privilege, and politics (Pennycook, 2001). Above all, we wanted our teacher candidates to be critical of the exclusionary practices that limited students’ home language use in general education classrooms at the time when the SEI endorsement course was created (Bacon, 2018; Chang-Bacon, 2022).…”

Translingual Disciplinary Literacies: Equitable Language Environments to Support Literacy Engagement

“…Expanding on this notion, Flores and Schissel (2014) explained that a monoglossic language ideology treats monolingualism as the norm and leads to (unquestioned) curriculum and instructional practices in the classroom from a monolingual (English-only) perspective. Monoglossic ideologies are also present in educational policies, some of which even aim to improve education for linguistically diverse learners (Chang-Bacon, 2020). Alternatively, a heteroglossic language ideology considers multilingualism a normative practice in and outside of the classroom, where educators can implement classroom practices that promote multilingualism and student learning (Blackledge & Creese, 2014).…”

Partnering with immigrant families to promote language justice and equity in education

“…Power is intrinsically embedded in language and is interconnected with historical processes of colonialism which have contributed to the linguistic and cultural genocide of ancestral languages in oppressed communities (Heller & McElhinny, 2017; Skutnabb‐Kangas, 2015; Veronelli, 2015). These ideologies have shaped educational policies reinforcing the monolingualism of dominant languages and limiting CLD families' access to resources (Chang‐Bacon, 2020; Hinton, 2016). For instance, educational policies promoting language‐based discrimination and immigrant students' assimilation into mainstream language and culture (Tardy, 2009; Viesca, 2013).…”