Increasingly across the U.S. and other industrialized democracies, teachers take dual classroom roles as both content and English language educators. Nevertheless, research on how educators actually understand and implement mainstreaming language education policies at the school and district level are sparse. This paper contributes a unique…

To commemorate "Lau v. Nichols," this paper reports on findings from archival data revealing its micro- and macro-level genesis, successive activities, and that despite its historic role in language policy development and critical importance for codifying language rights, the vision for educational equity by the Cantonese-speaking,…

Recent studies of language policy and bilingual education have focused on federal level legislation (Wiley and García in Mod Lang J 100:48-63, 2016. 10.1111/modl.12303), and immediate consequences of state level policy. Although Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been employed to analyze the structural impact of local policy on minoritized communities…

Bilingual education as a whole has been gentrifying, as more privileged students replace Transnational Language Learners (TLLs) in bilingual education spaces and policies (Valdez et al. in Educ Policy 30(6):849-883, 2016. https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1177/0895904814556750). We argue this is an extension of coloniality (Mignolo in Local histories/global…

Dual language immersion program models represent a potentially effective way to serve growing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in schools and districts. However, local challenges, such as interpersonal conflict, can impact the process of implementing dual language policies and programs, limiting the extent to which they are able to meet…

In this article we proffer a theoretical model for analyzing power in language policy processes and incorporate ethnographic data to illustrate the usefulness of the model. Grounded in an ethnographic project in the US state of Washington, we examine how nominally identical school district-level programs, which are funded under the same…

This article documents and interrogates top-down district-wide implementation of a two-way dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program in a large urban district. We carried out a language policy ethnography to explore the way two schools' teams of third grade teachers worked together to negotiate the intersection of DLBE implementation and…

This article discusses the effect of Arizona's language policies on school districts serving Native American students. Although these policies were designed to restrict the access of Spanish-speaking immigrant and citizen students to bilingual education programs, their reach has extended into schools and school districts serving Native Americans.…

While theoretical conceptualizations of language policy have grown increasingly rich, empirical data that test these models are less common. Further, there is little methodological guidance for those who wish to do research on language policy interpretation and appropriation. The ethnography of language policy is proposed as a method which makes…

Discontinuities are often found between top-down language education policies and local language policy enactments, as de facto language policymaking results from stakeholders' negotiation and interpretation of policy mandates. Teachers occupy a particular role in the execution of language education policies, as they are the "final…