Challenging Damaging Ideologies: Are Dual Language Education Practices Addressing Learners’ Linguistic Rights?

Abstract

The Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1968 to address the challenges faced by emerging bilingual students in U.S. schools. Fifty years later, ideologies promoting bilingual education persist with a discourse of “one nation, one territory, one language nationalism.” The bilingual and multiple language repertoires necessary for students to become fully participating citizens of an increasingly globalized world requires that educators invent a pedagogical framework that fosters students’ critical language awareness and provides affordances for utilizing their linguistic rights. Such a pedagogical approach is explored in this article. The objective is to examine promising, rather than damaging, ideologies intentionally or nonintentionally promoted in dual language education. From our joint research analysis, we offer several encouraging practices for consideration by bilingual teachers and bilingual teacher educators.