An informal conversation between three researchers--Avary Carhill-Poza, Sandra Zappa-Hollman, and Crissa Stephens--about their work on social resources and language policy. Crissa describes a critical ethnography of language policy with mothers of multilingual students and their schools. Sandra talks about individual networks of practice among multilingual students studying abroad. Avary talks about the social networks of adolescent immigrant students who are learning English in US high schools.
In U.S. schools today, one in four children speaks a language other than English at home, and the 4.5 million students classified as English learners are the fastest-growing segment of the school-aged population. Adolescent immigrant students who are still learning English are especially at risk of low academic achievement as they confront simultaneous linguistic and academic challenges at schools with subtly subtractive valuations of their first language knowledge and skills. Adolescent English learners also encounter widespread linguistic, ethnic, and racial segregation in U.S. schools (Palardy, Rumberger, & Butler, 2015). Against this backdrop, the social support of peers--and particularly bilingual peers--has emerged in research and practice as an important resource for language development and academic achievement, but language and education policies are at odds with leveraging this critical social resource. Research on the effects of school and district policies on the development of social resources among adolescent emergent bilinguals shows that teachers, administrators, and students conceptualize bilingual peers as both a source of academic support and a hazard to their academic progress. Setting the stage for these understandings, specific state, district and school-level policies were found to frame this issue and valorize monolingual peers and individual learning activities over bilingual and social activities. Data include social network interviews with 200 adolescent emergent bilinguals in three high schools, interviews with teachers, administrators, and district personnel, and policy documents. The paper suggests that language and education policies that leverage bilingual social resources can make a difference in the learning experiences and outcomes of adolescent emergent bilinguals.
