Abstract Summary
This study highlights the powerful advocacy of three Latinx mothers on behalf of their multilingual children in the US public education context. Utilizing data from a critical ethnography of language policy, it highlights the ways that the mothers attempt to advocate for equal educational opportunity for their children as well as the reasons this advocacy is not recognized by the school system. Finally, provide policy recommendations so that these powerful social resources may be recognized and centered in multilingual education.
Abstract :
In the US public school context, Latinx parents of multilingual students are often expected to play a culturally specific role in their children’s education (Olivos, 2004). At the same time, their attempts at involvement are often viewed through the lens of deficit framings by educators (Baquedano-Lopez, Alexander & Hernandes, 2013; Poza, Brooks & Valdes, 2014) who may not recognize or respond to their advocacy. This study highlights the ways that Latinx mothers utilize social resources to navigate and attempt to transform the school system on behalf of their multilingual children.
Data are taken from a critical ethnography of language policy (Johnson & Hornberger, 2011) conducted with three Latinx mothers and their children at home, in the community, and in school. The study was grounded in a critical sociocultural framework (Moje & Lewis, 2007; Tollefson, 2015) that illuminated the workings of power relationships, identity, and agency in the process of educational language policy in one Midwestern school district with a newly growing demographic of multilingual students. While the multilingual mothers are powerful advocates for their children and for social change as community activists, this power is not recognized by the school system.
Findings show how these mothers rely on a variety of social resources as they exercise agency and creativity that defies deficit narratives. The paper pinpoints how the school district’s language policy implementation and practices are tied to larger social power structures and often precluded this powerful advocacy. It identifies points of potential transformation in the education system and its language policies in order to provide policy recommendations that explicitly address the role of the social resources of mothers in the education of multilingual students.
