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This article examines recent U.S. language education policies regarding English learners (ELs) and their teachers using an interpretive policy analysis theoretical lens (Wagenaar 2011) incorporatin...

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 process-oriented longitudinal perspective on how educators at the local level in one small rural U.S. school district greeted a new mainstreaming English language education policy. The article applies an institutional “decision-making theory” framework that focuses on teachers as de facto local policymakers. It considers how educators vied with one another to (re)construct a usable history of and rationale for district language education policy that influenced educators’ collective sense of its fairness and appropriateness. The study also documents how teachers’ sense-making and moral judgments regarding their own and colleagues’ professional roles and identities were wielded in policy interpretation and implementation. Finally, the paper examines how the mainstreaming policy continually evolved as administrators at various levels of the school district hierarchy negotiated conflicting goals, and as teachers in each school improvised differing professional relationships and roles. In all, the paper finds that the meaning and form of mainstreaming language education policies are constantly reinstantiated by educators at the local level, and thus that local implementation of language education policies, and what “mainstreaming” means in English learner education, merit more careful scrutiny.

Self-esteem is often invoked in scholarly literature and popular belief alike as contributing positively to academic achievement in immigrant youth. Yet, research exploring this link is sparse and findings are mixed. This article reports on a 5-year-long ethnographic case study exploring the educational path of a college-bound Latino adolescent in one southeastern U.S. new immigrant community in which the student’s high self-esteem appeared to have a negative influence on academic achievement. The study traces how high self-esteem caused the student to disregard negative feedback regarding his academic performance and focus his attention instead on excelling in extracurricular pursuits, particularly athletics. The study also finds that educators gave mixed messages about achievement that reinforced the student’s high self-esteem but contributed to low academic expectations and outcomes. In all, it suggests the need to reexamine the assumed link between high self-esteem and academic achievement in immigrant youth and to consider individual differences.

Participation in extracurricular activities has been associated with enhanced academic achievement in Latino youth. Based on a longitudinal case study of one immigrant adolescent, this article finds that athletic participation is in itself neither a wholly positive or negative influence on Latino school achievement. Rather, effects of extracurricular sports on academic outcomes are mediated by complex factors including but not limited to ethnicity and are more contextually dependent and individually variable than existing scholarship suggests.

Scholarship on Latinos’ lagging US high school graduation and college enrollment rates has focused on systematic biases and inequities in schooling. This article argues for an additional complementary explanation for underachievement and school failure. Namely, it suggests that high school underachievement in Latino children of immigrants can be attributed in part to the bureaucratic nature of schooling and a constant onslaught of bureaucratic errors and omissions. Based upon a 5-year multiple-case study in the southeastern United States, it finds that bureaucratic dysfunctions figured prominently in the education of Latino immigrant youth. The article calls for more research on the impact of bureaucratic errors on educational paths of immigrant students and argues that educators might profitably draw from work on organizational failure to help Latino children of immigrants navigate school bureaucracies more successfully.

Background/ContextExplanations for the relatively low numbers of Latinas pursuing higher education have tended to focus on socialization into traditional gender roles. However, recent scholarship has challenged this view, suggesting that gender roles—partic-ularly among recent immigrants—are mutable and subject to constant renegotiation.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThis article suggests that forgoing college, far from representing a retreat into traditional women's roles, might in some cases represent emergent feminism and a means for Latina immigrants to contest and reshape those roles.SettingA new Latino diaspora community in the rural southeastern United States.Research DesignLongitudinal qualitative case study of an adolescent immigrant Latina.Findings/ResultsBoth risk factors and facilitative factors previously identified by research as contributing to Latino/a college enrollment were found to be present in the case study student's background. The article argues, however, that some gender-specific factors often used to explain Latina school-leaving and low academic ambitions, such as close association with teenage mothers and responsibilities for household chores and child care, served instead as deterrents for this Latina adolescent from taking traditional gender roles. On the other hand, the article argues that the association between higher education and increased independence and a break from traditional gender roles that is often assumed for American-born women did not hold for a working-class Latina. Rather, her wage-earning represented a better position from which to challenge traditional gender roles within her family.Conclusions/RecommendationsThis case study confirms the heterogeneity and diversity to be found in the individual schooling paths of Latino/a immigrant youth, and thus the value of close examination of the protracted and as yet little understood process through which Latinas/os make the decision to pursue or forgo higher education over the course of high school. The article lends support to arguments in recent scholarship suggesting the mutability of gender roles in immigrant communities. It suggests that new attention be paid in research and college recruitment programs to growing evidence of gender-specific factors at work in Latino/a immigrant students’ academic achievement and college-going decisions.

Recent shifts in immigrant settlement patterns are bringing new Latino communities to areas of the Midwest and Southeast that are unaccustomed to educating multilingual students. Schools in these areas often lack resources for communicating with students and their families. In this article we document how Spanish teachers in new Latino communities are being asked to serve as unofficial translators and interpreters in many contexts. We further show that teachers are being asked to take demanding roles as surrogate counselors, administrators, and teachers in other subject areas. We consider teachers' varying attitudes and responses to these new demands and discuss the implications for the field of world language education in terms of professional education and policy. Key words: advocacy, interpreting, Latinas/os, teacher education, teacher workload Language: Spanish Several regions of the United States have traditionally served as gateways for new immigrant settlement, including California, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Texas (Alba & Nee, 2005). In recent years, however, settlement patterns have shifted markedly and new immigrant communities are springing up in rural areas of the Midwest and Southeast (Massey, 2008). Approximately three quarters of new immigrants in the southeastern United States are Spanish speakers (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003, p. 2). The Latino population in Georgia, for example, grew 302.7% between 1990 and 2000 (Guzman, 2001, p. 4), and Georgia had the third fastest growth of Latinos1 (60.1%) in the nation between 2000 and 2006 (Pew Hispanic Center, 2008, Table 13). This demographic phenomenon, sometimes termed the "new Latino diaspora" (Hamann & Harklau, 2010; Hamann, Wortham, & Murillo, 2002), has brought about salient and relatively sudden changes to the demographics of public schools in affected areas. Schools that are unaccustomed to educating new Spanish-speaking immigrant students often lack resources for communicating with them and their families and improvise with whatever resources are on hand. In this article, we document how Spanish teachers, as some of the few Spanish- speaking educators in new immigrant communities, are bearing an especially heavy burden as impromptu, unofficial translators and school representatives. Taking the experience of north Georgia educators as an example, we document a wide range of duties assigned to and assumed by foreign language educators working in schools hosting new immigrant student populations. We show how these duties include not only translation and interpretation, but also much more demanding roles as surrogate counselors, administrators, and teachers of English and other content areas. We explore the hidden extra workload that this work imposes on Spanish educators. Finally, we consider teachers' varying attitudes and responses to these new demands. We conclude by considering the implications for the field in terms of professional education and policy. Background There has been little recognition thus far in the literature of the roles that world language educators play as unofficial translators, interpreters, and liaisons for immigrant communities. However, existing work provides instructive insights on two related issues. First, scholarship on the training and qualifications of professional translators and interpreters offers a useful comparison to the typical training of foreign language educators. Second, recent research on the experiences of other impromptu interpreters and school liaisons with immigrant families such as language minority children and parent liaisons identifies potentially relevant issues. Professional Translating and Interpreting Although both translators and interpreters deal with language conversion, "the act of writing or speech in one language and converting it to another effectively and accurately" (Hallam, 2008, p. 34), scholars distinguish between the two because they demand somewhat different skills. …

We argue for the value of postmodernism in illuminating the roles or subject positions of ethnographic program evaluators. Drawing upon data from an ethnographic study of a summer college readiness program for African American, Asian American, and Anglo youth, we explore how postmodern theories can provide insights into the multiple roles of evaluators and increase reflexivity in ethnographic program evaluation.

This article is based on an invited colloquium on second language (L2) writing presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. The colloquium featured five L2 writing researchers who discussed some of the important currents that have, over the last decade, shaped the field of second language writing.

This paper argues that writing should play a more prominent role in classroom-based studies of second language acquisition. It contends that an implicit emphasis on spoken language is the result of the historical development of the field of applied linguistics and parent disciplines of structuralist linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and child language development. Although writing as a communicative modality has been marginalized, it is key to understanding second language acquisition in contexts such as elementary and secondary level content area classrooms where literacy plays a central role in communication and transmission of subject matter. In all, the paper argues that while it is important for classroom-based studies to investigate how students learn how to write in a second language, it is equally important to learn how students learn a second language through writing. Implications of this perspective are noted for notions of learner and target language variation, multimodality and language socialization, and interactionist approaches to classroom research.

There are few naturalistic studies of how individuals experience and perceive the literate transition from high school to college. This yearlong study followed 4 female language-minority students through their last semester in high school and first semester in college. Taking a literacy-as-social-practice perspective, the study focused on these students' perceptions of reading and writing they encountered across the curriculum. The study found that what students found new or more challenging in college literacy practices was not necessarily predicted in a developmental perspective, but was better understood as contextualized in their high school literacy experiences. The article argues that high school literacy practices should not be seen merely as an underformed version of collegiate practices, but rather should be interpreted in light of the particular population and purposes secondary schools serve. The study shows that a social-practice perspective can serve as a useful supplement and counterpoint to cognitively oriented approaches to literate development in young adults. In particular, it is argued that they hold potential to render the emic perspectives of learners themselves more prominent in literacy research.

This article explores representations of language minority student identity in US post‐secondary education. Arguing that representations of attributes such as ethnicity are locally constituted and manifested in curricula, institutional organization, and teacher beliefs and practices, the study explores how dominant representations of diversity in higher education settings normalize and perpetuate images of deficits in ethnically diverse students even as they provide support and advocacy. Employing case studies of four immigrant first year US college students, the study examines student experience in two different academic assistance programs in US higher education, Educational Opportunity Programs and English to Speakers of Other Languages. By comparing divergent representations of same immigrant students’ backgrounds and experiences across these two settings, it is shown how different traits and deficits are ascribed to the same individuals depending on context.

A college education has become a prerequisite for socioeconomic advancement in the United States, and yet research and policy discussions on immigrant education often have overlooked the place of newcomers in higher education. This article provides a critical examination and synthesis of current knowledge about immigrant experiences in American postsecondary institutions. It considers issues such as the demographic impact of newcomers on U.S. colleges and universities, potential inequities in college admission practices, gatekeeping and academic support of nonnative language speakers, and dynamics of collegiate enculturation for immigrants from diverse sociocultural backgrounds. The article identifies a number of areas for further research in this neglected but increasingly essential part of U.S. immigrant education.

This article illustrates a process by which two language-minority students were able to change their initial track placement in mainstream classes, and to position themselves in ability groups that were higher in status and, arguably, in educational value. Employing the notion that academic ability is a construct that is situationally negotiated among students, their teachers, and counselors, it explores the means by which these students were able to "jump tracks." LANGUAGE-MINORITY EDUCATION, TRACKING, ABILITY GROUPING Virtually every school in the United States practices some form of ability grouping, in which students are sorted according to purported academic ability, and then instructed with differentiated curricula. At the secondary level, ability grouping is woven into the fabric of instruction in a practice known as tracking. Tracking separates students with varying academic records into entirely separate classrooms and courses of study. Tracking, and ability grouping more generally, exist on the premise that students will learn best in homogeneous groups where instruction can be tailored to their particular educational needs. Nevertheless, the utility and equity of tracking have been a subject of intense debate. Research suggests that the instructional groups produced by tracking, and the differentiated curriculum they engender, are not equal. Rather, when tracking is viewed across classroom contexts, one finds consistent and patterned inequities, with students on the lower rungs of the system receiving less instruction in societally valued skills, resulting in differential access to future educational and occupational opportunities after high school (Oakes 1985; Oakes et al. 1992). Linguistic-minority students are overrepresented in low-track classrooms (Braddock 1990; Medina 1988). Since they seem to be disproportionately and adversely affected by this system, it is important to learn more about what befalls them in tracked instructional environments. This article illustrates the process through which linguistic-minority students at one high school were assigned to tracks. The article also shows how it is sometimes possible for students to discover the workings of the tracking system and to use that knowledge to negotiate their place within it.

Tracking is a ubiquitous practice in American high schools, whereby students are sorted according to perceived academic ability and then instructed separately with different curricula. In recent years, numerous educational inequities have been identified in association with this practice, including the concentration of language minority students in the lowest status rungs of the system. This article addresses linguistic features associated with the differentiated curricula of high school classrooms, and consequences for learners of the school language. The article also explores processes by which language minority students are placed in tracked classrooms, and the means by which some of them negotiate the system in order to change tracks after they ore placed.

@contents: Selected Contents Introduction Generation 1.5 ten years later, Mark Roberge, Meryl Siegal and Linda Harklau Section One: Frameworks for understanding Generation 1.5 * Approaching Generation 1.5 through immigrant studies and socio-political/socio-economic frameworks, Vivian Louie * Language minorities in higher education-What we (don't) know, Linda Harklau * The complex linguistic situation of Generation 1.5 students, Mary Schmida * The Erasure of Resident ESL Writers, Paul Kei Matsuda and Aya Matsuda Section Two: Generation 1.5 student characteristics and schooling paths * Generation 1.5 immigrant ESL students: What experiences, characteristics and needs might they bring to our English classes? Mark Roberge * Academic reading and writing challenges and strategies used to meet those challenges: A case of four undergraduate Generation 1.5 students, Cathryn Crosby * At what price success? The academic writing development of a Generation 1.5 latecomer, Jan Frodesen * Generation 1.5 students and the hegemony of dominant language ideologies, Jennifer A. Mott-Smith * Accessing academic literacy in college: Pathways of U.S.-educated English language learners, Genevieve Patthey-Chavez, Joan Thomas-Spiegel, and Paul Dillon Section Three: Pedagogical approaches for Generation 1.5 * Pedagogical principles and practices for working with Generation 1.5, Patricia Porter, Deborah VanDommelen, Sugie Goen-Salter, and Deborah Swanson * Reading/writing connections for Generation 1.5, Harriett Allison 3. Vocabulary and reading for Generation 1.5, Cheryl Benz A functional focus on language: Grammar for Generation 1.5, Mary J. Schleppegrell * Socioliterate pedagogy for Generation 1.5, Ann Johns * Charting new territory: Creating an interdepartmental writing course for Generation 1.5, Christine Holten * Individualizing pedagogy: Working with diverse needs and goals in freshman composition for international students and Generation 1.5, Dudley Reynolds, Kyung-Hee Bae and Jennifer Shade Wilson Situating language and academic literacy development into a curriculum of first-year college courses for Generation 1.5, Robin Murie * Promoting Generation 1.5 learners' academic literacy and autonomy: Pedagogical approaches from the learning center, Margi Wald and Nathalie Destandau Conclusion Where do we go from here? Mark Roberge, Meryl Siegal and Linda Harklau

Theory and research on second language acquisition have long acknowledged the significant influence of learner identities—that is, how learners see themselves and are seen by others in relation to the target language and culture. Learner age has likewise been a central theme in second language acquisition research. These two important factors intersect in the case of adolescent language learners. Adolescence is regarded as a particularly malleable and difficult age in the development of social identity and conception of self, and even more potentially problematic for multilingual and multiethnic English learners. In this chapter, I first briefly outline current debates and cross-cultural research about adolescence as a unique developmental stage in identity development and suggest potential implications for English language learning. I then outline major strands of investigation on the role of social context and social identity in adolescent English language learning, including research in social psychology and intercultural communication; research in social psychology, clinical psychology, and clinical health; research in educational anthropology and sociology; and research on critical theory, cultural studies, and poststructuralism. The chapter concludes with a summary of current debates and directions for further research.

An increasing number of students graduate from U.S. high schools and enter college while still in the process of learning English. This group--the "1.5 generation"--consisting of immigrants and U.S. residents born abroad as well as indigenous language minority groups, is rapidly becoming a major constituency in college writing programs. These students defy the existing categories in most college writing programs, and in the research literature. Experienced in American culture and schooling, they have characteristics and needs distinct from the international students who have been the subject of most research and literature on ESL writing. Furthermore, in studies of mainstream college composition, basic writing, and diversity, these students' status as second-language learners is usually left unaddressed or even misconstrued as underpreparation. Nevertheless, research and pedagogical writings have yet to take up the particular issues entailed in teaching composition to this student population. The intent in this volume is to bridge this gap and to initiate a dialogue on the linguistic, cultural, and ethical issues that attend teaching college writing to U.S.-educated linguistically diverse students. This book is the first to address explicitly issues in the instruction of "1.5 generation" college writers. From urban New York City to midwestern land grant universities to the Pacific Rim, experienced educators and researchers discuss a variety of contexts, populations, programs, and perspectives. The 12 chapters in this collection, authored by prominent authorities in non-native language writing, are research based and conceptual, providing a research-based survey of who the students are, their backgrounds and needs, and how they are placed and instructed in a variety of settings. The authors frame issues, raise questions, and provide portraits of language minority students and the classrooms and programs that serve them. Together, the pieces paint the landscape of college writing instruction for 1.5 generation students and explore the issues faced by ESL and college writing programs in providing appropriate writing instruction to second-language learners arriving from U.S. high schools. This book serves not only to articulate an issue and set an agenda for further research and discussion, but also to suggest paths toward linguistic and cultural sensitivity in any writing classroom. It is thought-provoking reading for college administrators, writing teachers, and scholars and students of first- and second-language composition.

Language minority students are often placed in mainstream, English-medium classrooms long before they develop the degree of language proficiency necessary to compete on an equal footing with native speakers of the school language. With the ever-increasing presence of such students in U.S. schools, ESL and content-area educators are working to better integrate their respective curricula and instructional roles. In order to accomplish this integration, significant instructional differences in these two contexts must be identified, and systematic comparisons must detail how L2 learners fare in each of these instructional environments. What do students lose and gain in their transition from ESL to the mainstream? This question was addressed in a 3 ½ year ethnography of the L2 learning experiences of newcomer students attending a high school in northern California. The study, which followed 4 Chinese ethnic immigrant students as they made the transition from ESL to mainstream classes, contrasted patterns of spoken and written language use in classrooms, identified significant differences in the content and goals of the ESL versus mainstream curricula, and documented language instruction and feedback in both contexts. Both contexts were also evaluated in terms of the socializing features of schooling, such as counseling and peer networks. As in many other U.S. public schools, the isolated and marginalized position of the ESL program in an institution that otherwise made no adjustment for nonnative speakers produced a makeshift system in which there was no appropriate instructional environment for learners of the school language.