Decolonizing ESOL: Negotiating Linguistic Power in U.S. Public School Classrooms

The year-long study that was the context for this article explored the complicated relationship among the shaping of ESOL as a school construct, the historical legacy of colonialism, and the contemporary influence of globalizing forces on the teaching of English worldwide and the lives of multilingual students enrolled in ESOL. In the context of a year-long critical feminist ethnography of four first-year teachers, this data-driven exploration examines each of three interconnected colonialist manifestations within the schools of the study: (1) an embracing of the supremacy of English over other languages, related to the dominance within school walls of a monolingual model of identity; (2) an investment in keeping Self and Other dichotomous, reflected in a construction of the school category of ESOL as Other and deficit; and (3) the promotion of a White, NES, American norm and the consequent marginalization of ethnic minority, NNES, and immigrant status. (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)