Dissertation: Language policy within and without the school district of Philadelphia

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Language policy within and without the school district of Philadelphia
(Pennsylvania)

David Cassels Johnson, University of Pennsylvania

Date: 2007

Abstract

Throughout American history, language policy has often hegemonically
normalized English-only approaches to education. Currently, language
policies like Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act seem to threaten
bilingual education throughout the U.S., even though these programs offer
students the chance to learn through two languages and are supported by
psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and educational research. At the same
time, the number of English Language Learners in U.S. schools has doubled
in the last decade and thus this is a critical moment for developing
educational systems which do not leave these students behind. In order to
preserve bilingual education as an educational right and develop quality
programs for English Language Learners, we need substantive research on
how bilingual educators interpret and implement federal and state
educational language policies while developing their own bilingual polices
and programs.

Following in the tradition of Critical Language Policy, this study
critically examines the multiple layers through which educational language
policy develops. As well, it incorporates anthropological and sociological
conceptualizations of educational policy to buttress an ethnographic
analysis of how local interpretations influence implementation and how
practitioners become producers of language policy. With ethnographic and
discourse analytic methods I focus on how a group of bilingual educators
in the School District of Philadelphia interpret and implement national
and state educational language policy texts and discourse while engaging
in their own language policy creation and bilingual program development.

http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3260925/

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