[lg policy] Pursuing Social Justice in Language Education

[Harold Schiffman]

 Pursuing Social Justice in Language Education

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   <https://www1.lehigh.edu/news/pursuing-social-justice-in-language-education#>
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   <https://www1.lehigh.edu/news/pursuing-social-justice-in-language-education#>

Students learning English as a second language who also have special needs
are more likely to fall between the cracks of elementary school education,
finds researcher Sara Kangas
<https://ed.lehigh.edu/faculty/directory/skangas> in a paper to be
recognized March 28 by the International Research Foundation for English
Language Education.

Her study is the first to examine in depth the access English language
learners with disabilities have to educational services.

For the ethnographic study, Kangas, an applied linguist and assistant
professor in Lehigh’s College of Education <https://ed.lehigh.edu/>, spent
seven months observing classrooms, interviewing teachers and
administrators, and collecting documents in a bilingual public charter
school in the northeastern United States. The findings surprised her:

“I expected a bilingual school to safeguard language services for English
language learners  with special needs, given its educational mission to
foster bilingualism for all students,” she said. Yet, she discovered the
school forfeited its bilingual mission in order to preserve special
education services for these students. In fact, some educators felt
bilingualism was too lofty a goal when students also had a disability, so
they did not prioritize language services. “In the end, English language
learners with special needs received inadequate services compared to their
peers,” Kangas said. “In this way, their intersecting language and
disability needs created a disadvantage for them in school.”

Students were identified as being both English language learners and having
a language disorder or learning disability in reading or math. The school
self-identified as using a two-way immersion 50/50 model in Spanish and
English. While charter schools often lack resources to provide appropriate
special education and related services to students with disabilities,
Kangas said her findings don’t just reflect a “charter school problem.”
According to the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education,
providing both language and special education services makes the top 10
list of issues facing English language learner education, with schools
persistently failing to comply with federal law in providing services to
English language learners with special needs.

“Thus, this case study, despite its charter school location, represents a
common experience in service delivery for English language learners with
special needs: inequitable distribution of resources for intersectional
students,” Kangas writes in the article. “Such inequitable allocation … can
happen even in a bilingual school that is explicitly committed to language
development.”

Research shows English language learners with special needs have higher
academic performance and linguistic development when exposed to both
languages, even for more severe disabilities like developmental delay,
Kangas said. “My research findings show how educators can buy into the myth
that English language learners with special needs have limited capacity for
language learning,” she said. “In reading how this myth plays out in
schools, I hope administrators, teachers and parents can learn to believe
in and advocate for their students’ bilingual development.”

Kangas will receive the 2018 James E. Alatis Prize for Research on Language
Planning and Policy in Educational Contexts from The International Research
Foundation for English Language Education, for her article, “That’s Where
the Rubber Meets the Road’: The Intersection of Special Education and
Bilingual Education”
<http://www.sarakangas.com/uploads/3/0/1/0/30101275/kangas__2017__tcr.pdf>(Teachers
College Records, Volume 119, Issue 7, 2017). The prize recognizes an
outstanding article or chapter in the field of language planning and policy
in educational contexts. Kangas will be honored during the 2018 TESOL
International Association International Convention & English Language Expo
in Chicago, Ill.

“I deeply appreciate the Foundation’s recognition of my research,
especially as there are many pioneering scholars conducting meaningful work
in critical areas of language education policy research,” Kangas said. “I
am grateful that this award will draw attention to language policies and
plans that systemically disadvantage second language learners with
disabilities. Receiving this award encourages me personally to keep
pursuing social justice in language education for marginalized language
learners.”
By: Amy White <https://www1.lehigh.edu/news/author/abw210>
Posted on:
Thursday, March 01, 2018


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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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