CHALLENGING LINGUISTIC INEQUITIES IN MULTILINGUAL SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P126-C7
2025-10-02
230
CHALLENGING LINGUISTIC INEQUITIES IN MULTILINGUAL SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
Moving to an analysis of whether or not the school board policy that accepted student multilingualism at Northside was able to challenge any of the linguistic inequities facing the ESOL students studying there, I discuss some of the pedagogical approaches that supported student multilingual ism at the school. Following sociolinguists Monica Heller, Marilyn Mar tin-Jones, and Makul Saxena, I look at these approaches in terms of whether or not they encouraged the use of languages other than English on or off the "center stage" of the classroom floor.1
Students who were learning math from an introductory lecture by Mrs. Lo (before practicing problems on their own or in small groups on a shared stage) did not perform on center stage unless they were asked to explain a problem to other students during the lecture. This center stage performance was always undertaken in English. The association of English with center stage teaching performances can be traced back to the Language for Learning Policy, which clearly stated that English was the language of instruction in the school board's schools. Although the policy encouraged institutional student multilingualism (for the purposes of assisting each other), the use of languages other than English to teach while occupying (as opposed to sharing) center stage was not legitimate. This may explain why Mrs. Lo talked about her work at Northside as encompassing three different roles: teacher, helper, and counselor. It was only in the roles of helper and counselor, off center stage, that she used Cantonese and Mandarin because it was only in those roles that the use of languages other than English was legitimate.
The exclusive use of English for teaching on center stage of the classroom floor sent a strong message to students about the value of different languages used in school. English was the legitimate language at the school and was valued more highly despite the recognition that "all languages and varieties of languages are equally valid forms of thought and communication" (Language for Learning Policy, p. 8). However, Mrs. Lo limited the amount of time she spent teaching on center stage and the amount of time English maintained its legitimacy in her classroom. After her introductory lesson on center stage, Mrs. Lo involved her students in "classroom practice activities," which transformed her classroom space into a shared stage. On this shared stage, the use of languages other than English was accepted and challenged the dominance of English. Similarly, during the painting unit in Ms. Edwards' class, students worked on a shared multilingual stage and were able to advise each other in whatever language they desired as they worked on their different projects. This establishment of a shared stage not only momentarily challenged the dominance of English, but also challenged coercive relations of power underlying standard English ideology and traditional roles of authority in the classroom.
Mrs. Lo and Ms. Edgars' creation of a shared multilingual stage in their classrooms, made possible by the acceptance of student multilingualism in the Language for Learning Policy Language, allowed them to challenge the linguistic disadvantage of having to always perform academically in a second or other language. Another challenge of linguistic disadvantage occurred—on center stage—in Mr. Robertson's class, when a student chose to make an oral presentation that involved the use of another language. Here the student presenter, who did an analysis of a Chinese poem that he had performed twice, once in Chinese and once in English, was using Chinese on center stage to complete an oral assignment that was being evaluated for academic credit.
To summarize, a school board language policy that accepts student multilingualism at the same time as it names English as the official, legitimate language of instruction in its schools provides teachers with a space to challenge linguistic inequities facing ESOL students in small, momentary ways. At Northside, such work was undertaken by creating a shared, multilingual stage in the classroom. Such a strategy, however, was not unproblematic. Given the powerful discourses of linguistic privilege and discrimination operating in our society, teachers who created a shared multilingual stage in their classrooms found themselves needing to negotiate a variety of dilemmas of speech, silence, and exclusion. Learning how to negotiate these dilemmas effectively is extremely important for teachers who work to create a shared stage in their own multilingual classrooms.
1 See Heller and Martin-Jones (2001) and Martin-Jones and Saxena (2001).
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