{"title":"Principal agency 50 years after the Lau decision: Building and sustaining bilingual education programs for Asian languages","authors":"Zhongfeng Tian, Kevin M. Wong","doi":"10.1007/s10993-024-09706-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examined how three champion principals of Asian language dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs—Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin—in California have navigated the oscillating language-in-education policies after the <i>Lau</i> decision. We explored principals' various roles through a lens of agency in a social justice leadership framework, specifically considering the opportunities and challenges for agentive leadership from three different phases: <i>foregrounding and engaging</i>, <i>planning and implementing</i>, and <i>evaluating and sustaining</i>. Findings demonstrate that the success of DLBE programs goes beyond the overarching language policies that supposedly enable bilingual education; rather it hinges on the bottom-up commitment, collaboration and resilience of principals, teachers, and parent communities. The blanket policies at the state level often overlooked Asian languages and the unique needs of Asian teachers and communities in DLBE schools, limiting principal agency. Within these confines, principals consistently engaged in advocacy work, such as in teacher recruitment, hiring and work distribution, and curriculum design and assessment, contributing to the growth and sustainability of their programs. By elevating these champions and their experiences and perspectives, this study reflects upon the politicized path to bilingual education 50 years after the <i>Lau</i> case and contributes valuable insights to inform future implementational research, practice, and policy, ensuring the continued flourishing of Asian language bilingual education for the growing constituency of Asian-identifying students.</p>","PeriodicalId":46781,"journal":{"name":"Language Policy","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Policy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-024-09706-6","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study examined how three champion principals of Asian language dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs—Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin—in California have navigated the oscillating language-in-education policies after the Lau decision. We explored principals' various roles through a lens of agency in a social justice leadership framework, specifically considering the opportunities and challenges for agentive leadership from three different phases: foregrounding and engaging, planning and implementing, and evaluating and sustaining. Findings demonstrate that the success of DLBE programs goes beyond the overarching language policies that supposedly enable bilingual education; rather it hinges on the bottom-up commitment, collaboration and resilience of principals, teachers, and parent communities. The blanket policies at the state level often overlooked Asian languages and the unique needs of Asian teachers and communities in DLBE schools, limiting principal agency. Within these confines, principals consistently engaged in advocacy work, such as in teacher recruitment, hiring and work distribution, and curriculum design and assessment, contributing to the growth and sustainability of their programs. By elevating these champions and their experiences and perspectives, this study reflects upon the politicized path to bilingual education 50 years after the Lau case and contributes valuable insights to inform future implementational research, practice, and policy, ensuring the continued flourishing of Asian language bilingual education for the growing constituency of Asian-identifying students.
期刊介绍：
Language Policy is highly relevant to scholars, students, specialists and policy-makers working in the fields of applied linguistics, language policy, sociolinguistics, and language teaching and learning. The journal aims to contribute to the field by publishing high-quality studies that build a sound theoretical understanding of the field of language policy and cover a range of cases, situations and regions worldwide.
A distinguishing feature of this journal is its focus on various dimensions of language educational policy. Language education policy includes decisions about which languages are to be used as a medium of instruction and/or taught in schools, as well as analysis of these policies within their social, ethnic, religious, political, cultural and economic contexts.
The journal aims to continue its tradition of bringing together solid scholarship on language policy and language education policy from around the world but also to expand its direction into new areas. The editors are very interested in papers that explore language policy not only at national levels but also at the institutional levels of schools, workplaces, families, health services, media and other entities. In particular, we welcome theoretical and empirical papers with sound qualitative or quantitative bases that critically explore how language policies are developed at local and regional levels, as well as on how they are enacted, contested and negotiated by the targets of that policy themselves. We seek papers on the above topics as they are researched and informed through interdisciplinary work within related fields such as education, anthropology, politics, linguistics, economics, law, history, ecology, and geography. We particularly are interested in papers from lesser-covered parts of the world of Africa and Asia.
Specifically we encourage papers in the following areas:
Detailed accounts of promoting and managing language (education) policy (who, what, why, and how) in local, institutional, national and global contexts.
Research papers on the development, implementation and effects of language policies, including implications for minority and majority languages, endangered languages, lingua francas and linguistic human rights;
Accounts of language policy development and implementation by governments and governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations and business enterprises, with a critical perspective (not only descriptive).
Accounts of attempts made by ethnic, religious and minority groups to establish, resist, or modify language policies (language policies ''from below'');
Theoretically and empirically informed papers addressing the enactment of language policy in public spaces, cyberspace and the broader language ecology (e.g., linguistic landscapes, sociocultural and ethnographic perspectives on language policy);
Review pieces of theory or research that contribute broadly to our understanding of language policy, including of how individual interests and practices interact with policy.
We also welcome proposals for special guest-edited thematic issues on any of the topics above, and short commentaries on topical issues in language policy or reactions to papers published in the journal.
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