10.1 Language Policy in Multilingual Classrooms

Hina Ashraf

INITIAL REFLECTIONS

  • How do you feel about using non-target languages in the classroom? Why do you feel this way?
  • What do you know about bilingual education? When and how was bilingual education introduced in public schools in the United States? Why do you think schools in the United States tend to favor an English-only policy for education? If you live and work outside of the United States, what does bilingual education look in your context?
  • What do you know about the languages of students enrolled in dual language programs where you live?
  • What are some of the possible challenges schools face in implementing dual language programs for both most commonly taught languages (MCTLs) and less commonly taught languages (LCTLs)?

Introduction

The United States is home to many immigrant communities from around the world, and policies to promote or restrict English have varied throughout the country’s history. As U.S. schools have welcome more multilingual students, there has been a natural, yet legally and ideologically difficult shift away from monolingually dominant approaches. This shift has been influenced by policy orientations (Ruiz, 1984), or complex dispositions and attitudes toward language(s) and their societal roles. These orientations can limit policy makers attitudes toward languages as either a problem, a right, or a resource, and influence school language policy design and implementation. Following World War I, foreign languages were seen as a problem; ten years post-World War II, as a right; and in contemporary United States, to a certain extent, as a resource. U.S. states vary in their recognition of multilingual students’ languages, though there is general support for English (Wiley & De Korne, 2014).

Languages such as Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, and Vietnamese, often referred to as Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) due to their limited presence in U.S. school systems, are nevertheless globally large languages with significant populations of U.S. speakers. As such, curricula, instructional methods, and assessment strategies that are tailored to the specific needs of children who speak LCTLs are crucial. Otherwise, LCTL DLI programs are often forced to rely on a familiar Spanish-English model, potentially jeopardizing program validity and quality. This chapter offers an overview of the history and theory of bilingual policy design in the United States and demonstrates how school communities that leverage an orientation of language as a resource and as a right can successfully incorporate LCTLs into their curricula. I illustrate this by sharing the case of an Urdu-English dual language immersion program in North Carolina, which overcame several challenges and managed to thrive. This illustration demonstrates that teaching and educating through an LCTL in the United State can become a platform for constructive dialogue between schools and linguistic communities, shaping aspirational language policy initiatives.

An Overview of the Legal History of Bilingual and Multilingual Schooling in the United States

Historically, efforts to create equitable multilingual education in the US have resulted from legislation and litigation (Gottlieb, 2023). Although these policies were often enacted to increase equity, their implementation did not necessarily result in equitable educational opportunities. During the 19th and 20th centuries, most U.S. immigrants came from Europe, bringing languages like German and French, which remained popular in education and official domains in the Midwest and Texas (Crawford, 1987; McLanahan, 1904). Although assimilating into American culture required learning English (Almack, 1919), resistance to European languages and the promotion of monolingual English policies gained momentum only after World War I (Kloss, 1998 [1977]; Pavlenko, 2002; Wiley & De Korne, 2014). In 1923, the Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska struck down prohibitions against teaching languages other than English, although the ruling also affirmed that the state had the right to mandate English as the official language of education (Wiley & De Korne, 2014). Similarly, Japanese was viewed as a threat to national security after World War II, and schools were discouraged from using it or shut down altogether (Archery, 2024).

Assimilationist policies continued to be enforced on immigrant children who did not speak English after both World Wars, persisting through the 1960s. These policies included placing immigrant children in intensive English language programs for six months or one year, or admitting them to grade one regardless of their age and previous knowledge (Almack, 1919; Berrol, 1995; Roediger, 2006). They also included conducting intelligence tests in English for skill determination, often leading to high failure and dropout rates among immigrant children, and the implementation of remedial strategies including punishments for using their home languages (Berrol, 1995). These excessive measures portrayed children with limited knowledge of English as “deficient,” rather than “proficient” in another language (Ricento, 2014). These policies were closely tied to national identity and cultural unity (Archery, 2024).  In the decades that followed,  this orientation led to the promotion of English as a unifying force, while other languages were increasingly framed as problematic (Almack, 1919; Baran, 2017; Flores, 2014; Hubener, 1906, Kloss, 1998 [1977], etc.). Nation-building and identity formation, thus, led to the language-as-a-problem orientation in the United States (Katznelson et al., 2023). After the Voting Rights Act of 1965, some of these restrictions were relaxed to increase political access and promote equal educational opportunity, leading to a shift towards a language-as-a-right orientation.

Effects of these can be evidenced in the Supreme Court ruling in Lau v. Nichols (1974), which determined that educational institutions receiving federal funding were obligated to implement proactive methods for teaching English and ensuring comprehensibility of the curriculum for students who did not speak English. As a result, some immigrant languages started to be reintegrated into educational programs. Although initial stringent language policies led to a scarcity of resources for languages other than English, the teaching of these languages was acknowledged as beneficial for English acquisition among multilingual individuals (see also Flores, 2014; Kloss, 1998 [1977]). Following the landmark Castañeda v. Pickard (1981) case, additional policy changes were integrated into the U.S. education system to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1974 Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA). The court mandated that schools address the needs of immigrant children, English learners, and dual language learners through “appropriate action,” a term from the Pickard case. This decision established the “three-pronged test” as the benchmark for EEOA compliance, as follows:

  1. Theory: Districts must base language programs on recognized educational theory.
  2. Implementation: Districts must provide the necessary resources to implement the theory effectively.
  3. Outcomes: Schools must evaluate program success.

Under the EEOA, which remains in effect today, schools are required to make specific language policy adjustments to meet the needs of multilingual students, integrating their native languages and cultural elements (Roos, 2022). This approach aligns with Ruiz’s third orientation, which views language as a resource, and promotes both English and multilingualism (Katznelson et al., 2023).

How Schools Determine a Language Policy for their Students

Any decision to adopt a language policy for a school or school system requires careful language planning in three key areas: status, acquisition, and corpus. Once schools assess the needs of the populations they serve, they can make critical decisions for their institutions including choices related to the medium of instruction and the availability of resources for different language groups.

Status planning involves deliberate and systematic efforts to grant official and legal status to certain languages and define their relative positions within an institution. Guidelines established by Castañeda v. Pickard require schools to base their decision on a sound educational theory, leading to optimal circumstances to address the needs of bilingual and multilingual students (Crawford, 1987). Ideally, educators and researchers consider the district and state’s political context, their orientation toward the additional language, student needs, and linguistic theory to choose between various bilingual programs, such as dual language immersion, two-way immersion, or English immersion programs (Johnson & Freeman, 2013; Wiley, 2008;). The same team would negotiate, select, and reconceptualize an adequate educational linguistic theory, which will indicate that the school is familiar with the larger body of research and thus can make well-informed decisions based on theory, test hypotheses, and rely on evidence from studies on second language acquisition (Johnson & Freeman, 2013). Without delving into the challenges of this process (saved for a later section), let us first examine how schools undertake language planning to create optimal conditions for learners.

For acquisition planning, schools and districts focus on creating effective frameworks, resources, and strategies to support learners in acquiring proficiency in additional languages. This includes student placement, curriculum design, teaching methodologies, material development, and assessment strategies. Schools may place English learners (ELs) in intensive or restrictive English language programs that often limit the use of their native languages (Howard et al., 2003; Hult & Hornberger, 2016; also see Forman, 2016). Alternatively, students may be segregated from mainstream classes, which has been reported to correlate with lower graduation rates (Mahoney et al., 2022). If the language-in-education theory and policy fail to yield positive outcomes, legal action would require schools to adopt a new theory and allocate appropriate resources to ensure success in mainstream subjects. Districts that choose non-bilingual programs and subsequently demonstrate a lack of academic achievement invite judicial scrutiny and may be required to implement bilingual education (Roos, 2022). However, these factors are often overlooked, and various structural barriers continue to impact access and equity for bilingual learners and students of minoritized languages (Flores & McAuliffe, 2022; García & Menken, 2015).

Given limited resources and the absence of curricula for literacy in lesser-known partner languages, schools may engage in corpus planning initiatives, such as compiling dictionaries for languages like Navajo (e.g., McCarty, 2013; Spolsky, 2009) or Kvan (e.g., Lane, 2015). This endeavor is often perceived as daunting due to the scarcity of resources, funding, and personnel capable of producing authentic educational materials. For languages with many dialects, such as Spanish, deciding on a standard variety can also involve corpus planning, and such decisions are ideologically or socially motivated. Keller (1983) elucidates that in granting Spanish official status in the US, corpus planners encountered numerous challenges, including bilingual Spanish schools grappling with the diversity of Spanish varieties, with at least eight distinct forms of the language taught across U.S. schools.

Most Commonly and Less Commonly Taught Languages in Dual Language Immersion Schools

The school language policy for bilingual education should specify the nature of the instruction, the proportion of time given to each language in the curriculum, and the goals of both languages (see McGroarty & Fitzsimmons-Doolan, 2014). While the primary focus remains on developing English language skills, schools can adopt suitable educational approaches for their bilingual programs, such as one-way or two-way Immersion programs within a dual language immersion (DLI) framework.

Schools have the flexibility to choose a model and tailor it to their needs. DLI programs can be one-way (students from one language background learning through English and the partner language) or two-way (two groups of students with different native languages learning through English and the partner language). The two-way model supports bilingual development for minoritized language users but is also implemented to create opportunities for native English-speaking students interested in learning a foreign language (see Valdés, 1997). In both these models, schools may teach English and the partner language with a 50/50 or 90/10 ratio. Another approach that dual language schools might choose is the A/B day or week model, where the curriculum is evenly divided between both languages (McGroarty, 2001).

There are significant differences in the choice of partner language for DLI programs across U.S. schools. The American Council (2021) reports that over 80% of DLI programs in the US have Spanish as a partner language (see also Steele et al., 2017), with an estimated number exceeding 3,000 (DualLanguageSchools.org). Mandarin and French are the two other commonly taught languages in DLIs, although far behind Spanish, with a little more than 300 and 182 programs, respectively (American Council, 2021). Several other languages each have 20-30 DLI programs across the country. After that, the numbers drop from seven to one, according to the American Council. Arabic, Russian, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Korean, and Vietnamese are considered LCTLs at all levels of U.S. education. With typically fewer than seven schools per LCTL, despite their global significance, little is known about the student success and pedagogical challenges faced in their implementation in the US and other English-speaking countries (Johnston & Jamus, 2003; Kim, 2017).

The Benefits of Bilingual and Dual Language Immersion

Regarding outcomes, the benefits of bilingual and dual language immersion programs are well-documented (e.g., Aguilar et al., 2020; Burkhauser et al., 2016; Kalia et al., 2019; Lucero, 2018; Padilla et al., 2022; Tran et al., 2015) and extend beyond language acquisition. Research shows that students in these programs often demonstrate enhanced cognitive abilities, increased cultural awareness, and improved academic performance in both English and the partner language (Babino & Stewart, 2018; Burkhauser et al., 2016; Crawford, 1992; Li et al., 2016; Nascimento, 2017). Moreover, dual immersion programs can help bridge cultural divides and promote diversity and inclusivity within schools and communities with lesser-known languages (Paat, 2013; Porter, 2018; Richards et al., 2007).

As Valdés (1997) warned, DLI programs are not free from the pressures of mainstream society on education, nor do they lift all inequities that afflict US schools. Many dual language programs are centered on developing the additional language skills of native English-speaking students, with little done to address the power hierarchies between minoritized language learners and White communities (Flores & García, 2017; García et al., 2023; Subtirelu et al., 2019). During implementation, challenges emerge due to structural barriers, inadequate resources, lack of qualified personnel, and limited demand (Fink et al., 2022; Johnston & Janus, 2003; Kim, 2017), thus shifting the language as a resource or right orientation to a language as a problem orientation. Critical scholarship suggests that in many contexts DLI programs serve the interests of politicians and majority parents and families, necessitating a stronger focus on social justice (e.g., Cervantes-Soon, 2014; Freire et al., 2021).

The Precarity of Knowledge in LCTL DLI Contexts

As noted earlier, most bilingual programs in the country use Spanish as the partner language, and most research on immersion programs stems from these programs (American Councils, 2021; Philip & Abbott, 2011). We have robust knowledge about DLI success stories and, conversely, about challenges faced by teachers and students. For example, looking at Spanish-English DLIs, Tran et al. (2015) focused on student achievement in relation to science and mathematics, Padilla et al. (2022) on secondary school academic and language achievement, Burkhauser et al. (2016) on partner language learning trajectories, Lucero (2018) on bilingual narrative retelling, Kalia et al. (2019) and Aguilar et al. (2020) on vocabulary, Valdés (2021) on curriculum, and Morita-Mullaney and Chesnut (2022) on equity in bilingual classrooms. We also know the forces that negatively impact these programs, such as deficit ideologies (García & Menken, 2015), the dominance of English (Palmer, 2009), varieties of Spanish (Keller, 1983), and school leadership and decision-making (Flores & McAuliffe, 2022). Global research on language acquisition among young learners covers only one to two percent of the world’s languages (Lieven & Stoll, 2013), resulting in limited insight into the acquisition of many languages, especially if they are not of Anglo-European orientation (Philip & Abbott, 2011; Stoll, 2015). In sum, there is a significant lack of information about the situations faced by learners of LCTLs and the experiences of their teachers, principals, and school districts (Amos, 2020; Brown, 2009).

It should be clear, then, that students from diverse linguistic backgrounds beyond Spanish face a disadvantage in accessing dual language immersion programs. DLI programs are often non-existent for LCTLs. For example, there are only six schools with Vietnamese and Hmong, only one with Bengali, and none with Hindi, Swahili, or Amharic as partner languages. Benchmarks, pedagogical materials, and assessments for LCTLs are scarce, particularly in languages with non-Roman scripts and high linguistic diversity.

Historically, efforts to introduce minoritized languages in schools have been localized, with bottom-up initiatives by parents and teachers, who strive for equitable, high-quality academic resources, appropriate professional development, and institutional and communal support (Kim, 2017; Palmer et al., 2016). Moreover, García and Menken (2015) clarify that dual language and bilingual education “is not static, linear, or able to reach an endpoint of completion; rather, it is emergent, continuous, and never-ending, shaped by relationships with people, situations, and texts” (p. 99).The case study in this chapter represents the grassroots efforts and challenges a school community in the United States faced to run an LCTL program which approached language as a resource and a right.

Viewing Language Policy Making in LCTL: A Case Study of Urdu in the US

This section focuses on the Urdu program at Allen Jay Elementary School, a K-5 public school in North Carolina. As an Urdu language and curriculum expert, I was approached by the school in 2022 to support its curriculum development efforts. While this is not a formal research report, the information shared here draws on research evidence collected and analyzed so far over the first year of the grant, including interviews, observations, school visits, a home language survey, curriculum document analyses, and pilot tests.

The Urdu DLI program originated in 2018 when a Spanish DLI program was proposed to Allen Jay ES by the local university and the school district. As the school population could be neatly divided into three groups (English, Hispanic, and Pakistani), the principal, not wanting to deprive Pakistani students of their right to their language, insisted on starting an Urdu program as well. The school developed both DLIs simultaneously and has successfully run them since then. This is the only Urdu-English DLI in the country. (The American Councils, 2021, lists two Urdu DLI programs in the United States, but neither Allen Jay nor this author have been able to find any evidence of the other program’s existence.)

Language as a Resource and a Right: A Strong Orientation among all Stake Holders

Often DLIs for LCTLs are established through a series of critical reviews with decisions made at various levels according to different socioeconomic realities. For this reason, this case study of Urdu is unique to Allen Jay ES. In this sense, although Urdu can be viewed as rather unusual by outsiders, it was a natural choice for Allen Jay ES. Urdu has been declared a critical language in the United States, and the government has encouraged its learning through various Flagship initiatives and Critical Language Scholarship Programs. However, these programs are limited compared to those for more established critical languages, such as Chinese. Parents in this school community did not have any option for their children to access Urdu education, except through this DLI program. In the counties where Allen Jay ES is located, the Urdu-speaking community constitutes a significant portion of the population; Urdu was ranked the fifth most spoken language in the county after a higher number of Asian immigrants moved to the region between 2016-2017. For the parents in this community, Urdu is not unusual. On the contrary, in South Asia, Urdu is a lingua franca. In Pakistan, it is the national language and taught in schools across the country. Choosing Urdu as a language of education, therefore, was a logical decision for the Allen Jay leadership, teachers, students, and families. Viewing language as a right, teaching Urdu could enable students of Pakistani background, especially newly arrived immigrants with limited English language proficiency, to have equal access to education and maintain ties to their culture while studying in a U.S. public school.

Besides Urdu, Allen Jay Elementary students bring different languages to the classroom, such as Hindko, Punjabi, and Pashto, all part of the diverse linguistic ecology of South Asia. In the lower elementary grades (K and first), one bilingual English-Spanish student and two monolingual English students are also enrolled. The program commenced in kindergarten with a new grade level added each year, so in 2023-2024, the school prepared its first fifth grade class to graduate from the elementary-level program. By foregrounding their language as a resource in the curriculum, the dual language immersion program supports multilingual development (Hult & Hornberger, 2016). This contrasts with research showing that some bilingual programs end up catering to developing foreign language proficiency in monolingual American students (Flores & García, 2017; Valdes, 1997).

It bears repeating that the principal and the Guilford County School district took an unusual stance in support of enhancing the learning opportunities for diverse linguistic groups, without which developing and continuing the two DLIs at Allen Jay ES would have been impossible. The teachers have been instrumental in implementing an educational approach that fosters multilingualism, academic success, and intercultural competence. Providing resources, recognizing home languages and translanguaging practices, and leveraging critical instructional tools have sustained the program over these seven years of planning and implementation through fifth grade. Similarly, parents and family engagement such as volunteering, participating in school events, and communicating with other parents and the school personnel, have been constants since the inception of the program (to read about the important role of parents and family engagement in DLI, see Ee, 2017). This orientation of all stakeholders to language as a resource and as a right, where home practices are not only recognized but also used flexibly and strategically in instruction to meet the needs of the students, is instrumental to the success of the program. Conversely, discouraging translanguaging and preferring language separation would imply a problem orientation (Katznelson et al., 2023). 

The School’s Language Policy: Trials and Choice of ‘hybrid’

The school introduced the two-way 50/50 DLI program in 2018, opening admissions to 30 students with connections to Urdu, either as heritage speakers of the language or first-generation immigrants. Allen Jay Elementary’s unique status as a school with DLI programs in both Spanish and Urdu provides insights into policymaking and design involved in a) introducing and teaching an LCTL like Urdu and b) teaching it alongside an MCTL like Spanish. Both programs promote bilingualism and biliteracy. Although a direct comparison of the two falls beyond the scope of this chapter, the teachers and administration are aware of the parallels and differences and use this knowledge to make design and implementation decisions.

One clear difference was the limited resources and models for running a non-Roman, South Asian language program in a heritage setting. Rather than adhering to textbook models of DLI, the school proactively sought solutions to challenges common for LTCLs. For example, following initial trials involving the distribution of languages and subjects across the curriculum with the two-way model, the school opted for the A/B day model, with alternating days in English and Urdu. To achieve a more balanced approach, teachers at Allen Jay Elementary have introduced adaptations to the A/B day model, now referred to as the “hybrid” model (see Figure 1). On Day 1, for instance, math, science, and social studies are taught in English for a portion of the day, while language arts are taught in Urdu during the last two hours. On Day 2, the pattern is reversed, with math, science, and social studies taught in Urdu and language arts taught in English for two hours toward the end of the day. This language policy model was developed to address feedback from teachers and students, while also fulfilling the district’s requirements for subject hours. The execution of this A/B model, which aims for equitable exposure to both English and Urdu on a 50/50 basis, is dependent solely on time allocation and does not consider the differing levels of language proficiency among students in Urdu. This presents challenges for students and teachers, who must implement the language policy.

 

Pie chart of Allen Jay Elementary dual language program: Urdu 110 minutes (80 Language Arts, 30 Math), English 120 minutes (70 Language Arts, 50 Math).

Figure 1. Hybrid model: Time distribution of two languages in the Urdu-English DLI program

Teachers as Agents of Change

Presently, the Urdu DLI program has six teachers. New teachers are hired annually for each added grade level. All teachers speak Urdu, Punjabi, Siraiki, Hindko, and Pashto. Additionally, all are college-educated and have received education either fully or partially in Pakistan or the United States. Although the teachers are not specifically trained for DLI, they have received onboarding and in-service training from the school district’s central office.

The teachers have exercised their agency over the six years of teaching. They have been instrumental in not only implementing but also choosing instructional policies, from an initial requirement to isolate both languages to supporting translanguaging, and from using a curriculum translated from the Spanish DLI program to relying on Pakistan’s National Curriculum albeit scaled one or two grade levels below. Research shows that the agency of teachers in the classrooms makes them the final arbiter of the language-in-education policy (Mohanty, 2010). Thus, their practices can validate or undermine the decisions made by the school district. The implementation of language policy by the teachers depends on many factors that include access to resources, school district curriculum goals, personal beliefs and attitudes, students’ proficiency levels, and the school administration’s support (Hornberger & Johnson, 2011; Menken & García, 2010; Palmer et al., 2016). The next section examines how the teachers at Allen Jay ES shaped the curriculum at their school.

Curriculum, Literacy and Communicative Competency: Always Evolving

While dual language programs have placed emphasis on developing communication skills and oral proficiencies there is a lack of understanding regarding curricula, cultural adeptness, and literacy proficiency for heritage language learners in the context of LCTLs (Malone et al., 2014; Swanson et al., 2022). This gap extends to authentic, age-appropriate teaching materials, validated and standardized, norm-referenced assessments in additional language contexts (Brown, 2021; Demiralp, 2020; Hur, 2017; Kan et al., 2020). Without high-quality materials and standardized learning objectives for heritage students, the Urdu teachers at Allen Jay ES are continuously developing and revising their curriculum.

Bilingual schools often rely on translating existing standards such as those from ACTFL or, in the case of Allen Jay Elementary School, the North Carolina World Languages Essential Standards, to gauge language proficiency across PreK-12 education in the United States. Standards help teachers identify what learners must do to demonstrate proficiency at different levels. For example, an intermediate learner can understand language components—stems, prefixes, tones, verb endings, parts of speech—used in the target language, while a novice writer frames their writing in the present tense but may contain references to other time frames. However, at Allen Jay ES, it became apparent that even when aligned with clear learning and assessment objectives, several ACTFL World Readiness Standards do not fully address the challenges posed by the difficulty level, diverse writing system, right-to-left reading directionality, and syntax of certain languages (see Fink et al., 2022, for LCTLs with diverse writing systems).

Mastering a new writing system and evaluating literacy skills typically require more time than allotted by many bilingual programs’ curricula. The complexity of a partner language with a different writing system, such as Urdu, further complicates mastery (see Burkhauser et al., 2016, for Chinese and Japanese languages). This is evidenced in Davidson et al.’s (2019) study on the challenges Urdu learners face in a community-based school in Illinois. At Allen Jay ES, educators explored diverse approaches to cultivate literacy skills, including letter recognition, decoding, and using digital apps. Classroom, charts, posters, and signs in Urdu and English facilitate learners’ visualization of biliteracies, thereby empowering students’ linguistic and cultural agency and deepening the learning experience (Gottlieb, 2023). However, there was a noticeable absence of dedicated time for free writing in Urdu to enhance fine motor skills and develop the muscle coordination necessary for learning a distinct writing system. Moreover, the lack of proficiency standards has made it difficult for teachers to assess the literacy skills of Urdu learners. The presence of a researcher (the author of this chapter), committed to working with teachers, administration, and families, was made possible by a three-year federal grant, starting its second year at the time of writing. This provided much-needed support while maintaining the core emphasis on teacher agency.

The research collaboration has revealed several realities to all stakeholders. As noted, the Urdu curriculum at Allen Jay Elementary was originally based on the Spanish DLI curriculum at the school. As both language combinations (English and Urdu, and Spanish and Urdu) vary in script, directionality and cultural representations, the curricular approach raises questions of language policy regarding the use and learning of languages inside the classroom (see also Davidson et al., 2019; Mirza et al., 2017; Mumtaz & Humphreys, 2002). The cursive script, letter discernment, and right-to-left directionality of Urdu increased the cognitive load for students (also Davidson et al., 2019; Mirza et al., 2017; Sneddon, 2008). Significant differences in the language learning difficulty levels also highlighted the reliability and validity of assessment practices and purposes. This included decisions about languages and pedagogy, the role of teachers, the curriculum and assessment standards, and the learning outcomes in various communicative and cognitive skills. This also draws attention to linguistic hierarchization in curricular approaches when LCTLs and MCTLs coexist within the same school setting, and the overlap between curricular goals, requirements, and outcomes. Learning the language, pacing it in the curriculum, and addressing the difficulty level differences between English and Urdu versus English and Spanish pose challenges. However, the intrinsic motivation of the teachers and the school to sustain and develop the program has ensured that they avoid viewing it from a problem orientation. A problem orientation would have led the school to discontinue the program, discourage translanguaging, and limit Urdu space. Instead, the support and solution seeking approach suggests that the success of these children and the school is driven by a rights- and resource-oriented approach to language policymaking.

Conclusion

Decisions about language policy are affected by a complex set of dispositions that Ruiz (1984) termed orientations. Language can be viewed as a problem, a right, or a resource. When language is seen as both a right and a resource, teaching less commonly taught languages (LCTL) becomes a platform for constructive dialogue between schools and linguistic communities, shaping aspirational language policy initiatives.

The chapter underscores the significant role of underlying ideologies, as explored through Ruiz’s orientations to language, in shaping language policy within educational contexts. It emphasizes that these ideologies are not fixed but are actively shaped, contested, and realized by various stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, and parents. Over the past century and a half, the United States has transitioned from monolingual to bilingual education policies, reflecting shifts in societal attitudes toward languages. The chapter underlines the critical role played by school districts, families, and communities in shaping language policymaking. Within the classroom, teachers serve as agents of change, making deliberate language policy choices to promote their students’ well-being.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

  • After reading this chapter, do you think bilingual schooling would serve students in U.S. schools better than English-only programs? Give reasons for your answer.
  • What orientations to bilingualism are evident in the case study of Allen Jay Elementary School? How did they shape different aspects of the program?
  • Is English the first language of most students in your class? What other languages do they speak, and how does this impact your classroom?
  • What orientations toward bilingualism are present in your classroom and program? How do they impact practice?
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Contemporary Topics in Applied Linguistics for Language Educators Copyright © 2025 by Julieta Fernández and Chantelle Warner; rights for individual chapters held by respective authors. All Rights Reserved.

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