Critical Bilingual Leadership for Emergent Bilingual Students

Introduction

The increase in transnationalism and global migration of students calls for changes in educational policy and school leadership to match the cultural and linguistic identities of students in schools. Educators across the globe must analyze the ways in which they serve students who transcend national boundaries. Unfortunately, it is all too common for countries to avoid responding in affirmative and transformative ways. Across the United States (US) many schools have been, and continue to be, used as vehicles for assimilation (Irizarry, 2011). In this role, such institutions often enforce traditional White, middle class, and monolingual norms and values through color-blind individualism (Leonardo, 2004; Welton, in press), racist nativism (Pérez Huber, Benavides Lopez, Malagon, Velez, Solorzano, 2008) and other sociopolitical factors (Nieto & Bode, 2008) that impact culturally and linguistically diverse students. Due to these subtractive forms of school policy and practices (Valenzuela, 1999), emergent bilinguals¹ are forced to shed their multidimensional identities for a chance at school success (Irizarry, 2011; Valenzuela, 1999). As 21^st century transnationalism and globalization lead to an increase in emergent bilingual students and families across the world, the demographic shift requires educators, scholars, and policymakers to be responsive to, and conscious of, linguistic diversity in their approaches to language and literacy programs and instruction.

Schools, school leaders, and educators hold the promise and potential for making the changes needed to be more responsive to and conscious of their culturally and linguistically diverse students and families. To achieve this goal, language and literacy practices are essential for the successful development of emergent bilingual students. This chapter begins with an examination of the larger forces at play in the dynamics of schooling as relates to school leadership. By extension, the chapter will examine the sociopolitical factors that influence how school leaders operate with due attention to the goals of social justice and multicultural education. In doing so, I fulfill two objectives. The first is to problematize and challenge traditional leadership theories and practices that lead to subtractive schooling and limited equitable educational opportunities for the implementation of cross-cultural practices for emergent bilingual students. The second objective is to further theoretical understandings of how equity-oriented school leadership can, and should, foster the types of school communities where emergent bilingual students can prosper. Through exploring these objectives, this chapter will reveal possible situations in which a proposed theoretical framework can be contextualized for emergent bilingual students and schools. This chapter will reflect how leadership can foster the spaces to promote positive change for language and literacy development of multilingual youth. As a result of this discussion, insight will be gained into the ways in which critical bilingual leadership practices deployed in subtractive times might support school leaders’ and policy makers’ efforts to enact equity-oriented approaches with bi/multilingual learners in schools.