Empowering Students: Decentering the English Monolingual Norm Through Discourse

Introduction

Dual Language Learners (DLLs) are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States. Defined as children ages eight and under with a parent whose home language is other than English, DLLs comprise 32% of all young children in the nation (Park et al., 2017a). In California, the number of DLLs is even more striking, as it makes up 60% of the young children’s population (ages 0-8) in the state. The top five home languages spoken by parents of DLLs in California are Spanish (65.3%), Chinese, which includes Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese languages (4.4%), Tagalog (3.6%), Vietnamese (2.7%), and Korean (1.5%) (Park et al., 2017b).

Despite this linguistic and cultural diversity, most educational programs in the U.S. are still predominantly English monolingual, largely affecting the academic achievements of DLLs, owing to the linguistic gap between home and school. Although California is presently one of the most linguistically diverse states, it once embraced the English-only law (Proposition 227), enacted in 1998 and only ended in 2016 when repealed by Proposition 58 (Shin, 2018). Currently, while several states including California have mandated bilingual education laws, other states such as Tennessee have enacted laws forbidding bilingual education in public schools (Park et al., 2017a). Furthermore, while a wide range of studies have validated the cognitive, social-emotional, and economic benefits of bilingualism for individuals and society (Kroll & Dussias, 2017), the research underlines a lack of adequate professional preparation for early childhood teachers to work with dual language learners (Zepeda, Castro, & Cronin, 2011). AB 1363, which was recently passed in California and began implementation on January 1, 2023, aims to systematize the identification of DLLs in state preschool programs with the goal of informing future policy and program decisions to increase equitable service in early childhood programs (Cal. Legis. Assemb, 2021). As such, it is imperative that teacher preparation programs prepare and equip teacher candidates for an increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse workforce and student population.

The national- and state-level context described above is fundamental in understanding the local context of this work. This chapter is situated in this linguistic, geographical, and political context. The authors are faculty in the Early Childhood Studies (ECS) department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (referred to hereafter as CPP). In this chapter, the authors present how they have created discourse spaces that strive to combat the English monolingual norm of educational settings. In so doing, they empower their students who pursue a career in working with children who are likely to reflect California’s diverse demographics.