From English Language Learners to Emergent Bilinguals - Teachers ...

Part III.Equity Issues in the Education of Emergent Bilinguals:What the Research ShowsFrom ELLs to Emergent Bilinguals26Now that we better understand who these emergentbilingual students are and what policies have beenenacted to educate them, we turn to the heart of thematter: What does the research tell us about how best toeducate and assess emergent bilingual students? Are weusing accepted theories and evidence in the education ofthese students? We provide evidence to show that weare not.In this final section of our review we focus on evidencefrom the research literature on the educationand assessment of English language learners. This sectiondraws on research from different fields—sociolinguisticsand psycholinguistics, psychometrics and assessment, educationand curriculum, sociology, and economics. In thecontext of the research findings related to English languagelearners’ experiences in school, we address fourdifferent but critical equity issues for emergent bilingualstudents:1. providing educational programs that are tailoredto meet these students’ linguistic and academicneeds2. providing fair assessments3. providing adequate resources4. involving parents and communities in these students’educationAs we said in the beginning, we use the term emergentbilinguals to emphasize one of our central themes,namely that issues of inequity in educating and assessingthese students frequently evolve from incompleteunderstandings of their emergent bilingualism on thepart of the policymakers and educators who shape theireducational experiences. The research literature, on theother hand, helps to explain the educational needs ofthese emergent bilingual students.Providing Emergent Bilingual Students withEducational Programs That Are Tailored toMeet Their Linguistic and Academic NeedsEmergent bilingual students very often do not receivethe meaningful educational programs that theyneed. Because of the lack of recognition of these students’evolving bilingualism and the importance ofthe use of their home language in their learning process,educational programs for emergent bilinguals are .frequently inconsistent in their goals (see Table 8). Thereare also unreasonable time limits placed on students todevelop their academic English by both schools and policiessuch as Proposition 227. As we noted above, someprograms focus narrowly on the acquisition of English,while others focus more broadly on educating meaningfullywhile promoting the children’s English-languageacquisition. In this section, we consider the theoreticalconstructs and empirical findings that support the useof a student’s first language in a meaningful education.We also examine the theories and research on secondlanguageacquisition that speak to the developmentalprocess of acquiring English not just for verbal communicationbut also for academic work. And, finally, wepresent research evidence on the appropriate use ofthe child’s first language in education. The section endsby considering the present status of the education ofemergent bilinguals.Important Theoretical ConstructsOver the last three decades, researchers have developedframeworks for understanding the relationshipbetween a student’s native language and a second language,which must be used in school for the purposeof academic achievement. A pioneer in this work hasbeen Jim Cummins. We describe what he has proposedand then point to alternative frameworks proposed byBrian Street and other scholars in the area of social