Running head: MINORITIES AND WORLD LANGUAGE EDUCATION

The Achievement Gap among Heritage Language Learners in

World Language Education:

Social Capital, Deficit Models, and Teacher Perceptions

Melissa S. Ferro

EDUC 874: The Achievement Gap

Professor Nicola Williams

May 12, 2008

George Mason University

Introduction

In September of 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported on the status and trends of racial and ethnic minority students enrolled in U.S. public schools, grades K-12. The data show that as of 2003 minority students comprised 41.3 percent of the K-12 student population, of whom 17.2 percent were Black, 18.5 percent were Hispanic, 4.4 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander, and 1.2 percent were American Indian/Alaska Native. As noted in the 2007 NCES report, students of Hispanic decent are now the largest minority student population in our country, outnumbering Blacks by a full percentage point. This trend is expected to continue as NCES projects that by the year 2020, the total U.S. minority population will grow by another 32 percent, keeping in mind that NCES projections for the growth of the total White population is at a much lesser rate of only 4 percent.

What does this mean for our public schools? If K-12 minority enrollments were to grow at the same rate as the national population, our schools would see a new majority with just over 54% of enrollments coming from a combination of the aforementioned minority groups. When we consider the current gaps in achievement between majority and minority students, we must question whether or not our current educational system is equipped to close these gaps as minority populations continue to grow. If past results predict future outcomes, the possibility of ensuring equitable education of our nation’s rapidly growing minority population is rather grim.

This paper will seek to shed light on one aspect of the minority achievement gap. The primary focus will be on language minority students and their achievement in world language education. Although what is explored here will eventually become part of a larger literature review for a doctoral dissertation, the paucity of research on this topic coupled with the continued growth of the minority student population lend to the current need to examine the achievement gap of language minority students in the world language classroom. To do so, three possible contributors to this slice of the gap will be reviewed: the social capital of language minority students, the role of teacher perceptions, and the effects of language policies and programs that have been based on deficit models. The purpose here is to gain an understanding of the current state of world language education with respect to minority student populations as well as to discuss possibilities for implementing systemic changes that would help to close the gaps in minority student enrollment and achievement.

The Achievement Gap and World Language Education

In the last decade, PK-12 world language classes have slowly begun to open their doors to all students. Previously, the study of foreign/world languages had been reserved for the academically gifted, preparing them to meet college entrance requirements. Compared to the demographics of the general student population, the population of students with high academic performance has historically included a disproportionate percentage of minority students. To understand why minority students are not achieving at the same rate as their White middle-class peers has been the topic of discussion for quite some time. In more recent years, this topic is referred to as the achievement gap.

The achievement gap has been well documented, perhaps most notably by the 1998 publication, The Black-White Test Score Gap by Jencks and Phillips. Focusing on the gap in test-scores between White middle-class students and Black minority students, the contributing authors in the Jencks and Phillips text provide a broad stroke of the history of the achievement gap by examining factors such as test bias, teacher perceptions, school curriculum, as well as heredity and home environment. Interestingly, the majority of the early scholarly writings on the gap have addressed what Wilson (1998) refers to as individual properties. In the final chapter of the Jencks and Phillips text, Wilson warns against the analysis of social inequalities that look only at the effects of individual factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, because the results of these analyses do not represent the inequities among social groups that are produced and reproduced by the very structure of our social systems. He calls for social scientists to conduct research that seeks to understand the very complex relationship between individual effects and the structure of inequality within our social systems, including our schools. But what is this relationship between the individual and the social structure of inequality? And, what is the role of language?

The well-known French sociologist and critical theorist, Pierre Bourdieu has examined the relationship between an individual’s identity and his/her social environment. Bourdieu’s ethnological work in North Africa with the Kabyle led him to question the traditional structuralist approach to the study of languages. Through his research, he found that the use and meaning of language cannot be explained by semiotics alone. In Language and Symbolic Power (1991), Bourdieu criticizes Saussure’s langue and parole and Strauss’s universal structures of mind because they do not account for the economic and social conditions involved in the acquisition of what he calls “legitimate language” or the language that is valued above all other languages spoken in the same social system.

Using economics as a backdrop for his theory of social capital, Bourdieu (1991) explains how the language one speaks has symbolic power that is rooted in the individual habitus. The habitus is a methodological construct that represents the long process that each individual experiences in order to acquire a set of dispositions that eventually guarantee the “correctness” of his/her words, actions and thoughts more reliably than any formal rules or explicit norms. What is deemed “correct” is valued and eventually becomes “the legitimate.”

Bourdieu has also presented the idea that dispositions may be socially inherited thus making the habitus relatively homogeneous across individuals from similar backgrounds. What is valued in a social system is produced and reproduced by the individuals that live in that system. Yet, at the same time, the individual habitus, a large part of one’s identity, is developed by the inculcation of what is valued in that social system. One’s identity is thus transformed by social systems while at the same time contributing to the very development and preservation of those systems, including the development and preservation of social inequalities. For Bourdieu (1991), one’s language, actions, thoughts, and perceptions have economic value. What is given higher economic value by the dominant social group becomes the legitimate and those that possess the legitimate have greater social capital. As we shall see in our discussion here, what are valued in the world language classroom are all too often not the language and/or cultures of minority students.

The use of an economic framework has also been used to redefine the achievement gap (Ladson-Billings, 2006). In her 2006 presidential speech at the conference for the American Education Research Association, Ladson-Billings presents the long standing achievement gap of African American and Hispanic students not as a problem needing remedy, but as a symptom of our nation’s education debt. According to Ladson-Billings (2006), our education debt is closely tied to our historical debt that has grown due to the inequities based on race, class, and gender differences; our economic debt that has accrued due to years of funding disparities for schools with large minority populations; our sociopolitical debt due to the lack of equal access to legislative power; and our moral debt that continues to grow as those who have power fail to act upon their social responsibilities. As with any economic system, we may succeed in running a fiscal surplus, but that does not guarantee a reduction in our overall debt. This economic framework may also be applied to the ongoing debt that is evident in world language education with regards to minority student enrollment and achievement.

In light of the recent opening of world languages to minority student populations, one would think that there would be an automatic increase in their overall enrollment and achievement in these courses. This has not been the case. The data from the last several years of NCES reports as well as a study on African American students’ opinions about world language study by Moore (2005) indicate that the gaps in minority enrollment and degrees conferred at the post-secondary level are not closing. Although these gaps are not new to the field of world languages, there has been little research to explore and explain why more Blacks and Hispanic students are not earning four-year degrees in foreign/world languages. Although the percentages of minority students earning post-secondary degrees continues to grow each year, that growth is far behind the overall population growth of minority students. For each year that we run a world language deficit, our world language debt continues to grow.

Of particular interest in the field of world language education, is the current deficits we are running with respect to heritage language learners (HLLs), or students who have a language other than English spoken in the home. For many HLLs in the world language classroom, their journey through U.S. schools may have started in programs for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). As ESOL students, they were asked to drop their heritage language and culture at the schoolhouse gate in order to focus on gaining an academic command of the English language. Now, as world language classrooms open their doors to the general student population, many ESOL students find themselves in a world language classroom where they are expected to reconnect with their heritage language and culture. For many HLLs, this is not always a positive experience. What can be done to reverse the accumulating debt of HLLs in world language education? To gain a clearer understanding as to why this specific group of minority students is not more successful in world language classrooms it is necessary to look at the systemic effects of the social capital that HLLs bring to the world language classroom; the perceptions held by their teachers; and the deficit models upon which many HLL courses are based.

Social Capital, Deficit Models, and Teacher Perceptions

Under the assumption that our educational system is a social system, we can apply Bourdieu’s (1991) framework for understanding the production and reproduction of social capital within our schools and classrooms. To do so, we must look at the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the social system. What is valued in our schools essentially reflects what is valued by the dominant groups in our society. English is the legitimate language and those who are not native English speakers are considered language minority students. Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri (2002) have noted that the traditional view held by the dominant group is that language minority students lack what is needed to achieve academic success, a command of the English language. Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri also note that until recently, many of the programs developed for ESOL students were based on these traditional deficit views. Instead of using the English language as a vehicle for academic enrichment, ESOL classes often focused on the remediation of English language skills.

The results of these deficit model remediation programs have been mixed (Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002). This is because there is a great diversity among the academic backgrounds and learning needs of English language learners (ELLs). Variables such as how long they have lived in the U.S., the level of formal education they have received in their home countries, and whether or not they have been subjected to interrupted schooling either here or in their home countries may be statistically significant in predicting their level of academic success (Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002). To explain the diversity among ELLs, Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri draw upon Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory. Similar to Bourdieu’s (1991) concept of social capital, Ogbu and Simons (1998) provide a framework for discussing the differences between voluntary and involuntary minority groups and how an educational system and community forces can affect the perceptions and actions of various minority populations (Ogbu & Simons, 1998).

According to Ogbu and Simons, voluntary immigrant minority groups have willingly entered the United States seeking better opportunities than were afforded to them in their home countries. They have not had long-term exposure to the social inequalities that have resulted what Ladson-Billings (2006) describes as our education debt. Many of these students enter and exit ESOL programs and achieve relative success in mainstream classrooms. Involuntary minority students, as defined by Ogbu and Simons (1998), “are people who have been conquered, colonized, or enslaved. Unlike immigrant minorities, have been made to be a part of the U.S. society permanently against their will (p. 165). Their long-term exposure to discrimination may be a strong contributor to their academic failure.

Like Ogbu & Simons, Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri (2002) have identified fundamental differences in the histories of English language learners. Voluntary minority students who enter ESOL programs at a very young age are often successful if they have not experienced interrupted schooling in their home countries or interrupted schooling once they have arrived in the U.S. In general, these students exit ESOL programs and generally perform at or above grade level. The success of voluntary minority students varies greatly if they enter U.S. schools in middle school or high school, if they have had limited formal schooling in their home country, or if they experience interrupted schooling once they arrive in the United States. Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri believe that students with limited formal schooling often become long-term English language learners (LTELs) who may also share the same socioeconomic class as involuntary minority students. Though many voluntary minority students begin school in the U.S. very optimistic that a good education will lead to upward social class mobility, in many instances something changes. That something according to Ogbu & Simons (1998) is the realization that community forces contribute to their minority status. Similar to Bourdieu’s (1991) notion of the production and reproduction of social inequalities, Ogbu & Simon (1998) note that minority students, aware of the nation’s education debt, purposefully choose not to participate in a system that produces and reproduces their low social capital. Why is this distinction among minority groups important when assessing the academic achievement among HLLs in the world language classroom?

Reagan and Osborn (1998) have explored what they call the subculture of the world language classroom, which they say is a reflection of the biases and discrimination found in the broader American culture. In the past, the relationship of power and social capital between the teacher and the students was less complex as both teacher and student were members of the same dominant social group. Most world language students were non-native speakers with high academic achievement. And, although in many cases world language teachers were also non-native speakers, there was generally nobody in the classroom, or even the school, who could challenge their language proficiency (Reagan & Osborn, 1998). Teachers were the world language authority.

Today, the same world language teachers are faced with a more complex relationship of power and authority in their classrooms. As HLLs, with varying levels of fluency in the world language, enter the classroom, the question of what dialects and cultures are valued is generally answered by whatever dialects and cultures are valued by the teacher. And, as Reagan and Osborn (1998) report, the fact that HLLs bring some level of fluency to the classroom has prompted a whole new set of teacher/student perceptions. It is these perceptions that Reagan and Osborn (1998) believe have greatly influenced the development of social capital and symbolic power in the world language classroom.

Prior to offering world languages to all students, the traditional role of the world language teacher had been that of authoritative expert (Reagan & Osborn, 1998). The students were generally White middle-class high academic achievers. Instruction was centered on developing linguistic mastery rather than communicative competence. Although methods based on social-learning theory had started to emerge in other content area courses, for the most part, the transition to constructivist pedagogy had yet to reach the world language classroom. The teacher served as the “language authority” whose power included not only the expert knowledge of content, but also the expert knowledge of the language used to communicate in the classroom (Reagan & Osborn, 1998). Even before the increased presence of HLLs, world language programs were based on deficit models. Students were perceived as lacking the canonical knowledge that the teacher possessed (Reagan & Osborn, 1998). Rarely was this expertise challenged. Thus, the production and reproduction of the teacher’s social capital was preserved, not only by the power of the teacher, but also by the relative homogeneous habitus of the students in the classroom.

In recent years, the new demographics of world language learners coupled with the new standards-based curriculum that focuses on communicative competence and the paradigm shift to student-centered teaching and learning have challenged the traditional role of the world language teacher. As a result, teacher perceptions have also changed. The presence of heritage language learners in traditional beginning level language classes means that the teacher is no longer the only speaker of the target language in the classroom. How teachers perceive HLLs in their beginning world language classrooms is rather interesting. In a study conducted with post-secondary Chinese heritage language learners, Weger-Guntharp (2006) found that while teachers tend to have higher expectations for the HLLs in their beginner level courses, they also restrict their use of the target language to simple forms, stating a concern that more advanced language use will confuse the true beginners in the class. In addition, since many HLLs are perceived to have high oral skills but low literacy skills, many world language teachers resort to the remediation of grammar and orthography, rather than providing HLLs with opportunities for enrichment and higher-order thinking (Reagan & Osborn, 1998; Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002; Weger-Guntharp, 2006). With teacher perceptions less than positive, low social capital both in and out of the language classroom, and courses based on deficit models, one would wonder why HLLs enroll in beginner level classes at all. The answer lies in the policies and programs that are currently in place to address the diverse needs of language minority students.

Current Policy and Programs for Language Minority Students

There is never a guarantee that a particular language or educational policy will “work,” but when that policy reflects the goals of the people it is to affect rather than those of either foreign missionaries or a colonial government, and when it reaffirms rather than negates a people’s knowledge of its culture and heritage, then there is no better prospect for its success.

Lisa Delpit

Discussion about policies and programs for language minority students has increased since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became law in 2002. This bi-partisan act was written with the intent to close the achievement gap. Since its inception, many have debated as to whether or not NCLB has contributed to closing the gap among language minority students. Does this law meet the recommendations set forth in Delpit’s quote? In other words, does NCLB recognize the different ways of knowing and the different funds of knowledge (Moll & Gonzalez, 2004) that language minority students bring to the classroom? Or, has it actually done a better job at preserving a post-colonial, Eurocentric education system that recognizes only one way of knowing based the dominant language and culture that belongs to the White middle-class? To fully explore these questions would expand beyond the scope of this paper. However, to gain an understanding of the effects of NCLB on language minority students, one needs to look no further than how states are currently assessing these students under the strict code of NCLB.

The state of Virginia’s Standards of Learning Assessments for Limited English Proficient Students was updated in early 2007. To comply with NCLB, Virginia notes that all students, including those with limited English proficiency (LEP), in grades 3-8 must take the state standards of learning examinations (SOLs) in reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, and social science. The state does provide LEP students a one-time waiver for taking the SOLs in writing, science, history, and social science. The only exemption for the reading SOL for LEP students occurs during their first year in a U.S. public school. There is no exemption for the SOL in mathematics. However, LEP students who have very limited command of the English language, what Virginia calls level 1 or 2 LEP, are given the “Plain English” test for mathematics and/or the Virginia Grade Level Alternative Assessment (VGLA) for reading. To understand the effects of this testing policy, it is important to examine a few of the intended/unintended benefits as well as the intended/unintended consequences that it has had.

The intended benefits of Virginia’s policy for testing language minority students is that these students are now receiving the attention of educators, administrators and legislators. There is a new awareness and drive to provide instruction that is dedicated to closing the achievement gap. It is assumed that the achievement gap will close if all students, including language minority students are able to pass the SOL exams. As a result to this new focus on minority student achievement, an unintended benefit is that states are now collecting extensive data on minority students. It is assumed that the data will be used to make funding decisions that will lead to more programs for a population of students who had previously been marginalized.

On the other hand, an intended consequence of the federal/state testing policy is that schools are now required to spend more time on the development of cognitive skills at the expense of instruction in the arts. This has led to another probable intended consequence which is that schools spend little if any time developing non-cognitive skills such as personal and social responsibility, leadership, and motivation. What is more alarming is the unintended consequence that relates to the reality that not all students, including language minority students, will pass SOL exams at or above the state cut scores. As Rothstein (2004) notes, the expectation that all learners will perform at the same level is unreasonable. To say that it is possible to raise the test score of each individual student above a predetermined benchmark score has consequently led to the lowering of those benchmark scores. Therefore, instead of raising the achievement of minority language learners, we may simply be lowering the bar for all students (Rothstein, 2004).

Clearly this is a small sample of the benefits and consequences resulting from the requirements surrounding state SOL testing and English language learners. In evaluating these benefits and consequences, it is difficult to determine if they were intended or unintended. This is especially true when one considers that second language researchers have shown the cognitive, linguistic and social benefits of bilingual education. And, the research of Collier (1995) and Cummins (1986) has shown that it takes at least two years for language learners to acquire social language and at least twice as long to acquire academic language. Why then would NCLB require language minority students to take exams that they clearly will not be prepared to pass? And, does this policy reflect the goals of the people that it is supposed to affect, as Delpit (2006) suggests is necessary for a policy’s success? As these questions about ELLs remain unanswered, additional questions have come to light regarding policy for heritage language learners in the world language classroom.

As stated earlier, language minority students often begin their schooling as ELLs, who are asked to leave their home language and culture at the schoolhouse door in order to acquire academic English as quickly as possible. Years later, they arrive in the world language classroom, expected to reconnect with their heritage language and culture, even though they have had little if any opportunity to gain or maintain their academic skills in that language. To exacerbate this issue, there is currently no federal policy for world language education. Although there is a new federal initiative to measure the country’s language capacity, world language education policy, for the most part, has been left to the individual states. In many cases, states are so preoccupied with meeting NCLB requirements that some do not have a world language supervisor or specialist to advocate for policy or funding.

Thankfully, organizations such as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) have called for pedagogical recommendations for the education of heritage language learners. Schwarzer and Petrón (2005) report that as early as 1972, AATSP issued a plan of action that called for Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS) courses that would recognize the value of all variations and cultures of the Spanish language. There has been some progress in the 35 years since AATSP made the call for heritage language education. Many public school systems and post-secondary institutions are now offering heritage language courses. But do these courses really meet the diverse needs of HLLs? And, can they contribute to closing the achievement gap?

Promising Practices for Systemic Change

The thread that has been present throughout this paper has been the plight of ELLs and HLLs in the current education system. Their lack of social capital, programs based on deficit models, and negative teacher perceptions have contributed to the production and reproduction of inequalities that are evident in both the low enrollment numbers and the low academic achievement of language minority students in world language education. Unless we address the system of inequality as Wilson (1998) advised, and until we create policies that are based upon the goals of the people they are intended to serve as Delpit (2006) suggests, we will not emerge from what Ladson-Billings (2006) describes as our education debt. The next section will examine what has been done in the field of world languages to change the system.

A call for change

In 1986, Cummins proposed a framework for empowering minority students in U.S. schools. His call for change criticized legislative and policy reforms for not addressing the underlying causes of the achievement gap. He boldly stated:

The lip service paid to initial L1 [first language] instruction, community involvement, and nondiscriminatory assessment, together with the emphasis on improved teaching techniques, have succeeded primarily in deflecting attention from the attitudes and orientation of educators who interact on a daily basis with minority students. It is in these interactions that students are disabled. In the absence of individual and collective educator role redefinitions, schools will continue to reproduce, in these interactions, the power relations that characterize the wider society and make minority students’ academic failure inevitable (p. 33).

In his framework, Cummins notes that the differences in power and status between minority and majority groups in our schools have a major influence on the school performance of minority students. In order to change school performance, he, like Wilson (1998), and Rothstein, 2004) called for a systemic change.

Defining systemic change is no easy task. Although Wilson (1998) warned against the analysis of social inequalities that only look at effects of individual factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, it is difficult to ignore Bourdieu’s framework for social capital that is based upon a reciprocal relationship between the individual and the social system. One possibility is that systemic change exists within that reciprocal relationship. Moje, et al. (2004) define this reciprocal relationship as third space, or the space where one’s informal world that includes home, family and community merges with one’s formal world of work, school, and church. The development of third space is critical for changing inequalities that exist in a social system because it is where one’s individual funds of knowledge, or one’s informal ways of knowing, are recognized as having value in the formal world. It is where language minority students can develop an identity within the dominant social world without having to sacrifice their identity within their home language and culture. With roots in sociocultural theory, the idea of creating third space in schools and classrooms, where language minority students can develop a multicultural/multilingual identity that is valued, is gaining momentum in education research.

Reports from the field

Building on Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri’s work with developing curriculum and instruction that meets the diverse needs of ELLs, Schwarzer and Petrón (2005) have provided an outline for developing heritage language courses that are based upon the dreams and goals of the students as well as sound pedagogical practices. Expanding upon Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri’s four-keys of engaging students in a theme-based curriculum; drawing on their background knowledge; organizing collaborative activities; and creating an environment where students can establish self-confidence, Schwarzer and Patrón (2005) call for the use of authentic materials that represent a wide variety of cultures and dialects. Further, they recommend a framework for language learning that is based upon critical pedagogy, where the previous practices of restricting the cultural, linguistic, cognitive and social growth of heritage language learners are replaced with dialogues that promote social justice.

Other research by Weger-Guntharp (2006) suggests that the diverse backgrounds of heritage language learners make it difficult to create courses that would address their individual needs. In her study with post-secondary Chinese HLLs, Weger-Guntharp (2006) found that many of the HLLs prefer to take traditional beginning level language courses instead of the course designed for heritage language learners. They cite reasons such as their perceived low oral and written proficiency, the perceived difficulty of heritage language courses, and a fear that taking the heritage language course will lower their grade point average. Nevertheless, once they found themselves in the traditional world language course for beginners, they reported that they believed that their language abilities were devalued by their instructors. Weger-Guntharp notes that more research is needed to better understand the needs of low-proficiency HLLs who find themselves in classrooms with traditional world language learners. And, drawing upon the work of Moje et al, (2004) and Schwarzer and Patrón (2005), the ability and willingness of world language instructors to create hybrid spaces for HLLs with low oral and written proficiency is of critical importance for their identity development. How, then might these instructors create a classroom environment that addresses not only the needs of traditional world language learners, but also the diverse needs of HLLs?

Carter (2005) says that today’s minority students “need teachers who have not only the pedagogical skill and cultural sensitivity, but also a deeper social understanding and some capability to handle the many ways that students will differ from one another” (p. 156). But, we must ask if this can be accomplished by a teaching profession that is largely comprised of White middle-class females? Although there has been a new found interest in the creation and implementation of professional development for both in-service and pre-service teachers that addresses White privilege and minority discrimination, additional research is still needed to test the efficacy and effectiveness of these programs. In some instances, the commercialization of these programs has blurred the lines between testing their effectiveness and marketing their products. Nevertheless, programs such as REACH have been successful in creating a non-threatening atmosphere where teachers come to understand the history of racism, elitism and classism while exploring their own cultural self-awareness (Howard, 2006).

The call then, is to implement systemic change at the intersection of the individual habitus and the social system. Part of this systemic change includes developing courses for HLLs that are based on their goals and individual needs. This will require educators to value goals and needs that have not traditionally been present in the world language classroom. It will also require the idea of a third space where HLLs can identify with both their informal and formal worlds. But perhaps most importantly, it will require teachers, administrators, and legislators to explore their own cultural backgrounds to fully understand how racism and discrimination have contributed to our education debt.

Conclusion

The realization that narrowing the achievement gap is more realistic that closing it has been well documented by Rothstein (2004), who also believes that schools alone cannot narrow the gap. Addressing issues of class differences such as the inequalities that have historically existed in income, housing, healthcare, and educational programs that extend beyond the school calendar, Rothstein’s call is for social change rather than for education reform. But as Ladson-Billings (2006) notes, our moral debt continues to grow as there is a “disparity between what we know is right and what we actually do” (p. 8). Who then, will institute and maintain the social changes that Rothstein proposes?

Over twenty years ago, Cummins (1986) challenged educators and policy makers alike to create an educational system that would empower minority students, and thus transform society. Recent research indicates positive results in programs that allow language minority students, whether they are ELLs or HLLs, to explore their cultural identities in hybrid spaces. Howard’s (2006) call for the “la tierra transformativa” has shown that there is hope for “dismantling the dominance paradigm and healing the wounds of past and present racism” (p. 143). Yet more research is needed in both the classroom, in professional development, and in pre-service teacher education programs. It will be interesting to see what transpires in the field of world languages over the next twenty years.

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