UC San Diego

How do bilingual Mexican American children make sense of their school experiences in the context of restrictive language policies such as California's Proposition 227? The primary goal of this study was to better understand relationships among agency, power, and identity through an examination of participants' views, or ideologies, about language. Data were collected at an urban public school near the U.S.-Mexico border, through group and individual interviews as well as through participant observation in a bilingual third-grade and a mainstream English fourth- grade classroom. Four research questions guided the study: What views about language were held by the teachers? What views about language were held by the children? How were these views enacted within and shaped by classroom language practices? How did these views and practices contribute to the construction of children's identities at school? Overall findings suggest that children explicitly valued bilingualism but were beginning to enact the hegemony of English in keeping with the institutional structure of the transitional bilingual program. However, when teachers challenged theories of linguistic expertise and authority embedded within the policy context, children were able to exercise agency in constructing more positive academic identities. The third-grade teacher helped students understand a developmental perspective on second language acquisition. The fourth-grade teacher drew children's attention to multiple textual voices within academic discourse. Thus, children were provided multiple opportunities to be recognized as "good students." Previous and contemporary literature on student accommodation and resistance (e.g., Carter, 2005; Foley, 1990; Willis, 1977) has largely overlooked elementary school children. Studying children allows for an examination of identity construction within schools not only as a situated enactment or performance (Bucholz, 2004), but also as an aspect of social, emotional, cognitive, and physical maturation (e.g., Cole & Cole, 2001). The findings of the present study highlight possibilities for agency on the part of children and teachers through explicit attention to language use, informed by a theory of educational practice as struggle (Freire, 1970; Remillard & Cahnmann, 2005) within restrictive contexts