ABSTRACT

In spring 2019, without controversy or fanfare and without violating the voter mandate of Proposition 203, emergent bilinguals in Arizona were once again granted unrestricted access to dual language bilingual education after nearly 20 years. The policy change was accomplished through a seemingly small piece of legislation that reduced the daily Structured English Immersion requirement from four hours to two hours. In this study, we analyze the Senate and House education committee hearings in which this legislation was unanimously approved before being signed into law by the governor. Using critical discourse analysis and through a theoretical lens of interest convergence, we examine the strategic moves utilized by speakers and legislators to build consensus for this remarkable, yet overlooked, legislation. We found that, in contrast to policy reforms in California and Massachusetts, which used a “multilingualism-for-all” strategy, the speakers and legislators in Arizona focused on English learners. Yet, they worked to show that a change benefitting English learners would also benefit parents, schools, teachers, districts, and even the state of Arizona. Our findings suggest that advocacy for bilingual education that is informed by contextual awareness and translated into the local discourse can produce success, even in conservative contexts such as Arizona.

摘要

2019 年春天，在没有争议或大张旗鼓的情况下，在没有违反 203 号提案的选民授权的情况下，亚利桑那州的新兴双语者在近 20 年后再次获得不受限制的双语双语教育。政策变化是通过一项看似很小的立法来实现的，该立法将每日结构化英语沉浸要求从 4 小时减少到 2 小时。在这项研究中，我们分析了参议院和众议院教育委员会的听证会，在这些听证会上，这项立法在州长签署成为法律之前获得了一致批准。通过批判性话语分析和利益趋同的理论视角，我们研究了演讲者和立法者用来为这项非凡但被忽视的立法建立共识的战略举措。我们发现，与加利福尼亚州和马萨诸塞州采用“多语种”战略的政策改革相比，亚利桑那州的演讲者和立法者关注的是英语学习者。然而，他们努力表明，让英语学习者受益的改变也会让家长、学校、教师、学区甚至亚利桑那州受益。我们的研究结果表明，以情境意识为依据并转化为当地话语的双语教育倡导可以取得成功，即使在亚利桑那州这样的保守环境中也是如此。