CHR Fellow Talk: Professor Jennifer Leeman (Modern & Classical Languages), "Gentrification and bilingual education in Washington DC: Discursive and spatial intersections"

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Hybrid Event in Horizon Hall 6325 and on Zoom

Whereas Spanish/English bilingual education programs implemented in the 1960s were designed primarily for Latinx children, since the 1980s dual language immersion (DLI) programs, which are designed to promote bilingualism among English-speakers as well as Spanish-speakers, have become the dominant model. Along with a shift in educational policy there has been a shift in discourses surrounding bilingual education and bilingualism; whereas the motivation for early programs was framed primarily as a question of equity and inclusion, current discourses promoting DLI often extol the economic value of bilingualism. In recent years, the metaphor of “gentrification” has been used to critique these shifts, the prioritizing of affluent White English-speaking children within DLI programs, and the dispossession of educational resources and opportunities from children of color (especially Latinx and Black children). In this project, Dr. Leeman and her collaborators, Dr. Galey Modan (Ohio State University) and Dr. Lou Thomas (Rowan University) go beyond the use of gentrification as a metaphor by investigating educational policies and discourses at a DLI school in Washington DC and their connection to the political economic processes and policies that have led to the displacement of racialized and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups from the surrounding neighborhood and city. Specifically, they analyze the interplay of educational policies (such as school boundaries and accountability measures); discourses about the social, economic and academic value of Spanish, multilingualism and ethnoracial diversity; housing policies and real estate prices; and neighborhood demographics in order to understand how DLI programs fit into the larger economic, political and cultural landscape of gentrification in DC.