2025 AAAL Conference Colloquium—Dual Language Bilingual Education in Non-Dominant Partner Languages: Expanding the Research Base

Dual Language Bilingual Education in Non-Dominant Partner Languages: Expanding the Research Base
Date & Time: March 25, 2025 | 8:00–10:00 a.m. Mountain Standard Time
Location: Silver, AAAL, Denver, CO

Organizer
Hina Ashraf, Georgetown University

Organizer
Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University

Discussant
Ester de Jong, University of Colorado Denver

Discussant
Diep Nguyen, Center for Applied Linguistics

Author
Mahassen Ballouli, Arabic Immersion Magnet School of Houston

Author
Jayoung Choi, Kennesaw State University

Author
Vashti Wai Yu Lee, Michigan State University

Author
Alisha Nguyen, Lesley University

Description:
Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) pursues four primary goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, sociocultural competence, and critical consciousness (Freire, Alfaro, & de Jong, 2024; Howard et al., 2018). Based on the 2021 American Councils directory, approximately 80% of DLBE programs in the U.S. partner with Spanish. This trend reflects DLBE’s ties with civil rights movements of Latinx communities (Moore, 2024) and the demographic presence of Spanish speakers in the U.S. However, this focus has resulted in a research gap concerning non-dominant, and particularly non-European, partner languages (Morita-Mullaney, 2024). Increasingly diverse linguistic, cultural, and ethnic communities desire DLBE programs, and these communities inhabit different valences and histories in the U.S. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to the four goals of DLBE will be impossiblein this diversified landscape. This colloquium foregrounds research on DLBE programs with 5 partner languages that are widely spoken globally but under-taught and under-researched in the U.S.: Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Urdu, and Vietnamese. Each DLBE context presents its own challenges to sustainability, points of tension around programmatic and equity goals, and opportunities for success. The Presenters focus on different dimensions of DBLE: (1) program success against all odds (Arabic), (2) learning to span complex research-practice boundaries for collaboration (Korean), (3) a teacher’s development of ideological clarity (Mandarin), (4) the evolving, emotion-imbued beliefs about biliteracy of six teachers (Urdu), and (5) power negotiations over linguistic justice among community leaders, educators, and district administrators (Vietnamese). The colloquium is organized as follows. After an introduction by the co-organizers, each presenter will do 15-minute presentations. Two senior DBLE scholars will be our discussants, each taking 10 minutes to synthesize lessons across presentations and theorize the unique value added—for research and for practice—of DLBE in non-dominant partner languages. We will conclude the session with 20 minutes of audience interaction.