Parental attitudes and activism reshape educational language policies: the surge of dual language programmes in California

Abstract

While educational language policies have been shown to have a stronger influence on school-aged children’s multilingual outcomes than Family Language Policy, California provides an example of how parental motivation and activism can also have a profound impact on educational language policies. This paper has two goals: first, it provides an overview of the legislative changes that affected California’s educational system between the 1970s and the present, which resulted in an overall shift in public opinion and attitudes towards multilingualism and in a transition from promotion-oriented to restriction-oriented to again promotion-oriented educational policies with regards to multilingual education. The second part of the paper exemplifies the agency of Californian families in shaping their children’s education by describing the history of an Italian/English two-way immersion programme born out of parental activism. The paper then presents the results of a preliminary study on parental attitudes within the programme, highlighting parents’ strong appreciation of multilingualism and their renewed enthusiasm for Italian proficiency, bilingualism, and biliteracy in this Southern California’s community.

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