Rethinking achievement gaps: language minority status and audience-specific heritage language use in PISA 2018

Abstract

Heritage language use (HLU) has received increasing attention in bilingualism research. Prior studies on achievement gaps between language minority (LMi) students and English-speaking peers have largely focused on HLU at home, which may provide only a partial picture of HLU. Guided by an ecological systems perspective, this study examined how LMi status and HLU with different audiences (e.g. mother, father, schoolmates, best friend) were associated with reading and mathematics achievement in the U.S. PISA 2018 dataset. Using design-based regression models, we compared unadjusted with covariate-adjusted gaps after accounting for socioeconomic status, teacher learning support, parental emotional support, gender and immigration background. Unadjusted models indicated lower reading and mathematics performance for LMi students, but these differences attenuated and became nonsignificant after covariate adjustment. Additionally, among LMi students, HLU was audience-specific: greater HLU with parents was positively associated with academic achievement, whereas greater HLU with peers was negatively associated. These findings are consistent with a possible opportunity gap interpretation and highlight the importance of measuring HLU across home and peer contexts. Overall, this study challenges deficit-oriented interpretations of LMi students’ HLU and demonstrates the value of context-specific HLU measurement for future research.

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