School-based language education programs (e.g., English as a Second Language) were created to increase access and facilitate academic success for linguistically marginalized students. However, larger educational contexts continue to compromise access for these students by systematically pathologizing and othering them in ways that deny or limit their access to opportunities to learn. Recognizing a need for more complex understandings of language access, U.S. scholars have turned to intersectionality; however, as an analytical framework, intersectionality has often been applied in “race neutral” ways to explain individual encounters rather than name and dismantle inequitable structures. Similarly, traditional unitary and unidimensional approaches to language education have centered language while omitting critical perspectives of race and disability thereby upholding policies, programs, and conceptualizations of languages and language practices that perpetuate the systematic marginalization of a growing population of students: multilingual learners with disabilities (MLwDs). By focusing on MLwDs, we demonstrate how MLs who are racialized and pathologized through language have been systematically ignored in ways that sustain systems of oppression. As an alternative, we present the Expansive Language Access Framework (ELAF), a structure for understanding what it would mean to attend to race, language, and dis/ability in policy, programming, and practice. We illustrate how the ELAF can serve as a tool for stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, educators) to critically examine, evaluate, and rethink their role in perpetuating institutional oppressions that MLwDs encounter while creating opportunities for growth, expansion, and increased access to holistically responsive learning opportunities. Implications for international contexts will be highlighted.

Authors:
Rebecca Linares, Rowan University, United States
María Cioé-Peña, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Sara Kangas, Lehigh University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Rebecca E. Linares is an Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Literacy, Technology, and Multilingual Education in the College of Education at Rowan University in New Jersey in the USA.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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