The need for this book arises from historical contradictions (i.e., tensions), still prevailing today in teaching and learning efforts with emergent bilingual children, and in teacher education for multiply diverse classrooms (i.e., intersectional classrooms). The main historical contradictions invading the teaching and learning with bilingual children with a disability are (1) the intersectional deficit perspectives invading the learning of bilingual children with a disability and (2) the lack of inclusive bilingual education opportunities and of agreement on what processes are needed to prepare teachers for such contexts.
Intersectional Deficit Perspectives on Bilingual Children With a Disability
There are multiple indicators currently used to describe academic performance (i.e., graduation rate, educational achievement measured by test scores, etc.) that depict emergent bilingual children with a disability as performing poorly in schools. For instance, in New York State, only 39% of emergent bilinguals with a disability successfully finished high school in 2019, while there was a much higher rate of 86% for nonemergent bilinguals (New York State Education Department [NYSED], 2019). These disparities indicate that schools have failed to understand the complexities of children with multiple potential learning identities or the forms of oppression they experience (Crenshaw, 1991; Liasidou, 2013).
The intersection of emergent bilingual and disability categories, in relation to disproportionality, has been amply explored in the literature and noticed by educators. I was an inclusive bilingual teacher for more than ten years before entering higher education. During those years, my students that were identified with disabilities under the federal law guiding special education services (i.e., Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act [IDEIA], 2004) were mostly Latinx children of color and labeled as emergent bilinguals. Disproportionality was very visible then, and still is nowadays, throughout classes in the United States. Issues of over- and underrepresentation have also been well documented in a number of studies, in which wide discrepancies across states have been reported (Artiles et al., 2011; Harry & Klingner, 2014). In essence, when looking at the data by state, research suggests an overrepresentation of emergent bilingual children in, what are often referred to as, the “soft” disability categories (Donovan & Cross, 2002; Sullivan, 2011). Soft is a term used to refer to disability labels that are of “a less tangible nature—perhaps because of their apparent ‘invisibility’—in comparison to physical or sensory disabilities” (Connor & Ferri, 2005, p. 110, emphasis in original). These disabilities include, for example, the categories of SLD and speech and language impairment (SLI). The identification of soft disabilities typically begins when children start school and is rife with vague definitions and subjective processes often guided by biased assessments (Connor & Ferri, 2005).
The issue of misidentification of emergent bilingual children with fixed disability labels is particularly problematic because this population is most susceptible to educational inequities situated at the intersection of differences. For example, emergent bilinguals with a disability have fewer opportunities to learn in high-quality bilingual programs (Martínez-Álvarez, 2018), receive less support for English-language development (Kangas, 2018), and are exposed to lower expectations for their learning (Kangas, 2020) than those without an ELL label. In a sense, the disability label results in fewer inclusive opportunities for emergent bilingual children.
Deficit perspectives invading the learning of bilingual children is connected to the historical resistance to bilingual education in the United States. For decades, a sociopolitical antagonism to having children of immigrant background learn in their home languages has been extant in the United States. Such opposition is rooted in the country’s enduring legacy of racism (MacMillan & Hendrick, 1993). The resistance to bilingual education for immigrant communities sharply contrasts with existing research documenting the manifold benefits that growing as bilingual and biliterate individuals pose for children. For example, when children learn bilingually, they present favorable attitudes toward learning, develop strong bilingual identities, and display several cognitive strengths (e.g., Bialystok, 2010; Kabuto, 2010; Umansky & Reardon, 2014).
Even within bilingual education, there are issues related to language hierarchies. These most often manifest through a strict separation of languages and the unfavorable ways in which translanguaging practices have been historically understood within and beyond bilingual programs (Martínez, 2013). Only recently, bilingual research efforts are beginning to recognize the latent possibilities in the hybrid use of languages and of multiple modes for learning (García, 2009). The misconceptions that bilingual children lack basic skills for learning and that only those children considered to be “able” can learn in two languages accentuate restrictive access to dual-language bilingual education (e.g., Espinosa, 2008; Genesee, 2007; Greenfield, 2013).
These populist ideas prevail as a result of the imagined view of the “normal” or “average” child. The so-perceived normal child learns using recognizable processes that are valued in schools, while all others are excluded as they are considered to be out...
