Achieving Equity for English Learners
An applied linguist, Yasuko Kanno has dedicated her research and professional career to examining the obstacles and limitations to English learner success in K–12 education. English learners are bi- or multilingual students who are deemed to need English language support services at school to obtain language proficiency.
Kanno is a professor in BU Wheelock’s Language Education program. Her most recent research examines the importance of labeling, intersectionality, and equity for English learners and the systemic obstacles that impede their success.
Q&A
BU Wheelock: In your recent research, you explore several related topics regarding English learners. One of these is the disagreement about what to label this population, which others have suggested calling emergent bilinguals or multilingual learners. Please explain a little bit about this context.
Yasuko Kanno: This research was very much motivated by a concern in the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), where many of us are working with this population and are not able to agree on what to call them. The other studies I’ve done, especially on English learners’ access to college, show that they are very much disadvantaged in every possible measure. So why are we spending so much time arguing over the label when we are not really spending enough time focused on how to change the system so that their linguistic assets are valued and recognized?
BU Wheelock: Many English learners are impacted several factors, including race, class, and gender. What has your research found regarding how linguistic educators and researchers have been addressing this intersectionality in their work and what suggestions do you have for expanding the inclusiveness of this field?
Yasuko Kanno: Our research has not found much evidence that educators and researchers have been engaged with the intersectional nature of English learners’ experiences. And I think that’s why we wrote that piece. The fact that this student population is labeled “English learners” definitely shapes their educational opportunities, but there are other factors that come into play.
For example, when a student is admitted to a four-year college but then decides to go to a community college, this is most often not a linguistic issue—it’s a financial issue or it’s an undocumented immigrant status issue. Or if you are a Latino male English learner, there is also racial discrimination and stereotypes against Latino boys that are transposed on top of all the deficit orientations that are put on English learners, too.
All these things matter. And yet, I feel like a lot of us applied linguists tend to look at language and then not look at these other things.
BU Wheelock: Equity seems to be a central focus of your work as well. How have you seen English learners impacted by inequities in education?
Yasuko Kanno: Fundamentally, I’m just really puzzled by why the language you’re born to learn shapes your educational opportunities so much in this country. On the one hand, learning another language in the U.S. is considered a desirable asset, but it doesn’t have the same value when it comes to English learners.
Most English learners have another language that they already speak, and they are adding a second or third or fourth to their repertoire, and yet, that just reduces their educational opportunities so much. Especially when you come into high school with an English learner classification, it does seem to do something to your educational trajectory.
BU Wheelock: Can you speak more to that? What does it do?
Yasuko Kanno: If you come in as an English learner in high school, so much time in your schedule is taken up by English language development. There is very much the assumption in K–12 schools that you must first learn to speak English at a high level before you can actually cope with rigorous academic content.
In Massachusetts, most of these students take content courses, like math or social studies, in what is called EL-sheltered courses. These are the classes for only English learners, where the teachers integrate language support along with the content learning. However, what often happens is that the content is watered down for these students and these students may not have the opportunity to take really high-level courses like AP Calculus.
BU Wheelock: So, wouldn’t that be a form of discrimination? And if so, how can we change that?
Yasuko Kanno: It is, yes! That’s why I talk so much about equity. A lot of it is mindset combined with language support legal requirements. There is also this assumption that we should not send English learners to higher level courses because we are setting them up for failure. In some ways, educators are “protecting” them rather than challenging them to see if they rise to the occasion, and I think a lot of students will, given the opportunity.
