Head Start Teachers' Language Ideologies and Policy Implementation in New Immigrant Settlement Areas in Pennsylvania
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Umezawa, Kiyomi
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 24, 2023
- Committee Members:
- Kimberly Anne Powell, Program Head/Chair
Esther Prins, Outside Unit & Field Member
Allison Henward, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kai Schafft, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Francesca Lopez, Major Field Member - Keywords:
- Head Start
Policy
Teachers' Language Ideology
Bilingual Education
New Immigrant Settlements
Latin@
Policy Implementation
Ethnography - Abstract:
- This is a comparative ethnography that focuses on Head Start programs and their educators in four New Immigrant Settlement areas in Pennsylvania, and it investigates Head Start educators’ understanding and implementation of Head Start’s language policy of 2007. Under this policy, all educators are mandated to recognize multilingual children’s home languages as an asset and incorporate them into daily practices to support the development of both English and home language skills. Namely, educators are expected to conduct bilingual education. Meanwhile, in those four areas, the existences of immigrants are relatively new, and most Head Start educators are monolingual English users. This study investigates how those educators confront the language policy of 2007, understand it, and turn it into their daily classroom practices, reflecting dialogical relationships they have had with surrounding facets, such as their language ideologies, backgrounds, training, organization, community, and children. The findings indicate that the outcomes of the policy vary depending on several aspects: if the organization has people who share the cultural and linguistic background with children they mainly serve at the administrative level; if educators hold an asset-based perspective toward bilingualism; and how the new immigrant community has developed and merged into the original community. This study offers an ethnographic understanding of policy implementation, lives of Afro-Caribbean children attending Head Start in Pennsylvania, and monolingual English-speaking educators’ struggles serving children who speak Spanish. This study also sheds light on the need for training and resources for educators, and communications between Head Start programs and public schools.