Language, Ideology, and Equity in Chinese-English Dual Language Bilingual Education: From Curriculum to Classroom Practices to Student Experience Peizhu Liu

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Liu, Peizhu, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Education., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

0282.

0290.

0459.

0727.

Local Subjects:

0282.

0290.

0459.

0727.

Physical Description:

1 electronic resource (187 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-07A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2025

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Unlike most research on Chinese-English Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programs, which primarily examines one-way models serving English-dominant, middle-class children (e.g., Tian, 2020; Zheng, 2020), this dissertation investigates a different context-an all-minority student program in New York City. In this seemingly ideal program designed to serve emergent bilinguals, challenges, inequalities, and marginalization persist in less visible ways. Drawing on 1.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork, including classroom observations, discourse analysis, interviews with teachers, parents, and students, as well as analysis of student work and curriculum and assessment documents, the study explores how intersecting ideological, pedagogical, and interactional factors shape curriculum, instruction, and student experiences. Findings reveal that raciolinguistic ideologies embedded in Chinese Language Arts and Mathematics curricula and assessments privilege English over Chinese, narrowing instructional focus and excluding students most in need of support. Teachers' translanguaging practices, influenced by test preparation demands, pressure from English-side colleagues, and limited bilingual resources, often took problematic forms that reinforced rather than disrupted English dominance. At the student level, the case of Fei, a newcomer from China, illustrates how emergent bilinguals are subject to conflicting positionings and how these shifting positionings create both challenges and opportunities for participation and learning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that even programs designed for language-minoritized students can reproduce inequities unless educators and stakeholders critically reflect on education policy, curriculum and assessment design, and everyday classroom practices. As one of the first studies to focus on a two-way Chinese-English DLBE program, this dissertation contributes to scholarship by foregrounding the voices of Chinese students from working-class immigrant families who have often been overlooked. It underscores the tension between DLBE's transformative goals and the reproduction of English hegemony, urging a reimagining of DLBE as a site for ideological, curricular, and pedagogical change that dismantles entrenched hierarchies and cultivates genuinely equitable bilingual education

Notes:

Advisors: Rymes, Betsy R. Committee members: Flores, Nelson; Matsumoto, Yumi; Harvey, Robin E.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-07, Section: A.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2025

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798276001944

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license