The Future of Education

Education is based on language, semiotics and the use of other tools in communicative activities designed to support the teaching and learning needs of all people (Halliday, 1982, 1989; van Lier, 2004; Vygotsky, 1987). Human language encompasses semiotics, psychological, symbolic, and physical tools, and is used mediationally to learn and develop our culture and society. Such mediation and its use through discoursing or languaging make development in L2 learning possible by coordinating actions and activities promoting such change (Wells, 2012). These discourses also carry socializations imbued with empowering and disempowering “positionings” (Foucault, 1977) in the classroom and can impact, for example, the effectiveness and longevity of student education (Dworin, 2011). Language socialization and “positioning” has been researched by identifying characteristics and attributes of such language, with discourse analysis identifying terms, words, or concepts describing people's L2 learning dispositions, lingua-biases, and status positions (Edelsky, 2006; Valdes, 1997; Howard, Sugarman, & Christian, 2003) including translanguaging issues (Garcia, 2011; Otheguy & Garcia, 2015). Accordingly, there is a need to understand the nature of how classroom discourse empowers and disempowers participants, particularly for those learning a new second language. Stetsenko (2017) claims that such language and socialization as authentically occurring in the classroom continues to be an area of need in educational research, noting the “lack of discussion about race and power in sociocultural theories including those in Vygotsky's lineage.” In this study, issues of power and positionings are viewed through a Vygotskian sociocultural theoretical framework of language as a primary tool for learning. Using a qualitative case-study analysis process (Merriam, 1998), discourses were viewed in both English and Spanish for characteristics demonstrating whether they empowered or disempowered the students while using either of the languages. Empowerment/disempowerment was based on van Lier’s (1996) definition of authenticity and agency in language. Findings demonstrate how discourse in a Spanish-English dual language immersion classroom did not necessarily meet the minority language needs of the Latinos learning English. In addition, teacher-to-student(s) discourses revealed characteristics of disempowerment for all students, a result that conflicted with the teachers’ beliefs that they were performing “best practices” approved for second language learning.

Keywords: Empowerment/Disempowerment discourse; Second language learning; authenticity; agency;