Producing change and stability: A scalar analysis of Paraguayan bilingual education policy implementation

Research on educational language policy has faced the perennial question of how to conceptualize and analyze the relationships between what are often seen as macro-level policy and micro-level practices. Recent work on social identification and language in globalization demonstrates, however, that analysis of complex social phenomena requires attention to multiple and heterogeneous scales of time and space (Blommaert, 2010, Canagarajah, 2013 and Wortham, 2006). Drawing on this work, this paper uses the notion of scales to examine how both change and stability were produced in the appropriation of a national policy to incorporate Guarani into instruction in Paraguay. The analysis shows how the policy was appropriated in ways that left rural, Guarani-dominant children marginalized while benefitting urban, Spanish-dominant children. The scalar frame is productive not only for explaining patterns of appropriation and policy effect, but also in pointing to ways that we might make policy more effectively support language minoritized students.