Minority Language Education Reform from the Bottom: Two-Way Immersion Education for New Immigrant Populations in the United States

This paper focuses on the role of personal, educational, and socio-cultural contexts influencing the creation and implementation of a two-way immersion program in a rural district in the U.S. It centers on White teacher transformation into microlevel language policy (LP) reformers and the processes involved in their reintepretation and “correction” of top-down LPs for inclusive, enriching, and equitable educational reform for English language learners and mainstream students. The study asks: how educators contested monolingual or remedial bilingual education to promote enrichment bilingual programs and policies, and what contexts fostered and constrained teachers’ role as microlevel LP reformers.