Multicultural Social Justice Education Through the Lens of Positioning: English Language Learners in K–12 Contexts

English language learners (ELLs) continue to be a growing part of the K–12 student population in the United States. Besides their ELL status, these students also differ from the overall student population based on their ethnic/ racial composition. According to the current statistics (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2021), around 92% of the overall ELL population in the United States are students of color. Thus, understanding the intersectional identities of these students and their racialized linguistic experiences in the school environment becomes more necessary than before. Since the goal of the social justice education is “full and equal participation of all groups in society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs” (Adams et al., 1997, p. 1), it is important to understand how ELLs are positioned in educational settings and how their self- and other-positionings influence their participation and access to learning opportunities. Drawing on social and positioning theories (e.g., Davies & Harré, 1990; Erickson, 2004; Holland et al., 1998) a number of scholars have focused on power relations in culturally and linguistically diverse K–12 classrooms and provided descriptions of the classroom contexts and speech events for understanding classroom participation. Their findings have been eye-opening in terms of demonstrating how ELLs were positioned in English dominant discourse communities in ways that native speaker peers or teachers limited their access to classroom discussions and activities (e.g., Bashir-Ali, 2006; DaSilva Iddings, 2005; Duff, 2002; Hunter, 1997; Martin-Beltrán, 2010; McKay & Wong, 1996; Miller, 2000). Focusing on the K–12 classroom contexts, in the following section I first define social justice education, review related literature on positioning, and then revisit the notion of multicultural social justice to discuss further what it should mean in the education of ELLs.