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How do we get policymakers to prioritize multilingual and multicultural education (MME) and to emphasize the incorporation of translanguaging theoretical stances and practice (García, 2017; García and Wei, 2015; Vogel and García, 2017) into education? This is the question that keeps coming up at the end of conference presentations, in teacher lounges, at faculty meetings. Silence follows the question, because we educators do not really know how this transition that we have been talking about for so long will happen. Then, everyone takes a breath and tries to come up with an optimistic answer: We are making progress, the research that shows the benefits is irrefutable, they are beginning to pay attention. And we keep working and trying to do better, because educators are, at heart, optimists. We believe in the goodness, student-aligned priorities and logic of others, who we think must be paying attention, although attention – and funding – are often focused on something entirely unrelated.
First, however, some background information related to multicultural and, then, multilingual education is warranted. Definitions of multicultural education vary while maintaining a focus on education that is inclusive and equitable. Banks and Banks (2001) defined multicultural education as:
An idea, an educational reform movement, and a process whose major goal is to change the structure of educational institutions so that male and female students, exceptional students, and students who are members of diverse racial, ethnic, language, and cultural groups will have an equal chance to achieve academically in school (p. 1).
Ladson-Billings (2004) addresses multicultural education through advocacy for culturally responsive pedagogy along with teacher training. The National Association for Multicultural Education refers to education that involves social justice and is equitable, diverse and inclusive (National Association for Multicultural Education, 2022). (For a more extensive discussion on definitions of multicultural education, see, for example, Özturgut, 2011).
Multilingual education may include, for example, dual language education (Collier and Thomas, 2020, 2017, 2004; Thomas and Collier, 2003) and the translanguaging stance in practice (García, 2017; García and Wei, 2015; Vogel and García, 2017). Dual language education provides instruction and support in students’ heritage language while supporting the transition to learning in a new language, and student participants may be English learners learning alongside native English speakers. Dual language...