Community colleges serve a crucial role in providing higher education access for U.S. English learner (EL) populations. Many ELs are placed in community college academic ESL programs in order to prepare them to transition to taking courses in the wider college. Yet, the success of academic ESL programs has been mixed at best, with these programs appearing to function as barriers to EL student success rather than as pathways to higher education. This case study examines one community college’s Academic ESL program in the northeastern United States to determine what is the intended role of the program and what role does the program actually play in the wider college and in individual student trajectories. To determine which factors impact the Academic ESL program’s role, data collection included state and institutional-level documents, interviews with college administrators, faculty, and staff, and classroom observations. My theoretical framework included a modified version of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological model in conjunction with raciolinguistic and orientations in language planning lenses.
The findings identify that the Academic ESL program did not function as intended, and that factors at each level of the program’s ecological system (exo, outer-meso, inner-meso, and micro) contributed barriers to the Academic ESL program’s success. First, policies regarding tuition, financial aid, and immigration all hindered Academic ESL program enrollment. Second, the program’s structure, curriculum, lack of coordination between levels, and the divergent viewpoints of the faculty who taught in the program all created barriers to the program serving as a pathway for ELs into the wider college. EL students who managed to transition from the Academic ESL program to other college coursework faced additional barriers in the wider college, including a language support as accommodation discourse and a Nursing program which was hesitant to admit many linguistic minority (LM) students from entering due to accreditation concerns regarding whether they could contribute to low pass rates on national exams. An underlying reason for these factors was that administrators at the state and college level did not adequately address the role of language in higher education or prioritize the needs of linguistically diverse populations.
This study argues that traditional academic ESL programs are often ill-suited to serve many EL populations. In response, community colleges should not only seek to overhaul ineffective academic ESL programs, but also to create pathways for ELs of varied proficiency levels to better access already existing vocational training programs. Furthermore, community colleges serving diverse populations should create and adopt campus language plans that identify resources as well as the roles and expectations of faculty and staff in supporting student language development.
Finally, this study highlights the need for decision makers and researchers to consider the complex ways in which actions at one structural level (state Department of Higher Education, administration, classroom, etc.) reverberate across levels. Creating more equitable ESL programs and support for ELs can only occur when varied factors, many of which are beyond the control of any individual college or faculty member, are fully considered and accounted for.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45216 |
| Date | 29 September 2022 |
| Creators | David, Nicholas Eli |
| Contributors | Kanno, Yasuko |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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