Leading for Equity: How Education Leaders Navigate Conflicts to Implement Dual Language Immersion Policies

Abstract

Dual language immersion is an instructional model increasingly adopted by school and district leaders to improve educational opportunities for traditionally marginalized emergent bilingual or bilingual students. Current studies suggest that dual language programs support bilingual students’ academic achievement and bilingual development, but often fail to disrupt social structures and instructional practices that disadvantage students from language minoritized communities. Echoing trends in literature depicting the implementation of other equity policies, dual language implementation studies show that leaders tend to compromise the equity-focused elements of these program when confronted with overwhelming implementation challenges, including scarce resources, accountability pressures, and resistance from parents and teachers. This study investigates how education leaders navigate this contested terrain to achieve their equity aims by drawing on theories of micro-politics and Strategic Action Fields. This qualitative comparative case study analyzes conflict episodes during dual language immersion policy implementation in four different grade-level teams at two schools in a single district to trace how leaders’ strategic actions influenced policy outcomes. Across cases, leaders’ actions produced a spectrum of more or less successful implementation outcomes, ranging from short-term agreements to enduring coalitions built on shared logics and values. My findings depict effective political leadership moves in varied educational contexts, illustrating how leaders drew strategically upon different sources of authority and adapted their approaches based on local conditions. These findings contribute to existing literature by focusing on how actors’ coalition-building moves influence implementation and elaborating on successful equity-policy leadership practices. These findings suggest that school and district leaders might productively navigate equity-policy implementation by acting strategically to build buy-in over time.