Rating: ★★★★/5
One Word to Describe It: Foundational (no pun intended)
This book was one of the base texts for a course I took last semester, Foundations of Multilingual Education, with Dr. Shannon Daniel. Pulled from our syllabus, this course covered all of the “historical, political, legal, theoretical, cultural, and educational influences that shape schooling for multilingual students learning English as an additional language.” While this book is a little outdated (published in 2011), it felt wholly relevant. In our current academic publishing scene of citing what feels like every thought you have, I found the lack of citations in every other sentence quite refreshing.
My main takeaway was de Jong’s four principles for multilingual education: a) educational equity, b) affirming identities, c) promoting additive bi/multilingualism, and d) structuring for integration. Also, as someone who has found a recent interest in policy, I appreciated the time she took in Chapter 6 to walk through how language policy in the United States has shifted over the past century. Very pleasant read – I recommend!