Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0391-7749

Date of Award

Summer 5-28-2025

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Linguistics, Applied

First Advisor

Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza

Second Advisor

Dr. Panayota Gounari

Third Advisor

Dr. Rosalyn Negron

Abstract

This dissertation examines how multilingual English language teachers (MLETs) reshape mainstream secondary education through asset-based, linguistically inclusive pedagogies. Using an ethnographic, participatory design grounded in second-generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the study investigates a Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) program at East Summer High (ESH), a public, four-year high school located northwest of Boston, Massachusetts. ESH serves approximately 1,394 students and offers a range of academic and vocational programs, including structured SEI pathways that support English Learners (ELs) at various proficiency levels, such as SEI-1, SEI-General Education, and SEI-Special Education. Over three years of immersive fieldwork, data sources include in-depth interviews, classroom observations, professional development workshops, and staff meeting analyses.

Findings reveal that while English-centric policies and accountability measures constrain classroom practices, MLETs strategically leverage their linguistic repertoires to challenge monolingual norms. By centering translanguaging, relational and intellectual care, and critical consciousness, they create learning environments where students’ home languages are valued as academic resources. Additionally, teachers’ reflections highlight the transformative potential of liberatory cariño—a decolonial extension of critical care that encourages students to interrogate systemic inequities and question the interests embedded in language policies. The study further explores how MLETs navigate and renegotiate their linguistic identities, moving beyond native/non-native binaries to reclaim professional legitimacy and embrace multicompetence. Professional Learning Communities and participatory workshops emerge as catalysts for collective problem-solving, fostering more equitable, community-driven approaches to language education. By integrating CHAT with teacher identity scholarship and translanguaging theory, this research demonstrates how policy constraints can become opportunities for pedagogical innovation.

The dissertation concludes with implications for theory, policy, and practice, advocating for explicit translanguaging support, reflective professional development, and decolonial critiques of English-only mandates. Ultimately, it argues that MLETs—through relational, critical, and liberatory practices—can transform SEI classrooms into sites of linguistic justice and social change.

Comments

Free and open access to this Campus Access Thesis is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the “Off-Campus Users” button.

Download

Share

COinS