In this essay, Luis E. Poza argues that educational dignity can help practices and reforms targeting students classified as English learners move beyond a narrow focus on programmatic and material factors related to English language development and instead toward more holistic consideration of these students and their schooling ecologies. In aligning the philosophical and legal operationalizations of dignity with landmark judicial victories for racially and linguistically minoritized students, he argues that dignity frameworks are relevant and actionable for more effectively imagining and designing education as an empowering, emancipatory endeavor.
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Luis E. Poza (
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6775-8719) is an assistant professor of teacher education in the Connie L. Lurie College of Education at San José State University, where he teaches classes about multicultural education, bilingual education, and the roles of language and education in human rights frameworks. His research, recognized with an Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Bilingual Education Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association in 2015 and a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017, examines how ideologies of language, race, class, and nation are embedded and enacted in educational policy and practice for bilingual learners. Poza’s work has been published in several journals, including the
Journal of Education Policy,
Bilingual Research Journal,
Whittier Law Review, and
Journal of Language, Identity & Education.