We don't do anything: analyzing the construction of legitimate knowledge in multilingual schools

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which what counts as legitimate knowledge is produced and negotiated in two multilingual classrooms of two different programs designed to “attend to diversity” at secondary schools in the Madrid region. Following a sociolinguistic approach, the article focuses on the ways in which local identities, beliefs and social relations emerging from situated practice become a window through which to understand how different social experiences and academic trajectories are institutionally constructed in connection with broader social processes. For this reason, the article seeks to connect recorded and observed classroom interactional patterns, through which legitimate knowledge is produced, with social actors’ (teachers and students) positioning-s, and the academic trajectories of students enrolled in such programs. We end with a discussion about the possible consequences of such practices for migrant students, recently arrived in the Madrid classrooms, in terms of academic success and school participation.

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ORCID for Adriana Patino-Santos: orcid.org/0000-0003-1950-3954

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