Research Strands
Taken as a whole, Dr. Heineke’s research probes how PK-12 educators promote equity for multilingual learners in U.S. schools. Recognizing that U.S. schools were designed to serve English-dominant students, her research seeks to disrupt monolingual, assimilative, and deficit-based ideologies that typically accompany the policies, programs, and practices that claim to serve students labeled as English learners. With three intersecting research strands, Dr. Heineke’s scholarship seeks to study and elevate tangible ways that educators can transform the educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes of this large and growing population of U.S. students.
Language Policy and Programming
Language policies guide programs and practices for multilingual learners. Whether these policies center on English or involve multiple languages, educators make decisions while implementing policies that serve to widen or narrow students' access to learning and language development.
Curriculum Design with a Language Lens
Curricula guides teaching, though traditionally written by external companies without attention to students' cultural backgrounds and linguistic competencies. Teachers can widen or narrow access to grade-level learning by designing and enhancing curricula with lenses on students' language and identities.
Teacher Learning for Multilingual Learners
In preservice teacher preparation or inservice professional development, teachers need opportunities to learn about multilingual learners and how to best serve them in their classrooms. Teacher educators can support or deter teacher learning, which subsequently shapes teachers' mindsets, discourse, expectations, and practices.
Current Research Projects
Strong Schools for Multilingual Learners
During the COVID-19 pandemic, attention to multilingual learners and their families emerged as tantamount to providing equitable distance learning that reached all students regardless of language background or proficiency levels. Educators in multiple roles creatively and innovatively (a) engaged families, (b) supported students, (c) nurtured collaboration, and (d) centered well-being to get through what was arguably the most difficult time in modern U.S. schooling. Many actions taken by districts served to bolster the educational opportunities and outcomes, and we see the potential to continue these policies, programs, and practices in post-COVID practice. Done in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Vera, this multiple case study of districts across the United States seeks to understand the strengths of local stakeholders’ work with multilingual learners around these four facets.
K-8 Pathways to the
Seal of Biliteracy
This study investigates how teachers and leaders work to implement pathways to biliteracy in elementary and middle schools, which connect to the Seal of Biliteracy typically awarded in high school. Given the Seal of Biliteracy is a nascent policy initiative in the last decade, the related pathway recognitions, which seek to encourage students’ biliteracy development over time in PK-8 contexts, have only emerged in the last few years. Despite their potential to promote longitudinal biliteracy development and language programming, they are understudied and under-implemented. With this research, we aim to share best practices on developing Seal of Biliteracy pathway programs for educators across the nation to implement in their settings. Done in collaboration with Dr. Kristin Davin, this study’s findings will be published in a research-based monograph with Georgetown University Press.
The Seal of Biliteracy in Higher Education
Whereas research on the Seal of Bilteracy has centered on U.S. high schools, a growing number of institutions of higher education have initiated this work. Edited in collaboration with Dr. Kristin Davin, this volume shares Seal of Biliteracy efforts in colleges and universities across the United States. Chapters probe equity efforts for heritage language users such as (a) faculty using the Seal of Biliteracy to provide college credit and placement into coursework for less commonly taught languages, (b) faculty enacting their own recognitions for those who did not have the opportunity to receive one in high school, and (c) faculty using the Seal of Biliteracy to recruit students into professional programming. With this text, we aim to showcase Seal of Biliteracy efforts so faculty can consider efforts in their own contexts to support biliteracy and equity among immigrant-origin and Indigenous students who use other languages.
