The Policy Feedback Loop: Exploring English Learner (EL) Policy, Policy Implementation, and the Relationship between Policy, Research, and Practice

This study will explore the EL policy implementation process and offer evaluative feedback by systematically reviewing the history of US federal educational language policy and its impact on schools and classrooms, as well as the role research, has played in the development of EL policy. Additionally, this study will explore how current language policy implementation impacts programming and practices in both the UK and the US through two separate case studies, as a means of providing evaluative feedback on the policies.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the complicated history of EL policy and its impact, as well as to address the policy feedback gap by investigating the process of how specific and local EL policy is interpreted from the national and state level, and then supported and enacted at the K-12 level. Additionally, this study seeks to chart how this interpretation and enactment manifests across and within a school, how policy influences EL programs and practices, and how this localized implementation relates to the state and national policies. Thus, I hope to create the means to analyze EL policy with innovative conceptual and theoretical frames, to provide transparent policy feedback as well as to delineate the specifics of policy enactment in the EL context, highlighting how policy influences programs and practices.

Final Defense + Graduation form have been submitted; previous revisions all addressed.