A critical ethnographic examination of New Jersey's education policy landscape and its influence on foreign language elementary school teacher practice

Since 1996, New Jersey's K-8 foreign language authorization has accounted for the proliferation of foreign language elementary school (FLES) teaching in public schools statewide. However, recent changes in New Jersey public education policy and funding have had a negative impact on this trend. Many programs have been eliminated or teachers have been replaced with computer assisted language learning programs.;Using a critical ethnographic approach, this study examines the perspectives of eight elementary school foreign language teachers regarding the current state of early foreign language education in New Jersey and how changes in education policy affect their work. Though a new wave of language education policy research refocuses attention from the role of governments to local stakeholders in influencing and shaping language education policy, little attention has been given to the role of teacher agency in the delivery of language education policy for early foreign language education in the United States. The trending research reveals that teachers, located on the front lines of delivering on education policy, identify how to most effectively adapt a policy according to the conditions in their schools and school districts.;The experiences of the eight teachers who participated in this study were audiorecorded using an approach informed by multiple sequential interviewing. Their collective experience tells a story of dedication to implement the New Jersey K-8 foreign language authorization in the face of three challenges: limits to FLES teacher agency to make programs sustainable, the absence of political will to invest time and money in FLES, and low consensus about the goals of early foreign language education. Together, these factors have the circumscriptive effect of relegating elementary school foreign language programs to the margins of the curricular life of participants' schools despite the fact that foreign language is declared a major subject K-12 in New Jersey's core curriculum.