A decade after institutionalization: educators’ perspectives of structured English immersion

In 2006, Arizona ELL Task Force implemented Structured English Immersion (SEI) within its public schools to educate emergent bilingual (EB) students. Although prior research has demonstrated limitations of SEI, we investigate whether institutionalization has improved its implementation and outcomes using coordinators’ and teachers’ responses from a statewide summit. Analyses of responses for each of the research questions uncovered that SEI was viewed as providing ease of implementation, but there were several obstacles introduced: (1) limitations to curricular access and correlation to standards; (2) deficit model; (3) limited access to language acquisition; (4) limited access to high school graduation; (5) issues with language assessment; (6) classification concerns; (7) classroom segregation; and (8) lack of teacher preparation for instruction. Respondents asserted that changes were needed in SEI and standards, teacher endorsement and pedagogy, and assessment to support EB learning and language acquisition. We discuss the resulting themes against extant literature, and provide policy recommendations.