‘We Persist in this Cycle’: A Critical Disability Raciolinguistic Analysis of Behavioral Policies for Emergent Bilinguals Labeled as Disabled

Emergent bilingual children with disabilities are represented across many student subgroups which are disproportionately affected by rigid disciplinary policies and behavioral support systems, as well as exclusionary policy implementation in general and special education. This qualitative study investigated how teachers read and enacted policies to correct, eliminate, or otherwise change emergent bilingual students’ behavior and social interactions in a culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse mid-sized urban school district. The findings of this study offer suggestions for teachers and teacher educators as they endeavor to disrupt inequitable outcomes of behavioral policies on emergent bilingual students with and without disabilities.