Courageous Leadership for Multilingual Learners
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Harvard Educational Publishing Group
Publishing:6th Oct '26
£25.99
This title is due to be published on 6th October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A new, transformative framework that helps leaders design coherent, equity-minded systems to promote the success of multilingual students
Multilingual learners (MLs) are a protected class of students entitled to certain educational services designed to ensure equitable access to the same educational opportunities as other students. Yet MLs are often siloed from core school programs. To address this pressing issue, Courageous Leadership for Multilingual Learners offers an original, research-backed framework for leaders to ensure that MLs are considered from the start across all levels of the educational system.
Drawing on her deep expertise in the field, Hopkins shows how the marginalization of MLs in schools is neither neutral nor inevitable. Rather, it is the product of longstanding, systemic patterns that require collective action to disrupt. This accessible and practical book provides a roadmap for this work, showing how leaders can center the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of multilingual learners. The framework presented in this book identifies the two essential dimensions of transformative ML leadership—individual change and organizational change—and outlines core components of each, including policy knowledge, asset-based dispositions, and collaborative norms. Hopkins demonstrates how leaders can leverage the framework's dimensions to design coherent, equity-minded systems that honor the diverse learning experiences and backgrounds of MLs while strengthening educational opportunities for all students.
This book empowers school, district, and state leaders by offering concrete strategies to support MLs, while making clear that meeting the minimum requirements of legal compliance is insufficient. It challenges leaders to pursue equitable practices, protect vulnerable students, and cultivate communities where MLs and their families can thrive. Hopkins shows what becomes possible when responsibility for ML education is shared and when policies are designed to uplift the strengths of ML students.
"Courageous Leadership for Multilingual Learners is an urgent and deeply resonant contribution to the field. With clarity, courage, and sharp equity-minded insight, Megan Hopkins offers leaders at every level a compelling roadmap for moving beyond silos and building more just, inclusive, and shared systems of responsibility for multilingual learners." - Alan J. Daly (University of California, San Diego. Professor and Director, UC LEAD Educational Leadership Doctoral Program.)
"Megan Hopkins harnesses her extensive experience in educational leadership to craft a powerful guide for navigating diverse governance landscapes. With a rare knack for blending research insights with real-world practice, she shines a light on crucial situations and perspectives. This is an essential resource for empowering the education of our invaluable asset—our immigrant and multilingual children." - Kenji Hakuta (professor emeritus, Stanford University)
"Megan Hopkins synthesizes two decades of scholarship in this book to both challenge educators working with Multilingual Learners and to show the way to break down the silos that prevent schools from providing these students with a truly equitable education. The millions of ML students in American schools urgently need their educators to heed the lessons of this book." - Patricia Gándara (Professor Emerita and Co-Director, Civil Rights Project, UCLA)
ISBN: 9798895570906
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages