Award Date

12-15-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Educational Psychology, Leadership, and Higher Education

First Committee Member

LeAnne Salazar Montoya

Second Committee Member

Maria Roberts

Third Committee Member

Blanca Rincon

Fourth Committee Member

Joseph Morgan

Number of Pages

179

Abstract

This study explored the experiences of school-level bilingual program leaders in the Southwestern United States, focusing on how their preparation, lived experiences, and local contexts shaped their leadership practices and decision-making. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the research examined how habitus and various forms of capital (cultural, social, and symbolic) influenced leaders’ approaches to developing and sustaining bilingual programs. Yosso’s theory of community cultural wealth (CCW) further expanded this lens by highlighting the aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant forms of capital.

Using a qualitative multi-case study design, the research analyzed policy documents, leadership preparation coursework, and semi-structured interviews with bilingual program leaders across four Southwestern states. Findings suggested that leaders built preparation through professional networks, mentorship, and role-embedded learning, to better sustain program integrity and parallel rigor across languages despite shifting policy conditions. Additionally, uneven policy and institutional coursework impacted the way in which leaders built their preparation.

The study identified the need for leadership preparation programs to embed bilingualism and biliteracy as leadership competencies, offer routes specific to bilingual program leadership, and provide ongoing professional learning networks that intentionally cultivate leaders’ social and cultural capital. Ultimately, this research contributed an asset-based understanding of bilingual leadership as both a technical and sociocultural practice shaped by institutional structures, local policy orientations, and leaders’ accumulated forms of capital.

Keywords

bilingual education; bilingual program leadership; qualitative multi-case study; Bourdieu, community cultural wealth; cultural capital; leadership preparation; social capital

Disciplines

Education | Educational Leadership | Linguistics

File Format

PDF

File Size

1196 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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