Drama-based instruction for young multilingual students with disabilities: A case study

Dual language education is a powerful education model for supporting multilingual students. Yet, multilingual students with disabilities may be steered away from these programs. This study explored the introduction of Spanish-language instruction into an inclusive PreK classroom in Arizona, as part of a larger project implementing drama-based instruction (DBI). DBI provides opportunities to participate and show knowledge through movement, gesture, and facial expression, which can benefit students with disabilities and multilingual students. This case study focuses on Sofía, a four-year-old learner with a developmental delay in cognition and communication who is bilingual in Spanish and English. We examined Sofía’s reaction to the introduction of Spanish and how the use of Spanish (compared to English) affected her participation, oral language production, language choice, and language quality. We found that Sofía was initially hesitant to switch to Spanish, but that once she was consulted on the language choice, reacted positively. We also found that the language of the lesson did not change the frequency of Sofía’s overall participation across modalities (e.g. gesture, puppetry). However, during lessons in Spanish, Sofía produced more Spanish-language and translingual utterances, and the quality of her oral language increased. Our findings suggest that integrating Spanish into 1:1 DBI lessons is a viable way to give multilingual students with language disabilities permission to use all of their communicative resources.