.png)
Oral Presentation Session
Reviewed by: Council on Anthropology and Education
Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students, Those Involved in Mentoring Activities
Primary Theme: Resistance
Secondary Theme: Resilience
Contemporary linguistic, migratory, cultural, and digital flows have posed new challenges for teachers and researchers around the inclusion of whole communicative repertoires in their practices. In response to the proliferation of hyperdiverse linguistic and cultural resources, teachers and learners embody tensions between two perspectives: 1) Separate and monoglossic language ideologies and practices that often promote the linguistic variety and culture of racially and ethnically dominant groups; and 2) Holistic language ideologies and practices that value speakers’ whole repertoires. As one of such holistic perspectives, translanguaging advocates for speakers’ complex and active use of a repertoire of linguistic features (García and Li Wei, 2014). These panels present ethnographic accounts of how these divergent perspectives are shaped by, and in turn, reshape, pedagogic practices within different US and glocal contexts: a dual language program in the Southwest; pre-service teacher education in the Midwest; EL classrooms in the Northwest; transnational, culturally diverse paraeducators in the Northwest; professional learning communities of English as a foreign language teachers in Colombia; and in performances that include local indigenous languages on the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico.
Different language ideologies are exposed and emerge in these contexts of contact. Various scholars (Alim, 2005; Bakhtin, 1981; Fairclough, 1989; Kroskrity, 2006; Woolard, 1994) have pointed out the links between language ideologies and hegemonic power relationships. Johnson (2006) argues that dominant ideologies frame reality in particular ways through the reiteration of “preferred, privileged practices treated as though they were natural” (p. 62). The consequence of “this control of meaning” (p. 62) by dominant groups is the dismissal of other linguistic and literacy practices as wrong, uneducated, primitive, or unnecessary.
The first study investigates the connection between dual language teachers’ explicit ideologies of language and translanguaging pedagogy and the theoretical-ideological underpinnings associated with translanguaging. The second study examines how explicit translanguaging practices and policies utilized during a foundational class for Mexican-American/Latinx bilingual pre-service teachers shaped the way these educators envisioned their language practices in their future classrooms. A third paper investigates the tensions that university English language teachers in an English- only context experience when they integrate multimodal, digital and multilingual literacy resources in their pedagogical practices. A fourth study examines the outcomes and effects of the use of the Petul-Xun glove puppet performances in official campaigns and suggests that long-term success of these shows can be attributed to the creativity of bilingual puppeteers who adapted the scripts to local languages and customs. The fifth paper investigates the decision-making practices of experienced teachers and how they resist prescriptive curricula by adapting their small group instruction to address the needs of their culturally and linguistically diverse students. Finally, the sixth paper focuses on the lived stories and reflections of the language and literacy development of a diverse group of educators and the potential of these narratives for developing a humanizing pedagogical perspective.
The studies in this panel contribute to the understanding of how a variety of language and literacy pedagogies can be used to re-signify, resist and transform monoglossic and homogenizing ideologies.
Sarah Newcomer
Assistant Professor of Literacy Education
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Char Ullman
Associate Professor
University of Texas at El Paso
Gabriela Dolsa
University of Texas at El Paso
Gabriela Dolsa
University of Texas at El Paso
Yuliya Ardasheva
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Susana Ayala
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Avanzados
Blanca Caldas
University of Minnesota
Blanca Caldas
University of Minnesota
Rosa Medina Riveros
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Rosa Medina Riveros
University of Massachusetts, Amherst