Coconstruction of Identities and Learning Spaces in a Two-Way Immersion Program

• In Event: Language Immersion Education: Comparing Multilingual Policies and Pedagogies in One-Way and Two-Way Programs

Abstract

This paper explores how third-grade students in a Spanish-English TWI school construct academic and social identities as they navigate learning spaces through peer interactions. Though there is a growing body of work on TWI contexts, most of it has focused on the impact of programs on student academic success (Kondo-Brown, 2010); few studies have examined the ways students use language in their interactions with one another (see Lee, Hill-Bonnet, & Raley, 2011; Martin-Beltrán, 2010; Potowski, 2007 for notable exceptions). Given that dual immersion programs are founded on the assumption that interactions among students are central to the learning process (see Martin-Beltrán, 2010), it is crucial that educators and researchers better understand how students interact with one another and how these interactions may shape learning spaces. Grounded in a sociocultural understanding of language and learning (Lantolf, 2011) and taking a sociocultural linguistic approach to the analysis of identity in interaction (Bucholtz& Hall, 2005), the present study addresses precisely these questions, asking: 1) How do students discursively position themselves and one another as particular kinds of learners, speakers, and social subjects in their interactions? and 2) How are these interactionally emergent identities related to students’ learning opportunities?

The present analysis is part of an 18-month ethnographic study conducted through participant observation and interviews in the homes, schools, and communities of 24 elementary-age children of immigrants living in Southern California. To capture the intricacies of identity work, this analysis follows four participants across different learning spaces (e.g., Spanish language arts, English math, bilingual dance class) and closely analyzes their discursive and embodied moves during group work, off-task talk, and language-related episodes (Swain & Lapkin, 1998). The four focal children are third-grade girls of Mexican descent who were students in the same Spanish-dominant language group at their TWI school. To triangulate findings and to better understand students’ own perspectives on their identities and interactions, we supplement our microanalyses of classroom discourse with distal information (Mehan, 1991) from interviews, playground observations, and artifacts.

Findings illuminate the complex array of resources that children used in identity construction while also revealing variation in the ways they positioned themselves and one another over time and across different learning spaces. For example, Sofía often positioned herself as a leader and English expert by indexing stances of epistemic authority and acting as a broker in her interactions with Ana, a recent immigrant from Mexico; this often positioned Ana as less able and constrained her learning opportunities. When interacting with English-dominant white peers, Sofía frequently used some of the same tactics to position herself as a follower and bilingual helper, often in ways that opened up learning opportunities to her peers. We discuss these findings with regard to educational challenges within the sociopolitical landscape of California TWI schools and in relation to more universal implications for language immersion programs. Our conclusions emphasize the importance of avoiding essentialist notions of identity so that children can move more fluidly across multilingual learning spaces.

Authors

• Meghan Corella Morales, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Jaycee Layne Bigham, University of California - Santa Barbara