Creating Educational Space Through Heritage-Language Learning and Teaching: The Case of Ilokano in a Secondary Classroom in Hawaii

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Decolonizing Evaluation: Case Studies of a Critical Framework of Review on Culturally and Community-Responsive Curricula

Abstract

Language educators (e.g. Peyton, Ranard, & McGinnis, 2001) have increasingly advocated recognition of heritage language communities as valuable resources. Yet there have been few models showing how heritage language resources can be utilized in educational programs and through classroom practices. Drawing from theoretical advances in areas such as identity, hybridity, and critical ethnography, this presentation provides a language education model that assumes the need for grassroots school and community planning efforts in creating a pedagogy towards linguistic diversity and addressing the needs of heritage learners.

Utilizing the critical review framework developed by Halagao, Tintiangco-Cubales, & Cordova (2009), the presentation will focus on the implementation of critical pedagogical approaches in a Ilokano Heritage Language Curriculum in a secondary classroom. Critical pedagogy encourages students’ active engagement with knowledge, presents a framework for understanding the structural causes of social “problems,”and posits ways that hegemonic practices may be resisted or transformed through participatory democracy and collective action (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1997; McLaren, 1989). A central tenet of Paolo Freire’s (1974) critical pedagogy is that the most local and immediate experiences should become the material of learning. Along these lines, the Ilokano heritage language curriculum situates pedagogical activities in students’ home and community experiences in order to: 1) build on multilingual and multicultural resources students bring to the classroom and 2) enhance language learning through participating in heritage language and literacy activities naturally occurring in homes and communities.

Those of us in heritage language instruction who look to Freire as an inspiration focus on how he talks about a way to create a linguistic reality; an important part of that process is vocal, oral, saying things. In addressing the impact of the curriculum, this paper also highlights the voices of heritage language learners of Ilokano, carrying forward indigenous meanings and experiences of their pakasaritaan (history) (Soria, 2012) that are in opposition to dominant discourses and practices (Fine, 1994). The discourse of saritaan (talking story) (Soria, 2012) is utilized to draw and account students’ stories about their family, schooling, peers, and community to arrive at their pakasaritaan. It is a model that offers a space to give or help give voice to young Ilokanos who are the inheritors of the language and culture of Ilokano and Amianan (North) peoples, yet marginalized within the cultural and language groups of the Philippines.

All in all, this paper constitutes both an affirmation and a declaration of the significance of the heritage language movement and improvement of heritage language instruction. The curriculum described above represents a model of heritage language education in the context of Hawaii that is deeply rooted in language and experiences of students. A sizable number of curricula analyzed under the critical framework model developed by Halagao et al (2009) have been developed and/or situated in the context of the Continental United States, and this paper will suggests ways of curricular improvement especially when a marginal language, like Ilokano, is involved and subsumed under the label of Filipino.

Author

• Julius B Soria, University of Hawaii - Manoa