Negotiating and Navigating Transnational Literacies and Research Through Storytelling

• In Event: 16.019 - "We All Have Stories to Tell": Pedagogical Possibilities Toward Educational Justice Through Digital Storytelling

Abstract

Critical and sociocultural literacy scholars have theorized how literacy is a social practice, which reflects cultural norms as well as power relations that are constructed and negotiated within particular contexts (Street, 2003). This research tradition has come to understand literacy in expansive ways, which include multimodal and digital practices (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). Although the research field is conceptualizing literacy as multiple, situated, and multimodal, policy and practice often treat literacy as an autonomous or decontextualized set of skills (Street, 1983). As a result, schooling is often exclusionary and marginalizing for students whose skills are linguistically, socially, and culturally outside of this narrow view of literacy (González & Moll, 2002). However, by honoring and exploring the myriad ways in which students are literate outside of the classroom, researchers have uncovered ways in which knowledge is being constructed through literacy practices (Hull, 2003; Kellner & Share, 2007). Studies exploring local literacy practices have highlighted the various contexts in which social identity markers, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and age, relate to issues of power and social justice (Vieira, 2013). And yet, while focusing on local literacy practices has been generative in interrogating issues of power and privilege, the focus on “local” practices may “lead us to ignore similarities that exist across individuals, situations, and events” (Bartlett, 2003, p. 71 as cited in Warriner, 2009). Furthermore, the focus on local literacy practices has reified a binary that too often becomes coded as local versus global literacy practices. Literacy scholars have been attempting to bridge local and global literacy practices in theoretical and methodological ways in order to create more socially just conditions for historically marginalized communities (Blackburn & Clark, 2007).

This practitioner inquiry study seeks to understand the relationship between local and global literacies within the context of a digital storytelling workshop with transnational youth. Transnational individuals live, work, and/or are deeply connected to more than one country. Transnational youth navigate these borderlands on a many levels – as they begin to learn, adapt, and remix new practices into their literate practice (Anzaldúa, 1987, Knobel & Lankshear, 2008; Vasudevan, 2010). Exploring the ways in which transnational youth navigate local and global affiliations through multimodal literacies can provide empirical and theoretical insights that may bridge the global/local divide and illuminate the agentive literacy practices of youth who continually cross such borders. Moreover, this study highlights how the practitioner negotiates her own identity as a self-identified transnational. This presentation highlights the ways in which the researcher navigates the tensions among her identities as a researcher, a transnational woman of color, and as an educator. By seeking to understand how youth navigate their global and local affiliations through storytelling, this practitioner uses her own stories and experiences to make sense of data and reflect on her multiple roles.

Author

• Alexandra Thomas, Teachers College, Columbia University