Leveraging Heteroglossic Language Ecologies in the Home

• In Event: Ingenuity and the Shaping of New Participation Trajectories: Examining Connected Learning Through Joint Mediated Practices in the Home

Abstract

Objectives:
This study explores the situated language practices of two Spanish/English bilingual families drawn from a larger study of 14 families. This study attempts to understand the ways in which everyday situated language practices leverage horizontal and vertical forms of learning (Gutiérrez, 2012b; Gutiérrez & Stone, 1998), reorganize learning as collective joint activity (Schwartz & Gutiérrez, 2013), and broaden literacy practices in a manner that leverages heteroglossia (Garcia, 2013; Garcia & Wei, 2013).

Perspectives:
We draw on additive understandings of multilingualism as hybrid, sociocultural, and situated (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-Lopez, Alvarez & Chiu, 1999; Gutiérrez, 1995; Gee, 2001). The study explores the ways in which everyday multilingual language practices leverage horizontal and vertical forms of learning through the syncretic approach and reorganize the learning ecology for robust learning in third spaces (Gutierrez, 2008).

Methods, Participants & Data:
This study uses ethnographic qualitative methods from a larger social design connected learning research project. The project draws on data sets from two families from the project’s larger pool of 14, each consisting of video recorded data, audio interviews, observations, field notes, and surveys. The families in the study include at least one focal child that attends the after-school connected learning program in Colorado.

Results:
The study found fluid use of multiple language registers (including hybrid ones) by family members in communicating intimacy, authority, and ingenuity. Accordingly, youth and parents demonstrated a keen awareness of the socio-historical markedness of each of these registers as they deployed them in their everyday joint activities. There are instances in which siblings negotiate meaning-making using hybrid language, for instance, in their joint activity and digital media related practices. There is also a fluid interplay between registers by one of the mothers who chose to use English--not her first language--to discuss themes and issues relating to schooling with researchers.

Significance:
This study has significant implications for expanding notions of what constitutes useful language and literacy practices for the development of learning trajectories. The ways in which the families utilized hybrid language practices in the home provide examples of how schools might reorganize learning towards joint activity and reexamine some of the current reductive approaches to bilingualism.

Authors

• Samuel Martinez, University of California - Berkeley

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of California - Berkeley

• Judith FAbrega, University of California - Berkeley

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley