Reimagining Literacy Pedagogies: Cultivating Transcultural, Translingual Competencies

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-4 - Everyday Practices in Transcultural and Translingual Communities: Connections to School

Abstract

This research asks what types of curriculum and potential learning is generated when youth in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms are engaged in studying themselves? What happens in classrooms when young people are positioned as researchers and experts with real insights into the ways they use language to read, write, talk, listen and view in one or more languages inside and outside of school? How and in what ways will this invigorate educational practice?

Many disciplines and fields have recently studied how globalisation has influenced situated social practices, including linguistic and communicative practices. Researchers purport young peoples’ linguistic capabilities and cultural experiences are increasingly diverse and dynamic (Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013; Warriner & Wyman, 2013). Societal and institutional mandates however, have been slow to recognise the complexity of language/s and literacies across all domains of young peoples’ lives. While The Australian Curriculum: English (ACARA, 2012), acknowledges Australian students’ linguistic diversity, the education system frames linguistic homogeneity as the norm and maintains a monolingual, monocultural orientation (Coleman, 2012). Recent scholarship calls for a reimagining of literacy pedagogies in order to cultivate what scholars describe as young peoples’ increasing transcultural and translingual competencies, (Garcia, 2014; Guan et al., 2014; Rampton, 2014; Reynolds & Orellana, 2014). In this study, we began to understand the role language played in the social and cultural lives of these young people’ employing this knowledge creatively to design meaningful, engaging learning that invigorated educational practice.

This one year qualitative study was situated in an elementary and middle school classroom in one urban Australian school. Three teachers and 52 multilingual young people employed collaborative ethnography methodology to research their linguistic and cultural practices and experiences. Teachers and researcher conducted weekly lessons over two school terms (20 weeks). Linguistic and ethnographic methodologies were adopted to empirically describe situated meaning making practices. Data sources included student and teacher interviews, language maps (visual mapping), lessons, activities, observations (field notes, audio recordings), units of work, assessment tasks and student work samples. Emerson, Fretz and Shaw’s (1995) guidelines on ethnographic research guided analysis of the research questions above, ethnographic and discourse analytic methods were applied across data to support an inductive approach to analysis.
As linguistic ethnographers these young people examined the diverse multilingual, multimodal, socio-cultural and socio-linguistic, practices in their everyday worlds. Transcultural and translingual competencies were foregrounded in examining how language and literacies worked and shifted across and around practices, communities, and countries. Teachers’ and students’ expectations and their knowledge of how they navigated diverse cultural and linguistic practices were amplified. This evolving knowledge led to the creation of rich academic tasks that continued to increase in complexity. Tasks built on young peoples’ ‘funds of knowledge’ (Gonzalez, et al, 2005), cultivating linguistic flexibility and versatility and fostering meaningful and authentic learning that engaged all participants. Students, teachers and parents reported increased competence, confidence and learning. Analysis of curriculum and assessment tasks offered evidence of students’ increased metalinguistic awareness and achievement of targeted English writing outcomes.

Author

• Jacqueline A. D'warte, University of Western Sydney