Youth Research Into the "How" and "What" of Poetry Inside Out

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-6 - Multiliteracies in Action: An Intergenerational Inquiry Into Literacies and Multilingualism Through a Poetry Translation Program

Abstract

In this paper, written by a team of youth researchers (all English language learners) and university-based researchers, we share what we are learning about language, identity, and translation.

In September 2014, two university-based researchers decided to work with a group of high school seniors to investigate an aspect of PIO. While the youth engaged with PIO in the classroom, they also systematically documented their own learning as well as the learning of their classmates. Together, we developed the following research questions: How does PIO help bilingual youth understand more about themselves and others? What is gained (what capacities are developed) through participation in PIO?

The youth research group met once a week, after school, for two hours. During that time, the university-based researchers apprenticed youth to data collection strategies, such as interviewing, audio-taping group work and whole-class discussions during PIO, and collecting written work. The youth-researchers collected data while participating in PIO. This included audio-recording themselves and their classmates while they translated poems and discussed their translations and possible meaning of the poem; interviewing their classmates in English and Spanish; and collecting their classmates’ writing. We used a process of data analysis where we listened to audio-recordings and read the accompanying transcripts (transcripts of interviews and class sessions on PIO). We annotated and underlined what we noticed, and what we found interesting. After a discussion of what we noticed, we returned to the transcripts and re-read them, underlining parts from the transcripts that were relevant to the research question.

Through this process, we learned that PIO helps bilingual high school students understand more about themselves and each other through 1) safe and open communication; 2) discussions about meaningful yet taboo topics (e.g., religion, racism, immigration); and through 3) collaborative construction of meaning. We also learned that what high school students gain from participating in PIO are 1) confidence in one’s voice; 2) special listening, which the group defined as the capacity in which we listen with ears, eyes, mind, one’s history, culture, languages, and try to see “behind” what the person is saying; and 3) deep focus on language. The youth researchers will share transcripts which illuminate these six themes, and discuss how each theme is critical to the development of multiliteracies in school settings, especially for students who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Authors

• Deborah Diaz, Clark University

• Saint Cyr Dimanche, Brandeis University

• Elvis Arancibia

• Abby Moon, Clark University