Undergraduate Research on a Third Space After-School Program That Supports Productive Diversity

• 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, I (an undergraduate researcher) will be utilizing the framework of “productive diversity” to discuss the ways in which a cohort of college undergraduates fostered an enriching after-school learning space in a Poetry Inside Out (PIO) program for 7th and 8th graders. In designing and enacting an afterschool program, the undergraduates aimed to create a “third space”-- characterized by the “ideals and practices of a shared humanity, a profound obligation to others, boundary crossing and intercultural exchange in which difference is celebrated without being romanticized” (Gutierrez, 2008, p. 149). Our goal was to recruit the participants’ linguistic and cultural resources, and develop further all of our capacities for listening and creative expression, by engaging in poetry translation and multi-modal artistic work, based on a pedagogy of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). The afterschool program served seventh and eighth graders who live and learn in a culturally and linguistically diverse urban neighborhood, with a high immigrant and refugee population. Given that a pedagogy of multiliteracies is focused on the “Realities of increasing local diversity and global connectedness” (The New London Group, 1996, p 64), we translated poems in languages ranging from Mandarin to Spanish, and with themes ranging from the immigrant history of Angel Island to colonization in the West African islands of Sao Tome and Principe. We eventually produced and published our own original poetry, in our many languages, and organized an art exhibit and reading for the larger community (made up parents, community leaders, educators, and university professors and students).

This paper draws on multiple data sources including audio and video recordings of PIO sessions in the afterschool program, audio-recording of undergraduate meetings, and post-PIO student interviews. It will reflect on the PIO work the undergraduates conducted in the Spring 201 semester, and examine the ways in which PIO afforded everyone to experience, and grapple with “productive diversity” (New London Group, 1996). In the words of one of the middle school students on poetry translation:
“So many people were like, expressing what they felt about the poetry…it made me change because like, so many people were just talking about how the travelers, you know, maybe they could have just been travelling through the lady’s house, so it just got me thinking, maybe they were correct, maybe, I’m not. So it just, just gives you a big question mark in your head, like on top of your head.

Through analysis of video and audio records (made each session), I will share moments when productive diversity was a key to powerful learning and development of multiliteracies. The notion of “productive diversity” is defined as the process of wrestling with different ideas and ways of thinking. I found that through translation and creative expression, undergraduates and middle school students surfaced their diverse languages, worldviews, identities, home cultures, leading to multiplicity in meaning-making. As we engaged in “productive diversity,” we found it to be potentially risky as well, with contact zones (Pratt, 1991) being created in a discussion about colonization.

Author

• Kefiana Kabati, Clark University