Joint Learning Through Everyday Multilingual Language Practices

• In Event: 56.035 - Seeing Learning Anew: Shifting the Gaze Toward Ingenuity of the Everyday

Abstract

Objectives:
This study considers the everyday multilingual language practices of three Spanish/English bilingual families drawn from a larger study of 14 families. In looking at everyday language use we are interested in the ways youth and their interlocutors 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 multilingualism (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). We see the ways in which youth employ different registers as a form of play in which the focal youth are able to position themselves as knowers in the worlds they create through their language use (Vygotsky, 1978; Gutiérrez, Bien, Selling, Pierce, 2011).

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 three 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 after­school connected learning program in Colorado.

Results:
Through our analysis we found that youth engaged in fluid use of multiple registers in their everyday language practices. When communicating with members of their family we saw multilingualism to be a way for youth to engage with intimacy, authority, and ingenuity. We found the use of a particular register to be intentional and aided in the joint learning that took place across the settings we observed. There are instances where, through multilingual language practices, meaning-making is able to occur in a way that would have not been seemingly possible with the use of one register.

Significance:
This study has significant implications for what we consider meaningful language practices amongst youth. In particular, a focus on everyday language practices allows us to see the ways in which youth use language uninhibited and how they navigate such a vibrant repertoire of verbal practices. This can help us in reorganizing learning in schools towards joint activity in a way that sees value in the variety of language practices that exist in a youth’s everyday environment.

Authors

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of California - Berkeley

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley