"Giiiiirl, That's a Good One": Languaging Among Heritage Language Learners and Linguistically Diverse Peers

• In Event: Developing Multi/Translingual Competencies and Expertise Through Peer Interactions: Affordances, Constraints, and Complexities

Abstract

Objectives
As AERA’s conference theme calls us to (re)imagine the possibilities of public education, educational researchers must investigate the wealth of knowledge young people bring to our schools that could open new possibilities. Heritage language learners (HLLs), a diverse and growing population of students who bring multilingual competencies in both majority and nonmajority languages, are uniquely positioned to transform the ways we think about language learning possibilities in schools. The extant literature on HLLs and peer interaction (Bowles, 2011; Valdés, 2005) has primarily focused on how HLLs collaborate with foreign-language learners, but this restricted research focus leaves unexplored the interactions among peers who share the same heritage language and/or who are in the process of learning an additional/majority language. Our study begins to address this gap in the literature by exploring the following research questions:
1. How do heritage language learners (HLLs) engage in languaging with multilingual peers in an extracurricular dual language program in high school?
2. What patterns of interaction develop when HLLs collaborate with different peers who demonstrate various levels of multilingual expertise?
3. How do patterns of interaction relate to languaging or language learning opportunities?

Theoretical Framework
Grounded in sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), this paper focuses on languaging and collaborative dialogue as moments in which peers engage in discussions about and through language which afford opportunities for language and literacy development (Author, blinded; Swain, 2000, 2006). In addition, we use Storch’s (2002) typology of interaction patterns to analyze peer interactions in terms of equality and mutuality.

Methods and Data Sources
We examine video-recorded data of student interactions from ten sessions in an extracurricular program that brought together high school students learning English and Spanish. In the transcripts, we identified language related episodes (LREs), in which HLLs engaged in collaborative dialogue with peers. Using sociocultural discourse analysis (Mercer, 2004), we identified relevant LREs and coded them for: (a) who initiated it, (b) outcome, and (c) pattern of interaction (Storch, 2002).

Results
Our findings revealed that languaging and interaction patterns among HLLs and their peers were neither constant nor predictable based on what we had conceptualized as language expertise. Moreover, we found that students enacted multilingual expertise in varying forms across peer interactions, and that the complexity of these interactions complicates the recognition of linguistic expertise. Finally, we found that, in classroom settings, teachers can impact patterns of peer interaction more than the previous research gives them credit for.

Significance
These findings raise further questions about the expectations that teachers have about HLLs/ELLs and the usefulness or limitations of these categories of peers. Further research should give us greater insight into what HLLs can do to scaffold their peers’ learning as well as what HLLs need to enrich their own language learning. This study has implications for peer learning and teaching approaches that address HLLs’ often-untapped learning potential, which in turn may transform the ways that educators conceptualize and leverage language resources all young people bring to school.

Authors

• Melinda E. Martin-Beltran, University of Maryland - College Park

• Andrés Alberto García, University of Maryland - College Park

• Angélica Montoya-Ávila, University of Maryland - College Park