Dis/ability as Mediator: Possibility-Centered Hybrid Learning Spaces for Emergent Bilinguals With a Dis/ability

• In Event: Cultural-Historical Approaches to Study the Teaching and Learning of Students With Dis/Abilities

Abstract

Emergent bilingual children labeled with a dis/ability (EBwD) live at the intersection of differences that impact their learning. Despite the multiple resources they bring to school, these children are perceived as low academic performers and drop off from school earlier than other children (e.g., Artiles & Ortiz, 2002; Davis-McCray & Garcia, 2002). Assisting EBwD take volitional actions to mediate their own learning utilizing their multiple accessible tools, including perceived impairments, could help construct dis/ability from a more asset-oriented standpoint and gradually shift these patterns. The purpose of this session is thus to examine whether and how emergent bilingual children’s dis/ability mediates learning, and how instructional spaces can be designed to assist this process.

I build on the understanding of children labeled with a dis/ability as learners whose development is “different”, but not “less developed”, from those of their peers (Vygotsky, 1983, p. 96). It was Vygotsky who theorized how a dis/ability could mediate children’s learning as they experience shortfalls in school that can potentially transform their difficulties into “a source of strength” with positive learning outcomes (Vygotsky, 1993, p. 56). However, compensation processes do not happen spontaneously and in isolation in schools. They require “a concerted volitional effort that is socially reinforced” (Smagorinsky, 2012, p. 12). Hybrid Spaces (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, Tejeda, & Rivera, 1999) can be purposefully designed for children to be able to dialogically engage as active participants to outwit learning barriers.

This presentation reports on a year-long qualitative study investigating how EBwD mediate their learning in an afterschool. The afterschool, led in Spanish, was conceptualized as a “possibility-centered” (Smagorinsky, 2012, p.11) hybrid space designed to cultivate children’s knowledge and languages, and to employ multimodal/multisensory approaches to practice core literacy and science processes. Twelve second-and-third grade EBwD Latina/o children participated twice a week in two-hour long sessions. Three teacher candidates seeking certifications for elementary bilingual special education met with the researcher weekly to plan the sessions. Data included audio-taped sessions, photographs, notebook entries, higher order reading skills assessments, and multimodal products. The analysis began during the planning sessions, and continued as we ended the afterschool, scored assessments, and coded available multimodal data. The analysis initially focused on exploring dis/ability as a mediator for learning, and on identifying children’s volitional actions, and soon expanded to other forms of mediation. Simultaneously, the analysis attempted to connect mediational efforts and instructional contexts.

Findings show that EBwD took numerous volitional actions to self-mediate unconventional learning trajectories utilizing not only their dis/ability, but also their immigrant backgrounds and transnational knowledge. This was made possible as teacher candidates used cultural tools that moderated learning barriers enacting a possibility-centered hybrid learning space for volitional actions. This study surfaces ways in which hybrid spaces that are respectful of children’s multiple learning identities can be fruitfully designed. Such approach can help researchers and educators understand EBwD’s learning more holistically dismantling pervasive deficit perspectives and making the learning of emergent bilinguals with a dis/ability possible.

Author

• Patricia Martínez-Álvarez, Teachers College, Columbia University