Literacy Engagement Through Literacy Sponsorships: A Case Study of One Young Transnational's Out-of-School Literacy Practices

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: Researching Literacy Engagement Among English Learners

Abstract

This paper documents the out-of-school literacy practices of one multilingual, transnational student, Paula. Drawing on artifact and interview data, I describe three of Paula’s out-of-school literacy practices: religious literacies, care-giving and home-making literacies, and civics and assimilationist literacies. Using border theory and literacy sponsorship theory, I describe how Paula enacted agency in cultivating new relationships and maintaining existing relationships with individuals facilitated her participation in these literacy practices and how in participating in them Paula traversed physical, ideological, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual borders. I describe how, by engaging in these literacy practices and maintaining these relationships, Paula negotiated her positionality, as a young multilingual woman taking on new roles and meeting new expectations, in a new country and cultural landscape.

Author

• Rebecca E. Linares, University of Colorado - Boulder