Decentering the E in the (E)LA Classroom: A Meta-Study of High School Students Across the Multilingual Continuum

• In Event: (Re)Imagining English Language Arts Through a Critical Translanguaging Lens: Practical and Epistemological Insights on Teaching "English"

Abstract

U.S. secondary classrooms often function under the mono-mainstream assumption, the underlying belief that average, or mainstream, students are monolingual, monoliterate, monocultural, and mononational, expressing themselves in monomodal ways (Author 2, 2020). This is evident in ELA (English Language Arts) classrooms through instruction, assessment, and labels that position students as lacking English proficiency (Rosa & Flores, 2017; Paris & Alim, 2017). These mono- ways of being and meaning-making relate to a colonial logic that upholds the ideal citizen as a standardized speaker of the nation-state’s language (Flores, 2013). This creates a learning ecology that eclipses and dehumanizes secondary bi/multilingual students who regularly engage in sophisticated languaging and literacies.
Through this meta-study, we disentangle and delineate mono-, bi-, multi-, and trans- views of students across various dimensions of being/meaning (-lingual, -literate, -cultural, -national, -modal). The purpose is to consider actionable steps for secondary ELA to become more accurate about students’ multidimensional realities, resulting in humanizing and liberating instruction. The research questions are:
1. How can secondary ELA students be viewed across the mono-to-trans progression?

2. How could secondary ELA teachers teach across the mono-to-trans progression?

Perspectives
This work is informed by Author 4’s (2018) critical translingual approach, where “translanguaging, raciolinguistic ideologies, critical literacies, and critical language awareness…invite inquiry into the intersections of language, power, and identity” (Author 4, 2022, pp. 2-3). We use this approach by naming and detailing how teachers may view students and approach their instruction across the mono- to trans-progression depicted in Authors 2, 2020.

Methodology
We implemented a meta study (Hoon, 2013) in order to “synthesize primary qualitative case studies for the purpose of making contributions beyond those achieved in the original studies” (p. 527). Thus, we aim to create a more nuanced, robust theoretical contribution. We analyzed four of our own studies from 2014-2020 with high school bi/multilinguals in an iterative series of three pláticas, the Spanish word for “chat”, used as a decolonial methodology focused on mutuality in dialogue (Calderón et al. 2012; Valle & Mendoza 1978). We coded the published articles and raw data (consisting of field notes, analytical memos, observations, interviews/testimonios, and collected artifacts for instance of mono, bi, multi, and trans views.

Findings
Across the studies, the secondary students (n=17 from eight countries) have limited multilingual opportunities in schools; the majority of the school spaces were mono- in orientation (RQ1). We juxtapose this with students’ bi/multi-/trans- realities of meaning-making, demonstrating the inaccuracy of a traditional ELA view of bi/multilinguals who regularly traverse spaces through their languaging and literacies. Yet, we highlight specific instances where educators taught across the mono-to-trans progression (RQ2).

Significance/Connection to Theme
This meta-study interrogates the limiting lenses and their impacts on students by explicitly calling out how mono-, bi-, and even multi-views fall short of capturing their literacies and languaging practices. It provides humanizing solutions for the ELA classroom aligned with their trans-lingual/literate/cultural/national/modal realities.

Authors

• Mandy Stewart, Texas Woman's University
  Presenting Author

• Alexandra Babino, Texas Woman's University
  Presenting Author