Nepantlera Translanguaging Pedagogies: Lessons From la Frontera

• In Event: The Transformative Potential of Translanguaging Spaces for Diverse Latinx Students

Abstract

Purpose
This paper builds on authors’ previous work on translanguaging and biliteracy practices of transfronterizxs, or border-crossers (Authors, 2018), which are shaped by their mobile experiences across borders. Mobile literacy practices that they bring back and forth– be it across geographic borders, communicative situations or modalities, or named languages– is part of transfronterizxs’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006). They mediate their transnational life and navigations. Our purpose is to introduce the idea of nepantlera translanguaging pedagogies (NTP). These pedagogies contrast starkly with the colonizing language policies found in other DLBE contexts (Authors, 2018; Flores & García, 2017; Poza, 2014; Valdés, 2018).

Theoretical framework
We use border theory and translanguaging theory to explain the transfronterizx students’ use of language in dual language bilingual (DLBE) classrooms, but also their transfronterix teachers’ pedagogical practices. Using Anzaldúa’s (2007) concept of Nepantla, “the overlapping space between different perceptions and belief systems,” (p. 541) we propose that nepantlera teachers navigated “un sitio entre dos mundos, and build bridges among ways of knowing” (Authors, 2021, p. 3). In this presentation, we develop these ideas by emphasizing translanguaging and the students’ agentive participation in this nepantlera pedagogy.

Modes of inquiry and data sources
From 2009 to 2012, we conducted ethnographic research in Border Elementary School, and collected a range of data. These include participant-observation in classrooms and other school settings, group interviews with students in DLBE classrooms, and individual interviews with teachers, administrators, and staff members. The school serves mostly economically disadvantaged Latinx students, and a high percentage of transfronterizxs and emergent bilinguals. Ms. O., who taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, was our focal DLBE teacher at BES. She was born and had lived in Mexico until she moved to the US in 6th grade, where she was labeled “Limited English Proficient.”

Results and significance
We found that Ms. O’s NTPs included the development of relationships of confianza, cariño, and convivencia. NTPs allowed emergent bilinguals to leverage translanguaging as one of their multiple repertoire of capitals. Confianza, cariño and convivencia made it easier for students to take risks with their languaging and their active use of their community cultural wealth as legitimate sources of knowledge. At BES students and Ms. O were aware of the linguistic discrimination in the broader school community. We will share examples of how students used their lengua, to resist the hegemony of English and language purism ideologies. NTPs mediated the transformation of knowledge, which was evident when students made connections between the lesson’s content, their experiential knowledge and their ancestral wisdom. Rather than assuming Eurocentric knowledge systems and epistemologies as the only valid knowledge, Ms. O made sense of content through their own lived experiences, conocimiento, and capital.

As for significance, there is a need to learn from la frontera, specifically NTPs that can confront white supremacy and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The NTPs we witnessed contribute to questioning the dominant and normalized ideologies that privilege English and language purism, and the regimes of power that enter DLBE classrooms every day.

Authors

• Maria Teresa de la Piedra, The University of Texas - El Paso
  Presenting Author

• Alberto Esquinca, San Diego State University
  Presenting Author