Translingual Possibilities for Meaningful Participation in School-Based Writing: A Sixth-Grade Case Study

• In Event: Multilingual Literacies: Predictors and Practices

Abstract

While languaging is inherently social, cultural, and central to our identities, standards movements have increasingly narrowed curricula, making humanizing writing in schools challenging (Dyson, 2020). Further, title I teachers often feel a tension between teaching narrowly “academic” and “joyful” writing. For these reasons, I conducted a collaborative design-based research study with a Title I teacher focusing on translingual approaches to writing. This case study presents a multilingual student in that class whose writing reveals possibilities for dignity-affirming (Espinoza et al., 2020) school-based writing experiences. I frame this student as a “language architect” (Flores, 2020), using her translingual, heteroglossic linguistic repertoire across artifacts. I show how this student engaged in writing activities that centered her lived multilingual experiences, highlighted the relational aspect of languaging, and exercised her “voice [in her] educational career” (Espinoza et al., 2020). These data illustrate how educational dignity might manifest for a multilingual sixth-grader in school-based writing.

Author

• Erin Lane, University of Washington
  Presenting Author