Participatory Learning and Endangered Language Reclamation on Instagram

• In Event: Transformative Digital Spaces: Disrupting Traditional Notions of Learning and Reimagining Educational Possibilities Through Social Media

Abstract

Objectives

Schools in the U.S. have played a central role in upholding English monolingualism and erasing students’ heritage languages through different forms of violence, English-only language policies, and deficit-based, racially-motivated language models (Baquedano-López et al., 2013; Flores & Rosa, 2015). Even when taught in schools, studies have shown that endangered languages are not used in the community or home (Fishman, 2001; Hinton, 2013). Thus, while traditional schools can play supporting roles in teaching endangered languages, researchers suggest that teaching and learning outside of traditional schools has the highest potential for language reclamation. I use Instagram as a distinct case study for understanding how digital technology can support non-traditional, anti-racist and relevant forms of language learning.

Theoretical Framework

This paper draws on the field of New Literacies Studies and the concept of indigenous language reclamation to contextualize a participatory, collaborative, relevant, and transformative learning environment that disrupts and transcends the boundaries of a traditional classroom (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Knobel & Lankshear, 2014; Leonard, 2017). In analyzing how an endangered language was taught on Instagram, this paper explores possible pathways toward language reclamation that resists colonial constructs of education and draws on a community’s own rich cultural knowledge to support linguistic justice.

Data and Methods

Multimodal data were collected from 16 weeks of teaching Hmong on my public language learning account on Instagram and included: (a) 53 posts, (b) 56 reels (1.5-minute videos in portrait format), (c) 53 videos (longer videos in landscape format), and (d) an uncountable number of stories (posts or videos that disappear in 24 hours). Data was analyzed using analytic induction. Initial tagging of data was followed by coding and memos (Boellstorff et al., 2012), then categorized, and scanned for relationships among categories (Goetz & LeCompte, 1981). I looked for patterns in behavior, production, and relationships that illustrated important insights about literacy and learning practices among participants.

Results

Two main findings resulted from this study. First, learning on Instagram is multi-directional and participatory. In this study, the roles of teacher and student were constantly renegotiated. While I created and posted content, students could ask for clarification, agree with, or disagree with me by liking, commenting, direct messaging, or “remixing” the content. In this way, learning on Instagram required participants to simultaneously be consumers and producers of knowledge using multiple literacies (Kalantzis & Cope, 2015; Knobel & Lankshear, 2014). Second, the multimodal and participatory nature of Instagram allowed users to make new meaning of existing knowledge and to collectively produce new knowledge from within a Hmong epistemology (Vue & Mouavangsou, 2021). This knowledge is ubiquitous (Kalantzis & Cope, 2015), accessible to anyone who has an Instagram account, and serves as an informal community archive of learning (Author 2, in press).

Significance

This case study has theoretical and pedagogical implications for multiple disciplines. The study exposes the limitations of a traditional classroom and suggests that while classrooms can certainly generate transformative learning, digital spaces have the potential to cultivate rich, highly relevant, responsive, and active knowledge making for the most overlooked students in our communities.

Author

• Pa Nou Vue, University of California - Berkeley