Portraits of Bilingualism and Dis/ability: The Perspectives and Experiences of Emerging Bilinguals With Dis/abilities

• In Event: At the Crossroads of Bilingual Education and Special Education

Abstract

This multi-case case study explores how children who are emerging bilinguals with dis/ability designations (EBwDs) express and perceive their language and literacy through visual arts-based methodologies and Portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). Intersectionality theory (Collins & Bilge, 2016), DisCrit (Annamma, 2016), and Translanguaging (Garcia & Li Wei, 2014) were used to analyze participants’ experiences with language, ability, race, and ethnicity. Findings revealed that participants identified as bilingual and biliterate and perceived these practices as valuable to sustaining connections to family members and engaging in multimodal literacies. Notably, no participants explicitly named dis/ability. This study contributes to research that expands and humanizes the linguistic possibilities of EBwDs and generates counter-stories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2015), disrupting the ideology of languagelessness (Rosa, 2019).

Author

• Elizabeth Silva Diaz, Bank Street College of Education