Leveraging Transformational Data Collection Practices to Center Multilingual Learners’ Stories

• In Event: The Stories We Tell: Theorizing Intersectional Justice in the Context of Working With Marginalized Communities

Abstract

Purpose
Multilingual learners (MLs) are children learning multiple languages simultaneously – English and the language(s) they use at home (García & Kleifgen, 2010). As MLs increase in U.S. schools, the education system fails to support MLs and neglects to adapt to MLs’ diversity. We resist silencing the ML community by seeing MLs “as theorists of their own everyday lives and practice” (Dei & Johal, 2005, p. 5). This study aims to demonstrate how we can use the intersectional justice (IJ) framework to guide data collection processes that center the knowledge and wisdom of our research co-collaborators (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

Theoretical Framework
Valorizing the intercultural contexts MLs experience, we embrace an asset-based view of their narratives using Funds of Knowledge (FoK) (González et al., 2005). The development of their identities as MLs, recorded as Funds of Identity (FoI) (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014), is a dynamic process of internalization that shapes their perspective. As an act of critical consciousness (CC) (Freire, 2000), we see how MLs critically negotiate their intersectional identities based on their FoI and FoK in different social contexts. Acknowledging the richness of FoK, FoI, and CC, we invite MLs to be co-collaborators.

Modes of Inquiry
Rooting our transformational data collection practices in the IJ framework, we disrupt mainstream practices embedded within oppressive onto-epistemologies. IJ's actionable components of enacting equitable practices and creating supportive learning environments guide our work. We focused on relationship building, social interactions with self-expression in the language(s) of MLs’ choosing, incorporating a matrix of choices between interview formats, questions, and groupings, and reflective and cyclical processes to adjust to the co-collaborators’ feedback.

Data Sources
The project is a portion of a larger research project to develop partnerships among teachers, parents, and children to advance mathematics education equity. The research team is composed of transnational, multilingual, and multidisciplinary individuals, including 11 co-collaborators who are 4th and 5th graders, all from multilingual families as emergent bilingual or multilingual.

Findings
From the methodological perspective, the results encompass a wide variety of collected data. The development of personal relationships gave insight into the lives of co-collaborators beyond the traditional interviewer-interviewee interaction. As such, the active participation of co-collaborators in the research process empowered them to ask questions, provide feedback, and express emotions and thoughts freely in the manner of their choice. The abundance of stories and perspectives, individually and collectively, is a substantive demonstration of the IJ-driven interview efforts that centered their voices and lived experiences.

Significance
By exploring how the IJ framework can guide research data collection, this study demonstrates how researchers can facilitate counter-story telling by centering MLs as co-collaborators. Embracing a strength-based approach to research that acknowledges MLs as actors in their lives allows us to highlight how MLs actively draw from their funds of knowledge and develop their identities and critical consciousness to support their learning and development.

Authors

• Luis Alejandro Royo Romero, University of Maryland

• Ting-Yu Ariel Chung, University of Maryland

• Beatriz E. Quintos, University of Maryland

• Claudia L. Galindo, University of Maryland