Dignity-ing in Literacy Events: Multilingual Paraprofessional Teachers and Students Broadening the Construction of Personhood in Instructional Conversations

• In Event: Dignity-ing: Magnifying the Social Construction and Consequences of Dignity-Affirming or Dignity-Denying Micro-Interactional Moments

Abstract

Overview: In this presentation, we explore an example of dignity-ing as a “social verb…to understand how dignity is manifested or thwarted in educational activity” (Espinoza et al., 2020, p. 325) by understanding how multilingual paraprofessional teachers and students broadened the construction of personhood beyond dominant and assimilationist models in an English-medium school in a Mid-Southern U.S. border town. We define personhood as “a collectively shared, socially constructed conception of what a person is, what is inherent to being a person, what characteristics and qualities a person has, and what rights and responsibilities are viewed as part of being a person” (Bloome et al., 2022, p. 227). Dominant models of personhood in schooling cause harm and pain in minoritized students’ schooling experiences by narrowly constructing personhood through monolingual, middle-class, Eurocentric and adult-driven norms that deny dignity for multilingual students of Color. By expanding the social construction of personhood to reflect multilingual students’ and teachers’ identities as valued ways of being human, the participants in this study engaged in the microinteractional process of dignity-ing.

Theoretical Perspectives: In this paper, we draw upon a social literacies perspective (Street, 1995) that conceptualizes literacy as a situated practice that is understood through observable behaviors and influenced by ideologies and power relations. We also draw upon theories of personhood to understand how it is constructed in microinteractions (Bloome et al., 2022) and is shaped by (1) broader ideologies in society (Hikida & Martinez, 2019) and (2) the construction of personhood within written texts (Heath, 1982), a matter of importance given limited number of books in classrooms that portray non-dominant models of personhood as central to being human (CCBC, 2022).

Methods: In this study, we blended research methodologies – ethnography (Blommaert & Jie, 2020), practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2015), and discourse analysis (Bloome et al., 2022). Data includes videos of paraprofessionals teaching read-alouds, audio of planning and discourse analysis sessions, paraprofessionals’ written reflections and researchers’ field notes. We used inductive analysis (Thomas, 2016) to examine patterns in the data and then identified rich points (Agar, 1991) for even closer analysis within each of these patterns.

Findings and Significance: First, we found that paraprofessionals and students broadened models of personhood in interactions by co-constructing multilingual models of personhood in which being multilingual was an exciting kind of person to be in the context of literacy instruction (e.g., smiling and giggling when constructing bilingual models). Second, they collaboratively constructed Latine/x knowledges (e.g, upward head nod between adult males in Latine/x cultures) as a valued and joyful attribute of personhood. In addition, they constructed models of personhood that celebrated working-class (e.g., children’s experiences of parents coming home from working-class jobs) and childhood experiences (e.g., students’ detailed knowledge of Spongebob Squarepants’ appearance) as an integral part of being a person. Finally, we discuss the significance for what broadening models of personhood means for manifesting dignity in microinteractional moments.

Authors

• Faythe Beauchemin, Boston College

• Rebecca Carpenter de Cortina, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville