Advocating for Belonging for Transnational and Multilingual Learners with/out Dis/Abilities: Critical Autoethnography

• In Event: Intersectional Disability Justice Critical Autoethnographic Counter-Histories as Living Archive

Abstract

Objectives
This paper examines the lived experience of an educator in a K-8 public school setting advocating for access to quality education for transnational and multilingual learners with and without disabilities. The selected vignettes illuminate various barriers and challenges encountered by these learners and their families in accessing the necessary support and resources to achieve academic success and well-being.
Perspectives
Counter-storying in critical autoethnography is essential for amplifying the voices of students, families, and educators who are often marginalized and underrepresented. Additionally, DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2016) offers a critical perspective on the intersections of race and dis/ability, challenging how ableism and racism work together to create deficit perceptions and exclusionary practices in schools, disproportionately impacting students of color with disabilities. I also draw upon theories of transnational and multilingual education, considering language as a fluid social practice and identity as adaptable and negotiated (e.g., García & Lin, 2016). This approach emphasizes the linguistic repertoires of transnational students as valuable assets, despite schools’ failure to recognize them.
Modes of Inquiry/Data Sources
I used a critical autoethnographic approach to systematically explore my personal and professional experiences as primary data sources for analyzing broader cultural and social structures related to identity, power, and systemic inequality (Boylorn & Orbe, 2020; Holman Jones, 2016). Central to this method is examining my positionality and how it influences my engagement with and responses to dominant social narratives, cultural norms, and institutional power dynamics, especially when advocating for transnational and multilingual students.
To support this inquiry, I use microethnographic discourse analysis (Author, 2020) to examine re-storied vignettes that depict key episodes from my twenty years of teaching in a public school in Southern California. These vignettes, reconstructed through careful reflection and reflexive analysis, form the primary data set and highlight the recurring barriers and systemic challenges faced by transnational and multilingual students and their families. Additional data sources include relevant educational policy documents uncovered during the analytic process, which provide further context for interpreting the lived experiences shown in the vignettes.
Substantiated Conclusion
Triangulating the analysis from the vignettes and relevant policies reveals prevalent challenges that are consequential to students’ academic success and overall well-being in school. First, students and families encounter language barriers and misunderstandings related to cultural practices. Students often suffer from ill-informed assumptions and misdiagnoses by staff members, leading to disillusionment, reduced self-efficacy, and loss of motivation. Families often experience exclusion from decision-making processes and limited communication between schools and homes, which leads them to give up.
Scholarly Significance
By sharing detailed and contextual stories of the struggles and successes of specific students and their families, this paper aims to highlight the significant impact of delayed access to resources and support for students. It also provides alternative actions that could be undertaken in the future to ensure timely and appropriate support and resources are provided to transnational and multilingual learners. Hence, by utilizing our histories as a living archive, we can discover effective ways to pave a brighter future for these students.

Author

• Monaliza M Chian, University of Northern Iowa