Moving Towards Linguistic Justice in Literacy Learning Through Multilingual Literature Partners

• In Event: Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Literacies Through Translingual Practices and Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose and Framing
We explore how a second-grade teacher created a multilingual literature partners program (MLPP) to work towards greater linguistic justice (Baker-Bell, 2020) in her English-medium classroom by creatively incorporating languages with fewer pedagogical resources into her literacy curricula (Najarro, 2025). We view less pedagogical resources not just as an instructional constraint but also as a linguistic justice issue closely tied to what linguistic models of personhood (Flores et al., 2016) count as legitimate and get affirmed or not in classrooms. While the teacher located a plentiful supply of Spanish-English picturebooks to enact translanguaging pedagogies (Garcia et al., 2016), she struggled to find resources in Marshallese, other than simple Marshallese-English dual-language picturebooks written by elementary students on the Marshall Islands. By creating another site for literacy learning through the MLPP, she was able to effectively draw upon Marshallese in her instructional design to ensure that Marshallese students’ languages would not be marginalized.

Theoretical Framework
We draw upon social literacies (Street, 1995) to conceptualize literacy as a situated practice that is never neutral and that overwhelmingly maintains dominant monolingual ideologies in English-medium schooling. We also draw upon the concept of translanguaging pedagogies (García et al., 2016) to understand how teachers can encourage multilingual students to fluidly draw upon their expansive language practices in instruction while transcending the traditionally forced boundaries and borders of named languages.

Methods of Data Collection and Analysis
This study was based in a classroom with an English-speaking teacher and children who spoke Marshallese (20%), English (32%) and Spanish (48%). 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 classroom videos, students’ written work, interviews and field notes. We used inductive analyses (Thomas, 2021) to examine patterns in the data and then identified rich points (Agar, 2006) for closer analysis within each pattern.

Findings and Importance
First, we found that MLPP provided a site of joy through the exploration of languages that are commonly devalued and suppressed in schooling. Marshallese children were able to ask each other about the meanings of Marshallese words and joyfully position other Marshallese children as experts on their shared language. Second, the MLPP provided students with a site to connect over their shared childhood, cultural knowledges such as a Marshallese movie on YouTube “Na Noniep” (I am the Good Fairy) (Microwave Films of the Marshall Islands, 2019) that was created to bring children joy after experiencing the harsh effects of climate change. Third, MLPP offered students opportunities for bidirectional teaching, both in terms of linguistic knowledge and comfortability of speaking non-English languages in classroom settings.

Significance
The significance of these findings point towards the possibilities of teachers moving towards greater linguistic justice in their own classrooms through the innovative use of available resources, as the second-grade teacher did with the creation of MLPP. Researchers and educators can learn from these insightful adaptations in order to incorporate and affirm all students’ linguistic personhood in classrooms.

Authors

• Faythe Beauchemin, Boston College

• Lexi Woodward, University of Arkansas