High School Newcomer Youth as Language Policymakers: Translanguaging in a Multilingual Student Advisory Council

• In Event: Translanguaging as Embodied Language Policy in Critical Inquiries about Linguistic Justice Across Generations and Contexts

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
This Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study explores how newcomer youth and adult collaborators embodied language practices to support each other in confronting monolingual and hegemonic language ideologies in their schools and communities. We also explore how multilingual students engage in translanguaging practices by leveraging their full linguistic repertoires and deconstructing language barriers to make meaning, and to develop critical consciousness (Cammarota, 2016) and critical language awareness (Fairclough, 2014). We share the case of a high school Newcomer Center in Colorado where we’ve co-created a Multilingual Student Advisory Council using YPAR to interrogate language ideologies, reframe them towards justice through the co-construction of a space where all languages (Arabic, Dari, Kurdish, Pashto, and Spanish) are valued, and translanguaging is leveraged as a common practice and pedagogical tool (Garcia & Lin, 2017) by educators and students becoming a part of students’ policymaking practice.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
YPAR is a pedagogical tool, a research methodology, and an ideological stance that utilizes critical pedagogies to support youth in investigating social problems in the world around them by engaging in each part of the action research. Through this praxis of YPAR, challenging linguistic injustices and engaging to interrogate power, youth support each other in the individual and collective development of critical consciousness (Cammarota, 2016; Heiman et al., 2023; Yosso, 2005).

Methods
Youth participants collectively conducted, recorded, translated and transcribed structured interviews with two principals, six teachers and five students. After reviewing and highlighting the transcriptions across multiple languages, the youth collectively coded the responses thematically (Saldaña, 2014) which included recommendations for language teaching and recommendations for community building. As researchers, we took a meta-analysis approach in analyzing how the youth leveraged their languages to make meaning, collaborate and convey their findings.

Data sources
Artifacts from the youth were collected from the language and identity unit. Interview questions, audio data and transcriptions were collected from thirteen interviews conducted by the students, as well as audio from the MLSAC presentation and two student reflection interviews.

Results
The youth from the MLSAC class challenged the monoglossic language policies and orientations of the school and district both through the content of their inquiry and the heteroglossic manner of conducting their research. In their final presentation, they called for more pluralistic and multilingual approaches to teaching and learning—supported in their findings and their practices from their action research. In their reflections, they expressed their capacity for language learning demonstrated in the way they engaged in practices of translanguaging.

Scientific or scholarly significance
In an era when programming for multilingual learners is under attack, YPAR involving multilingual learners provides the opportunity to continually guide youth via critical pedagogies and action research. Through this YPAR project, newcomer youth illustrated how we can engage youth in linguistic justice policymaking even as they are already impacting language policy through their embodied translanguaging practices.

Authors

• Adria Padilla-Chavez, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Laura Meinzen, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Deborah K. Palmer, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Michelle Renée Valladares, University of Colorado - Boulder