Beyond the Language of "Low Incidence": Translanguaging in Multilingual Community-Based Education

• In Event: Cultivating Authentic Language Practices: Learning From Community Translanguaging Practices Outside of Schools

Abstract

Objectives
In New York, emergent bilingual (EB) students are subjected to screening and surveillance making visible their language identity, proficiency, abilities, and migratory status from the time they are enrolled in public school. These mechanisms, rooted in the medical model traditions of special education (Migliarini & Author, 2021), construct categories of student and language borrowing from the terminology used to differentiate between disability categories: “high incidence” and “low incidence” (NYSED, 2019). Across the state, youth and families whose languages are deemed “high incidence” have a relative abundance of language-related educational programs, resources/services, and supports, leaving “low incidence” languages underrepresented. As such, many EB children who speak “low incidence” languages are subjected to “English-only” instruction, supports, and services because their languages are not adequately understood or considered by school-based professionals and policymakers.
To address these disparities, refugee and migrant families in the study construct and navigate complex networks of knowledge, people, and resources. Together they create and maintain opportunities and spaces for learning and support through language and relationships. This study, which focuses on a multilingual collective of refugees in a mid-sized urban city in Upstate New York, addresses two questions:
How does translanguaging appear in different multilingual community-based education settings?
What are the affordances of translanguaging classroom praxis in multilingual community-based education for multiply marginalized youth?

Theoretical Framework
This study draws on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework including Translanguaging classroom praxis (Migliarini & Author, in press), Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005), and Constructivist Grounded Theory ([CGT], Charmaz, 2006). Translanguaging classroom praxis refers to the “multifaceted conceptualization and application of translanguaging as process, theory, and practice as they relate to ableism” in language teaching (Migliarini & Author, in press, n.p.). Community Cultural Wealth provides a framework for understanding the assets of communities of color, such as the multilingual refugee and migrant community in this study. CGT is an analytical tool used to directly acknowledge the author’s subjectivity and involvement in the collection, interpretation, and presentation of data (Charmaz, 2006). CGT serves this study through foregrounding nuanced local contexts of participants and data, thereby supporting the investigation of ecological factors and practices which concern equity and experience for multilingual students and their communities.

Methods & Data Sources
Participants include community-based educators and parents of multilingual children who identify as refugees or former refugees. The author conducted 20 individual semi-structured interviews and over 70 hours of ethnographic observations (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011) at three refugee-founded and –operated education programs for refugee youth and families.

Findings
Focused analysis reveals how community-based educators—intentionally and unintentionally—engage in translanguaging classroom praxis as an approach to relational pedagogy. The data show how community-based educators leverage multiple forms of capital, but especially linguistic capital, to offer a model for how “low incidence” languages can be engaged as assets—even in multilingual education setting—to disrupt reliance on “English-only” pedagogies for teaching EB children. This study contributes a nuanced, contextual understanding of the affordances of translanguaging classroom praxis for multiply-marginalized youth and communities across education settings.

Author

• Chelsea Stinson, Syracuse University