"My Literacies Expand Over Two Languages": Language and Literacy Autobiographies as Justice-Oriented Teacher Education Practice

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Multilingual Erasure and Racism in Literacy Classrooms Under the Guise of Equity

Abstract

In this study, the researchers explore how pre-service teachers (PSTs) across one content area literacies course and one bilingual education course engaged with their past linguistic experiences through an autobiography assignment. The researchers examine how participants’ experiences interact with their understandings of a culturally sustaining language and literacy approach (Paris & Alim, 2017). Borrowing from multiliteracies and translanguaging pedagogies (Garcia, 2009; New London Group, 1996), the researchers examined students’ insights across the assignments, noting participants’ positive and negative associations with their past language and literacy experiences. The researchers further examine how a culturally sustaining, translingual, and multiliteracies approach may help PSTs view their own and their future students’ language and literacy repertories as valid, worthy, and critical academic texts.

Authors

• Mary Neville, New Mexico State University

• Susana Ibarra Johnson, New Mexico State University