Multilingual Multiliteracies: Transforming Languages and Literacies in the Heartland

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Negotiating Home, School, and Community Multilingual Languaging Practices

Abstract

This large-scale study focuses on 1,204 emergent bilingual (EB) families’ home- and community-based multiliteracies in five Indiana school districts. Drawing from questionnaires and interviews designed to profile literacy practices in communities with high proportions of EBs, this study identifies how parents are raising multilingual and multiliterate children, resisting school definitions and practices of language and literacies. Through creative agency, families are transforming their languages and literacies into relevance for their family and community. This inquiry provides important implications for educators as they move from thinking of literacy and languages as standard, fixed, and English-monolingual toward a more responsive multiliteracy approach to enhance understanding around home, school, and community.

Authors

• Trish Morita Mullaney, Purdue University

• Haiyan Li, Purdue University

• Jennifer Renn, Purdue University