Centering Family Storytelling: Engaging in Disciplinary Practices Through Translanguaging

• In Event: Translanguaging and Disciplinary Literacies

Abstract

Objectives. Out-of-school-time learning environments often give non-dominant learners access to tools and activities, but seldom value their conceptual, semiotic, and cultural resources (Rosebery, Ogonowski, DiSchino, & Warren, 2010). These environments often restrict fluid, meaningful communicative practices, reproducing deficit-based perspectives of learners (Vossoughi & Escudé, 2016). Finally, these environments are often age-segregated, privileging youth’s learning and excluding adults; programs for families tend to foreground English language development over other discipline-based learning and reify repressive language ideologies. Research is needed to understand learning environments that support families’ translanguaging practices, particularly for supporting disciplinary literacy (Lee & Spratley, 2010).
We explore bilingual families’ translanguaging practices during collaborative storytelling activities designed as Translanguaging Spaces (Li, 2011) within two research-library partnerships . We highlight commonalities in family translanguaging practices and differences in practices based on disciplinary work types.

Theoretical framework. We define disciplinary literacies as ways of knowing that disciplines develop and leverage to construct knowledge, including producing, decoding, and manipulating discipline-specific representations and tools; learners’ identities and experiences must inform their engagement with these literacies, and learning disciplinary literacies must serve learners’ socio-epistemic goals (Moje, 2007).
Translanguaging is “the process by which bilingual students and teachers engage in complex discursive practices in order to ‘make sense’ of, and communicate in, multilingual classrooms” (García & Sylvan, 2011, p. 389). From this perspective, plurilingual students develop one semiotic repertoire that comprises multiple linguistic systems and includes non-linguistic communicative resources (Blackledge & Creese, 2017).

Method and data. Family Storytelling comprised six weekly 90-minute workshops focused on writing, creating, and sharing stories. Each session was organized thematically (e.g., “The Story of My Name”; “Family Histories”) and included time for collaborative composition. Data sources from workshops included audio-recordings, fieldnotes, families’ artifacts, and semi-structured interviews with families. Analyses explore several literacy practices, including oral storytelling, writing processes, and performance.
RoboStories was a five-session, three-hour weekly STEM-Art workshop designed to re-position families’ relationships to technologies. Families represented stories with technologically-rich and aesthetically-complex dioramas. The primary data were video-recordings of families collaboratively building dioramas. The analysis centers on English-Spanish bilingual families and how they engage in translanguaging practices during robotics-based practices (e.g., circuitry, programming, sharing).

Results and significance Preliminary findings from Family Storytelling indicate that families engaged in several translanguaging practices (e.g., code-meshing) throughout collaborative composing processes.
Preliminary findings from RoboStories suggest families engaged in sophisticated disciplinary practices through translanguaging, particularly designing and programming robots. Moreover, families’ translanguaging practices were informed by their socio-epistemic projects related to cultural and linguistic continuance.
Attending to families’ translanguaging practices revealed how they leveraged communicative repertoires for disciplinary meaning-making. This is a contribution because most research on families’ languaging is confined to social environments and practices, such as studies on Family Language Policy (King, Fogle, Logan-Terry, 2013). Additionally, this study highlights the importance of designing equitable environments that support families’ learning through responding to their translanguaging practices and socio-epistemic goals; this is particularly poignant for families from historically marginalized communities. Finally, we highlight methodological synergies, coordinating research perspectives and highlighting different aspects of meaning-making through translanguaging.

Authors

• Enrique (Henry) Suárez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Emily Machado, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Don LaBonte, University of Washington - Seattle

• Lauren Plitkins, University of Washington - Seattle

• Grace Cornell Gonzales, University of Washington - Seattle