Multilingual literacies in Japan

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheiron McMahill

Economic immigration to Japan has increased the number of language minority students in certain Japanese elementary schools to as many as one in four. Little is known, however, about how these children are influencing language and literacy practices in schools. This article looks at the classroom interaction in the International Community School (ICS), a small school run by a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) in Gunma Prefecture in which the presence of English‑, Portuguese‑, and Japanese-speaking children has given rise to an experiment in trilingual education. A project to create world globes in a first-grade trilingual classroom is examined using a social semiotic framework. The physical characteristics of the globes bear traces of the political and linguistic environment as well as the organization and management of the school. Children and teachers in turn question and transform geographic systems of representation and approaches to literacy in the process of creating and using a multilingual globe to talk about interests, experiences, and knowledge related to the world.

2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 414-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linnea C. Ehri ◽  
Lois G. Dreyer ◽  
Bert Flugman ◽  
Alan Gross

The Reading Rescue tutoring intervention model was investigated with 64 low–socioeconomic status, language-minority first graders with reading difficulties. School staff provided tutoring in phonological awareness, systematic phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. Tutored students made significantly greater gains reading words and comprehending text than controls, who received a small-group intervention (d = 0.70) or neither intervention (d = 0.74). The majority of tutored students reached average reading levels whereas the majority of controls did not. Paraprofessionals tutored students as effectively as reading specialists except in skills benefiting nonword decoding. Paraprofessionals required more sessions to achieve equivalent gains. Contrary to conventional wisdom, results suggest that students make greater gains when they read text at an independent level than at an instructional level.


2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
MarÍa Paula Ghiso

Background The learning of students from (im)migrant backgrounds has long been a consideration for the field of education. The “transnational” turn in research has brought to the forefront the need to account for students’ language and literacy practices as situated within multiple national affiliations, fluid migration histories, global technological networks, and plural identities. Understanding the global/local dynamics of young children's literacies across contexts can help us consider how the literacy curriculum specifically, and educational institutions more broadly, may be reimagined to be more attuned to their transnational experiences. Focus Informed by Chicana and transnational feminist theories, this study examines how first grade Latina/o emergent bilinguals interacted with a literacy curriculum that sought to value their transnational experiences and multilingual repertoires, specifically by integrating photography and writing as a platform for children to inquire into community experiences they identified as salient. The curricular invitations were designed as a Third Space hat unsettled the often-reified boundaries between what counts as academic literacy learning in school and the practices and experiences of Latina/o children in out-of-school contexts. Research Design A total of 103 six- and seven-year-olds over the two years participated in this ethnographic and practitioner research study. One hundred and one identified as Latina/o, and all qualified for free and reduced lunch. Data sources (children's writings and photographs; audio recordings; interviews with the teachers and children; researcher reflective memos; and fieldnotes of participant observation in the school and community) were coded using thematic and visual analysis, with attention to how specific textual or discursive features functioned socioculturally. Findings/Conclusions I focus on one of the prominent themes in the data—the community space of the Laundromat—to discuss how the children participated in literacies of interdependence that linked individual flourishing with community wellbeing through their care work in supporting their families. I use the term literacies of interdependence to refer to young children's multilingual and multimodal literacy practices that both reflected and enacted their cultural practices of mutuality. Through transactions with neighborhood spaces as texts, the children surfaced multiple and contrasting narratives of immigration and inquired into their transnational identities. Findings from this study point to how researchers and educators may be more attentive to Latina/o children's values and practices of interdependence and understand the “transnational local” as embodied in concrete spaces within their lived experiences.


2021 ◽  
pp. 238133772110382
Author(s):  
Vivian E. Presiado ◽  
Brittany L. Frieson

Critical scholarship in bilingualism and bilingual education has documented multiple ways that the rich language and literacy practices of Black children participating in bilingual education programs are often erased in favor of dominant narratives about the literacy practices of their White Mainstream English–speaking peers. Utilizing Black girl literacies, raciolinguistics, and translanguaging as theoretical orientations, and counternarratives as an analytical tool, this article presents a cross-case analysis of two ethnographic case studies that explored how multilingual Black American girls enrolled in an elementary dual-language bilingual education program employed their literacies to navigate their social worlds, by challenging raciolinguistic ideologies and hegemonic systems of oppression in their daily lives. It also presents the nuanced nature of multilingual Black girls’ literacies and the various roles that they serve, which are often ignored in multilingual spaces. The need to learn from multilingual Black girls’ counternarratives is emphasized by engaging in a deeper sociopolitical understanding of the complex issues that Black girls face on a regular basis, which are often extended in bilingual spaces. Specifically, we call for educators to create critical translanguaging spaces that honor multidimensional counternarratives and intimately connect with the unique epistemologies and literacies that Black girls in bilingual programs bring to the table.


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