The Laundromat as the Transnational Local: Young Children's Literacies of Interdependence

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
MarÍa Paula Ghiso
Keyword(s):  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Literacy ◽  
Literacy Curriculum ◽  
Transnational Identities ◽  
Feminist Theories

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.

Multimodal Literacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy A. Mills ◽  
Len Unsworth
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Texts ◽  
Making Meaning

Multimodal literacy is a term that originates in social semiotics, and refers to the study of language that combines two or more modes of meaning. The related term, multimodality, refers to the constitution of multiple modes in semiosis or meaning making. Modes are defined differently across schools of thought, and the classification of modes is somewhat contested. However, from a social semiotic approach, modes are the socially and culturally shaped resources or semiotic structure for making meaning. Specific examples of modes from a social semiotic perspective include speech, gesture, written language, music, mathematical notation, drawings, photographic images, or moving digital images. Language and literacy practices have always been multimodal, because communication requires attending to diverse kinds of meanings, whether of spoken or written words, visual images, gestures, posture, movement, sound, or silence. Yet, undeniably, the affordances of people-driven digital media and textual production have given rise to an exponential increase in the circulation of multimodal texts in networked digital environments. Multimodal text production has become a central part of everyday life for many people throughout the life course, and across cultures and societies. This has been enabled by the ease of producing and sharing digital images, music, video games, apps, and other digital media via the Internet and mobile technologies. The increasing significance of multimodal literacy for communication has led to a growing body of research and theory to address the differing potentials of modes and their intermodality for making meaning. The study of multimodal literacy learning in schools and society is an emergent field of research, which begins with the important recognition that reading and writing are rarely practiced as discrete skills, but are intimately connected to the use of multimodal texts, often in digital contexts of use. The implications of multimodal literacy for pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment in education is an expanding field of multimodal research. In addition, there is a growing attention to multimodal literacy practices that are practiced in informal social contexts, from early childhood to adolescence and adulthood, such as in homes, recreational sites, communities, and workplaces.

Multilingual literacies in Japan

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheiron McMahill
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Classroom Interaction ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Language Minority ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Small School ◽  
Language Minority Students ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Organization And Management ◽  
Trilingual Education

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.

Teletubby Tales: Popular Culture in the Early Years Language and Literacy Curriculum

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Literacy Curriculum ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Field Notes

The aim of the study reported in this article was to explore the potential that popular culture has for motivating young children to engage in literacy and oracy practices in the early years. Pre-school settings and schools regularly fail to take account of children's popular cultural interests in their development of curriculum content. Literacy practices in most nurseries and schools are located within dominant cultural discourses and in the case of many industrialised societies, this means that the curriculum usually reflects the cultural norms of white middle-class communities. In an attempt to disrupt these dominant discourses, literacy activities related to the television programme Teletubbies were introduced into two nurseries in England. Data were gathered using field notes, photographs and interviews. The article discusses how the incorporation of popular cultural texts into the curriculum provided motivation and excitement for many children, some of whom were not usually willing members of the ‘literacy club’.

When Racial, Transnational, and Immigrant Identities, Literacies, and Languages Meet: Black Youth of Caribbean Origin Speak

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (13) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Allison Skerrett ◽  
Lakeya Omogun
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Immigrant Youth ◽  
Ethnic Discrimination ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Racial Category ◽  
Black Immigrant ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Literacy Research

Background/Context Immigrants are described as somewhat fixed in their geographical locations and activities in the world, having made a permanent move from their nation of origin to a new homeland. In contrast, transnational people are defined as those who live their lives across two or more nations and hold strong, multiple attachments to their nation-states. Frameworks of race are often centered in studies of the language and literacy practices of immigrant youth while transnational theories are typically prioritized in studies of transnational youths’ language and literacy practices. Research Questions/Participants This article explores extant research on the language and literacy practices and experiences of Black immigrant and Black transnational youth of Caribbean origin for whom the U.S. is a home. The purpose is to uncover similarities, differences, and nuances that may exist between the language and literacy practices and experiences of these populations. Research Design The extant research was analyzed through theoretical concepts such as micro-cultures, ethnoracial assignment and ethnoracial identity, raciolinguistics, and language and literacy as social practices. Findings Literacies prominent for both Black immigrant and Black transnational youth include reading, writing, the performing arts, and digital literacies. Analysis found that Black immigrant and Black transnational youth, through their language and literacy practices, undertake significant work in deconstructing Blackness as a monolithic racial category. The youths’ motivations for language and literacy use and transformation are conceptualized as efforts to make visible multiple ethnoracial identities and micro-cultural practices within an overarching racial category of Blackness. Analysis further found that Black immigrant and Black transnational youths’ experiences with racial, cultural, and linguistic discrimination lead many to subsume their original linguistic and literacy practices beneath the language and literacy practices of dominant ethnoracial groups in their new nations. In the case of Black transnationals, analysis found that they hold thick bonds to their countries of origin and new nations. Further, some transnationals have opportunities to spend extended time and employ their culturally influenced languages and literacies to a fuller degree in nations that hold appreciative perspectives on these repertoires. Such circumstances appear to promote Black transnationals’ abilities to continue developing and valuing their unique ethnoracial identities and ethnoculturally diverse language and literacy practices. Analysis further found that the multiple language and literacy practices of many Black immigrant youth are motivated by their longings to belong to diverse communities and connect to multicultural groups. However, these desires of youths’ were not oriented solely toward their new nation-states. Rather many Black immigrant youth actively seek out connection and consolidation of their homelands of origin and their new nations through language, literacy, and cultural practices. Analysis confirmed that this is a primary motivation for language and literacy development and use in transnational youth. Conclusion This article challenges the binary categories of immigrant and transnational using the cases of Black youth of Caribbean origin and their language and literacy practices. Its findings call for a more dynamic reconceptualization of the relationships among racial, immigrant, and transnational youth identities, literacies, and languages. Given the similarity of goals in the identity, language, and literacy practices of Black immigrant and Black transnational youth, this analysis argues that literacy research knowledge about Black immigrant youth can be enhanced by applying transnational as well as racial frameworks. Likewise, the article proposes that given the similarities of language and literacy goals, practices, and experiences, including racial and ethnic discrimination, shared by Black immigrant and Black transnational youth, future literacy research can undertake more explicit investigations of transnational youth's experiences through racial frameworks. The article suggests that knowledge of this kind can support scholars and educators in theorizing and designing educational spaces and curricula that enable all youth, notwithstanding their self- or other-assigned racial or sociopolitical categorization as native-born, immigrant, or transnational, to actualize while critically analyzing, the full range and diversity of their identities, languages, and literacies.

Traveling Transnational Identities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Transnational Identities ◽  
College Age ◽  
Class Standing ◽  
American Media ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
World Class ◽  
The Right

This chapter describes how the transnationally oriented elite and upper-class urban Indian youth are negotiating their everyday experiences with globalization. It shows how the college-age elite youth psychologically imagine themselves as being world-class citizens not just by going abroad but also by reimagining new forms of Indianness through their active participation in specific cultural practices of watching American media, shopping at exclusive malls, and constructing emancipatory narratives of globalization. The transnational urban youth’s narratives are hybrid and are organized around an Indianness that is mobile, multicultural, connected to consumption practices, and crosses borders easily. Being a global Indian means displaying a kind of transnational cultural difference that has the right currency and credibility and that can be transported to other countries, where it is accepted as legitimate, valid, and as having a world-class standing. Selected parts of Indian culture can be adopted in their travels and study-abroad stints.

“Make Sure You See This”: Counternarratives of Multilingual Black Girls’ Language and Literacy Practices

2021 ◽  
pp. 238133772110382
Author(s):  
Vivian E. Presiado ◽  
Brittany L. Frieson
Keyword(s):  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Bilingual Programs ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Dominant Narratives

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.

scholarly journals Inclusive practices in Rural Teacher Bachelor Course at Federal University of Viçosa (Brazil): multidisciplinary actions of the Literacy Project that was addressed to one deaf in the pre-service teacher process

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Carlos Antonio Jacinto ◽  
Cristiane Lopes Rocha de Oliveira ◽  
Danila Ribeiro Gomes ◽  
Idalena Oliveira Chaves ◽  
Vinícius Catão de Assis Souza
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Rural Teachers ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Deaf Person ◽  
Literacy Process ◽  
Brazilian Sign Language ◽  
Pre Service Teacher

This article discusses the educational and linguistic demands presented by a deaf person in the Bachelor of Rural Teachers, attended by a multidisciplinary team to develop strategic actions for the educational inclusion of the deaf. Knowledge of bilingual and scientific literacy practices was considered. For that, we used a qualitative approach characterized as action-critical research, including participant observation to describe the history and demands that led to the creation of this Literacy Project and the composition of the team that participated in the inclusion and literacy process. The results of educational actions pointed out the pertinence and need of considering the participation of this pre-service teacher deaf of the Rural Bachelor course as the guiding agent of the entire process. Since the team's articulation was only possible based on the considerations and notes given for this deaf referred. The results reveal the importance to articulate interventions about inclusive and bilingual approach in the University. Specifically, in the pre-service Science teacher courses, in order to discuss the presence of Brazilian Sign Language in inclusive or bilingual contexts, ensure the professional development of the deaf and the technical capacitation of the team members, through an effective evaluation of the educational process.

scholarly journals Práticas de letramento e whatsapp: estudo de caso no contexto de português como língua de acolhimento, à luz da perspectiva ecológica

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-237
Author(s):  
Rosyanne Louise Autran Lourenço ◽  
Eliana Barbosa dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Learning Process ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Refugee Immigrants

Este artigo visa a apresentar, sob uma perspectiva ecológica de letramento, resultados da análise de práticas sociodiscursivas do processo de ensino-aprendizagem de Português Língua de Acolhimento, de imigrantes refugiados no Brasil, realizadas por meio do WhatsApp. Teoricamente, o estudo circunscreve-se às dimensões analíticas de letramento (MOREAU et al., 2013), sob a perspectiva ecológica dos estudos linguísticos (VAN LIER, 2004, 2010), fundamentando-se em pressupostos referentes aos recursos multimodais das tecnologias digitais (LEFFA, 2006; MORAN, 2013) e à função mediadora da linguagem (VIGOTSKI, 1971), em especial, do Português Língua de Acolhimento (BARBOSA; SÃO BERNARDO, 2017) e de suas implicações referentes à noção de afetividade (LEITE, 2012). Metodologicamente, trata-se de estudo qualitativo de caso (STAKE, 1994), de base etnográfica virtual (SANTOS; GOMES, 2013) cuja geração dos dados ocorreu por meio de observação participante (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1998) e notas de campo (FETTERMAN, 1998). Sua relevância reside na urgência no processo de imersão de imigrantes refugiados em práticas sociodiscursivas que viabilizem a obtenção de condições mínimas de vida digna e a garantia de autonomia em sua agência no país de destino (COSTA; TAÑO, 2018). Os resultados da pesquisa sugerem que a abordagem ecológica de práticas de letramento em ambiente virtual amplia a compreensão das articulações inerentes ao processo de ensino-aprendizagem de línguas, propiciando ao docente melhores condições de promover a autonomia dos estudantes, em contexto de imigração, na condução de soluções que atendam às suas necessidades mais prementes, voltadas para as práticas sociais de imersão no país de chegada.   This article aims to present, in the light of an ecological perspective of literacy, the results of the analysis of sociodiscursive practices of the teaching-learning process of Portuguese as a Host Language, through WhatsApp by refugee immigrants in Brazil. Theoretically, the study is limited to the ecological perspective of linguistic studies (VAN LIER, 2004, 2010) and analytical literacy dimensions (MOREAU ET AL., 2013) based on assumptions regarding the multimodal resources of digital technologies (LEFFA, 2006; MORAN, 2013) and the mediating function of language (VIGOTSKI, 2009) in particular the Portuguese Host Language (BARBOSA; SÃO BERNARDO, 2017) and its implications regarding the notion of affectivity (LEITE, 2012). Methodologically, it is a qualitative case study (STAKE, 1994) with a virtual ethnographic basis (SANTOS; GOMES, 2013) whose data generation occurred through participant observation (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1998) and field notes (FETTERMAN, 1998). Its relevance resides in the urgency in the process of refugee immigrants sociodiscursive practices that make it possible to obtain minimum conditions of dignified life and guarantee autonomy at their agency in the destination country (COSTA; TAÑO, 2018). The research results suggest that the ecological approach to literacy practices in a virtual environment broadens the understanding of the articulations inherent to the language teaching-learning process, providing the teacher better conditions to promote the autonomy of the students in the context of immigration, in driving solutions that meet their pressing sociodiscursive needs, focused on social immersion practices in the country of arrival.

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