“We about to be real”… “Literacy is everywhere”… “Ya somos expertos”: Documenting and learning from families’ language and literacy practices
This dissertation documented and explored the ways in which marginalized families participating in a Two-Way-Immersion (TWI) program enacted their language and literacy practices in home and community contexts. In this study I problematize how schooling, even via “additive” programs such as TWI, are no exception to the demand and deficit views placed on marginalized families (Avineri, Johnson, Brice-Heath, McCarty, Ochs, Kremer-Sadlik, Blum, Zentella, Rosa, Flores, & Alim, 2015; Flores & García, 2017; Chaparro, 2019). I used three main frameworks to reveal how schooling practices are dominant in home and community contexts yet do not prevent families’ unique practices from manifesting. By investigating the phenomenon from three frameworks: family literacy (Taylor, 1983; Compton-Lilly, 2003; Zentella, 2005), pedagogies of the home (Bernal, 2002; Moll, 1992; Yosso, 2005; Smith & Murillo, 2013), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Ladson-Billings, 2000; Anzaldúa, 2012; Flores & Rosa, 2015). More specifically, these frameworks were used to explore how families engaged in language and literacy events in order to highlight knowledges that go unrecognized in schooling. This ethnographic case study took place in the homes and communities of three families who lived in a mid-sized, Midwestern community, near a large public university. Data was collected over two years and included a variety of data sources: audio and video recordings, semi-formal interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Data was analyzed using open coding with a critical lens. Findings showed that reflections of working-class families from various backgrounds demonstrated the dominance of schooling practices over home literacy practices, separation of languages, and raciolinguistic socialization via “languagelessness” (Chaparro, 2019; Rosa, 2019). Findings also demonstrated that families’ language and literacy practices included a range of cultural values, feelings, attitudes, and relationships that shaped and gave meaning to literacy activities in ways that were organically sustained and surpassed schooling practices (Barton & Hamilton, 2012). Data also showed how children are not only shaped by practices but are also shaping language and literacy practices and choices made in their environments among children and adults, demonstrating their roles as pedagogues, despite being monitored by formal schooling practices. Implications for bilingual education and teacher preparation programs are shared to problematize existing ideologies of culturally and linguistically diverse students in order to propose new directions for school practices and policymaking. This is done in an effort to bridge pedagogy and critical consciousness to include larger political and economic factors that lie at the root of the marginalization of language and literacy practices of racialized students and families (Flores, 2019).
Family literacy, Pedagogies of the Home, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Raciolinguistics, bilingual education, Two-Way-Immersion (TWI), dual language programs.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign