Centering Nepantla Literacies from the Borderlands: Leveraging “In-Betweenness” Toward Learning in the Everyday

Abstract

This article argues that building powerful literacies involves the centering of dispositions and practices that thrive on the boundary—spaces that are not always sanctioned as educational. Leveraging youths’ repertoires is particularly important for educators of nondominant learners who are committed to challenging characterizations of their students as being inept or deficient. To this end, we address how the design of learning opportunities that attend to polylingual repertoires (Gutiérrez, Bien, Selland, & Pierce, 2011)—the use of multiple languages and forms of expression-—can open up opportunities, pathways, for youth to leverage new identities as resources for consequential learning. We advance the idea of organizing learning environments where youth playfully negotiate their nepantla identities that are often in a “state of perpetual transition” (Anzaldúa, 1999, p. 100). We argue that nepantla literacies, or literacies that thrive in the boundary, emerge through negotiations with syncretic (Gutiérrez, 2014) literacies—those that are valued in the academy and across spaces and communities.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the support of Arturo Cortez and the research team at UC Berkeley’s Prolepsis Design Studio.

Funding

This work is made possible by support from the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network.

Additional Resources

1. Diaz, E, & Flores, B. (2001). Teacher as sociocultural, sociohistorical mediator: Teaching to the potential. The best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students, 29-47.

This chapter provides concrete examples for how teachers can apply Vygotskian principles in the classroom in deliberate ways. This piece is particularly important as it proposes strategies that attend to the “potential and not the developmental level” (p. 30) of nondominant children. The authors take a sociocultural and sociohistorical approach to understand how social interactions between teachers and students can be designed to promote literacy and biliteracy.

2. Paley, V. G. (2014). Boys and girls: Superheroes in the doll corner. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

This book chronicles the learning and developmental potential of play in a kindergarten classroom. The author encourages teachers to leverage the power of imagination and “pretend” to help young people critically look at their own roles in learning interactions in a way that “disarms and enchants” (p. 87). The book is written in clear and accessible prose, that reads more like a set of detailed journal entries than an academic text.

3. Rogoff, B. (1994). Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1, 209-229.

This important article highlights the dynamic (ever-changing) roles of expert and novice in communities of learners. The author advances a case for learning that occurs as participants engage in joint activities, approach that is distinct from traditional notions of learning that are based on transmission of knowledge from experts to novices.

4. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). The role of play in development. In Mind in society (pp. 92-104). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This chapter in the highly influential book by Lev Vygotsky outlines the developmental necessity of play for young learners as they “enter an imaginary, illusory world in which the unrealizable desires can be realized” (p. 93). This is an essential text for understanding how the rule-governed practices of play allow youth to imagine new worlds and roles for themselves.

Notes

¹ We utilize the term nepantlerxs to describe youth who navigate nepantlas in gender nonbinary terms.

² We utilize the term Latinx (a gender nonbinary term) to describe U.S.-based person of Latin American descent.

1. We are mindful of, and employ, a dynamic notion of culture that challenges static views of cultural communities and their practices, and thus, pedagogically always attend to both some enduring practices of communities (e.g., fighting back racism and oppression) as well as the ever changing nature of everyday practices). In short, we are careful not to equate culture with race and ethnicity and assume significant variance in the members and practices of any given cultural community.

2. All names are pseudonyms.