Co-editor’s introduction: Humanizing pedagogy, research and learning

Drawing on humanizing pedagogy (Fránquiz & Salazar, 2004; Salazar, 2013) and on humanizing research methods (Paris & Winn, 2013), bi(multi)lingual and bi(multi)literacy scholars agree that children’s and young adult literature offers mirrors and windows to readers (Bishop, 1990) for humanizing learning. The mirror offers a reflection of reader’s identities, languages, cultures, or experiences. When readers do not see genuine representations of themselves reflected in the stories they hear and the books they read, their educational future is threatened and sense of belonging in the wider community is reduced. While books-as-mirrors are needed to build strong, competent, and confident learner identities, windows are also needed. These windows must offer realistic views of the world and the people that live in it. Accordingly, all readers need books that are both mirrors of their own lives and windows into the lives of others. Such a perspective, however, is about disrupting and not promoting single stories about any particular cultural group. The idea for quality children’s and young adolescent literature is to examine books that offer possibilities beyond any one single story Adichie (2009). Rather than promoting the “correct” way of seeing, speaking, believing or being, readers are invited to explore a broad range of characters, cultural and linguistic representations, and storylines. Why does this matter to the readership of the Bilingual Research Journal? We offer the following considerations.

Second language and cultural competence

As educators and parents persist in supporting the acquisition of a second language and cross-cultural competence as a pivotal 20th century skill for the next generation, they will continue to enroll their children in dual language education programs. Yet, research shows the field of children’s and young adult literature in this country is in serious need of representing the demographics of its youth accurately (Naidoo, 2008), particularly in languages other than English. At this sociopolitical moment, literature matters for creating awareness of cultural diversity while at the same time integrating language learning. However, the call for literature cannot stand alone. It is also incumbent to create spaces in and out of school where books not only honor heritage languages but offer themes that engage emerging bi(multi)lingual youth with the issues in our era – the issues of persistent xenophobia, nativism and anti-immigrant discourse. Learners who are Latinx, Indigenous, Asian Pacific Islander, Afro-Caribbean for examples, may require a restorative pathway for decolonizing their community’s histories to better understand their community’s cultural wealth and the role these important resources ought to play in school curricula.

Inclusive excellence for language and literacy learning

Language and literacy learning are a human right. Such inclusive excellence considers diversity in all of its identities as presented in curricula for the purpose of fostering students’ personal, social and academic identities and well-being. Inclusive curricula seek to engage learners with expansive rather than restrictive bridges of communication about books that mirror the lived experiences of complex identities such as multiracial families, (bi)multilingual families, mixed-status families, and non-binary families. This perspective requires researchers of education, teachers and teacher educators to humanize their orientations by considering language teaching and learning in the complex context of learners’ lives.

For more than a quarter of a century, Anzaldúa (1993)’s children’s book, Amigos del Otro Lado/Friends from the Other Side, offers a story that can be used for dialoguing and responding to complex social issues, such as undocumented immigration, poverty, compassion, and healing practices. It provides the context for (de)constructing the racial, cultural, class, gender, citizenship and linguistic identities of adults and children living within borderlands. In building and imagining inclusive communities, writers of children’s books, then, are persistently faced with disclosing, or not, the types of sociopolitical issues that can be seen and heard on the streets and multiplied by digital resources of 21st century lives. These sociopolitical issues include rigid gender rules, the colonial legacy of English only, homelessness, immigration, among many other dilemmas.

In a community of inclusive excellence, learners big and small, are invited to respond to texts about sociopolitical issues that impact their lives and the lives of their neighbors. In such communities, heritage languages are assets, cultural strengths from homes are elevated, and inter-racial, cross-cultural and multilingual dialogs are promoted. Without opportunities to use family and community knowledge, learners are presented barriers to English language acquisition and cultural citizenship is denied. In communities that value inclusive excellence, student knowledge and experiences are tapped, lauded, and uplifted for the purpose of developing culturally and linguistically sustaining literacies. One effective way to guide the imagined community to fruition is through the intentional planning of critical encounters with literature (DeNicolo & Fránquiz, 2006) and other texts that foment dialogue about sociopolitical issues in society. It is the persistence of oppression in educational policies that limit the linguistic and cultural repertoires of learners where change needs to be made. If all available linguistic and cultural resources are acknowledged and/or challenged by mirrors and windows provided in texts, then the transformative potential of dialogue, composing, enacting and disseminating of new knowledge is optimized in the languages in which the author is proficient. This message has been promoted by the Bilingual Research Journal through its first editor, Alma Flor Ada, beginning with its inaugural issue in 1975.

Mutual humanization

At the dawn of 2020, it will be a half of a century since Freire (1970) stated that teachers who enact humanizing pedagogy engage in a quest for mutual humanization (p. 56) with their students, a process fostered through problem-posing education where students are co-investigators of social justice issues in dialogue with teachers. Response to quality children’s and young adult literature is a dialogic approach to the teaching of language and literacy with the goal of constructing mutual humanization with and among students. The curriculum is interrogated by teachers in order to meet Freire’s description for education: “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (p. 17). Accordingly, teachers who enact humanizing pedagogy engage with their students in praxis, reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. They utilize pedagogical practices to participate in the process of humanization by reading and responding with their students, both to the word and the world. For excellent examples see Batista-Morales, Salmerón, & DeJulio (this issue) where children guided their university tutors in reading their worlds and enacting actions to address important issues in their community and their lives – specifically, the need for recycling and naming their fear of deportation.

A growing number of scholars have developed a number of practical applications to Freire’s conceptualization of humanizing pedagogy as it relates to the education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners. For example, Macedo and Bartolomé (2000) suggest that humanizing practices include valuing students’ background knowledge, culture, and life experiences. They add that acknowledging and using students’ heritage languages, and accessing their background knowledge makes good pedagogical sense and constitutes humanizing practices for students.

Unfortunately, research also shows that too often bi(multi)lingual speakers who naturally move across and between languages (Garcia & Wei, 2014), are dissuaded from using their languages and language varieties (Lippi-Green, 2012). Typically, dissuasion results from school policies of English only or maintenance of strict separation of languages in dual language programs. What the highlighted researchers suggest is that dehumanizing practices can potentially stifle the academic and social possibilities of learners. Such practices rob children of their full humanity through a banking method of education that encourages students to receive, file, and store deposits of knowledge provided to them by their teachers (Freire, 1970) in English only. This approach promotes passivity, acceptance, submissiveness, and assimilation. In the case of Emergent Bilinguals, the banking method of education divests youth of linguistic and cultural resources for language and literacy learning. Instead, the reflective and dialogic space for literature responses can be used to support bilingual learners in reflecting and critically exploring the ways their own identities and the intersection of these identities is represented and aligns (or not) with previous family and educational knowledge as well as interactions with previous texts. Poza (in this issue) provides an example of literary intertextual links in transcript segments from fifth-graders translanguaging to make meaning of El Mago de Oz/The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. On the other hand, the discourse analysis in Braden (this issue) shows how intertextual connections made across time among peers in a physics lab can also index racial stereotypes.

Research articles in K-9 classrooms

Volume 42, Issue 4 begins with the results of three research studies in K-9 classrooms. The qualitative studies all used discourse analysis to provide analytical evidence for the findings. The first article is by Laura Hamman-Ortiz and titled “Troubling the ‘Two’ in Two-way Bilingual Education”. Discourse analysis is used to address the ongoing debate regarding the separation of instructional languages in bilingual classrooms. The limitations of language ideologies attached to programmatic binaries implied by two-way instruction within a second grade are examined. Data is drawn from an ethnographic case study in a public charter school with a school-wide Spanish/English Two Way Bilingual Education (TWBE) program in a mid-sized Midwestern city. As a proponent of social justice education, the second grade Latinx teacher’s ideologies match the belief that separate language spaces increase the minority language learning of Spanish. For her, language separation is a necessary practice. The research sought to show the tensions with the construction of “two” languages and “two” groups of students. The microanalysis of interactional units in a language event that occurred during math time shows how the binary between Latinx and Anglo correlates with and reifies racialized Spanish- and English-speaker identities. The positioning of students in two distinct categories of ethnolinguistic identities non-intentionally limit inclusive excellence. The question remains whether language separation ideologies and guidelines can coexist with more flexible language boundaries, such as translanguaging, during instruction.

“‘Where the True Power Resides’: Student Translanguaging and Supportive Teacher Dispositions” by Luis Poza is also an ethnographic case study. It highlights Maestro, a fifth-grade bilingual teacher who is ambivalent about the strict separation of language boundaries for instruction in a Dual Immersion program. As stated by Poza, “Maestro grapples with monolingual expectations imposed upon multilingual realities.” Nonetheless, like the Hamman-Ortiz study, tensions where reported for teachers in a suburban Northern California school with Dual Immersion classroom expectations of the separation of languages for instruction. While Maestro accepted students’ dynamic language practices for meaning making, there were times when the pressures of parents, colleagues and administrators required him to police his students’ language usage. The discourse examples from his class provided rich talk of students’ translanguaging and, at the same time, raise concerns regarding the contradictory positions teachers and teacher educators often take toward language separation in the name of students’ looming monolingual assessments.

In the article, “Linguistic Expertise, Mockery, and Appropriateness in the Construction of Identities: A Case Study from 9th Grade Physics,” Sarah Braden reports on a one-year case study of a lab group in a physics classroom located in a mid-sized Western city. The science-focused public charter school’s success in promoting science education is lauded in the district. However, the analysis of how four emergent bilingual students worked together across two labs and two months, shows that what counts as science expertise resulted in the marginalization of Latinx and female students. Mock Spanish was a peer group practice that was used for racializing Latinx students and for communicating the appropriateness of English for science lab work. Interestingly, the teacher naturalized the hegemony of English in the physics classroom while he encouraged and allowed the use of Spanish. As a result, even though the teacher was not part of the discourse analyzed, the author points out that the teacher’s pedagogy and favoring of dominant student contributions “explicitly sideline the funds of knowledge of minoritized students”. A number of recommendations for teachers and teacher educators are provided in order to address the inequitable representation gap of Latinx students and women in physics.

Research articles on in-service and pre-service teachers

Two articles in this final issue for 2019 directly focus on supports that can and ought to be provided to in-service and pre-service teachers. In her study, “The (Invisible) Work of Dual Language Bilingual Teachers,” Cathy Amanti uses the analytic category of “invisible work”, originally conceptualized by second-wave feminists, in order to identify the labor that is expected and accomplished by dual language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers and remains uncompensated. Six currently practicing DLBE teachers in Georgia agreed to reveal their experiences, perspectives and working conditions in order to make visible the work of language teachers (2 French, 4 Spanish). This relationship is critical for an occupation that is predominantly female and experiencing draconian shortages, particularly in classrooms serving emerging bilingual learners. One important insight of the research is to identify the mechanisms that render work invisible by naturalizing and devaluing workers’ skills – such as their linguistic labor in translating or making curricular materials in heritage languages. Workplace conditions and structural changes that can have a positive impact for teacher retention from current teachers’ perspectives is at the heart of the study.

The second article in this section on teachers is “Their Words, Their Worlds: Critical Literacy in Bilingual Spaces” by Nathaly Batista-Morales, Cori Salmerón, and Samuel DeJulio. The nested case study included three Latinx bilingual/bicultural second graders collaborating with bilingual pre-service teachers during 1:1 tutorials that were required in a reading methods course. This tutoring space contained many types of literacy activities and final products guided by student interest. The analysis focuses on the children’s engagement with critical literacy, particularly in relation to child-led processes to take action and enact change in their communities. The stories authored by the students about their community and their families demonstrate optimal engagement when student’s own experiential knowledge is central to the act of reading. While the 1:1 match is challenging when a reading course is larger or when a variety of home languages are present, the process for enacting critical literacy that is presented in the study provides a rich humanizing foundation for learning.

Research article on family literacies

The sixth article in Volume 42, Issue 4, is “Increasing Parent Knowledge through Workshops on Early Childhood Programs, Home Literacy, and Technology Use” by Doris Luft Baker, Ma Hao, and Elisa Gallegos. The exploratory study examined the direct effects of parent workshops on the knowledge of Latinx parents and the indirect effects on their children’s vocabulary. Three types of knowledge were the focus: early childhood programs, literacy practices at home and the use of technology. Knowing English, navigating the Internet, and parents living in isolation due to their immigration status were particular sensitivities considered in the study. The ultimate goal was to create a social network among Latinx parents. Thirty-two Latinx mothers from two neighborhoods in Texas participated. Data consisted of a demographic questionnaire, an intervention, and random assignment to a treatment or control group. Children from ages 1–4 participated in pretest and posttest vocabulary assessment. Mothers received books in Spanish to read with their children at home and seven workshops were developed in Spanish for the Latinx Families Network initiative. Descriptive statistics indicate that knowledge about early childhood programs increased as result of the workshops, parents in the treatment group spent more time reading to their children, children in the intervention group increased their expressive vocabulary, and parents in the treatment group found the information they learned useful. The study was effective in examining the causal effects of workshops on the knowledge of Latinx mothers and the vocabulary outcomes of their children.

Book reviews

Volume 42, Issue 4, of the Bilingual Research Journal offers two book reviews to our readers. In the first, Christina Fallas Escobar reviews Transforming Schooling for Second Language Learners: Theoretical Insights, Policies, Pedagogies and Practices edited by Mariana Pacheco, P. Zitlali Morales, and Colleen Hamilton. This edited volume is divided into four major sections, including theoretical insights, transformative policies, transformative pedagogies, and transformative practices. According to the review, the goal of the volume is to provide readers with insights into the ways language policies, pedagogies and practices can redress issues facing emergent bilinguals. Several chapters point to teacher, community and institutional efforts to leverage current legislation on language education. Other chapters highlight the need to rethink pedagogical practices for teaching emergent bilinguals including ways to include youth in co-creating richer learning contexts. Chapters also position multilingual learners as language and cultural experts. Constructs such as translanguaging, critical caring, and the socioemotional needs of bilingual students are considered as important to incorporate in pedagogical practices. The edited volume is described as timely and necessary amidst a harsh political climate with a recent history of restrictive language policies.

Grace Gonzáles reviews a second edited volume. Art as a Way of Talking for Emergent Bilingual Youth: A Foundation for Literacy in PreK-12 Schools is authored by Berta Rosa Berriz, Amanda Claudia Wagner and Vivian Maria Poey. The review begins with a brief summary of the chapters in its three sections and then synthesizes important themes that can be applied to practice. The reader is provided with the multiple ways that arts-based education can amplify communicative repertoires. Print-based and multimodal literacies are framed as vital for expanding linguistic and cultural understandings. The reviewer acknowledges “the importance of considering the resources emergent bilingual students bring into classrooms and how they can be woven into instruction.” Powerful connections are forged between home and school, in-school and after-school programs, teachers and learners through a plethora of artful practices such as spoken poetry, digital story-telling, quilting, collage, and more. Interestingly, political agency is also cultivated through arts-based instruction. For sure and argument and call for action is made in this volume to educators – a call for not letting the arts be pushed out of classrooms.

Together the research articles and book reviews in this issue of the BRJ point to the diverse ways children, families, teachers, teacher educators, administrators and researchers can enrich each other’s lives through dialogic encounters with languages, cultures, literature, art, social networks, and actions that can improve our lives and those of our neighbors. The one conspicuous area that remains unaddressed is ways to improve the bi(multi)lingual spaces where languages and people thrive. How do we honor the spaces and lands where our sustaining pedagogies are cultivated? How can mirrors and windows not only reflect the human condition but also be produced to reflect the consciousness of the earth, the sky, the water? If humanizing pedagogy, research and learning is our goal, then we cannot ignore or normalize the oppressive forces that are still hurting our mother earth. Let us take up the challenge.