Learning from a community bilingual classroom: Toward a translanguaging literacies pedagogy with Chinese American bilinguals

ABSTRACT

Situated in the Midwest region of the United States, this study draws on translanguaging literacies to critically examine the discussions and sense-making that was taking place in a Mandarin-English bilingual community classroom between a Chinese bilingual teacher and three Chinese American bilingual students while engaging in discussions of language, culture, and history with children’s literature. Our findings demonstrate that the teacher carefully applied translanguaging literacies as deliberate pedagogy to help bilingual students understand language in the world, normalize linguistic freedom and respect, and critically make sense of their complex identities and histories with and through their entire linguistic repertoires.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We use the term community schools to refer to schools established by the local community for their specific needs.

2. We use bi/literacies to refer to biliteracies or literacies of bilingual students who have multiple forms of languaging and literacies for reading and writing the word and world (Freire & Macedo, 2005).

3. A Chinese language variety native to the first author’s hometown – Heze, Shandong.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jiadi Zhang

Jiadi Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Language and Literacy Education program in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign. She is multilingual and speaks Mandarin, English, Korean, and Japanese. Zhang’s research interests include exploring Chinese-English translanguaging, critical biliteracies, teacher education, Asian American children’s literature, and language ideologies. Her work is guided by a sociocultural perspective that acknowledges minoritized communities’ daily literacy and cultural practices conducted with different modes and across named languages as legitimate knowledge. She believes the cultural, linguistic, and historical knowledge students bring into the classroom could leverage their learning, including academic performance.

Idalia Nuñez

Idalia Nuñez is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education in the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is a Chicana/Latina scholar who grew up on the Texas-Mexico borderlands and was a former elementary bilingual teacher in San Antonio, Texas, with experiences that have shaped and informed her understanding and interest in biliteracy and translanguaging. Her research focuses on recognizing the everyday cultural and linguistic resources of students of Color, specifically from diverse Latine/x communities in order to leverage academic learning.