Creating a translanguaging space in a bilingual community-based writing program

ABSTRACT

We, as multilingual teacher-scholars, had lingering questions about what community programs were doing, operating outside of school contexts, to maintain the bilingualism of racialized, Latinx children in Philadelphia and to resist the monolingual ideologies circulating in US society. To answer those questions, we partnered with a bilingual, community-based writing center serving the Latinx community in Philadelphia to offer a set of workshops in hopes of creating a translanguaging space. Using a variety of qualitative research methods, including participatory research and critical/positive discourse analysis, we found that a translanguaging pedagogy created a space where racialized, emergent bilingual children can practice the entirety of their languages and resist the monolingual and racist discourses that circulate in US society.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• community based writing
• biliteracy
• participatory research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation [201900092].