LEARNING, TEACHING, AND DIVERSITY
Translingual Home to School Connections: Including Studentsâ Heritage Languages and Cultural Experiences in the Curriculum through Family eBooks
Mary Ellen Miller
Dissertation under the direction of Professor Deborah W. Rowe
As emergent bilingual student populations continue to grow in the U.S., classrooms are more linguistically diverse, while many curricula remain English-dominant. Furthermore, researchers have called on educators to include studentsâ heritage languages, families, and cultural experiences in instruction, or create translingual home to school connections. Yet the processes by which teachers, particularly primarily English-speaking teachers, support studentsâ translanguaging and sharing in the classroom are not well understood. This qualitative study investigates ways that a primarily English-speaking teacher, a researcher, and emergent bilingual students shared about their heritage languages, families, and cultural experiences during home and classroom eBook composing and presenting activities with touchscreen tablets and digital cameras. Data were collected October through May using ethnographic techniques of participant/observation and interviews in one multilingual second grade classroom in an urban, English-dominant, public school. Adults invited children to use tablets in the classroom writing center to take photos, draw pictures, record oral narrations, and write/type text for translingual eBooks. Five digital cameras and two tablets were sent home with participants on a rotating weekly basis so that families could compose eBooks and take photos at home. Family eBooks and photos were included in classroom instruction, and findings indicate that students combined multiple modes and languages to represent their families, languages, and experiences in eBooks. Even when participants spoke different heritage languages, they taught each other their languages for translingual eBooks. Features of a translingual instructional context include collaborative composing, opportunities to present eBooks, and embodied practices where students and adults are positioned as both teachers and learners. Implications for researchers and educators working with emergent bilingual students and their families in English-dominant schools are described, including practices for creating translingual home to school connections. Future research is needed to further examine familiesâ use of digital tools to create translingual instructional materials, familiesâ perspectives on translanguaging pedagogies, and ways to implement translingual instruction beyond the classroom level.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06102017-113358 |
| Date | 15 June 2017 |
| Creators | Miller, Mary Ellen |
| Contributors | Deborah W. Rowe, Robert T. Jimenez, Ilana S. Horn, Laura M. Carpenter |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-06102017-113358/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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