Growing numbers of scholars in composition studies support translingual orientations in their postsecondary writing classrooms. However, translingual orientations are rarely extended to elementary school writers, who are often asked to compose exclusively in Dominant American English. Drawing on theories of translingualism and emergent biliteracy, we use case study methods to examine children’s translingual writing in a highly linguistically diverse second-grade classroom. We pay particular attention to students who had not had formal instruction in languages they tended to use orally, documenting the creative and strategic ways in which they wrote. Among other strategies, students repurposed English sound–symbol correspondences in developmental spelling, composed strings of non-Roman symbols, and remixed multilingual environmental print. They also engaged in translingual writing for a range of purposes, such as expressing pride, connecting with audiences, and indexing identities. Our findings suggest the potential of moving translingual perspectives beyond postsecondary contexts and into elementary classrooms.
Objective: To examine the effects of a 12-week therapeutic yoga program on gait speed, postural control, and mobility in community-dwelling older adults. Design: Quasi-experimental study with a pretest/post-test design. Researchers evaluated changes over time (pretest to post-test) in all outcome measures. Paired t-tests were used to analyze normal and fast gait speed, Timed Up and Go test, and Timed Up and Go Dual Task. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to evaluate scores for the Mini-BESTest (MBT). Setting: Yoga classes were performed at a local senior center. Blind examiners who were previously trained in the outcome measures performed all pretests and post-tests at the site. Participants: Thirteen adults (12 women and 1 man, with a mean age -standard deviation of 72 -6.9 years) completed the study. Research participants had minimal to no yoga experience. Interventions: A 12-week, 60-minute, biweekly Kripalu yoga class designed specifically for communitydwelling older adults. Outcome measures: Postural control (MBT), mobility (Timed Up and Go test), and gait speed (normal and fast) were assessed. Results: All 13 participants attended at least 19 of the 24 classes (80% attendance). Statistically significant improvements were seen in the MBT ( p = 0.039), normal gait speed ( p = 0.015), fast gait speed ( p = 0.001), Timed Up and Go test ( p = 0.045), and Timed Up and Go Dual-Task ( p = 0.05). Conclusions: Improvements in postural control and mobility as measured by the MBT and Timed Up and Go gait as measured by fast gait speed indicate that research participants benefitted from the therapeutic yoga intervention. The yoga program designed for this study included activities in standing, sitting, and lying on the floor and may be effective in improving mobility, postural control, and gait speed in community-dwelling older adults.
Although literacy can be a space for joy and criticality, urban early literacy classrooms are imbued with carceral logics, criminalizing young children along lines of race, disability, and language. To support teachers in enacting liberatory early literacy pedagogies, teacher educators must contend with the harm dominant literacy approaches can produce for multiply-marginalized young children. We describe how early literacy routines are (1) constructed for an imagined “normal child” through white, nondisabled, English-dominant perceiving practices; and (2) enforced through carceral logics. Teacher educators can cultivate urban teachers’ liberatory pedagogical tools, centering multiply-marginalized young children's power and agency so they might flourish.
We examine how culturally sustaining pedagogy that fosters linguistic and cultural pluralism might be taken up in writing instruction. Using data collected through semistructured interviews with nine urban elementary and middle school writing teachers, we document teachers' conceptualizations and enactments of culturally sustaining writing pedagogy. Findings indicate that these teachers tended to make space for explicit discussions of language, culture, and power in the writing curriculum and to problematize expressions of dominant culture, such as an emphasis on official languages. We also explore the tensions that these teachers experienced in their pedagogy while engaging in culturally sustaining methods; for example, we documented teachers' sense that writing needed to be more formal than speech and instances where their critical practices put them at odds with stakeholders in their schools. This work represents an emerging understanding of how culturally sustaining literacy pedagogy might be implemented in practice.
In this article, I synthesize extant research that documents how teachers foster and sustain children's diverse literacy practices within the early childhood classroom. Framing this review with Bakhtin's heteroglossia, I draw on theoretical and empirical scholarship in the fields of biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy. Findings are organized into three themes: (1) comparing languages and literacy practices, (2) hybridizing literacy practices, and (3) engaging children's linguistic and cultural repertoires. I conclude with a discussion of implications for researchers and practitioners.
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