Children as Co-ethnographers of their Plurilingual Literacy Practices: An Exploratory Case Study

Abstract

Interdisciplinary childhood researchers have begun to advocate a shift from conducting research about children to engaging children themselves in the research process. In this article, I reflect on issues and insights that arose while working with grade 5 students as ethnographers of their own language and literacies practices over the course of a sixmonth transformative multiliteracies classroom intervention in a French school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I describe this initial exploratory case study as a way of provoking discussion on ways we may re-envision plurilingual multiliteracies research with children as co-researchers.

‘Is there an app for that?’ Exploring games and apps among heritage language families

“…Research among families who speak more than one language is situated against a complex background which refers variously to: immigrant families (Szecsi and Szilagyi 2012;Rumbaut and Portes 2001), bilingualism or multilingualism (Baker 2011) plurilingualism (Prasad 2013), home language (Eisenchlas, Schalley, and Moyes 2016) and heritage language (Cho and Krashen 2000;Szecsi and Szilagyi 2012). Throughout this paper, the term heritage language' is used, since the vast majority of families had views of the 'heritage language' that aligned with Blackledge and Creese's (2010) interpretation, namely a minority language not spoken by the majority within the community or country, with both language and culture being passed down the generations.…”

Making Adolescents’ Diverse Communicative Repertoires Visible: A Creative Inquiry-Based Approach to Preparing Teachers to Work with (Im)migrant Youth

“…Studies of language representation have traditionally employed discourse analysis to study how representations are produced in and through discursive practice individually and collectively (Bono & Stratilaki, 2009;Gajo 2000;Jodelet, 1989;Py, 2004). With the emergence of pluralistic approaches to language learning and teaching, a variety of artsinformed practices have also been used to help learners make their implicit social representations of language and plurilingualism visible: for example, reflexive drawing (Molinié, 2009;Prasad, 2018b); photography (Farmer & Prasad, 2014;Razafimandimbimanana, 2014); collage (Prasad, 2013(Prasad, , 2018a; theatre (Armand, Lory & Rousseau, 2013). The diverse experiences and resources that teachers and students bring to their classrooms are revealed through multimodal representations of social representations of language make visible.…”

“…The second project, and the focus of the remainder of this article, sought to raise TCs' CMLA by training them to become teacher-researchers investigating the language and literacy practices of adolescents. During the Foundations course, I introduced four creative and critical language and literacy inquiry tools: language portraits (Busch, 2017;Prasad, 2014), conversation maps (Dagenais & Berron, 2001), language and literacy repertoire mapping via digital photography (Symthe & Toohey, 2009;Prasad, 2013) and time-tracking of language practices. In the next section, I present each tool and illustrate its use with data generated by TCs from their initial use of the tools on themselves.…”

The Western Sydney Rustbelt: Recognizing and Building on Strengths in Pre-service Teacher Education

“…Scholars contend that allowing linguistically diverse students to showcase their linguistic funds of knowledge in classrooms, not only serves to acknowledge and appreciate students' proficiency but also, emphasizes their achievement and enhances their learning potential (Cummins & Early, 2011;Prasad, 2013). While teachers' ideas and beliefs about language and learning, impact all students, for many linguistically diverse students, difference is often interpreted as deficit (Comber & Kamler, 2005;Gorski, 2011;Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martínez, 2009).…”