Expanding the Knowledge Base in Literacy Instruction and Assessment: Biliteracy and Translanguaging Perspectives From Families, Communities, and Classrooms

Abstract

This article is a response to claims made by proponents of “science of reading” and “structured literacy” reading instruction approaches, in regard to their effectiveness with emergent bilingual students. The author argues that the strong knowledge base generated from studies examining the dynamic literacy practices of emergent bilingual students should also be included in reading curriculum, assessment, and teacher education decisions. First, the author provides an overview of the contributions and limitations of the knowledge base associated with the science of reading, in relation to bilingual learners. The author explains that the complexity of the instructional, demographic, and sociocultural realities of emergent bilinguals in the United States requires solutions informed by various vantage points and perspectives. Second, the author summarizes family literacy research in households of Latinx bilingual children, documenting parents’ and children’s advocacy efforts, emergent biliteracy practices, and tensions in grappling with English‐dominant instruction in schools. Finally, the author summarizes research extending oral reading assessment procedures to analyze emergent bilingual students’ miscues and retellings. The author cautions against the implications of critiques of the three‐cueing systems and miscue analysis, by explaining how language‐related perspectives, including translanguaging, can help expand miscue analytic approaches. This expansion can help teachers and families understand how emergent bilinguals draw from their multiple language and literacy resources in decoding and retelling. Implications for teacher preparation and professional development are included throughout.

Bringing a Culturally Sustaining Lens to Reading Intervention

“…The young people who came to Lauren's class, speaking multiple languages and embodying transnational experiences, are illustrative of the growing cultural and linguistic diversity within school spaces. These students are now continuing their educational careers at the same time as the Science of Reading movement, characterized by increasingly narrow and decontextualized conceptualizations of literacy, has reemerged with new momentum (Vaughn et al, 2020) and with potentially deleterious effects on emergent bilinguals (Noguerón-Liu, 2020). In light of this movement and in response to the long-standing calls for reading intervention to be more responsive to diverse learners, we might ask through a culturally sustaining lens: How do we move away from a white-dominant, monolingual gaze for defining what literacy is, what we mean by reading achievement, and how we assess it?…”

“…Although a growing body of literature documents how CSP has been taken up in classrooms and communities (e.g., Nash et al, 2021;Paris & Alim, 2017), we know less about CSP within intervention settings. With CSP as a framework, this exploratory study addresses a long-standing problem that emergent bilinguals are commonly viewed through monolingual and monocultural lenses (Hopewell & Escamilla, 2014;Noguerón-Liu, 2020) and responds to the need for descriptive studies that explore how school culture, teacher practice, and student differences shape teaching and learning within intervention (Artiles, 2015;Orosco & Klingner, 2010). Following García (2009), I use the term "emergent bilingual" to refer to students who speak multiple languages.…”

Advancing the Science of Teaching Reading Equitably

“…Connecting with what minoritized students know, do, and identify with outside of school is another cultural domain of teaching suggested as affecting student reading and language gains. It includes the use of students' everyday language (E. García, 2005;Noguerón Liu, 2020), links between reading activity and students' everyday experi ences (e.g., routines, interests, social relationships, perspec tives, expertise, values, traditions; Tharp, Estrada, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 2000), and discussions about fairness, bias, and justice within the classroom and in society (Banks & Banks, 1995;Ogbu, 1992). Moll et al (1992) referred to the rich resources, practices, and experiences minoritized stu dents bring to classroom activity as funds of knowledge.…”

Why Sociocultural Context Matters in the Science of Reading and the Reading of Science: Revisiting the Science Discovery Narrative

“…To wit, SOR work has increasingly acknowledged the power that texts have in positioning readers in “normative (often gendered, racialized, classed, and colonized) ways of knowing, being, and doing” (Phillips Galloway, McClain, & Uccelli, 2020, p. S332). Further, several authors from the aforementioned special issue recognized the dominance of quantitative studies in SOR research and the need for qualitative approaches that would contribute to key issues and constructs that cannot be easily quantified (Milner, 2020; Noguerón‐Liu, 2020; Phillips Galloway et al, 2020).…”