Linguistic and Cultural Collaboration in Schools: Reconciling Majority and Minoritized Language Users

Abstract

This article extends the work of culturally sustaining pedagogy by moving towards the conceptualization of linguistic and cultural collaboration (LCC) in classrooms through reconciliation of majoritarian and minoritized language users. Whereas attention in mainstream educational research has been given to students’ cultures, this article underscores that explicit attention to diverse languages and language varieties is essential to reconfiguration of power relations in schools and reconciliation among culturally and linguistically minoritized and dominant groups. Drawing on scholarship regarding plurilingual and multilingual practice, the authors conceptualize LCC as both a process and a product that expands all students’ critical multilingual language awareness. They draw on an ongoing research‐practice partnership (RPP) with a U.S. school district experiencing growing cultural and linguistic diversity. The article focuses on a single school to illustrate how LCC has been taken up as a whole‐school approach to leveraging students’ and families’ cultural and linguistic resources as vital to learning and living together in a multicultural and multilingual world. After outlining development of the RPP following a social design–based methodology, the authors discuss how in practice reconciliation is forged as teachers, students, and their families engage in collaborative multilingual bookmaking. They focus on three aspects of reconciliation (collaboration, restoration, living together) that support students in becoming more language‐aware and in moving towards multilingual activism.

Examining Hegemonic and Monoglossic Language Ideologies, Policies, and Practices Within Bilingual Education in Colombia

“…Recently Hélot and Prasad (2018) proposed to reconceptualize the five domains of la in relationship to García's (2017) call to foster critical multilingual language awareness in multilingual school contexts. Prasad and Lory (2020) draw attention to the power domain, which they define as attention to power relations associated with languages, language speakers, and language learning. They argue that questions of power are at the center of developing cmla and serve as a lens to focus attention on the relationships between language and social dynamics of power and inequality.…”

Dual Language Books Go Digital: Storybooks Canada in French Immersion Schools and Homes

“…As a result, teachers and culturally diverse students are encouraged to develop strategies not only to sustain cultural practices and affirm a student's particular home language but also to encourage acceptance and respect of self and others. This gives educators, students, family, and community a sustainable vivre ensemble (Prasad & Lory, 2020) with the language(s) of instruction. In effect, a resource such as Storybooks Canada, with all its multilingual possibilities, allows for a "linguistic complicity" where the languages present in the students' repertoire become a source of pride.…”

Critical Multilingual Language Awareness Among Migrant Students: Cultivating Curiosity and a Linguistics of Participation

“…Among scholars with long-term experience of researching Multilingual Language Awareness in schools, it has been stated that "one of the criteria used to judge the equity of a country's education system concerns its capacity to respond to the challenges posed by an increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse post-modern society" (Mary & Young, 2018, p. 275). Prasad and Lory (2020) point out that a viable response is neither that each "single teacher will be able to speak every student's home language" (p. 798), nor that "the equity gap between minoritized language learners and dominant language speakers [is] bridged simply by minoritized language learners acquiring the dominant language" (p. 799). We frame these challenges not only as a practical question, but also as an issue not yet resolved despite the extensive research in sociolinguistics and language education that repeatedly has revealed unfair systems of education based on nation-state monolingual regimes (see Prasad & Lory, 2020;also Kramsch, 2021).…”

“…Prasad and Lory (2020) point out that a viable response is neither that each "single teacher will be able to speak every student's home language" (p. 798), nor that "the equity gap between minoritized language learners and dominant language speakers [is] bridged simply by minoritized language learners acquiring the dominant language" (p. 799). We frame these challenges not only as a practical question, but also as an issue not yet resolved despite the extensive research in sociolinguistics and language education that repeatedly has revealed unfair systems of education based on nation-state monolingual regimes (see Prasad & Lory, 2020;also Kramsch, 2021).…”

“…Responses to such inequalities are, however, not lacking. In multilingualism research, there is a long tradition of exploring how teachers may approach linguistic diversity via participatory and translingual pedagogies that aim to "activate a critical multilingual awareness" (García & Kleifgen, 2019, p. 14; see Prasad & Lory, 2020, for an overview). According to García (2017), a Critical Multilingual Awareness (CMLA) approach implies the development of students' "consciousness of language as social practice and a voicing of their own multilingual experiences" (pp.…”