Translanguaging and Learning Stories in preschool: Supporting language rights and social justice for Latinx children, families, and educators

Abstract

This article focuses on elements of successful sociocultural inclusion and linguistic participation in a bilingual dual-language preschool for Latinx children. It presents a subset of findings from a three-year qualitative research project in which Latinx critical race theory and a translanguaging framework were used to illuminate critical intersections between children's funds of knowledge, their translanguaging talents, and their interests in play and social interaction. Learning Stories served as both the focus for documentation and the unit of analysis for understanding children's translanguaging experiences, as well as for promoting new forms of authentic assessment for family engagement.

Raising multilingual learners’ awareness of social justice through translanguaging pedagogy

“…Social justice cannot happen without linguistic justice which values the importance of multilingual education (Skutnabb-Kangas et al, 2009). However, policies promoting monolingualism limit bilingual individuals to using only one language system, which does not align with their daily language practices at home or within their community (Escamilla et al, 2023). As a result, bilinguals are forced to make meaning only in English.…”