Patricia Baquedano-López

Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space

In this article we provide a perspective on hybridity both as a theoretical lens for understanding diversity and a method for organizing learning. We argue that the use of multiple, diverse, and even conflicting mediational tools promotes the emergence of Third Spaces, or zones of development, thus expanding learning. Using examples from our ethnographic study of the literacy practices of one dual immersion elementary school classroom, we illustrate through an analysis of the discourse and literacy practices of the teacher and students in this culture of collaboration, how hybrid activities, roles, and practices can lead to productive contexts of development.

Equity Issues in Parental and Community Involvement in Schools: What Teacher Educators Need to Know.

In this chapter, we examine the literature on parental involvement highlighting the equity issues that it raises in educational practice. Like so many educators and researchers, we are concerned with approaches to parental involvement that construct restricted roles for parents in the education of their children. These approaches often miss the multiple ways nondominant parents participate in their children’s education because they do not correspond to normative understandings of parental involvement in schools (Barton, Drake, Perez, St. Louis, & George, 2004). Moreover, these framings restrict the ways in which parents from nondominant backgrounds can be productive social actors who can shape and influence schools and other social institutions. A great deal of general educational policy on parent involvement draws on Epstein’s (1992, 1995) theory and typologies where a set of overlapping spheres of influence locate the student among three major contexts—the family, the school, and the community—which operate optimally when their goals, missions, and responsibilities overlap. Epstein’s (1992) Six Types of Involvement framework provides a variety of practices of partnership, including the following strategies for involvement: assisting with parenting, communicating with parents, organizing volunteering activities for parents, involving parents in learning at home activities (such as homework), including parents in decision making, and collaborating with community. This perspective, however, can foster individualistic and school-centric approaches (see Warren, Hong, Rubin, & Uy, 2009). We argue

“English for the Children”: The New Literacy of the Old World Order, Language Policy and Educational Reform

Abstract Proposition 227 is perhaps the single most important language policy decision of this last century—one that may have profound consequences on schooling in the 21st century. Documenting the ways school districts, the local schools, teachers, and parents make sense of this new policy is central to understanding its short- and long-term effects on the education of English language learners (ELLs). Using qualitative approaches to inquiry, we have studied how three different school districts in Southern California interpreted and implemented the new law. A second concurrent strand of research examined how teachers interpreted and implemented the new law in classroom practice. Three case study classrooms were observed across the first academic year implementing Proposition 227: (a) one English immersion classroom, (b) one alternative bilingual classroom, and (c) one structured immersion classroom. Participant observation and interview methods were used to capture the evolution of classroom practices, literacy practices in particular.

The pragmatics of reading prayers: Learning the Act of Contrition in Spanish-based religious education classes (doctrina)

Abstract In this article I investigate the convergence of a number of linguistic, interactional, and textual resources employed in religious reading activities in Spanish-based Catholic religious instruction (doctrina) for school-age Mexican immigrant children. I examine the use of these resources through an analysis of the reading and memorization of the Act of Contrition (AOC), a prayer said during the religious ritual that involves the confession and absolution of sins. I discuss examples of a classroom reading activity that centers on the interactions of four female students and their teacher as they read the AOC. The analysis of their interactions illustrates the ways in which their collaborative reading engages a ritualization process that focuses and constructs text as sacred. The reading activity supported this ritualization process through (i) parallel reframing and interpretation of the words being read and (ii) verbalizations of cognitive activity related to ways of reading text. I also discuss how the activities of ritualization socialize attention to both text and other participants in the activity. Descriptions of doctrina instruction and the origins of the AOC are also provided.

La Cosecha/The Harvest: Sustainable Models of School-Community Engagement at a Bilingual Program

This article examines the culminating activity—la cosecha or the harvest—in a yearlong project in which teachers at a bilingual afterschool program and staff from a citywide environmental advocacy group taught students to plant, harvest, and sell produce grown at the school site. The authors show how students are socialized to become empowered members of their heritage-language community as they participate in harvest-related activities and co-construct shared beliefs about environmental and social justice. By examining the interactions between adults and students, our findings extend previous research highlighting the pedagogical and communicative resources employed in educational heritage-language settings.