Patricia Martínez-Álvarez

An Exploration of Hybrid Spaces for Place-Based Geomorphology with Latino Bilingual Children.

ABSTRACT Latino bilingual children hold rich understandings, which are underexplored and underutilized in the geoscience classroom. Oftentimes, young Latinos possess unique cultural land experiences shaping their place identities. We consider science as language and culture, and propose place-based geoscience hybrid space explorations that are culturally and linguistically relevant. We explore the different elements that help bilingual children learn geoscience using pre- and postsurvey of their understanding of the processes of erosion, transportation, and deposition; childrens marks, drawing, and writing on a photograph; and graphic organizers with childrens notes. Several different instructional elements for working with Latino bilinguals, organized around five tenets of culture, arise from our analysis: (1) Utilizing multiple linguistic resources, (2) making explicit connections to alternative interpretations of words, (3) using culturally relevant examples, (4) using alternative and creative ways of operationalizing hybrid spaces, and (5) learning in a community of practice.

Preparing Bilingual Teachers: Mediating Belonging with Multimodal Explorations in Language, Identity, and Culture

This study draws upon a survey of writing conceptions and cultural dispositions data, as well as multimodal compositions allowing bilingual teacher candidates to recursively explore and deepen the relationships between language, identity, and culture in learning. We found that teacher candidates did rethink the relationships through the multimodal tool. Moreover, their epistemic writing conceptions were correlated with high intercultural dispositions and multimodal complexity. The multimodal composition allowed candidates to follow individually distinct processes, but they all made more references to their imagined teaching practice at the end of the learning experience. These references were the result of, and resulted in, a deeper reflection of the relationships. Our results have implications for preparing teachers to confront the reality of diverse classrooms through more flexible pedagogical practices that allow for diverse modes of meaning making, such as the multimodal composition in this study.

Language Multiplicity and Dynamism: Emergent Bilinguals Taking Ownership of Language Use in a Hybrid Curricular Space

ABSTRACT This study explores the impact of hybrid instructional spaces on the purposeful and expansive use of translanguaging practices. Utilizing technology, the study explores the role of multimodality in bilinguals’ language multiplicity and dynamism. The research addresses: (a) how do emergent bilinguals in dual language programs deploy their full linguistic resources (i.e., idiolects) in writing when encouraged to use translanguaging?, and (b) how do home-school hybrid spaces impact emergent bilinguals’ use of translanguaging in writing? The study involved 89 children enrolled in Spanish-English dual language programs, with 53 of them participating in storytelling, writing, and other multimodal projects (i.e., photographs depicting their homes, families, and communities), and 36 in a nonparticipatory control group. The data collected include writing samples, audio taping of the children’s stories and class sessions, and multimodal projects. The findings are organized around children’s ability to negotiate their hybrid languaging practices as both separate and mixed entities when allowed and encouraged to take agency in their learning experiences within a hybrid curricular space.

On languaging and communities: Latino/a emergent bilinguals' expansive learning and critical inquiries into global childhoods

ABSTRACT Young children in diverse urban contexts bring to school transnational knowledges, complex multilingual literacies, and cultural practices which reflect global mobility and the blended nature of their social worlds. For children such as the Latino first graders we have been working with for the past three years, their lived experiences do not easily align with one language or national affiliation. Our qualitative practitioner research study examines how emergent bilinguals in transnational contexts engage in critical inquiry through photographing and writing about their communities. Drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory, we explore how childrens experiences in global neighborhood spaces – including their dynamic translanguaging practices and transnational histories – were an epistemic resource and a means of enacting agency. We suggest that translanguaging, as a cultural historical artifact, can help mediate childrens critical inquiries into global childhoods.

Using Historical Building Analysis to Support English Language Learners’ Bicultural and Historical Thinking Skills Development

English language learners can develop historical thinking and larger literacy skills by engaging in historical building analysis. Without the barrier posed by traditional text, historical building analysis offers opportunities for English language learners to engage in deep disciplinary practices in ways that simultaneously draw upon and build bicultural and historical knowledge. This chapter presents a framework for engaging in historical building analysis, how to implement it in a classroom, and the specific literacy, linguistic, and cultural practices and skills developed.

Multigenerational learning for expanding the educational involvement of bilinguals experiencing academic difficulties

ABSTRACT Focusing on two bilingual children experiencing learning difficulties, I explore the scientific representations these students generate in an afterschool programme where they have opportunities to exercise agency. In the programme, children use a digital camera to document science in their lives and engage in conversations about the products they generate. Acting as agents in this context requires that these children undertake the responsibility of transforming the knowledge and practice of the afterschool community. Using cultural historical activity theory, I analyse child-generated multimodal data and conversations. Findings show that these two bilinguals acted as agents as they responded to the proposed curriculum in a process I call multigenerational learning. This process served to bring to the surface childrens culturally relevant practices, allowing them to recognize science in their lives. As other students, teacher candidates and researchers in the afterschool programme engaged in analysing childrens work and in conversations with them and others about the multimodal products, negotiations on what counts as science and science knowledge took place. These spaces assisted in generating a more complete “able” view of participating children. This study addresses concepts for expanding the educational involvement of emergent bilingual children perceived as potentially in need of special education services, including the importance of providing opportunities for children to negotiate family and community involvement in curricula and instruction.