Sabrina F. Sembiante

Navigating Hybridized Language Learning Spaces through Translanguaging Pedagogy: Dual Language Preschool Teachers' Languaging Practices in Support of Emergent Bilingual Children's Performance of Academic Discourse.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in early bilingual development and the unique role of the educational setting’s language policy in this development. In this article, we describe how one dual language preschool teacher, in partnership with two co-teachers, navigated the tensions between language separation ideology and its practical realization in early bilingual education by co-constructing and enacting flexible bilingual pedagogic practices in support of Spanish-English emergent bilingual children’s participation in language and literary activities and performance of academic discourse. Teachers’ translanguaging practices of code-switching, translation, bilingual recasting, and language brokering drew on children’s linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge, supported experimentation with new language forms, and integrated various languages and language varieties, while recognizing, validating, and expressing their shared bilingual identities.

What Students Need, What Students Say They Want: Student Perspectives on the Promise of Smaller Learning Communities

Despite the wealth of studies on smaller learning communities (SLCs), student voices are missing from the debate on high school reform. This article examines how students experience SLCs. A participatory research method, data-in-a-day was used to provide a systematic and inclusive method for gathering data on student perceptions. Data-in-a-day is a quick and efficient way of collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing a broad spectrum of data that can be utilized to evaluate the implementation of reforms in any organization. Utilizing the data-in-a-day process provided a large sample of students and captured a wide range of experiences as expressed by students. The SLC model not only provides a basis for a high-quality education as defined in scholarly research but also provides the learning environment desired by students. The SLC concept calls for small, interdisciplinary teaching and learning teams; rigorous and relevant curriculum and instruction; and a focus on inclusive programming and inclusive classroom practices. SLCs are clearly a key factor in some students’ satisfaction and success, and teachers are the driving force behind many students’ experiences. Students want what the SLC reform is intended to deliver. Implementing SLCs in an inclusive and systematic way may impact low-performing large, urban high schools.

Associations Between Counting Ability in Preschool and Mathematic Performance in First Grade Among a Sample of Ethnically Diverse, Low-Income Children

This study explores the effects of counting objects and reciting numbers in preschool on 1st-grade math performance. Data on 3,125 low-income preschoolers’ (4- to 5-year-olds) counting abilities (orally reciting numerals in chronological order and counting blocks) were collected during a fall session (between September 15 and December 15) and were associated with 1st-grade math performance 2 years later. Childrens counting abilities were organized into five ordinal categories (from lowest to highest): (1) cannot recite or count to 10, (2) can only recite to 10, (3) can count and recite to 10, (4) can recite (but not count) to 20, and (5) can count and recite to 20. Results of hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for sex, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and days absent in 1st grade, yielded a significant linear relation across the five counting ability categories. Children who were able to count and recite to 20 during the first half of preschool had the highest math performance in 1st grade. Implications for the importance of these findings for early curricula math standards are discussed.

Translanguaging and the multilingual turn: epistemological reconceptualization in the fields of language and implications for reframing language in curriculum studies

New challenges in education, stemming from the forces of globalization and the continued diversification of the student body, illuminate the need for a reexamination of the role of language in curriculum studies. Through a discussion of the issues around multilingualism and translanguaging and the shift in perspective that these topics have provoked in the fields of SLA, TESOL, BE, I present the relevance and implications of this critical language approach for the field of curriculum studies. My commentary is guided by three questions. Initially, I investigate, how do the purposes and audiences of the May and García and Wei compare? I continue on to discuss, what are common key themes or issues raised by the books? And lastly, I consider, how do the concepts discussed in each book inform each other and the field of curriculum studies at large? I provide concluding thoughts on ways for language as critical pedagogy to be taken up in the broader domains of curriculum studies.

Teachers’ Literal and Inferential Talk in Early Childhood and Special Education Classrooms

ABSTRACT Research Findings: This study examined preschool teachers’ literal talk (LT) and inferential talk (IT) during shared book readings in early childhood education (ECE) and early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms. We aimed to characterize and compare teachers’ LT and IT in these 2 classroom contexts and determine whether differences in LT and IT are predicted by classroom type, teachers’ educational background, or children’s average language skills. We examined the shared book reading activities of 52 teachers (26 ECE classrooms, 26 ECSE classrooms). Results revealed that ECSE teachers used significantly more LT and showed more variability in their LT and IT than ECE teachers. ECSE classroom type predicted teachers’ use of LT when we controlled for teacher education and children’s language skills, whereas teacher education predicted teachers’ use of IT when we controlled for classroom type and children’s language skills. Practice or Policy: These findings have implications for best practice guidelines and policies, particularly for ECSE environments.

Photography and Oral History as a Means of Chronicling the Homeless in Miami: The StreetWays Project

This article describes the use of Photography and Oral History research methods as part of a collaborative research project on homelessness in Miami. Issues involving the use of documentary photography and oral history as a means of creating greater social awareness in the general public are explored, as well as broader issues of Social Justice.

An Emergent Bilingual Child's Multimodal Choices in Sociodramatic Play.

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordances of his visual and actional resources, depending on his play purposes and collaborators. Anthony’s case illustrates how emergent bilingual children access a variety of modes to participate in literate discourses in complex and varied ways. This article concludes with a discussion on the importance of thoroughly accounting for the contexts and multimodal supports in interactive learning spaces.

What’s in a Name? A Critical Literacy and Functional Linguistic Analysis of Immigrant Acculturation in Contemporary Picture Books

ABSTRACT This article investigates how immigrant children’s acculturation experiences are characterized through the symbolic literary feature of name in children’s literature and how the language of the text functions to communicate these messages. We draw on the theoretical frameworks of Critical Literacy (CL) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to inform our analysis, showcasing how the connection and interrelation of these theories maximizes the potential for meaning-making. Texts were examined to reveal dominant themes around acculturation communicated through the use of protagonists’ names and trends in the language used to construct young readers’ understandings. Findings indicate that the construct of a name is a key theme in the literature used to forge a cultural identity for immigrant children, generate cultural conflict, and stimulate others’ judgment.

Translated science textbooks in dual language programs: A comparative English-Spanish functional linguistic analysis

ABSTRACT A comparative lexicogrammatical and logicosemantic systemic functional analysis of two third-grade science curricular units on the topic of “matter” written in Spanish is presented. One of these curricular units, translated from an English textbook, or “mirror text,” is used in dual language programs (Spanish-English) in the United States; the other is used in regular elementary science for monolingual Spanish students in some Latin American countries, including Colombia and Venezuela. After a discussion on how standards-aligned textbooks contribute to the deskilling and further disenfranchising of teachers that corresponds to a neoliberal agenda for education, the cross-linguistic analysis reveals that while the mirror text reflected a knower-code structure preoccupied with the here and now and with building interpersonal affiliations, the authentic Spanish text was concerned with building knowledge codes related to global themes seeking to build disciplinary science knowledge. That is, by foregrounding English structure and curricular pacing, the use of translated or mirror texts in dual language programs (in this case translated Spanish versions of English regular textbooks) unintentionally but effectively served as a lexicogrammatical, semantic, and curricular straightjacket not only preventing students and teachers from making potential key meaningful connections between languages but calling into question the possibility of a real language separation.