ENGAGING DOUBLE BINDS FOR CRITICAL INQUIRY WITH FIRST-GRADE LATINA/O EMERGENT BILINGUALS

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.5.3

This two-year predominantly qualitative study engaged 103 bilingual first graders in a literacy curriculum that sought to blend in- and out-of-school experiences, with particular emphasis on using photography and other multimodal texts as semiotic resources. Drawing on critical pedagogy and cultural historical activity theory, we supported students in interrogating epistemologies resulting from dominant hegemonic perspectives. As part of the curricular invitations, children photographed their everyday family and community experiences, and employed these images for oral storytelling and multimodal composing. Data sources analyzed for this article include children’s audio-recorded dialogic small group discussions and their multimodal texts. We analyzed the data thematically and discursively, identifying patterns across children’s engagements with their photos in the literacy curriculum. We found that young emergent bilinguals enacted agency by bringing often-silenced social issues and community knowledge to the forefront of school-based learning. We examine turning points in the dialogic discussions that helped create openings to voice topics often excluded from classroom contexts, and argue that such pedagogical spaces can support children in de-stabilizing historically rooted double binds that reinforce cultures of silence. Through illustrative examples of students’ talk and texts, we explore how a specific focus on blending oral storytelling-stimulated dialogue with technology can become a platform for critical inquiry that engages, rather than suppresses, the double binds children experience by virtue of their immigration histories and cultural and linguistic identities.