Literacy & Learning
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11274/9561
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Browsing Literacy & Learning by Author "Hansen-Thomas, Holly"
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Item Bilingual education during a pandemic: Family engagement. La educación bilingüe durante una pandemia: Compromiso familiar(Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2022) Lozada, Victor Antonio; Hansen-Thomas, Holly; Figueroa, Jorge; Stewart, Mary AmandaDuring the COVID-19 global pandemic, teachers have had to be creative on how they engage with the families of emergent bilingual students. This content analysis of four teacher focus groups reveals ways in which teachers have worked to connect to their students over a distance. The purpose of this paper is to discover, from educators. effective teaching strategies that engage families and emergent bilinguals during the COVID-19 pandemic and online teaching. Resulting themes included technology in teaching, building relationships with families. and accessing the educational assets of emergent bilinguals and their families. Connections to cariño (Bartolomé, 2008), educación (Valenzuela, 1999), and using the term "emergent bilingual" (Garcia, 2009) are discussed.Item Co-learning in the high school English class through translanguaging: Emergent bilingual newcomers and monolingual teachers(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Hansen-Thomas, Holly; Stewart, Mary Amanda; Flint, Patricia; Dollar, TamraThere is a growing chasm between the instruction of secondary emergent bilinguals (EBs) and research illustrating the benefits of adolescent EBs using translanguaging practices for academic engagement and gains. Specifically, this qualitative study purposes to understand how monolingual teachers enact a translanguaging pedagogy in a high school classroom where English language acquisition is the focus. Findings indicate the primary resource the teachers used in their translanguaging pedagogy were the students themselves, and suggest that teachers’ willingness to participate as co-learners with adolescent EBs is crucial. Co-learning has been found to be an appropriate pedagogical tool with teachers of multilinguals due to the rich experiences it can foster and this study supports such literature. Additional study findings revealed tensions students and teachers felt through these practices, specifically in regards to translating, technology use, and students’ desire to learn the L2.Item Co-learning, translanguaging and English language acquisition(Research Outreach, 2020) Stewart, Mary Amanda; Hansen-Thomas, HollyThe US has the largest number of English-speakers in the world, but it is also multilingual: according to 2018 census data, 23% of children aged 5 to 17 speak another language at home. English language acquisition for those who speak English as a second language is therefore an important issue for educators. Mary Amanda Stewart and Holly Hansen-Thomas of Texas Woman’s University have been studying how ‘translanguaging’ and ‘co-learning’ can be used to help newcomer English language learners acquire greater fluency.Item Sanctioning a space for translanguaging in the secondary English class: A case of a transnational youth(National Council of Teachers of English, 2016) Stewart, Mary Amanda; Hansen-Thomas, HollyA growing number o f adolescents in the United States are transnationals who regularly engage in translanguaging practices by drawing on their full linguistic repertoires in their everyday lives. Many of these students are also emergent bilinguals, learning language and content simultaneously. Yet, as the number o f these diverse students significantly rises, so does curricular standardization in the secondary English language arts classroom. Even so, some research documents promising translanguaging pedagogies, but these studies focus primarily on the elementary level or provide general overviews o f these practices in secondary classrooms. Consequently, this qualitative study was divided into two phases: Phase 1 deeply investigated the nature o f one high school emergent bilingual’s transnationalism through a case study approach. The findings indicated that the participant’s transnational lived experiences and literacies were closely tied to translanguaging practices. Then, grounded in that data, for Phase 2 o f the study, the researchers used a formative design to create a literacy unit in the participant’s high school English classroom that purposefully engaged her transnational literacies through translanguaging. Her reaction to the unit, specifically her writing in English and Spanish, was analyzed to understand her response to the curriculum and instruction. A systematic use o f translanguaging— through reading, through oral language, and primarily through writing poetry— provided the participant with the means to express creativity and criticality as she took ownership o f her literacy learning. The study suggests the possibilities o f student learning when a space for translanguaging is sanctioned in the secondary English language arts classroom.Item Translingual disciplinary literacies: Equitable language environments to support literacy engagement(Wiley, 2021) Stewart, Mary Amanda; Hansen-Thomas, Holly; Flint, Patricia; Núñez, MariannellaThe burgeoning work of translanguaging and bilingualism has much to offer adolescent learning spaces in order to provide bi/multilingual students more equitable opportunities to engage in disciplinary literacy at the high school level, particularly where there are many low-incidence languages. Drawing from critical theories in both literacy and language research, we conducted this three-year study in two U.S. high schools (grades 9–12) in order to promote language equity and literacy engagement for emergent bilinguals and heritage speakers. We provided an intensive year of graduate courses on language, literacy, and equity for 27 teachers from various disciplines and school roles. Through analyzing their coursework, observations of their classes, and follow-up surveys, we documented how their heteroglossic language ideologies were nurtured, how they enacted translingual disciplinary literacies, and what benefits they perceived from this instructional approach. The findings illustrate how schools might overcome previously unquestioned monoglossic standards and linguistically oppressive systems through a whole-school translingual disciplinary literacies approach. Providing nuanced descriptions of how teachers engaged in translingual disciplinary literacy in various disciplines, we make a case for constructivist disciplinary literacy teacher education grounded in heteroglossic ideologies. We also draw connections from language equity to literacy engagement, suggesting that a translingual disciplinary literacies approach is a necessary instructional innovation to effect change in high school learning spaces for bi/multilingual learners. Finally, as our field pursues language equity and literacy engagement, like the teachers in this study, we must also critically evaluate our own ideologies toward literacy and language.