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Abstract
In this article, I synthesize extant research that documents how teachers foster and sustain children’s diverse literacy practices within the early childhood classroom. Framing this review with Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, I draw on theoretical and empirical scholarship in the fields of biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy. Findings are organized into three themes: (1) comparing languages and literacy practices, (2) hybridizing literacy practices, and (3) engaging children’s linguistic and cultural repertoires. I conclude with a discussion of implications for researchers and practitioners.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (2015), the number of multilingual students in public schools continues to rise. These students bring a wealth of linguistic and cultural knowledge into their schools and engage with literacy in varied ways (Heath, 1983). With such great diversity, U.S. classrooms have the potential to become rich sites of linguistic, cultural, and literate learning. However, while this cultural and linguistic diversity exists in school demographics, it is rarely reflected in the ways that literacy teaching and learning are conceptualized in classrooms. In fact, while school populations have continued to diversify, the ways that we teach literacy and use language have become increasingly standardized, regulated, and monitored—even for our youngest learners in early childhood classrooms (Dyson & Genishi, 2009). This emphasis on standardization often privileges those language and literacy practices associated with dominant culture and consigns alternative practices to spaces beyond school walls.
Despite these challenges, growing communities of scholars have developed instructional approaches that aim to foster, support, and sustain children’s home, heritage, and popular language practices (e.g., biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy). These approaches position children’s linguistic, cultural, and literate diversity as resources to be cultivated rather than as challenges to be overcome. Furthermore, they position all students as what Pacheco and Miller (2016) call “strategic users of language” (p. 534), who engage with language and literacy through the use of dialects or popular literacy practices. In fact, some instructional approaches, such as culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014), position dexterity with multiple languages, codes, and cultural practices as a key aspect of access to power in the 21st century. When applied to early childhood settings, these approaches explore how teachers might support our youngest learners in using their linguistic and cultural practices as literate resources.
In this synthesis of literature, I draw attention to these pedagogies as they relate to sustaining children’s home, heritage, and popular language and literacy practices in the early childhood classroom. I begin by providing a working definition of “diverse literacy practices,” suggesting that they include ways of reading, writing, speaking, and engaging with media that have been traditionally excluded from what Dyson (2013) calls the “official” curriculum. Then, I provide an overview of my theoretical framework, Bakhtin’s (1981) heteroglossia, and outline the three bodies of literature examined in this study (biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy). My findings highlight three themes related to fostering and sustaining diverse literacy practices: (1) comparing language and literacy practices, (2) encouraging hybridization, and (3) drawing on the breadth of children’s linguistic and cultural repertoires. Finally, I offer a discussion of implications for researchers and practitioners. This review is by no means exhaustive. Rather, I frame it as a starting point for bringing together three bodies of literature that all aim to support the literacy practices that characterize young children’s lives.
Defining “Diverse Literacy Practices”
Traditionally, our educational system has tended to privilege particular linguistic varieties (e.g., Dominant American English [DAE]) and literacy practices (e.g., argument writing, mastering language conventions). In fact, Dyson (2013) describes how our “official” school curricula are tied to these languages and literacy practices and how they may be at odds with the ways that children make meaning in their lives outside of school. She writes that children’s “…rhythms beat out in varied languages and vernaculars” (p. xi) and that they use literacy for expressive and relational purposes, often in ways that do not align to these “officially” sanctioned practices.
In this article, I review literature that focuses on fostering and sustaining the “unofficial” language and literacy practices that play a significant role in children’s lives. In defining “diverse literacy practices,” I draw upon ways of reading, writing, and speaking that are traditionally undervalued and underexamined in public schools. These ways of doing language and literacy might include more seemingly “official” practices (e.g., speaking and reading in an official language other than English, such as Spanish or Amharic) as well as more unofficial ones (e.g., engaging with popular music, language, and media; speaking a dialect or vernacular).
Theoretical Framework: Heteroglossia and Associated Pedagogies
I frame this review with Bakhtin’s (1981)heteroglossia. While the construct was originally applied to the study of discourse in the novel, it has frequently been invoked in examinations of children’s literacy (e.g., Gort & Sembiante, 2015), particularly in scholarship related to literacy practices for nondominant linguistic and cultural groups.
A heteroglossic orientation to early literacy instruction supports linguistic invention (Gort & Sembiante, 2015) and encourages and celebrates multiple voices and perspectives in reading and writing. Heteroglossia has particular implications for sustaining diverse language and literacy practices, as it normalizes the use of multiple languages (García, 2009) and positions all students as strategic users of language (Pacheco & Miller, 2016).
I draw specifically upon two Bakhtinian constructs related to heteroglossia: polyphony and hybridity. Bakhtin (1984) applied the musical metaphor of polyphony, or multivoicedness, to his study of the novel, examining the ways that the voices embodied in dialogue could convey multiple meanings (Naot-Ofarim & Solomonic, 2016). When applied to the field of education, a polyphonic approach privileges alternative viewpoints and the construction of understanding through dialogue. Teachers engaging in polyphonic instruction would encourage students to debate and discuss authentically, not to reach a particular, officially sanctioned belief. This approach emphasizes collectively constructing new understandings around a topic rather than conveying a singular truth through didactic methods.
In his theoretical writing around discourse in the novel, Bakhtin (1981) examines the construct of hybridity. For Bakhtin, the mixing and meshing of multiple languages or dialects within a single statement was a process that contributed to literary style—not a sign of confusion. Teachers taking up a hybrid approach to literacy instruction would encourage and celebrate children’s texts and utterances that integrate multiple languages, dialects, speech forms, and genres. They might look closely at children’s speech, writing, and drawing, noticing the affective, stylistic, or emphatic intention behind their language choices.
A heteroglossic vision for the early childhood classroom positions all students as users of multiple forms of language with the ability to mix and blend them to convey meaning. Yet how teachers working in early childhood contexts might implement such a vision and enact heteroglossic teaching practices requires more explication. For this reason, I draw upon three bodies of pedagogical literature that resonate strongly with heteroglossia: biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy. Each of these bodies of literature explicitly aims to support language and/or cultural diversity in classroom settings and encourages the hybridization of languages, literacies, or cultural practices that have traditionally been seen as siloed and static.
Biliteracy
Biliteracy is a field of study that examines how students construct meaning across two or more languages through text. Coined by Goodman, Goodman, and Flores (1979), the earliest definitions of the term “biliteracy” emphasized the development of reading and writing proficiency in two languages. More contemporary investigations of biliteracy focus instead on what Hornberger (2003) calls, “…any and all instances in which communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing” (p. xiii). This approach privileges instances of biliteracy rather than mastery or proficiency, expanding the meaning to include those who use two languages but might not be considered “fluent.” Much scholarly work in biliteracy has examined early childhood classrooms (e.g., Ranker, 2009), focusing on the ways that students and teachers use the breadth of their linguistic resources to communicate.
Translanguaging
Translanguaging (García, 2009) is conceptualized throughout the literature as both a theoretical framework for bilingual meaning-making and a pedagogical framework for classroom practice (Gort & Sembiante, 2015). At the theoretical level, translanguaging explains the ways that bilingual individuals draw on their full linguistic repertoires as they use receptive and expressive language. From a translingual perspective, integrating multiple languages in the same speech act is a natural process, and one that amplifies possibilities for meaning-making (García, 2009). As a pedagogical framework, translanguaging draws connections between linguistic use and issues of equity. In fact, Velasco and García (2014) argue, “Translanguaging becomes the framework for conceptualizing the education of bilinguals as a democratic endeavor for social justice” (p. 7). Translingual perspectives push back on monoglossic and diglossic ideologies that position multilingualism as a challenge to be overcome rather than an asset to be cultivated.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Theorized by Paris (2012) as a 21st century extension of Ladson-Billings’s (1995) framework of culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to redefine the ways educators conceptualize culture in the classroom. This notion of culture is hybrid and dynamic and pushes back on educators’ tendency to equate culture with ethnic heritage (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). In fact, proponents of culturally sustaining pedagogy encourage all children and youth to explore their engagements with a wide range of traditional and nontraditional cultural groups—such as those that are formed based on shared interests or geographies. While little scholarship has examined culturally sustaining pedagogy in the early childhood classroom, its principles might support teachers in fostering and sustaining diverse literacy practices.
While these three bodies of literature foreground different constructs (i.e., culture and language), they share a commitment to supporting and fostering the linguistic, literate, and cultural practices of historically marginalized groups. For example, all three approaches privilege practices that have been traditionally seen as barriers to student achievement, such as linguistic code-switching. Rather than positioning a practice like code-switching as a challenge for learning, these approaches foreground its utility for learning and the distinct advantages that it confers upon speakers. For these reasons, I believe that bringing these bodies of pedagogical literature together can bring about productive conversations about fostering and sustaining students’ linguistic, literate, and cultural practices in our schools.
Method
In framing this review, I asked: Across the extant literature, how have educators fostered and sustained students’ diverse language and literacy practices in early childhood classrooms? I conducted this review in two major phases. In a first iteration of this article, I took an intuitive and flexible approach to the collection of articles, which informed my broad understandings of subject matter and focal areas. I conducted Boolean searches across three scholarly platforms, but primarily drew upon scholarship in the fields of bi/multiliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy by using the reference lists of seminal articles. This initial review included peer-reviewed articles, books, book chapters, and an online guide for teachers, totaling 32 sources. I read the articles and coded them descriptively (Saldaña, 2012), noting the pedagogical practices presented in findings sections that seemed to support linguistic and/or cultural diversity, such as “code-switching,” “alternative participation structures,” and “funds of knowledge.” In a second iteration of this article, and in response to reviewer feedback, I narrowed the focus of this review to peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2000 and 2017 with a focus on teachers and students in Grades PreK-3. I sampled 10 theoretical and empirical articles from the fields of biliteracy and translanguaging, respectively, and 5 from the field of culturally sustaining pedagogy, given the comparatively little scholarship in this area to date (see Table 1). These 25 articles include 17 from the first iteration of the article and 8 additional articles that were found through Boolean searches using key words such as “early childhood” and “biliteracy,” “translanguaging,” or “culturally sustaining pedagogy.” While I aimed to include articles that appeared to be seminal and/or widely cited, this review is necessarily limited, and key articles were almost certainly excluded.
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Table 1. Studies Reviewed and Associated Bodies of Literature.
In a second major round of analysis, I read the 25 articles and coded both deductively—using the codes, categories, and themes that I had previously developed in my first round of analysis—and inductively, noting additional practices that support linguistic and cultural diversity. In total, I developed 21 codes, including “peer language teaching,” “bringing community members into classrooms,” and “creating bilingual books.” I collapsed these codes into 12 categories, such as “contrastive analysis” and “funds of knowledge,” and then into five themes. Findings are presented around three of these themes.
Findings
I present findings that highlight three themes focused on sustaining diverse literacy practices in early childhood classroom settings. These themes include the following: (1) comparing languages and literacy practices, (2) hybridizing languages and literacy practices, and (3) engaging the breadth of children’s linguistic and cultural repertoires during classroom activities. I articulate these themes by describing two examples of supporting instructional practices used throughout the literature.
Comparing Language and Literacy Practices
Across the literature, scholars suggest that comparing language and literacy practices can build students’ metalinguistic and cultural awareness. Early childhood teachers tended to engage in contrastive analysis between languages and texts and strategically select texts for read alouds, independent reading, and writing mentors.
Engaging in contrastive analysis
Contrastive analysis involves the explicit comparison of multiple languages by identifying similarities and differences between their linguistic features. In the early childhood classroom, contrastive analysis might include examining similarities and differences between individual words (e.g., cognates) and scripts (e.g., directionality) in different languages. When applied to literacy practices rather than languages, contrastive analysis might include noticing and naming semiotic differences between picture books from two different countries (e.g., noticing uses of color or styles of illustrations).
While they did not all explicitly use the term “contrastive analysis,” I found that multiple articles described how teachers and students engaged in these practices (Boutte & Johnson, 2013; Durán & Palmer, 2014; Kenner, Kress, Al-Khatib, Kam, & Tsai, 2004; Lotherington, Holland, Sotoudeh, & Zentena, 2008; Manyak, 2006; Pacheco & Miller, 2016). For example, Manyak (2006), in his ethnographic study of a first- and second-grade classroom, describes how a teacher and her students engaged in contrastive analysis during an interactive writing exercise called “Daily News/Las Noticias.” As student volunteers in this classroom “reported” news about their home lives, others served as scribes, writing down their peers’ stories. Because students were encouraged to use both English and Spanish in their reports, student scribes often compared and considered differences between written English and Spanish, such as the use of a possessive apostrophe. Pacheco and Miller (2016), in their study of translanguaging in early childhood and elementary school classrooms, describe a more explicit example of contrastive language and literacy analysis, documenting how a teacher gathered newspapers written in multiple languages for her students to examine. Students noticed similarities, such as the way that many text features remained constant across newspapers (e.g., headings, captions). However, they also noticed differences, commenting on the ways that particular scripts were arranged differently on a page.
Strategically choosing texts
Across the literature, teachers—and occasionally students—also supported the comparison of languages, literacies, and cultural practices through strategic text selection (Gort & Pontier, 2013; Love, 2015; Martínez-Roldán, 2003; Michael-Luna & Canagarajah, 2008; Ranker, 2009; Souto-Manning, 2016; Watanabe Kganetso, 2017; Zapata & Laman, 2016; Zoch, 2015). The majority of these examples involved a teacher selecting picture books that showcased languages other than DAE or that featured individuals from historically marginalized cultural backgrounds. For example, Zapata and Laman (2016), in their cross-case analysis of second-, third-, and fourth-grade classrooms, describe how teachers drew upon bilingual picture books like What Can You Do With a Paleta? (Tafolla, 2009) as writing mentor texts. As they examined these bilingual texts, students drew comparisons between them and those written exclusively in DAE. For example, Zapata and Laman (2016) note that one student described how an author’s code-meshing practices indexed his identity as a bilingual. Souto-Manning (2016), in her study of a second-grade classroom, documented how a teacher strategically selected texts related to children’s names from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds (e.g., The Name Jar; Choi, 2001). After sharing these texts as read alouds, the teacher encouraged her students to interview their own families about their names and compiled these diverse stories in a class book.
In summary, the extant literature suggests that comparing languages may support the fostering and sustaining of students’ diverse literacy practices in the early childhood classroom. Students might use contrastive analysis to compare languages or texts in whole- or small-group lessons, or teachers might select texts that showcase a range of languages and cultural experiences. Both of these strategies resonate with Bakhtin’s (1981, 1984) theoretical writing around heteroglossia. They invite alternative voices into the classroom through the examination of language and text and contribute to the development of a classroom community with varied understandings of what constitutes language and literacy practices.
Encouraging Hybridization of Language and Literacy Practices
Across the literature, scholars have argued in support of allowing students to hybridize their language and literacy practices as a pedagogical resource. Hybridization, which Gort and Pontier (2013) define as “the concurrent use of two languages” (p. 226), was reflected both in students’ speech and writing. In this section, I highlight the pedagogical strategies of hybridizing languages through code-meshing and hybridizing literacies by blending genres and/or modes.
Hybridizing languages through code-meshing
Zapata and Laman (2016) define code-meshing as “blending ‘nonstandardized’ dialects and other languages with ‘standardized’ English” (p. 374). This meshing may take place inside a single word (e.g., forming the blended word “catchear” using the English word “catch” and the Spanish morpheme “-ar”) or at the sentence level (e.g., integrating regionalisms like “y’all” or “you guys” into a sentence).
Multiple studies highlighted or shared examples that demonstrated code-meshing and/or the related construct of code-switching (Boutte & Johnson, 2013; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Durán & Palmer, 2014; Gort & Pontier, 2013; Gort & Sembiante, 2015; Manyak, 2006; Martínez, Hikida, & Durán, 2015; Martínez-Roldán, 2003; Michael-Luna & Canagarajah, 2008; Moll, Sáez, & Dworin, 2001; Ranker, 2009; Souto-Manning, 2016; Velasco & Garcia, 2014; Zapata & Laman, 2016; Zoch, 2015). For example, Zapata and Laman (2016), Moll, Sáez, and Dworin (2001), and Michael-Luna and Canagarajah (2008) document how students used code-meshing strategies in their written work. Others, like Zoch (2015), Martínez et al. (2015), and Gort and Pontier (2013), document how teachers modeled these practices in their speech. For example, Gort and Pontier (2013) describe how teachers engaged in verbal code-switching and tandem-teaching practices to model bilingual ways of interacting for their preschool students.
Michael-Luna and Canagarajah (2008) argue that code-meshing may be considered a “…form of resistance, reappropriation and/or transformation of the academic discourse” (p. 56) and may be used as a pedagogical strategy with young children in early childhood settings. While young children’s use of code-meshing may not yet be a form of resistance, per se, they may choose to hybridize their languages for affective or expressive purposes. Michael-Luna and Canagarajah document how a first-grade boy chose to integrate the phrase “está muerto” into his English composition because the Spanish phrase “…had a more profound network of meaning for [him] and his multilingual audience” (p. 68). Although this simple act of hybridizing languages may seem inconsequential, Michael-Luna and Canagarajah argue that this student was approximating important linguistic and critical work, learning to use languages in such a way that he may eventually be able to critique and contest traditional academic discourse.
Hybridizing literacies by blending genres and/or modes
Hybridizing literacy practices in the early childhood classroom is perhaps best exemplified by the blending of genres and/or modes that have traditionally been siloed. Multiple studies described how teachers opened up spaces for hybridizing genres and/or modes such as comic books, songs, narratives, hip-hop songs, and informational texts (Lotherington et al., 2008; Love, 2015; Moll et al., 2001; Ntelioglou, Fannin, Montanera, & Cummins, 2014; Ranker, 2009; Soltero-González, 2009; Solsken, Willet, & Wilson-Keenan, 2000). Solsken, Willet, and Wilson-Keenan (2000) argue that literary genres have traditionally been assumed to be “…stable forms or preexisting schemata for texts that serve particular social functions” (p. 204). However, they highlight the example of a second-grade student who hybridized dominant literacy practices with those traditionally associated with Puerto Rican culture. They argue that her oral and written compositions actually mixed several different genres, including a “reportorial from a newspaper account…and a Puerto Rican cuento, or morality and cautionary tale” (Solsken et al., 2000, p. 195). As Kress (1999) argues, through this act of hybridization, this student “[lifted]” a genre “out of its proper social context and [inserted] it in another” (p. 467).
Framing her writing through the lens of hybridity positions it as “an innovative act, an act of creativity” (Kress, 1999, p. 467) rather than a sign of confusion. In additional examples, children hybridized elements of narrative writing with comic books (Ranker, 2009) and drama (Ntelioglou et al., 2014).
Students might also mix and hybridize traditional genres with those in popular and child cultures. Love (2015) makes a compelling argument for hybridity between formal discourse and children’s cultures in the early childhood classroom, describing how young children might mesh traditional genres with hip-hop. Drawing on mentor texts such as Giovanni’s (2008) book Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry With a Beat, she encourages teachers to integrate the cultural practices associated with hip-hop, such as “improvisation, call and response, communal learning, rich storytelling, and history” (Love, 2015, p. 112) with more traditional academic ways of communicating.
Ultimately, hybridization is another pedagogical practice that has the potential to foster and sustain diverse literacy practices in the early childhood classroom. As its name implies, this approach resonates with the Bakhtinian (1981) construct of hybridity. It encourages students and teachers to mesh and mix languages and writing styles that have long been considered static and siloed. It also positions the mixing of discrete elements as sources for learning, exploration, and invention.
Drawing on the Breadth of Children’s Linguistic and Cultural Repertoires
García and Kleifgen (2010) argue that teachers “meaningfully educate when they draw upon the full linguistic repertoire of all students, including language practices that are multiple and hybrid” (p. 43). By drawing upon their “full linguistic repertoires,” García and Kleifgen argue that teachers can support students in strategically accessing knowledge, languages, and literacy practices from their homes, schools, and communities. In this section, I outline two practices that support students in drawing on their repertoires: composing multimodal texts and drawing on students’ cultural funds of knowledge.
Composing multimodal texts
Multiple studies documented ways that teachers composed and/or encouraged students to compose multimodal texts that engaged the breadth of their linguistic and cultural repertoires (Lotherington et al., 2008; Ntelioglou et al., 2014; Pacheco & Miller, 2016; Watanabe Kganetso, 2017). These texts blend languages, dialects, images, and sound that reflect the hybrid ways that students make sense of the world. For example, scholars like Ntelioglou, Fannin, Montanera, and Cummins (2014) document how teachers utilized the strategy of creating multimodal identity texts or personal stories written using multiple meaning-making modes. In the early childhood classroom, which is often oriented toward multimodal meaning-making (e.g., through drawing, songs, etc.), students might use digital tools, such as iPad applications, to compose basic identity texts. This sort of activity encourages children to use all of their linguistic and semiotic resources in composition and positions their languages, cultures, and personal experiences as powerful resources worthy of attention.
Drawing on students’ funds of knowledge
Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González (1992), in their action research in the Southwestern United States, argue that families provide cultural funds of knowledge that can inform the purposes of literacy for their students. Much subsequent research has focused on how teachers of multicultural, multilingual students can use these cultural, community, and classroom funds of knowledge for literacy learning (Gort & Sembiante, 2015; Kenner et al., 2004; Lotherington et al., 2008; Love, 2015; Martínez-Roldán, 2003; Ntelioglou et al., 2014; Pacheco & Miller, 2016; Paris & Alim, 2014; Ranker, 2009; Solsken et al., 2000; Souto-Manning, 2016; Watanabe Kganetso, 2017).
Across the literature, teachers drew on children’s funds of knowledge by bringing community members into the classroom and positioning them as sources of knowledge. For example, Solsken et al. (2000) describe how their focal teacher invited her students’ family members into the classroom to share stories of their lives. Others described how teachers opened up spaces for children to draw on their own funds of knowledge. For example, Ranker (2009) describes how students in a first-grade classroom were afforded opportunities to write about subject matter drawn from their own funds of knowledge, such as dance and music.
In the early childhood classroom, teachers might draw upon students’ cultural funds of knowledge as a literacy resource in developmentally appropriate ways. For example, they might invite parents and family members into the classroom to conduct read alouds in multiple languages. Additionally, teachers might encourage students to bring in artifacts related to their popular literacy practices at home (e.g., comic books, games) to use as reading and writing content within the classroom.
Composing multimodal texts and drawing upon students’ cultural funds of knowledge help students engage their full linguistic and cultural repertoires. These approaches also resonate with a heteroglossic orientation to the classroom and specifically with the construct of polyphony (Bakhtin, 1984). By bringing family and local community members into the classroom (either in-person or through the use of digital tools), teachers very literally foster multivoicedness. Additionally, by bringing alternative and nondominant literacy materials into the classroom, they make spaces for new ideas, opinions, and beliefs about what constitutes reading and writing.
Discussion
The studies surveyed in this review point to the potentials and possibilities that might be realized when early childhood teachers aim not only to help students master dominant language practices but to support and sustain their heritage and home practices, as well. Biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy have much in common. Each body of literature foregrounds cultural pluralism, linguistic hybridity, and the explicit valuing of children’s and families’ literacy practices. Yet there is much to be gained by examining their differences and the tensions between them, as well. One point of tension centers on the way that many of the biliterate and translingual studies surveyed discussed integrating children’s home and heritage literacy practices in what Paris (2012) and other culturally sustaining pedagogical scholars might call “deterministic” ways (p. 95). Studies of biliteracy and translanguaging tended to describe mixing and meshing formalized languages associated with students’ ethnic heritages, such as Spanish and English, rather than dialects, regionalisms, or other languaging practices (see Boutte & Johnson, 2013, for an exception). A second point of tension centers on the pedagogical practice of engaging students in critical discussions. While nearly all of the texts framed with culturally sustaining pedagogy stressed the importance of developing students’ senses of critical consciousness through explicit discussion, this practice was much less common in the literature on biliteracy and translanguaging (see Martínez-Roldán, 2003, for an exception). Because many scholars position translanguaging as an act of resistance against monoglossic ideologies and policies (e.g., Gort & Sembiante, 2015; Martínez et al., 2015), it might be productive to explore the notion of incorporating developmentally appropriate critical conversations about language into early childhood translingual pedagogy. Finally, a third tension involved the specificity of discussions around languaging practices in the literature. While articles framed with a culturally sustaining pedagogical lens addressed issues of linguistic diversity, such as code-switching, it seemed that their analyses might be deepened by considering the ways that scholars working from biliterate and translingual perspectives closely analyze discourse, noticing and naming how individuals blend, mesh, and hybridize their linguistic resources in intentional ways.
While this review provides a starting point for a synthesis of literature in the fields of biliteracy, translanguaging, and culturally sustaining pedagogy as they relate to the early childhood classroom, it is certainly limited in scope. I sampled only a small number of articles in each field, and the vast majority of these pieces reported on research conducted with qualitative methodologies. Moreover, sampling three areas—rather than all articles related to fostering/sustaining diverse literacy practices—left related fields underexplored. For example, highly related work in areas like culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy (e.g., Souto-Manning, 2010) was left out of this review.
Implications for Researchers and Teachers
The studies surveyed point to the need for additional empirical research in two areas: culturally sustaining early childhood pedagogy and school contexts that support linguistic and cultural diversity. Notably, I reviewed only two articles that documented empirical research on culturally sustaining pedagogy in the early childhood classroom (Watanabe Kganetso, 2017; Zoch, 2015). While these pieces provide a powerful starting point for culturally sustaining work, additional research is needed that explores how culturally sustaining pedagogies might be enacted with young children. Given the recent publication of an edited volume on culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), it seems that the field is ready for additional work that explores culturally sustaining pedagogy for our youngest learners.
Additionally, more research is needed on the school contexts and policies that facilitate linguistic flexibility and the sustenance of nondominant language and literacy practices. The vast majority of the studies reviewed utilized ethnographic or case study methodologies and often seemed to highlight unusual cases. While individual teachers in flexible or supportive language environments have carried out these instructional practices in intentional and skilled ways, we need to know more about how these environments are fostered at the school or district level.
The studies also point to implications for teachers who hope to foster and sustain the linguistic, literate, and cultural practices of their students. Because they seek to sustain practices that have been historically excluded from the official curriculum, these teachers may face a lack of support—or at worst, an active resistance—from administrators and other stakeholders. For this reason, teachers might want to consider ways that they can intentionally support and foster children’s language and cultural practices in subtle ways within their existing curricular and program models. For example, teachers might consider making small linguistic shifts—such as modeling the fluid and flexible use of their own communicative repertoires—to position multilingualism and cultural pluralism as valuable and a resource for learning. Importantly, too, if they face resistance in their schools and communities, teachers may want to consider ways that they can advocate more publicly for the sustenance of children’s literate practices. Teachers might consider seeking out like-minded colleagues to lobby for school and district policies that foster and sustain students’ unofficial literacy practices.
Conclusion
This review aimed to synthesize extant literature related to fostering and sustaining diverse language and literacy practices within the early childhood classroom. As literacy researchers, it is critical that we continue to problematize and contest pedagogical approaches that privilege the literacy practices of only one language, particularly as our school population continues to diversify. In light of increasing linguistic standardization and a narrowing literacy curriculum, it is more important than ever for us to engage in this work. By empowering teachers to encourage all students to engage with a wide range of languages, cultures, and literacy practices in the early childhood classroom, we may help young children realize the powerful nature of their linguistic and literate resources.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflict of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
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Author Biography
Emily Machado is a doctoral student studying Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Previously, she worked as a public elementary school teacher in Washington, DC. She is interested in equity-oriented writing pedagogies in linguistically and culturally diverse elementary school classrooms.
