Abstract

In this article, we explore how multilingual paraprofessional teachers and students broadened the construction of personhood through literacy instruction in an English-medium school located in a Mid-Southern, semi-rural US town. Drawing upon a study that blended practitioner inquiry with an ethnographic approach, we closely examine how the construction personhood in translanguaging read-alouds was broadened beyond dominant models of personhood—as monolingual and as having Eurocentric, middle-class, and adult-sanctioned knowledges. Our findings show how students and teachers constructed broader models of personhood by constructing a model of a multilingual speaker and reader as well as Latine, working-class, and childhood popular culture knowledges as highly valued and exciting attributes of being human. We conclude by discussing what kinds of interactions these moments could foreshadow and the implications of this work for researchers and teachers to understand how both discursive and contextual factors can contribute to broadening conceptions of personhood to provide children and youth with a greater sense of dignity and belonging in their literacy learning.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
2025-08-01
DOI
10.58680/rte202560168
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (4)

  1. Research in the Teaching of English
  2. Research in the Teaching of English
  3. Research in the Teaching of English
  4. Research in the Teaching of English
Also cites 39 works outside this index ↓
  1. How to ask for a study in qualitatisch
    Qualitative Health Research  
  2. The politics of official knowledge: Does a national curriculum make sense?
    Teachers College Record  
  3. Languaging relations for transforming the literacy and language arts classroom
  4. Toward a theory of transgressive classroom language
    Linguistics and Education  
  5. Ethnographic fieldwork: A beginner’s guide
  6. Discourse analysis of languaging and literacy events in educational settings: A microethn…
  7. Creative language play(giarism) in the elementary English language arts classroom
    Language Arts  
  8. Scaffolding to make translanguaging a classroom norm
    TESOL Journal  
  9. “Tanto necesitamos de aquí como necesitamos de allá”: Leer juntas among Mexican transnati…
    Language and Education  
  10. Learning about culture, language and power: Understanding relationships among personhood,…
    Journal of Literacy Research  
  11. Writing ethnographic fieldnotes
  12. Raciolinguistic chronotopes and the education of Latinx students: Resistance and anxiety …
    Language & Communication  
  13. Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education
    Harvard Educational Review  
  14. Translanguaging and literacies
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  15. Reimagining diversity, equity, and justice in early childhood
  16. An essential but overlooked workforce: Elevating the need to investigate the career devel…
    Journal of Career Development  
  17. Discourse strategies
  18. What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school
    Language in Society  
  19. Languaging relations for transforming the literacy and language arts classroom
  20. Critical literacies in the making: Social class and identities in the early reading classroom
    Journal of Early Childhood Literacy  
  21. “So that I may hope to honor you”: Centering wholeness, agency, and brilliance in qualita…
    Educational Researcher  
  22. Transformative translanguaging espacios
  23. Teaching and learning argumentative writing in high school English language arts classrooms
  24. Building culturally and linguistically sustaining spaces for emergent bilinguals: Using r…
    The Reading Teacher  
  25. Teacher agency in bilingual spaces: A fresh look at preparing teachers to educate Latina/…
    Review of Research in Education  
  26. Coordinated translanguaging pedagogy as distributed cognition: A case study of two dual l…
    International Multilingual Research Journal  
  27. Re-theorizing literacy practices
  28. Biliteracy among children and youths
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  29. Standardization, racialization, languagelessness: Raciolinguistic ideologies across commu…
    Journal of Linguistic Anthropology  
  30. Emergent bilingual students’ use of humour in digital composing: Academic and social work
    Journal of Early Childhood Literacy  
  31. Interactional ethnography
  32. Making a stink about the “ideal” classroom: Theorizing and storying conflict in early chi…
    Urban Education  
  33. ELA as English language abolition: Toward a pedagogy of communicative belonging
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  34. Suddenly diverse: How school districts manage race and inequality
  35. The struggle to decolonize official knowledge in Texas’ state curriculum: Side-stepping t…
    Equity & Excellence in Education  
  36. “So, you’re not homophobic, just racist and hate gay Muslims?”: Reading queer difference …
    English Education  
  37. Mexicans as model minorities in the new Latino diaspora
    Anthropology & Education Quarterly  
  38. The practice of listening to children: The challenges of hearing children out in an adult…
    Harvard Educational Review  
  39. “I write to show how beautiful my languages are”: Translingual writing instruction in Eng…
    Language Arts  
CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network →