This book presents research focused on young emergent bilingual children’s multimodal meaning-making processes in diverse cultural and linguistic settings. Chapters draw on a range of theoretical frameworks and expand on traditional notions of literacy, especially for students who are working to learn English as a new language. The insights into original research studies will help readers understand the many avenues that one can take as a practitioner in order to ensure that student assets are built upon to promote positive literate identities and learning experiences and, ultimately, to promote literacy success for diverse learners. Each chapter includes practical pedagogical recommendations and implications for teachers that can immediately be applied to classrooms, making the book an essential resource for using multiple modes to teach literacy with diverse student populations.

This accessible guide introduces readers to the issues and controversies surrounding the education of language minority students in the United States. What makes this book a perennial favorite are the succinct descriptions of alternative practices for transforming our schools and students' futures, such as building on students' home languages and literacy practices, incorporating curricular and pedagogical innovations, using proven-effective approaches to parent engagement, and employing alternative assessment tools.

This volume introduces the reader to ongoing research on the study of biliteracy, and highlights recent trends in the promotion of biliteracy and multiliteracies in education. Literacy issues have come under the microscope of researchers in recent decades. The very concept of literacy includes skills such as understanding, interpreting, and managing different text types in different sociocultural environments. Therefore, the pioneers in the study of literacy characterize it as one multidimensional concept with social and cultural components, or go even further by talking about pluriliteracies/multiliteracies, which emerge through the complex linguistic and value practices adopted by speakers of multilingual societies in the 21st century. The contributions gathered here will give the reader a general idea of where research is heading in the areas of biliteracy and multiliteracies, especially in view of multilingualism and its ever-changing conditions. The authors situate their research within current debates in terms of theory and empirical data. In this volume, the reader will find several chapters discussing issues of biliteracy and multiliteracies in a wide variety of settings, countries, and orientations, including Brazil, Cyprus, Greece, Iceland, Malta, Portugal, and the USA.

This edited volume takes the US-derived concept and praxis of funds of knowledge and applies it globally to critically analyse current education in line with social justice, antiracism, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Edited by one of the premier international voices for the funds of knowledge approach, and in particular funds of identity theory, chapters foreground first-hand, participatory, research-practice experiences with learners, schools, and local communities. These experiences demonstrate the positive, social-justice inspired pedagogical actions that result in, and reveal, powerful possibilities for a decolonialised, antiracist praxis that aims to eradicate deficit thinking in education. Further, the inclusion of voices that are typically "othered" in the construction and distribution of academic knowledge make this a seminal volume in the field. Ultimately, the volume will be of interest to scholars, students, and researchers working in the sociology of education, psychology of education, and those specifically dealing with antiracism, decolonialism, and equity within education.

Applying an asset-based approach, Multimodal Funds of Knowledge in Literacy prepares educators to teach and support diverse students and their families as they negotiate multimodal aspects of literacy learning. Framed by sociocultural theory, multiliteracies, multimodality, and posthumanism, the text combats deficit narratives by providing concrete alternatives that push educators to rethink their practices and support students’ and families’ cultural and linguistic strengths. Chapters include case studies, vignettes, prompts, and learning samples that will leave readers with valuable insights and new understandings of multimodal funds of knowledge. Comprehensive and instructive, this book is a key text in literacy education, family literacy, and community engagement.

Offering a wealth of art-based practices, this volume invites readers to reimagine the joyful possibility and power of language and culture in language and literacy learning. Understanding art as a tool that can be used for decolonizing minds, the contributors explore new methods and strategies for supporting the language and literacy learning skills of multilingual students. Contributors are artists, educators, and researchers who bring together cutting-edge theory and practice to present a broad range of traditional and innovative art forms and media that spotlight the roles of artful resistance and multilingual activism. Featuring questions for reflection and curricular applications, chapters address theoretical issues and pedagogical strategies related to arts and language learning, including narrative inquiry, journaling, social media, oral storytelling, and advocacy projects. The innovative methods and strategies in this book demonstrate how arts-based, decolonizing practices are essential in fostering inclusive educational environments and supporting multilingual students’ cultural and linguistic repertoires. Transformative and engaging, this text is a key resource for educators, scholars, and researchers in literacy and language education.

The present volume represents a variety of portraits of what happens when families attempt to raise children in Spanish while living in English-speaking societies. Aided by the foregrounding chapter by Suzanne Romaine about language and identity and the afterword by Carol Klee that ties together many issues brought up throughout the collection, the reader gains a more complete understanding of the variables that contribute to Spanish bilingualism in English-speaking societies, and by extension a more complete understanding of the dynamic nature of bilingualism in general. This volume, the first of its kind, brings together an impressive array of sociolinguistic environments while keeping the two languages constant. We hope that it marks the beginning of comparative analyses of bilingualism, acquisition outcomes, and identity construction across environments that share the same languages, but where important disparities exist in the sociolinguistic landscapes.