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This article focuses on the experiences of transnational Latinx youth and families through historias shared by the mothers. Transnational communities such as those from Latinx immigrant backgrounds have acquired critical perspectives because of their experiences in and across borders that have become central to their understanding of how to navigate learning in the U.S. context. As such, learning about border-crossing knowledge and literacies from transnational students, families, and communities has become increasingly relevant and a timely pressing topic in today's U.S. language and literacy education and beyond. This study employed a pláticas methodology to capture how transnational Latinx mothers storied their bilingual children's biliteracies. This study draws on transnational literacies and transcultural knowledge to conceptualize border-crossing biliteracies, a lens for understanding how transnational children read and write the world. Drawing on this lens, the findings reveal how transnational Latinx families disrupt and expand the meaning of family, language, literacy, and cultural teaching and learning for transnational Latinx youth. Rooted in their experiences, this article discusses and unpacks the meaning of border-crossing biliteracies pedagogy and offers implications for bilingual educators, curriculum developers, and researchers.

Translanguaging, the fluid and dynamic language practices of bilinguals, reimagines language learning and offers the possibility of a more equitable academic experience for active bilingual students of Color, which was the impetus for our inquiry. This article presents the findings of an ethnographic study conducted in a second-grade dual-language classroom that focused on how bilanguaging love is manifested through the perspectives and approaches to translanguaging of bilingual students and their bilingual teacher. Drawing on the concepts of translanguaging and bilanguaging love, we present two main findings: (1) Generative translanguaging perspectives, and (2) Confronting tensions with and through translanguaging. The findings have important implications for translanguaging implementation in bilingual spaces and recognizing that the work involved in this approach is sustained by love for and with bilingual students and communities of Color.

For many minoritized communities, sustaining or at least holding on to their home language and cultural identity has been a constant uphill battle. Nevertheless, Latina/o/x who speak Spanish, for example, have demonstrated to be linguistically and culturally resilient against hegemonic societal, institutional, political, and monolithic national ideologies. This article explores a single case study of a Latina transfronteriza child's embodied critical language awareness. Merging Critical Language Awareness and Chicana Feminist Theory, the findings demonstrate how a Latina child makes sense of linguistic hierarchies, language loss, and how she challenges deficit perspectives imposed on her home language by relying on her senses and feelings. The article concludes by offering ways to understand and support critical language awareness with Latina/o/x students that stems from knowledge rooted in the brown body and their lived experience.

This article examines the cultural production of three "transfronterizo" children who daily, physically cross a U.S.-Mexico international bridge. Drawing on theories of identity, border inspections, literacy, and language, the findings reveal that "transfronterizo" children developed "literacies of surveillance," or the acquired and produced language and literacy practices to move across the surveillance, inspectors, and border. "Transfronterizo" children strategically used their full linguistic repertories to legitimize their border crossing identities in the context of surveillance.

The present study is a narrative analysis of 14 self-created books by Latina/o/x bilingual preservice teachers to describe their biliteracy trajectories. Drawing on the concept of identity and bilingualism, this analysis explores how preservice teachers experienced language and literacy and how these experiences have shaped their bilingual-biliterate identities. The findings of this research study revealed that bilingual preservice teachers (a) narrated Spanish as a significant part of their remembered identities, (b) struggled to maintain their bilingualism and biliteracy, and (c) reconnected and reclaimed their bilingual-biliterate identities through their experiences in their teacher preparation program.

In this essay, I explore the concept of embodied knowledge that stems from the Brown female body grounded in the critical scholarship by Chicana Feminist Theorists. I share three testimonios of "momentos"--moments in my life--where my embodied knowledge, through emotions, feelings, and senses guided my practices. Through this (re)membering, I illustrate how critical embodied knowledge is lived and passed down to our younger generations. Lastly, I discuss the notion of embodied knowledge in relation to my research praxis and pedagogy as possibilities for (re)imagining work that heals and humanizes the experiences of our children and communities.

In the current anti-immigrant context, Latinx families, children, and communities experience language as a highly contested and surveilled practice with consequential effects. In this study, I drew on the concept of literacies of surveillance and translanguaging to examine how language was embodied and rationalized in the context of three homes of Latinx, transfronterizx families. This critical multiple-case study led to three main findings: (1) Parents and children are linguistic guardians and surveil from a place of love and care, (2) embracing Spanish-English parallel monolingualism is a form of "respeto," and (3) translanguaging is a way of being for bilingual children moving in and out of surveilled moments. The findings have important implications for reconstructing the concept of linguistic surveillance in research and reframing parents' and children's roles in school when it relates to designing and authoring children's bilingual futures.

The present qualitative case study examines how community-based lessons impacted the practices, perspectives, and internship placement experiences of 16 bilingual pre-service teachers. Grounded in the concepts of funds of knowledge and border thinking pedagogy, the findings revealed that bilingual pre-service teachers drew on local knowledge to create community-based lessons; these lessons supported student engagement and participation, and they helped pre-service teachers develop a sense of belonging and connection. We end with important implications for the field of teacher education regarding the (re)framing of teacher preparation programs so that they center on learning with and from students' and communities' funds of knowledge.

In U.S. schools, educators are often regarded as knowledge producers and sole pedagogues, whereas parents (particularly of Color) are perceived as not engaged or interested in their child(ren)'s education (Colgrove, 2019; Nun~ez, 2019; Ramirez, 2020). These negative stereotypes and white-centered discourses sustain raciolinguistic perspectives (Rosa & Flores, 2017) of families of Color and immigrant backgrounds. For the present study, we employed critical discourse analysis to explore why and how Mexican mothers raise bilingual children by examining how their experiences inform us about their powerful roles as critical translanguaging pedagogues. Drawing on border thinking and pedagogy of border thinking, the findings revealed two main themes: (1) how mothers recognize and draw on the ruptures of cultural and linguistic worlds; and (2) how they sustain language through family and cultural practices. Lastly, we share implications for educators, teacher educators, and policymakers.

To address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse student population in our U.S. schools, teacher preparation programs need to prepare bilingual pre-service teachers to view and implement languages in supportive ways. This study demonstrates how a cohort of 16 bilingual pre-service teachers are beginning to think about language(s) and the impact it has on their practice within their internship experience. Findings reveal that when supportive practices and policies are implemented in the classroom, pre-service teachers adopt similar practices. However, when there are negative language policies and practices, they become practicing language arbiters who make decisions that challenge normative practices.

Background or Context: Middle-school Girls of Color experience complex systems of relationships, structures, and situations in and out of school spaces. Their experiences, however, are often at the margins or excluded from middle school curricula and after-school programming. In this article, we focus on how young women engage with chisme to liberate themselves from social and academic pressures placed upon them. Purpose and Research Questions: Our study seeks to center and explore the ways of knowing and being of Latina/x middle school girls with particular attention to the role of chisme. We draw on Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives to address the following research questions: (1) How do middle school Latina/x girls define chisme? (2) How and why was chisme enacted or leveraged to co-create a trusting space in an after-school program for middle school Latina/x girls? Research Design: We employed a practitioner research inquiry design to explore chisme as a literacy practice of Latina/x middle-school girls in an after-school program. The after-school program, Latina/x Girlhood Narratives, was implemented in a middle school in a mid-sized, urban city in the Midwest region of the United States. Analytically, we engaged in video data analysis and qualitative coding analysis to examine the data. Results and Conclusions: Three main findings emerged from the study: (1) shared understandings: chismes, rumors, and snitching; (2) todo or la mitad del chisme: a process and product of confianza; and (3) from chismes to liberatory literacy practices of desahogamiento. Our study demonstrates how chisme, in particular, not only was vital to building and deepening confianza, but also allowed access to the girls' ideas for activities and pedagogies. The field of education must continue to work to make visible the ways in which Latina/x girls engage with themselves and the world in order to sustain better relationships with and for them, and to build pathways for Latina/x girls to see themselves as successful in schools and in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in the Midwest region of the United States, this study draws on translanguaging literacies to critically examine the discussions and sense-making that was taking place in a Mandarin-English bilingual community classroom between a Chinese bilingual teacher and three Chinese American bilingual students while engaging in discussions of language, culture, and history with children’s literature. Our findings demonstrate that the teacher carefully applied translanguaging literacies as deliberate pedagogy to help bilingual students understand language in the world, normalize linguistic freedom and respect, and critically make sense of their complex identities and histories with and through their entire linguistic repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a basic interpretive qualitative study that examined how two students, a dominant Spanish speaker (Joel) and a dominant English speaker (Carter) used languages during their microinteractions in pair work in a dual language kindergarten classroom. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between language choice and power. Data sources included field notes and video/audio recordings collected during a Spanish day and an English day of instruction, with particular attention to the interactions of this bilingual pair. The authors conducted critical discourse analysis drawing on the notion of power as product and power in discourse. Findings reveal that despite the expressed intention of the dual language program that all children would have the opportunity to be bilinguals, there are more opportunities in this classroom for language development in English than in Spanish. Only the teacher's direct intervention appears to influence children's language use during their interactions.

Much research has focused on the reasons and mechanisms for immigrant language loss. However, there is a scarcity of research about influences on language maintenance over time, and much of this work employs survey data. With the current study, we aim to contribute to this body of research with a qualitative study of a bilingual individual, Esperanza Sada (a self-selected pseudonym), and her language and literacy development, beginning in late elementary school and concluding with a follow-up at age 22. We employed a language ideologies framework to interpret Esperanza's language and literacy practices, as well as the social, political, and educational contexts in which they developed. This long-term examination allowed us to understand more about the mechanisms and processes of Esperanza's language and literacy development and use over time. It also illuminated her deliberate choice to continue with bilingualism and biliteracy, even as some of her friends and acquaintances made the opposite decision.

The hyper-visible ways the U.S.-Mexico border becomes part of political discourse often disregard the complex histories, communities, and cultural knowledge of the people who have and continue to inhabit these borderlands. Specifically, the borderlands are rarely recognized as sites for rich forms of knowledge, practices of teaching and learning, and language and literacy. Drawing on the intersections of border(lands) thinking and Chicanx/Latinx multimodal literacies, we look at the relationship between image and texts and how the curation of zines reflects the epistemologies and lived realities of Chicanx/Latinx Pre-Service Teachers (PST) living on the border. Three themes emerged from our analysis of the PST's zines: (1) Borderlands artifacts, (2) Borderlands languaging, and (3) Borderlands identities and the borderline. We argue that zine creation is one way to deconstruct deficit narratives, reimagine pedagogical content, and highlight knowledge rooted in rich constructions of the borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings of a multiple-case study that examined the everyday language and literacy practices of three transfronterizx, bilingual students experiencing schooling in the US-Mexico borderlands. With attention to what it means to be "academically" acceptable and recognized at Frontera Elementary, the findings revealed that the three transfronterizx children engaged in restrictive monolingual language and literacy practices when under academic surveillance, and they pushed linguistic boundaries when the surveillance was removed. These findings have important implications for what it means to be bilingual in explicitly monolingual school settings, and for educators and administrators who are serving bilingual communities such as those in the borderlands and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]