ERIC Number: EJ1146051
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Mar
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0091-732X
EISSN: N/A
Leveraging Students' Communicative Repertoires as a Tool for Equitable Learning
Martinez, Danny C.; Morales, P. Zitlali; Aldana, Ursula S.
Review of Research in Education, v41 n1 p477-499 Mar 2017
Leveraging is often described as the process of using the home and community languages of children and youth as a tool to access the "academic" or "standard" varieties of languages valued in schools. In this vein, researchers have called on practitioners to leverage the stigmatized language practices of children and youth in schools for their academic development. In this review, we interrogate the notion of leveraging commonly used by language and literacy scholars. We consider what gets leveraged, whose practices get leveraged, when leveraging occurs, and whether or not leveraging leads to robust and transformative learning experiences that sustain the cultural and linguistic practices of children and youth in our schools, particularly for students of color. We review scholarship steeped in Vygotskian-inspired research on learning, culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogies, and bilingual education research that forefront the notion that the language practices of children and youth are useful for mediating learning and development. We conclude with a discussion of classroom discourse analysis methods that we believe can provide documentation of transformative learning experiences that uncovers and examines the linguistic resources of students in our twenty-first-century classrooms, and to gain a common language around notions of leveraging in the field.
Descriptors: Language Usage, Multilingualism, Interpersonal Communication, Classroom Communication, Literature Reviews, Concept Formation, Communicative Competence (Languages), Literacy, Language Research, Bilingual Education, Culturally Relevant Education, Sustainability, Discourse Analysis, Classroom Techniques, Teaching Methods
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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