Harini Rajagopal

Dr. Harini Rajagopal

Assistant Professor

she / her / hers

Biography

வணக்கம்! I am a listener of stories and enjoy working on collaborative and creative pedagogical designs. I am grateful to live and work on the traditional, unceded, ancestral territories of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people.

Rooted in antiracist perspectives, my work focuses on collaborating with children and teachers to mindfully include diverse communicative repertoires (especially multiple languages, photography, arts, playfulness) into mainstream classrooms, while paying attention to the realities of class, cultural, and systemic inequities. I engage with a feminist ethic of care, relationships and process, decolonizing and reflexive methodologies, and use participant-friendly methods that value multiliterate practices as resources for all students’ learning, and for designing caring justice-oriented pedagogies.

Broadly my interests include languages and literacies in the early years, multiliteracies, family literacies, critical and culturally sustaining pedagogies, childhood studies, arts-based research, decolonizing methodologies, and teacher education.

Selected Publications

Rajagopal, H. (2024)

“Can I speak that यहाँ पे (here)?”: Emergent bilinguals navigating intersectional inequalities with relational multimodal multilingual practices in elementary school. International Multilingual Research Journal, 19 (2), 153-172. https://doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2024.2420158

Rajagopal, H. & Shank Lauwo, M. (2024)

Mapping literacies, mapping selves: Multimodal autobiographical storytelling, critical multilingual awareness and antiracism in teacher education. TESL Canada Journal, 41, (1), 27–53. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v41i1/1398

Schnellert, L., Rajagopal, H., Miller, M. (2024)

“Different Spots in Their Learning Journey”: Striving to Develop Equity-Oriented Teacher Education Pedagogy. In: Burke, J., Cacciattolo, M., Toe, D. (eds) Inclusion and Social Justice in Teacher Education (pp. 317-336). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67612-3_17

Rajagopal, H., & Kendrick, M. (2023)

Looking Closely at Words and Worlds: Emergent Bilinguals Making Meaning Through Drawing and Talking. Language Arts, 101 (2), 94-107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/la202332684

Shank Lauwo, M., Accurso, K., & Rajagopal, H. (2022).

Plurilingualism, equity, and preservice teacher identity: Centring (linguistic) diversity in teacher education. TESL Canada Journal, 38(2), 114–139. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v38i2.1359

Anderson, J., Anderson, A. & Rajagopal, H. (2017)

Promoting first language development and maintenance and capitalizing on “funds of knowledge” in family literacy programs. In N. Kucirkova C. Snow, V. Grover & C. McBride (Eds.). The Routledge International Handbook of Early Literacy Education (pp. 351-361). Routledge.

Kim, J., Friedrich, N., McLellan, S., Prendergast, T., Rajagopal, H., & Teichert, L. (2016)

Looking back, looking ahead: Reflections on the intersection of language, culture, and learning in early childhood. In. J. Anderson, A. Anderson, J. Hare, & M. McTavish (Eds.) Language, learning, and culture in early childhood: Home, school, and community contexts. (pp. 255-264). Routledge.