Teaching and Researching the Continua of Biliteracy
Abstract
The continua of biliteracy model offers an ecological framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language policy and planning in multilingual settings. Biliteracy is defined here as “any and all instances in which communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing” and the continua depict the complex, fluid, and interrelated dimensions of communicative repertoires; it is in the dynamic, rapidly changing and sometimes contested spaces along and across the continua that biliteracy use and learning occur. The continua of biliteracy model was formulated in the context of a multi-year, comparative ethnography of language policy beginning in 1987 in two Philadelphia public schools and their respective communities. In the years since it was first proposed, the model has served as heuristic in research, teaching, and program development locally, nationally, and internationally in Indigenous, immigrant and diaspora language education contexts. Along the way, it has evolved and adapted to accommodate both a changing world and a changing scholarly terrain, foregrounding ethnographic monitoring and mapping, ideological and implementational spaces, voice and translanguaging as instantiated in multilingual education policy and practice. In this talk, I highlight recent experiences in immigrant contexts of Philadelphia and Indigenous contexts of Brasil, South Africa, Sweden and Peru where the continua of biliteracy model has informed bilingual program development and Indigenous and second language teaching.
Time and Place
When: Monday, July 31, 2017 | 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Where: Ponderosa Commons Multipurpose Room (Room 2012)
Admission is free, everyone is welcome!
Light refreshments will be served from 1:15 p.m.
Biostatement
Dr. Nancy H. Hornberger is Professor of Education and former Chair of Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, where she also convened the annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum for 15 years. Her research interests include sociolinguistics in education, ethnography in education, language policy, bilingualism and biliteracy, Indigenous language revitalization and heritage language education. With sustained commitment and work with Quechua speakers and bilingual intercultural education in the Andes beginning in 1974, she has also taught, lectured, and advised on multilingual language policy and education throughout the world, as U.S. State Department English Language Specialist, United Nations consultant, and three-time Fulbright Senior Specialist – in Paraguay, New Zealand, and South Africa. She has held visiting professor appointments at the Universidade de Campinas in São Paulo in Brazil, University of Natal in South Africa, and is currently visiting professor at the University of Umeå, Sweden, collaborating on research, curriculum development, and teacher education in Sámi language and literacy. Read more