AAAL 2025: Invited Colloquium

    Equity, Social Justice, and the Arts: How Arts-Based Methodologies can serve as Community-Accountable Research in Applied Linguistics

Conveners:

Discussant:

 Melisa Cahmann- Taylor, University of Georgia

Abstract:

In what ways do, and can, arts-based and multimodal projects in applied linguistics bring us closer to an antiracist decolonized applied linguistics (Motha, 2020)? How do arts-based methodologies create space for “relational accountability” between researchers and participants? While arts-based research methodologies have been used in educational and qualitative research, little has addressed how arts-based methodologies can be used in applied linguistics work. The purpose of this colloquium is to bring together diverse research projects that utilize arts as a methodology of research and representation in applied linguistics research. Through ethnographic poetry, theater, collage, multimodal testimonios and arts-based translation the authors of these papers underscore the affordances of arts-based methodologies, particularly the power and potential for these methods to create space for humanizing research that is accountable to the participants and communities we work with. 

The work presented highlights innovative practices and research methods that foster inclusive and equitable learning environments, and delineate creative arts-based vehicles to elevate the voices and experiences of multilingual students and families. Collectively, the research projects in this symposium showcase and advance the powerful ways that arts-based methods and practices can lead to more nuanced understandings of multilingual students and families in diverse educational and sociopolitical contexts.

After a brief introduction to the colloquium by the organizers, each presentation will be 15 minutes each with 15 minutes for the discussant's comments. We will end with 20 minutes for discussion and Q&A.

Arts-based Collaborative Translation: Exploring the Dynamic of Power and the “Living” Nature of Language

Kuo Zhang, Siena College    

Abstract: Translation, a complex language and literacy practice, is often engaged in by bilingual students outside of formal educational settings (Puzio, Keyes & Jiménez, 2016). Within language classrooms, it serves as a translingual literacy instruction strategy, fostering student engagement, valuing heritage languages, and enhancing comprehension of academic concepts (Keyes, Puzio & Jiménez, 2014). Arts-based translation extends beyond linguistic competence and meaning negotiation, encompassing cultural, creative, and aesthetic sensitivities. This research project delves into the lived experiences of in-service K-12 teachers undertaking an arts-based collaborative translation project with their English learner (EL) students, focusing on translating poems, picture books, or songs from the students’ home language to English. Four in-service teachers enrolled in a teacher education program at a public university in the western United States participated in this study. We seek to understand what K-12 teachers and students have learned about language, culture, diversity, equity, and inclusion through this collaborative process, particularly how they acquire new multilingual and multicultural skills, and challenge existing language ideologies. The goal of this study is to present arts-based collaborative translation as a promising pedagogical approach for investigating allyship and power dynamics between languages, between teachers and students, and among students themselves. It also involves an exploration of the “living” nature of language, emphasizing a departure from deficit-oriented perspectives towards a collective process of linguistic discovery, embracing possibilities, multiplicities, and choices. We highlight the inherent complexity of arts-based translation, wherein no single correct answer exists for any given text; even seemingly "simple" texts entail complexities of sound versus meaning and yield multiple plausible interpretations. This study aims to contribute to culturally sustaining classrooms and advocate for social justice in education, recognizing the transformative potential of arts-based collaborative translation in fostering inclusive and equitable learning environments. 

Abstract: Linguistic diversity has become a defining feature of Canadian schools in the twenty-first century. Today, whether students come to school identifying as dominant speakers of the language of instruction or bi-multilingual speakers of any variety of languages, all students need to build relationships with students and teachers who understand and speak other languages. In this way, classrooms are prime sites of multilingual encounter and exchange in which to develop all students’ mediational competence (Piccardo & North, 2018).  Mainstream teachers often report feeling un(der)prepared to serve with multilingual learners (Petitt, 2011; Li, Hinojosa & Wexler, 2017; Deng & Hayden, 2021).  Yet, never has there been a time of greater need to prepare all students to live and to communicate respectfully and productively with others across linguistic, cultural, racial, religious and social divides.  This study was born out of a place of hope that we could imagine schooling in more hospitable and humanizing ways that support students and teachers to thrive in multilingual classrooms (Peercy, Troyan, Fredricks, & Hardy‐Skeberdis, 2024).  Using collage as an arts-based research method (Butler-Kisber, 2019), teachers engaged in reflecting, negotiating and representing what linguistic flourishing might look like and feel like in classrooms that are designed as greenhouses for growing all students’ critical multilingual language awareness and their understanding of difference and diversity.   This paper draws on collages, scholartist statements and discussions with participating teachers working in mainstream multilingual classrooms. Drawing on theories of social representation of languages and linguistic diversity (Castellotti & Moore, 2002), the focus of this presentation is on analyzing how teachers’ representations of teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms are negotiated and made visible through the medium of collage. This article argues for the power and promise of creative multimodal arts-based methods in critical applied linguistics research.

One case engaged high school Latinx students in a participatory design to create bilingual multimodal testimonios of their experiences of trust and distrust in schools using photography, collage, narrative, and drawing, which were then analyzed by students and presented to school leaders to open a dialogue about implications and shifts in practice at their school. Another case engaged 5th grade educators to co-design pedagogical pathways that connected an established district capstone project to students’ identities, experiences, and families, engaging arts-based approaches to support students’ multilingual expressions and sense of belonging. In the last focal case, one family, a mother and her two sons (11 and 16), represented their experiences of trust and distrust in schools using imagery and photographs. This paper argues for and presents how integrating multimodal arts-based approaches in testimonio research methodology and pedagogical approaches bolsters both the process and counternarratives in powerful ways by adding depth and nuance to better understand the experiences shared by multilingual students and families. We found that the creative process validated students and families’ experiences, and fostered spaces for agency and imagination, which generated  future visions of schools characterized by confianza, or trust, and belonging. 

Abstract: Education scholars Espinoza, Vissoughi, Rose, & Poza (2020), have defined educational dignity as "the multifaceted sense of a person's value generated via substantive intra- and inter-personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate one's mind, humanity and potential" (p. 326).  The authors argue that, while dignity is a given of our human condition, it is not always experienced, and the experience of dignity is a social accomplishment that can be located in interaction and social space. In this paper, I examine how antropoesía, or ethnographic poetry (Rosaldo, 2014), can serve as a dignity-affirming method for research and representation that center minoritized immigrant populations in language education research and pedagogy. Drawing from two different research projects using interviews with Latina immigrant mothers as the main data source, I use antropoesía as a humanizing representation of participants' experiences and examine how these carry important implications for language programs and pedagogies - particularly bilingual programs that serve Latinx bilingual students in the U.S.  Specifically, I present transcripts-as-verse that illuminate the impact and ramifications of the experience of migration in relation to parents’ aspirations for their childrens’ schooling, notably as it pertained to language and bilingualism. In particular, the words of Latina mothers evoked the struggle of not understanding the language or the institutions one is expected to navigate;  the English-only discourses that scared and pressured parents; the sadness of language loss; and the hope-filled power of bilingualism and aspirations it brings. I end with a discussion of how dignity and the arts can be guiding concepts in language education research and representation in ways that humanize and center marginalized language populations. 

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