View Content #20404

Yvonne Fariño teaches at the John J. Duggan Academy Expeditionary School of Social Justice, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and she serves as co-chair of ACTFL's Special Interest Group on Heritage Languages.

Research shows that Spanish heritage language students do not have access to rigorous academic curriculum in the Spanish classroom (García, 2001), and the Spanish for heritage learners curriculum needs to address students’ cultural and individual differences (Carreira, 2012, 2007; Rodríguez, 2014), promote critical consciousness (Leeman, 2012), and focus on identity and affective issues (Martínez, 2012; Potowski, 2012). 

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (1987) links learning and development as a social product because through language social cognition and lived experiences are transmitted.  Language is a representation of commonsense and general knowledge of our group’s social mind: historicity, beliefs and values.  Because language is a mental tool that mediates the development and internalization of cultural forms of behavior, and semiotic systems in everyday activities (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986, 1998), social cognition, or ideology, can be materialized into activities during instructional design and pedagogical decisions. In this sense, language can also serve as a “cultural tool” to scaffold understanding, negotiation, and co-construction of knowledge when an instructional design affords learners to interact with different systems of knowledge. 

Learning Expeditions are tools for real-world application that engages educators and learners to go beyond the curriculum and not just across the curriculum. Learning Expeditions are also a great way for heritage language learners (HLLs) to share the richness that exists within each other, their families, and their communities, because it offers a multi-voice perspective, authenticity of knowledge with real-world application that affirms students’ social identity and membership. Thus, Learning Expeditions serve as “cultural tools” because they sustain students’ linguistic variety and funds of knowledge, while increasing their linguistic repertoire into academic literacy and concepts.

In order for HLLs to develop “academic concepts” (Vygotsky, 1994) as they progress from novice to intermediate levels, cultural and linguistic affordances are essential for student achievement because they foster student engagement and retention, and positions students as learners.

Linguistic features offer a way to integrate effective communication, whether oral or written, in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes, and to interact with cultural competence and understanding. As a critical language educator, affording opportunities for teaching and learning to develop “academic concepts” and literacy via linguistic functions have allowed me and students to reach our zone of proximal development (zpd) as we transform and are transformed by the knowledge that we are co-constructing.

I used backward design (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) to create the Mexican Muralist Movement Learning Expedition.  Once I knew which linguistic feature I wanted to use, I began to deconstruct the unit to have a better view of the linguistic, cultural, and literacy knowledge students were going to need prior to and during the Learning Expedition, while also meeting the language program curriculum.  The linguistic feature that authenticates language learning for HLLs is Family and Community, which can be found in any Level 2 textbook.  I made a conscious decision to rename the Unit Family, Community and Society, to show students how they are part of the social construction of society. 

In this week’s Activity of the Week I present the overall plan for the Learning Expedition and go into detail for one three-day component of the expedition, a Case Study exploring Puerto Rican identity through art.

References

Carreira, M. (2007). Spanish for Native speakers: Narrowing the Latino achievement gap through language instruction. Heritage Language Journal 5(1). Retrieved from http://www.heritagelanguages.org/heritage/

Carreira, M. (2012). Meeting the needs of heritage language learners: Approaches, strategies and research. In S. Beaudrie & M Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 223-240). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

García, E. (2001). Latinos education in the United States: Raíces y alas. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA): Connecting Assessment to Instruction and Learning model. Foreign Language Annals, 39(3), 359-382

Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. Beaudrie & M Fairclough (Eds.) Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field, (pp.43-60). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Martínez, G. (2012). Policy and planning research for Spanish as a heritage language: From language rights to linguistic resource. In S. Beaudrie & M Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field, (pp.61-100) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Potowski, K. (2012). Identity and heritage learners: Moving beyond essentializations. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a Heritage Language in the US: State of the Science (283-304). Georgetown University Press.

Rodríguez, A. (2014). Culturally relevant books: Cultural responsive teaching in bilingual classrooms. In NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 5. Retrieved from http://www2.nau.edu/nabej-p/ojs/index.php/njrp/issue/view/8

Transition by Design: The Power of Vertical Teams: https://www.amle.org/BrowsebyTopic/WhatsNew/WNDet/TabId/270/ArtMID/888/ArticleID/501/Transition-by-Design-

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher psychological processes. (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1986). Thought and language. (A. Kozulin, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky. Vol.1. Problems of General Psychology. R. W. Rieber and A.S. Carton, Eds.; N. Minick, Trans.). New York: Plenum Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1994). The development of academic concepts in school aged children. The Vygotsky reader, 355-370.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1998). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky. Vol. 4. The history of the development of higher mental functions (M. Hall, Trans.; R. W. Rieber, Ed.). New York: Plenum Press.

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005).  Understanding by design – Expanded 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.