Language and Cultural Practices in Communities and Schools Bridging Learning for Students from Non-Dominant Groups

Drawing on sociocultural theories of learning, this book examines how the everyday language practices and cultural funds of knowledge of youth from non-dominant or minoritized groups can be used as centerpoints for classroom learning in ways that help all students both to sustain and expand their cultural and linguistic repertoires while developing skills that are valued in formal schooling.

Bringing together a group of ethnographically grounded scholars working in diverse local contexts, this volume identifies how these language practices and cultural funds of knowledge can be used as generative points of continuity and productively expanded on in schools for successful and inclusive learning. Ideal for students and researchers in teaching, learning, language education, literacy, and multicultural education, as well as teachers at all stages of their career, this book contributes to research on culturally and linguistically sustaining practices by offering original teaching methods and a range of ways of connecting cultural competencies to learning across subject matters and disciplines.

Introduction to the Volume -- Everyday Learning: Centering in Schools the Language and Cultural Practices of Young People from Non-Dominant Backgrounds

Inmaculada Ma García-Sánchez and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

Chapter 1-- Learning by Observing and Pitching In: Implications for the Classroom

Maricela Correa-Chávez and Angélica López-Fraire

Chapter 2 -- Seeing Together: The Ecological Knowledge of Indigenous Families in Chicago Urban Forest Walks

Ananda M. Marin

Chapter 3 -- Building on Students’ Cultural Practices in STEM

Tia Madkins and Na’ilah Nasir

Chapter 4 -- "They Think Detroit is Just Litter": Youth Challenging Environmental Injustice Through Participatory Research and Civic Engagement

Enid Rosario-Ramos and Jenny Sawada

Chapter 5 -- Leveling the Politicized Experiences of Children from Mixed Status Families: Connections to Civic Education in Elementary Schools

Sarah Gallo, Holly Link, and Jessica Somerville

Chapter 6 -- Linking Church and School: Language and Literacy Practices of Bilingual Latinx Pentecostal Youth

Lucila D. Ek

Chapter 7 -- Figurative Language in Religious Community Contexts: Opportunities to Leverage and Expand Bilingual Youth’s Linguistic Repertoires

Mariana Pacheco and P. Zitlali Morales

Chapter 8 -- Centering Shared Linguistic Heritage To Build Language And Literacy Resilience Among Immigrant Students

Inmaculada Ma García-Sánchez

Chapter 9 -- Finding a Way into Story Worlds: Youth Co-Narrations of Cross-Cultural Lives as Analogue for Academic Literary Talk

Patricia Enciso

Chapter 10 -- Where Everyday Translanguaging Meets Academic Writing: Exploring Tensions and Generative Connections for Bilingual Latina/o/x Students

Ramón Martínez, Leah Durán, and Michiko Hikida

Chapter 11 -- Immigrant Youth Reading Stories in Translation: Lessons for Literacy Instruction in School

Jennifer F. Reynolds and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

Chapter 12 -- Exploring, Thinking and Learning about Languages and Literacies with Young People in Super-diverse Australian Classrooms

Jacqueline D’warte

Chapter 13 -- Leveraging Youth Cultural Data Sets for Teacher Learning

Danny Martinez, Elizabeth Montaño, and Javier Rojo

Afterword – Don’t Believe the Hype: Reality Rules!

Carol D. Lee

Inmaculada M. García-Sánchez is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Temple University, USA..

Marjorie Faulstich Orellana is Professor of Urban Schooling in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles, USA.