Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces: Language, Learning, and Love (Expanding Literacies in Education)

Grounded in both theory and practice, with implications for both, this book is about children’s perspectives on the borders that society erects, and their actual, symbolic, ideational and metaphorical movement across those borders. Based on extensive ethnographic data on children of immigrants (mostly from Mexico, Central America and the Philippines) as they interact with undergraduate students from diverse linguistic, cultural and racial/ethnic backgrounds in the context of an urban play-based after-school program, it probes how children navigate a multilingual space that involves playing with language and literacy in a variety of forms. Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces speaks to critical social issues and debates about education, immigration, multilingualism and multiculturalism in an historical moment in which borders are being built up, torn down, debated and recreated, in both real and symbolic terms; raises questions about the values that drive educational practice and decision-making; and suggests alternatives to the status quo. At its heart, it is a book about how __love__ can serve as a driving force to connect people with each other across all kinds of borders, and to motivate children to engage powerfully with learning and life. Grounded in both theory and practice, with implications for both, this book is about children's perspectives on the borders that society erects, and their actual, symbolic, ideational, and metaphorical movement across those borders. Based on extensive ethnographic data gathered with children of immigrants (mostly from Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines) as they interact with undergraduate students from diverse linguistic, cultural, and racial/ethnic backgrounds in the context of an urban play-based after-school program, it examines how children navigate a multilingual space that involves playing with language and literacy in a variety of forms. Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces speaks to critical social issues and debates about education, immigration, multilingualism, and multiculturalism in an historical moment in which borders are being built up, torn down, debated, and recreated, in both real and symbolic terms; raises questions about the values that drive educational practice and decision-making; and suggests alternatives to the status quo. At its heart, it is a book about how love can serve as a driving force to connect people with each other across all kinds of borders, and to motivate children to engage powerfully with learning and life Cover Title Copyright Dedication CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments 1 Introduction and Overview 2 Blurring Borders at B-Club: Research, Theory, Practice 3 Seeing with Our Hearts 4 A Pedagogy of Heart and Mind 5 Shining Lights in a Globalized World 6 Faces of Globalization: The Community Context 7 Learning and Love 8 Transculturation 9 Translanguaging 10 Transliteracies 11 Policy, Practice, and Possibilities: Imagining Teaching and Learning for a New World Appendix: B-Club Kids’ Survey Responses 2012–13 Index This book about children's perspectives on the borders that society erects and their actual and symbolic movement across those borders speaks to critical social issues and debates about education, immigration, multilingualism, multiculturalism.