“Dice que es bajo” (“She says he's low”): Negotiating breaches of learner identity in two Mexican families

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which elementary-aged children from two Mexican families were socialized to adopt figured worlds of literacy through breach-identifying interactions that took place in the home. By integrating theories of ethnomethodology and figured worlds, this article illustrates how the identification and repair of breaches involve the negotiation of identities in educational contexts. The analysis tracks how and when the mothers drew upon teacher discourse of children's “low” academic status to identify and repair breaches of pace, neatness, and English reading fluency during the completion of homework. The article provides new insights into how mothers and children reproduce school-derived ideologies at home when attempting to resolve learner-identity breaches. The findings are significant because they extend an ongoing conversation in the field about home–school relationships and literacy development among language learners enrolled in public schools.