Linguistically Diverse Children and Educators (Re)Forming Early Literacy Policy

Abstract

The current context of increased accountability and the proliferation of skills-based literacy mandates at the early childhood level pose particular tensions for multilingual children and educators. In this article, we draw on data from two ethnographic studies to examine how educators and children negotiate the constraints of early childhood curricular mandates within two New York City schools with multilingual populations and long traditions of attending to their linguistic, cultural, and social resources. Our data documents how educators sought to understand, grapple with, and (re)form early literacy policies to make spaces for student languages, collaboration, and inquiry. We found that young children distinguished between scripted practices and authentic literacy learning, and despite constraints found openings to bend the curriculum to suit their linguistic, intellectual, and social repertoires. The studies also emphasized the role of administrators and teachers in navigating—and mitigating—curricular mandates that were often contradictory to the bilingual missions and practices of their schools and at times conflicting and confusing in and of themselves. We argue that while policy is very much a participant in today’s early literacy contexts, it is not deterministic. All members of the school community have an impact on mediating how policy is enacted and creating alternative opportunities for learning. The findings of these complementary studies illustrate how multilingual children and educators negotiated policy mandates in order to affirm the intellectual and cultural traditions of their schools.