Learning Music Literacies Across Transnational School Settings

Abstract

This article examines an adolescent's music literacy education across Caribbean and U.S. schools using qualitative research methods and theories of multimodality, transnationalism, and global cultural flows. Findings include that the youth's music literacy practices continuously shifted in response to the cultural practices and values of the physical geographies in which he alternatively lived; however, transnational movements combined with extended physical sojourning contributed to the youth's development of progressively generative perspectives about the potential of U.S. contexts for building his music literacies and a correspondent constraining view on Caribbean geographies for his music literacy development. Amid an abundance of research on the significance of online worlds to transnational youths' identity and literacy development, this article contributes insights into how formal literacy education physically experienced within and across nations shapes the nature of literacy learning.

Translingual Practice, Strategic Participation, and Meaning-Making

“…This burgeoning area of scholarship is accompanied by growing linguistic diversity across the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016), with new destination states in the South and the Midwest seeing nearly a 50% growth in immigrant populations between 2000 and 2009 (Marrow, 2011). Transnational flows of individuals, ideas, practices, and resources present rich learning opportunities for students and their teachers in such contexts (Noguerón-Liu & Hogan, 2017; Skerrett, 2018).…”

The Circulation of Care in Multilingual and Transnational Children

“…Students whose family members physically travel to their homelands are given opportunities to use or be exposed to their heritage languages, interact with extended family members, and develop attachments to multiple countries during their transnational journeys (Gardner & Mand, 2012; Kwon, 2019b). Skerrett (2015) notes that transnational sojourning can help immigrant students to develop family ties, establish cultural identities, and engage in multiple languages, and she notes an urgent need to investigate “the possibilities, challenges, processes, and outcomes of literacy learning across physical borders” (Skerrett, 2018, p. 32). In this article, I direct my attention to language and literacy experiences of an underexplored immigrant group (elementary-aged Korean children) across physical borders by joining them on their transnational journeys.…”

Disciplinary Literacy: From Infusion to Hybridity

“…Researchers were the disciplinary teachers in two studies, drawing on long-standing recommendations for teacher research to develop context-specific teaching ideas (Blackburn & Schey, 2018; Tanner, 2017). Two studies privileged students’ perspectives (Learned, 2018; Skerrett, 2018). Two conceptual analyses critiqued overly simple notions of content area and disciplinary literacy, suggesting that context-specific support for disciplinary literacy would require learners to deploy a variety of literacy practices (Collin, 2014; Dunkerly-Bean & Bean, 2016).…”

“…They valued teachers’ perspectives, compelling inquiry, authentic disciplinary texts, supportive practices, gradually withdrawn scaffolds, and expectations that students were capable of using available resources to construct new learning—varied, context-driven approaches drawing on generic and discipline-specific literacy practices. Students appeared to be engaged, motivated, and willing to learn during inquiry that welcomed their insights and critique (Blackburn & Schey, 2018; Learned, 2018; Skerrett, 2018).…”