Grassroots Translingualism: A Case Study (Thesis)
Marcus William Somerville, Spring 2019
Director: Jennifer Maher
Committee Members: Lucille McCarthy and Jody Shipka
Grassroots translingualism serves as an effective instructional method for educating our increasingly diverse student populations—diverse in terms of both culture and language. The translingual pedagogy places a central focus on understanding communicative differences and similarities among persons from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The proposed grassroots aspect of the instructional model allows translingual pedagogies to operate beneath the scrutiny of state or federal educational policies such as Common Core State Standards and Maryland College and Career-Ready Standards. Instead, it allows educators to design and tailor their translingual pedagogies within the context of their particular school’s educational policies or their county school system’s educational guidelines.