The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

LANGUAGE MAKING IN CLASSROOMS WITH EMERGENT BI/MULTILINGUAL

CHILDREN: RECOGNIZING ADDITIONAL WAYS OF ENGAGING

A Dissertation in

Curriculum and Instruction

by

Frances Nebus Bose

© 2020 Frances Nebus Bose

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May 2020 The dissertation of Frances Nebus Bose was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Mari Haneda Associate Professor of Education (English Language Learning and World Languages Education) and Applied Linguistics Dissertation Advisor Co-Chair of Committee

Christopher M. Schulte Endowed Associate Professor of Art Education School of Art, J William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences University of Arkansas Co-Chair of Committee

Athelstan Canagarajah Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, English, and Asian Studies

Gail Boldt Professor of Language & Literacy Education

Kimberly A. Powell Associate Professor of Education (Language, Culture & Society), Art Education, Music Education, and Asian Studies

Rose Mary Zbiek Department Head, Curriculum & Instruction

ii Abstract

This dissertation research is a longitudinal classroom ethnography in a second-grade classroom in a public Northeastern suburban school. It is a story of surprise for me as researcher, as I discover the multiplicity of how engagement can be conceptualized in this

English-medium classroom with emergent bi/multilingual children. As tensions flowed through children and teachers of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds often not able to communicate and connect across the boundaries of English and Chinese, engagement was not only the participation and contribution of children working with peers and teacher. Engagement was also what transpired when children worked in alliance with mobile technologies, objects, and sounds, such as video cameras, translation software, and tablet computers.

Responding to multiple perspectives of language in the classroom, I approach this study of language and engagement by activating two different theoretical orientations. One is translingualism from socio and applied linguistics, where language practices are understood as semiotic and mobile resources. The other is the feminist new materialist concept of intra-action, as it is engaged in young children’s literacies. With these theoretical orientations, I give voice to the different ways in which children, teachers, and researcher conceptualize language differently.

Furthermore, I suggest language practices are conceptualized as ethico-onto-epistemological fusions among participants in a classroom. As such, the focus is on what transpires in the connections between children, researchers, teachers, mobile technologies and objects in the classroom, and how this changes ways of recognizing engagement.

Methodologically, this dissertation takes a diffractive approach to classroom ethnography. Throughout the school year, second graders and I filmed activities in the classroom with different cameras and then analyzed video footage of three specific moments, along with

iii parents, peers, and teachers. These three moments were designated as the most significant of their first year in a U.S. school by two emergent bi/multilingual girls, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline.

With the aim of centering the perspectives of these emergent bi/multilingual children, the dissertation focuses on in-depth video analysis and storying of the three moments. Critical to this analytical approach is the involvement of the multiple perspectives of Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s teachers, parents, peers, as well as camera lenses, and the algorithmic language of software that influences what produces video and translations. I entangle my researcher involvement in the analysis such that my own parenting moments raising a child with multiple home languages for the first time intra-act with my experiences as novice researcher and experienced language educator.

Building on critical and socioculturally-oriented work in elementary language and literacies, this work suggests participation and contribution in classrooms is realized through more than a human-oriented understanding of language practices such as different culturally- oriented ways of knowing, and social identities available when home languages and multimodal ways of expression are incorporated in classroom curriculum and pedagogy. Contributing to scholarship in K-5 language and literacies of emergent bi/multilinguals, my research extends this work by making explicit the multiplicity of ways engagement and language can manifest in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms that we are not able to notice through humanist discourses. That is, I argue that opportunities to engage in a classroom change when language is reconceptualized as performatively constructed in the affective, semiotic, and material relations between human and non-human players and partners. From this reconceptualization of language, engagement can be theorized as the multiple ways of conceptualizing taking part in and/or

iv contributing in classroom literacies, not necessarily foregrounding a child actively working with peers, teacher, or curriculum.

Contributing to another body of work in scholarship in young children’s literacies taking a posthuman orientation, I assert there is a diversity of sonic material through diverse tones, pitches, rhythms of linguistic sound that is overlooked in classrooms with multilingual children.

There are additionally varied ways of working with material objects that are overlooked. This is significant as both sonic diversity and material objects can create additional opportunities for engagement. Furthermore, I suggest how language and literacy intra-actions involve memories and ways of knowing from spaces and times across transnational school settings. Across the research areas of K-5 teaching emergent bilinguals and young children’s literacies, my research demonstrates that as educators we must harness the synergy of and recognize the productive differences and tensions emerging between classroom participants’ different ways of seeing, hearing, and feeling language. Pedagogically, this research is significant because it suggests that despite linguistic and cultural differences in classrooms, other ways of engaging that generate connections and bridges in intercultural classrooms can be recognized. Such connections have the potential to create larger changes across classrooms, schools, while engaging with families across communities.

v Table of Contents Table of Figures ...... x Glossary ...... xii Acknowledgements ...... xvi Chapter 1. Language Making in Room 246: Diffraction as an Approach to Classroom Ethnography for Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Language ...... 1 Research Questions ...... 3 I. Purpose of Inquiry Situated across Interdisciplinary Research ...... 4 Why Study Language and Engagement in Classrooms with Emergent Bi/Multilingual Children? ...... 4 How Engagement Matters ...... 5 How Does ‘Language’ Matter ...... 12 The Many Ways of Conceptualizing Language in Room 246 ...... 15 Two Interdisciplinary Areas of Scholarship That Enable Seeing, Hearing, and Feeling Language: A Brief Outline ...... 26 II. Research Site/Participants: Engaging and Connecting Across Linguistic Difference ...... 31 Engaging in Language, Studying Engagement ...... 31 Oakville School ...... 32 Engaging with and Identifying Child Research Participants ...... 34 Child, Teacher, and Researcher Participants Engaging ...... 36 How I Got to Know Children, Their Teachers, and Parents ...... 38 III. A Diffractive Approach to Ethnographic Classroom Research ...... 39 What is ‘Diffraction’? ...... 39 IV. Research Process ...... 42 From Ethnographer as Instrument to Diffractive Apparatus ...... 42 A. Rationale for a Diffractive Approach to Ethnographic Classroom Research: ...... 44 What Does It Make Possible? ...... 44 B. How A Diffractive Approach to Classroom Ethnography Shaped Methods ...... 55 V. Data Analysis ...... 65 Material-Discursive Transcripts as a Language Making ...... 68 Experiences of Parent Entangled in Language Making of Material Discursive Transcripts 70 What a Material Discursive Data Analysis Makes Possible ...... 72 VI. Potential Limitations and Complications of a Diffractive Approach ...... 73 Responding to Limitations ...... 77 VII. Significance of the Study and Outline of Proceeding Chapters ...... 78

vi Organization of Chapters and Arguments Made ...... 78 Chapter 2. Diffracting Translingualism and Intra-Action as a Theoretical Approach to Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Language Making ...... 85 Diffraction: A Theoretical Approach ...... 85 Theories and Orientations Diffracted in Analysis ...... 89 Translingualism ...... 89 Intra-Action ...... 95 Chapter 3. Blogging Science: Additional Opportunities for Recognizing Engagement in Three Stories ...... 104 Introduction ...... 108 Three Stories of Blogging Science ...... 110 Story #1: Re-placed Resources and Enfolded Memories produce Disjunctures Across China/U.S./home/School, Affecting ...... 110 Story #2: Different Ways of Meaning Across a School Year: 没有化 , lalala Reprise ...... 118 Story #3: Resources for Each Other, Extending Boundaries of Bodies Through Paralell Re- Working ...... 123 Classroom Repertoires as Dynamic Suggesting Engagement as Collective ...... 131 Implications for Teacher Education and Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms . 134 Chapter 4. Google (Mis) Translate: Recognizing Additional Opportunities for Engagement Through Tensions Across Screen and Linguistic Borders ...... 137 Introduction ...... 137 Translation in the Writing Workshop ...... 138 Reconceptualizing Translation as a Way to Engage ...... 143 Language Making with Google Translate: A Funneling? ...... 144 Extending (Machine) Translation in K-5 Classrooms by Working Across Interdisciplinary Fields ...... 145 Building from Literacy Translation...... 146 Potentials for Children with Hardware and Software of Tablets...... 147 Digital Devices: Transformations, Affective Connections, Algorithms, and Human-non- Human Networks...... 148 Bridging Insights of Diverse Fields Toward Extending (Machine) Translation in K-8 Classroom...... 149 Analysis I: By Children, Student Teacher with Tablets, Human Translator, Google Translate ...... 149 More Possibilities with the Funnel? Translation Beyond Screen and Linguistic Borders ..... 153 Analysis II: Returning to Analysis of the Writing Workshop Moment with the Funnel ...... 155 Engaging in Tensions Through Toggling ...... 156

vii Not composing a written product in English, not socially connecting, what might be described as frustrations ...... 158 Writer in English, no longer dependent on peer translator, writing not expressing intentions ...... 162 Child-teacher Connection, Yet Not Understanding or Being Understood ...... 165 Toggling as Generative for Translation and Engagement ...... 166 Connections to Classrooms: Engaging Tensions in Toggling to Inspire Possibilities in Composing with Google Translate ...... 169 Translation as Moving of Language Making in Room 246 ...... 169 Recognizing Language Making in Translation ...... 170 Chapter 5. Post-Election Pajama Day Yut Nori: Engagement as Dis/Continuous and Dis/Located Transglocaltimematterings ...... 173 Focus of Inquiry: Post-Election Pajama Day Yut Nori ...... 176 Theoretical Orientation: Diffracting Scalar Approaches ...... 178 Rationale ...... 178 Theoretical Approach ...... 180 Short Story— Post-Election Pajama Day Yut Nori Moment ...... 185 Analytical Retellings of the Short Story: Dis/continuities and Dis/locations ...... 190 Transglocaltimemattering 1: Xi Xi Lu℘Chinese as Bounded℘Pajamas℘A Lunar New Year Monkey℘In-between time of day ...... 192 Transglocaltimemattering 2: Patrick℘Chinese as bounded℘Marks on Yut ...... 197 Transglocaltimemattering 3: Yut℘Korean℘Sapphire ...... 199 Transglocaltimemattering 4: Korean℘Chinese ...... 201 Transglocaltimemattering 5: “English Please”℘ Bonjour!℘ Chinese ...... 204 Transglocaltimemattering 6: A Circle ...... 206 Repertoires of Language Making in Room 246 ...... 212 Chapter 6. Recognizing Engagement with Video: Tensions and Agency of Video as a Research Apparatus ...... 220 Surprises with Video in Room 246 ...... 221 Two Theoretical Points of Departure: Diffracting Video as a Body and With a Human Body ...... 223 Video as a Body: Digital Participants℘Researcher℘Children ...... 225 Video with a Human Body: Human-to-Human Connections with Video ...... 227 Video as an Apparatus of Knowledge Production: Producing Image, New Video, and Social Connections ...... 229 How Video of Room 246 is Produced ...... 229

viii Video as a Body ...... 233 Video with a Human Body ...... 236 How Video Inspires New Video and Child-Researcher Connections ...... 240 Video as and with a human body ...... 241 v Social Connections and Language Play ...... 244 Video as a Body ...... 245 What Video in Room 246 Produces: The Tensions and Agency of Multiple Perspectives ... 247 Rocks Jutting Out: Contrasts in Words versus Video to Conceptualize Language in Room 246...... 248 Rocks Jutting out: The Risk of Losing the Boundaries of Human Bodies ...... 248 Rocks Jutting Out: The Risk of De-Centering Written/Verbal Means of Connecting Across Families and Communities ...... 250 Agency of Multiple Perspectives ...... 251 Chapter 7. Enfolding Forward: How Does Moving with and Playing in Language Making Create Openings for Recognizing Engagement in Classrooms? ...... 256 Contributions to Academic Fields ...... 258 K-5 Bi/Multilingual Classrooms ...... 258 Early Childhood Literacies and Play ...... 263 Connections for Moving with and Playing in Language Making, Opening Translation in K-5 Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms ...... 264 Connections for Pre-Service and In-Service Teacher Education: Research Moving Forward268 References ...... 272

ix Table of Figures Figure 1.1. Photo elicitation cards ...... 3 Figure 1.2. Card sort interviews ...... 9 Figure 1.3. Excerpts from Room 246 classroom video...... 22 Figure 1.4. English-dominant children moving to Mandarin sounds they don’t understand...... 24 Figure 1.5. Neel with red car ...... 26 Figure 1.6. Diffraction—a visual...... 42 Figure 1.7. Image of diffractive ship--tangram structure created by Xi Xi Lu...... 43 Figure 1.8. Methodological and theoretical tensions in Room 246...... 46 Figure 1.9. Methods comprising diffractive apparatus ...... 47 Figure 1.10. Theoretical/methodological tension #1...... 49 Figure 1.11. Theoretical/methodological tension #2...... 50 Figure 1.12. Methods producing field texts to answer research questions...... 56 Figure 2.1. What diffraction makes visible with theories and moment...... 88 Figure 3.1. December 16 science investigation...... 106 Figure 3.2. The first blog post created...... 107 Figure 3.3. Tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline...... 126 Figure 3.4. Parallel reworkings of Ice℘cups℘tape to create insulator...... 127 Figure 3.5. Patrick ℘ Materials ℘Sounds...... 130 Figure 4.1. Pre-writing: Xi Xi Lu’s photograph (left), Madeline’s drawing (right)...... 138 Figure 4.2. Screen shot from video produced by Madeline with Go Pro...... 139 Figure 4.3. Xi Xi Lu hops back after finger taps on tablet...... 141 Figure 4.4. Xi Xi Lu speaks to tablet with Google Translate after what is understood as mistranslation...... 142 Figure 4.5 Mistranslation ...... 143 Figure 4.6. Video elicitation interviews and ranking of writing workshop moment...... 150 Figure 4.7. The translation is funny because wrong...... 153 Figure 4.8. A pathway of toggling, a thick and dense mixture—cuts of language making from enfolding from figures 4.9-4.11...... 157 Figure 4. 9. One cut of language making ...... 159 Figure 4.10. A second cut of language making ...... 163 Figure 4.11. A third cut of language making ...... 166 Figure 5.1. Air quotes and photo elicitation cards...... 174

x Figure 5.2. Xi Xi Lu and Google Translate Neural Network...... 174 Figure 5.3. 5/23/17 interview...... 176 Figure 5.4. Xi Xi Lu’s map of school ...... 180 Figure 5.5. Yut and Sapphire ...... 186 Figure 5.6. Video footage from Clarisse with Go-Pro ...... 187 Figure 5.7. Sharing Yut ...... 188 Figure 5.8. Decoding marks...... 189 Figure 5.9. Patrick attempts to decode yut, ...... 190 Figure 5.10. 5/5/17 video elicitation interview ...... 190 Figure 5.11. Engagement as a circle of bodies...... 207 Figure 6.1. Children’s unsolicited experimentation with video ...... 222 Figure 6.2. Differing perspectives of yut nori moment...... 230 Figure 6.3. Different perspectives of video elicitation interview...... 231 Figure 6.4. Diffracted video ...... 232 Figure 6.5. Responses to 没有化 , lalala from three different video elicitation interviews...... 240 Figure 6.6. Social connections made ...... 245 Figure 6.7. Rocks jutting out, or tensions, with apparatus of video...... 248 Figure 7.1. Video sharing in Room 246...... 266

xi Glossary

Affective Connections Working with Barad’s (2010) notion of forces as a “felt sense of difference” (p. 240), affective connections are sparks or gravitations produced through matter making itself felt as it iterates in a process of language making. These forces felt are ontological augmentations*, or marbled fusions linking human, non-human, and more-than-humans in very small to very large ways. To Barad, matter playing “[is] able to affect each other so as to produce something together (Barad, 2003, p. 821). Such forces that produce change are the less-recognized ‘tissue’ connecting players and partners in classrooms that go on to produce the capacities or possibilities of acting or engaging in classroom literacies differently. Such ‘tissue’ is what creates fused relations or interconnections between players and partners. For example, Affect(ive) connections, acting as bridges, is how I conceptualize human agents, such as myself and Xi Xi Lu and Madeline being inspired by, gravitating toward, or changed by the forces of different sounds, tones, pitches of Chinese/English, synthesizer music, visuals, memories---and also what forces we, with tablet and Google Translate neural network, produce together to enable new sounds, tones, visuals, making possible different ways of engaging. In such connections, it is more than children’s bodies affected. As human bodies are affected, they affect (Hultman and Taguchi, 2010). For example, as children’s bodies are changed, un-done and re-done by a felt sense of difference, this simultaneously un-does and re-does a blog post, and what is possible in science in Room 246.

* I refer to Barad’s terms (quantum) entanglements in the same way as ontological augmentation.

Agential Realism Agential Realism this is the umbrella term that Barad (2007) uses to describe her philosophical framework that does not position binaries between the following: epistemological-ontological- ethics, human-non-human, material-discursive, nature-culture, social-material. The concepts critical to this dissertation are intra-action, material-discursive (apparatus), spacetimemattering, and a performative approach to language making operate with this theoretical premise.

Diffraction/Intra-action Principles from physics by which components/resources, also called players and partners in the classroom, don’t have inherent properties, but rather ontologically change or are changed as they come into contact with not only each other but the methodological and theoretical apparatus of the research, and tensions/frictions produced in this process.

Emergent bi/multilingual young children Children that are identified in K-5 school settings as learning the language of instruction in school and not proficient in that language. In the United States, these children are also referred to as “English (Language) Learners”. The term “emergent bi/multilingual” is inspired by García’s (2009) asset-based term of “emergent bilingual”, which emphasizes children’s growing bilingual repertoire as opposed to focusing on their acquisition of English. In this project, the emphasis is also on the wide variety of sounds, ways of knowing, and ways of working with materials children knowing more than English bring to their English-dominant schooling experiences.

xii

Engage(ment)/Engag(ing) Engagement is theorized as the variety of ways of conceptualizing taking part in and/or contributing in classroom literacies, not necessarily foregrounding a child actively working with peers, teacher, or curriculum. Engagement with intra-active language making orients to Springgay & Truman’s (2018) work on re-thinking participation beyond the logic of inclusion. When language making is intra-active, we’re always engaged, but in ways that might not be recognized. A state of dis-engaged is not possible. The focus of inquiry is therefore on recognizing different ways engagement can be produced through language making, and how different players and partners might recognize this engagement and taking part in differently.

Language making Language making is an emergent doing or making of language by players and partners in Room 246, the unit of analysis in the study. Language making is a performance-oriented approach to analyzing language as it is emergently constructed through activities in the classroom, creating iterative, affective, material, semiotic, and often a-signifying connections between human and non-human players and partners. Language making encapsulates the multiple co-existing ways of conceptualizing language making recognized in the study—as verbal and written varieties that communicate such as “English”, “Chinese”, “Korean—language making beyond verbal and written consisting of interactions and intra-actions between human and non-human bodies. In language making, language can perform outside normalized ways of language as verbal/written and communicating information. As intra-active, language making is iterative, continually being re-created. It re-incorporates, kneads, and enfolds different bits and pieces from former intra- actions into each emergent intra-action. Playing in and moving in language making are ways of characterizing the dynamic iterative nature of language making.

Material-Discursive (Apparatus) Working with Barad’s (2007) lens of material-discursivity, language making is comprised of matter dynamic entangled, de-tangled, re-tangled into conglomerations where both material and discursive are implicated in each other. Therefore, language comprises the following: speech acts such as “没有化 , lalala”, English and Mandarin Chinese spoken and written that signify as emphasized by the WIDA assessment rubric, sounds that don’t signify but provoke, and the material characteristics of players and partners in Room 246 such as video cameras, Google Translate neural network, and tablets. Yet with Barad’s concept of apparatus, just like a physical architecture in a science project that results in changed physical reactions of particles, the material-discursivity of language making can only materialize based on the methodological and theoretical apparatus of which the research project is comprised. The methodological and theoretical apparatus is critical because it is what allows the recognizing and noticing of language making. This matters because the methodological and theoretical apparatus is what comes to count as knowledge creation in the study. This knowledge creation through a material- discursive apparatus is an agential cut, the freeze framing of an emergently enfolding, iterating language making, and what can be recognized and noticed in storytelling and analysis.

xiii Multilingual or culturally/linguistically diverse classrooms Physical locations in school where more than one named language such as “Spanish”, “English”, “Korean” are regularly part of inter/intra-actions and where ways of doing and knowing are thought to be different.

Players and Partners The dynamic participatory agents taking part in language practices in Room 246 that do “language making”, the unit of analysis. I also refer to these agents as “languagers”, diffracting K-12 bilingual educator García’s (2018) term through an intra-active lens. In Room 246, players and partners are human, non-human, and more-than humans that are resources for each other. This term is used because in the classroom participants are dynamic, playing and partnering with one another intra and inter-actively. From an intra-active perspective, players and partners aren’t entities or things. They are meshes, what Barad (2007) calls “phenomena”, that can be forces and characteristics of humans and non-humans in what we come to know as researcher, teacher, children, Google Translate neural network, video cameras, and tablets. When writing of players and partners as intra-active, I often link the visible players and partners with the symbol ℘ to emphasize their entanglement.

Repertoire Repertoires are theorized as emergent iterations of language making, comprised of combinations of resources and components, what I refer to as players and partners. In Room 246, repertoires of the classroom are more dynamic than have been theorized by variations of repertoire in socio and applied linguistics such as spatial and semiotic repertoires. By dynamic, this suggests repertoires are not patterned, sedimented, nor are all components/players and partners/resources able to be identified in analysis due to their marbled nature. Repertoires as iterations of language making have different collective capacities, as their agency is distributed.

Toggling Language making is characterized by what I call toggling, the enfolding in different directions, of what might seem like a back and forth, and forth and back, that occurs in the play of children, words and sounds of Chinese/English, tablets, and Google Translate neural network amongst the other players and partners in the classroom. Examples of a toggling in language making are the dynamic moving between not understanding the meaning and not being understood, a child- teacher connection, and the compromise to be a writer of English. These states are not satisfactory individually, providing the impulse to re-iterate, continually searching and craving for something else. I suggest that while each iteration on its own might not feel productive, put together, this process of toggling provides a pathway to continued work with the tablet, with each other, and a continued language making in Room 246. Toggling is often characterized by tensions and frictions.

Translingualism A translingual orientation, or translingualism, is a broad approach in applied/sociolinguistics encapsulating a variety of definitions, all of which conceptualize language as dynamic doings of meshed verbal/written languages and varieties with semiotic features to communicate (Canagarajah, 2013). The translingual practice lens I work with is comprised of resources as semiotic (van Leeuwen, 2005) and mobile (Blommaert, 2010). van Leeuwen’s conceptualization

xiv of resource adds to Blommaert a focus on more-than-verbal and written aspects of practices, whereas Blommaert’s empirical examples are more oriented to transnational settings, even though focused on verbal and written examples. The approach to translingualism I work with is interactive, comprised of many different semiotic elements that communicate information in different ways given different situational contexts.

Transglocaltimematterings Transglocalmatterings are the meshed local/global space, time and matter that characterize iterations of language making. I borrow the phrase “transglocal” from Scott and Dingo (2012) as a succinct linguistic meshing to characterize an interpenetrating local and global space, where local/global can’t necessarily be distinctly defined. Transglocalmattterings are therefore dis/located and dis/continuous. The visual appearance of the word ‘dis’ (slash) ‘continuities’ and ‘located’ captures the disjunctures or divergent juxtapositions of spacetimematterings, suggesting how one iteration of spacetime with matter (continuity/located) might be injected with a different spacetime with matter (‘dis’).

xv Acknowledgements

The poet Mary Oliver died while I was writing this dissertation. She wrote in her poem, “Sometimes”: Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell About it. I tried that over the last five years of research and writing this dissertation. Throughout that process, what was possible only came to fruition based on what and whom I could come into alliance with. I turn now to expressing my heartfelt gratitude to many integral players and partners:

To Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, Patrick, Ruby, Sapphire, children of Room 246, and families: For inviting me into your lives, homes, sharing your stories, and letting me tell one version of them; To Oakville teacher Caitlin: For your pedagogical inspiration and for generously letting me be part of the interesting happenings of Room 246. Thank you for letting me share these stories with other educators; To Teachers, student teachers, and administrators at Oakville: For believing in the work I was doing at your school and sharing your stories.

To Mari Haneda and Chris Schulte as Dissertation Co-Chairs: For your wonderful generosity of time, resources, and dedication in the process of dissertation writing and revising; To Mari Haneda: For giving me a chance to take part in this wonderful process of exploration and learning, for advocating for me in numerous ways, your patience, openness, and prompt and detailed feedback; To Chris Schulte: For your caring guidance, inspiration, and leading the way to engage with a theoretical direction of interest that would have been impossible without your encouragement; To Suresh Canagarajah: For the chance to engage with your work across multiple academic areas that influenced my thinking even before the dissertation. For your support and kindness from the early days of the IECP to Migration Studies; To Kim Powell: For your early influences in ethnography and qualitative research. So much of the methodological approach in this dissertation originated from your classes and reading suggestions; To Gail Boldt: For your beautiful writing that changed how I understand language and literacy. For the D&G reading group; To Charles Garoian, Anne Whitney, and Allison Henward: I am also grateful to you as very influential faculty members who shaped my doctoral program and this dissertation considerably; To Ana Carolina Diaz Beltran, Hayon Park, Michelle Wooten, and Müge Baytas: For being wonderful writing partners, collaborators, and friends.

To Aniruddha Bose: For everything big and small—words can’t even begin to express the love and support you give me every single day and my gratitude; To Neel James Bose: For being the ultimate inspiration and my love. For your entire five years of life to be shaped by this research and writing, and for wanting me to tell these stories of your childhood; To James/Patricia Nebus and Indra/Indrani Bose: Thank you for believing in me and your incredible support in so many ways –emotional, physical, logistical, academic, and more. Most people are not so lucky; To the Owens, Looneys, Everharts, Walshes, Nebus Shiftouris, Henzes, Kunzs, Dutta Daggumallis, Duttas, Huis, and Gooptus: Thank you greatly for your warm and extensive network of support.

xvi Chapter 1. Language Making in Room 246: Diffraction as an Approach to Classroom Ethnography for Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Language

The stories told in the following chapters are oriented toward the surprise of how researching in Room 246, a linguistically and culturally diverse second grade elementary classroom with emergent bi/multilingual children, radically changed my idea of engagement.

The stories tell how in working with one another in the classroom, unexpected things happened.

Literacy scholars Burnett and Merchant (2017) note that iPads have the “potential not just to morph into something else but to radically shift as they come into relation with other things”.

Noting the transformative qualities of mobile technologies in Room 246 such as tablet computers, Google Translate, video cameras, and other objects, I came to notice something about linguistically diverse classrooms that I hadn’t noticed before. That is, working with mobile technologies and objects becoming something else in each moment emphasized that engagement is more multiple than we often realize, and so too is language more multiple.

This noticing of mobile technologies, objects, and language becoming something different in each moment emphasized that emergent bi/multilingual children can have many additional ways of acting and becoming engaged in classrooms. This is to say that engagement is created by both whom and what we work with in classrooms, and the capacities of these alliances to change what can happen. This realization is critical for emergent bi/multilingual children who have been represented in scholarship as having fewer opportunities to engage. For

Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, newcomer emergent bilingual children in their first year of school in

America, this suggests their engagement is enhanced through such alliances, many of which we are not habituated to recognize. This dissertation argues engagement cannot be reduced to precise combinations of resources that produce a particular result in classrooms. Rather, it argues

1 attention be turned to recognizing the multiplicity of what engagement can be from moment-to- moment, and particularly how this multiplicity manifests across the contrasts of transnational schooling with the rationale of recognizing more connections in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms.

This inquiry explores recognizing opportunities to engage, the wide variety of ways of participating, that materialized in Room 246. The focus of this study is how language in Room

246 relates to recognizing opportunities to engage. The following chapters present an in-depth analysis of three moments that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, two emergent bilingual girls in their first year in a U.S. school, consistently suggested were the most important to their second-grade school year (see Figure 1.1). The analysis of recognizing opportunities to engage in these moments are situated within longitudinal classroom ethnographic research (Bloome, 2012;

Gullion, 2018 ).

2 Figure 1.1. Photo elicitation cards—still shots from video indicating three moments emergent most significant to second-grade school year.

By the term “language making”, I conceptualize language in the classroom as an emergent doing or making of language by the many participants in room 246. Language making is a performative approach (Barad, 2007) to language creation as it is emergently constructed through activities in the classroom, creating iterative, affective, material, semiotic, and often a- signifying connections between human and non-human participants. All participants in the classroom are collectively referred to as players and partners to emphasize that rather than individually participating in a classroom, they are collective, playing and partnering together in language. Language making is a stitching together of the different ways language is conceptualized in Room 246. With language making, language is often performed outside normalized ways of conceptualizing language, such as verbal/written modalities that communicate information and represent meaning. Language making therefore does not necessarily foreground a sign that signifies, even if that sign is not fixed as signifying a particular meaning, but rather negotiated differently across spatiotemporal circumstances such as with indexicality (Blommaert, 2010). It likewise takes a slightly different orientation than that of

‘languaging’, because in this work, language is conceptualized as more than communication.

That is, the term communication as it is drawn on in the empirical studies of socio and applied linguistics that I cite, thus referring to a sign that has been recognized as open to multiple meanings yet that also symbolizes and signifies.

Research Questions

Given this focus, this inquiry is guided by the following the research questions:

• How is language making done among players and partners in Room 246?

3 • How is language making recognized from the perspectives of emergent bi/multilingual

children, their peers, teachers, and parents?

• How does language making make possible recognizing opportunities to engage in Room

246?

In this chapter, I provide an introduction to the research study, the purpose for inquiry,

and what is to be gained through the study, broadly speaking. I show how philosopher physicist

Karen Barad’s (2003/2007) concept of diffraction and applied linguist Suresh Canagarajah’s

(2013) orientation of translingualism inspire additional ways to recognize engagement in Room

246. I further illustrate that diffraction as an approach to classroom ethnography enables a wider

way of recognizing engagement in classrooms than is most commonly noticed in classrooms

with emergent bi/multilingual children.

The chapter is organized as follows:

I. Purpose and Focus of Inquiry Situated across Interdisciplinary Research II. Research Site/Participants: Engaging Across Linguistic Difference III. A Diffractive Approach to Ethnographic Classroom Research IV. Research Process: a. Rationale for a Diffractive Approach b. How a Diffractive Approach Shaped Methods V. Data Analysis VI. Potential Limitations and Complications of a Diffractive Approach VII. Significance of the Study and Outline of Proceeding Chapters

I. Purpose of Inquiry Situated across Interdisciplinary Research

Why Study Language and Engagement in Classrooms with Emergent Bi/Multilingual

Children?

Recognizing opportunities to engage in classroom literacies where children and teachers

often have different linguistic experiences and ways of accessing resources in a classroom is an

4 important undertaking. This is even more timely given changing U.S. demographic and immigration patterns resulting in both rapid and steadily growing linguistically and culturally diverse populations in the United States over the last two decades. More bi/multilingual children are comprising the K-12 schooling population, often attending suburban and rural schools in communities that have previously had fewer (emergent) bi/multilinguals (OELA, 2015; Frey,

2011). As such, teachers may not have available training to work with the specialized needs of these student populations. This demographic reality is coupled with young children’s growing transnational experiences, where children often move fluidly across boundaries of nation-states and networks (Ghiso, 2016; Suárez-Orozco, 2005), carrying with them memories and ways of doing and expressing across diverse experiences and schooling systems. Given the dual focus on constructs of language and engagement in this study, I begin by turning to how these constructs matter to schools and classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children.

How Engagement Matters

Opportunities to Engage for Emergent Bi/Multilinguals Represented in Scholarship.

Despite the growing demographic reality in the United States, where there are more bilinguals in

K-12 schools than ever before, studies of classrooms with young (emergent) bi/multilingual children that address opportunities to engage in elementary school literacies indicate that in

English-medium schools with monoglossic language ideologies, children have fewer opportunities to participate and contribute than their peers as a result of both their linguistic resources being less valued in the instructional content and the limited means by which their other ways of expressing can be drawn on (Brown, 2009; Compton-Lilly et al., 2016; Dagenais et al., 2006; da Silva Iddings, 2005; Devine, 2009; Katz & da Silva Iddings, 2009; Maguire &

Curdt-Christiansen, 2007; Sun, 2016; Toohey, 1998; Walters, 2011; Willett, 1995; Yoon, 2008).

5 That is, in institutions valuing and expecting a single verbal and written language for communication (Flores & Schissel, 2014), young (emergent) bi/multilingual students have fewer opportunities to participate. In order to challenge monoglossic language ideologies, one predominant approach to advocating for more equitable schools and classrooms for language minorities is asset-based pedagogical lenses (González, Moll, Amanti, 2005; García & Wei,

2014; Paris & Alim, 2014/2017). This scholarship takes as a starting point the idea that children and youth of color and/or linguistic minorities have unique verbal/written and cultural repertoires, and that the languages and cultures children bring from home into school must be identified, drawn on, and strategically implemented in classrooms to promote engagement

(García & Kleifgen, 2018; García & Wei, 2014). As such, most of this work suggests that since language is one of the factors that minoritizes emergent bi/multilinguals in schools, in order to advocate for emergent bi/multilinguals, language needs to be conceptualized more broadly than academic English. This broad area of research advocates for creating curricular and pedagogical opportunities for children to express themselves in home languages and varieties, multimodally, and by drawing on their cultural funds of knowledge.

The multimodal focus of asset-based pedagogical lenses aligns with scholarship in early childhood literacies, which has long-documented that children’s ways of expressing are often characterized by fluidly weaving together movement, drawing, symbols, text, dance, drama, and objects to make meaning rather than relying on written or verbal text alone (e.g., Dyson,

1990/1993; Edwards et al., 2012; Gallas, 1994; Kress, 1997; Wohlwend, 2009). Yet despite this recognition within early childhood literacies, in the field of teaching K-5 bi/multilinguals, the evidence scholars most readily draw on to consider opportunities to participate are largely based on the following: verbal and linguistic evidence such as linguistic content and grammar of

6 classroom talk, academic appropriateness of form, children’s proficiencies in different languages, and which languages children use when and for what social and academic purposes.

Exceptions to this include scholarship that also attends to the physical positioning of the child’s body in the classroom in relation to peers and teacher, and children moving their bodies by gesturing as evidence of participation and contribution (Bauer et al., 2016; Chapman de Sousa,

2017; Katz & da Silva Iddings, 2009; Pinnow & Chval, 2015; Toohey 1998/2000). Other studies consider the role of material objects as a way to participate such that objects are currency that children use to barter their way into particular social networks and negotiate oneself academically and socially (Brown, 2009; Dagenis et al., 2006; Pinnow & Chval, 2015; Toohey,

1998).

In addition to the prevalence of language as verbal/written producing evidence of opportunities to engage, be included, and participate in elementary classrooms, research in the field of teaching K-5 bi/multilinguals also tilts considerably to a human-oriented understanding of participating in language practices. Art and literacy educators Springgay and Truman (2018) note

Participation is typically framed as democratic interaction where individuals come

together by choice, and as a convivial mode of collectivity. Participation is valued as

emancipatory, liberatory, and transformative. (p. 66)

Similarly, this human-oriented perspective of participation pervades the research on teaching K-5 emergent bi/multilinguals, where scholarship has noted emancipatory potentials can occur in classrooms when children negotiate social identities through making linguistic choices. This suggests attending to emergent bi/multilingual children’s social identities have made it possible to analyze the ability to engage as being (or not being) a “participant” (Toohey,

7 1998), “contributor” (Chapman De Sousa, 2017) in the classroom, or a “competent” student

(Willett, 1995). Thus, participation in classroom literacies with emergent bi/multilingual children are most commonly conceptualized as what children can do, with whom, under what conditions and with what consequences (Castanheira et al., 2007, p. 175).

Yet what happened in Room 246 in relation to engagement was surprising and challenged the dominant storyline informed by asset-based pedagogies. These happenings caused me to re- conceptualize my initial understanding of engagement. As I began to pay close attention to what was happening in Room 246 and what children began telling me, something very different became apparent. First, the three moments Xi Xi Lu and Madeline noted were most significant to their second grade school year were different than those I thought they would note as the most important. Moments deemed by Xi Xi Lu and Madeline as most significant were more complex, contested, and storied differently over time than other moments we recorded of their second grade year.

Moreover, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s perspectives of how they could participate in the classroom were often different than those of myself, peers, and teacher. In one such moment I perceived as looking like participation, Madeline was sitting in the front of the class working with tablet, raising her hand, volunteering metaphors in English to answer the teacher’s questions correctly, and smiling at peers while peers encouraged (see Figure 1.2, top left). My initial assumption of participation had to do with Madeline seemingly able to act different in this moment. For example, Madeline rarely sat in the front of the class, nor volunteered answers, nor received significant attention from English-dominant peers. Yet Madeline disagreed with my analysis that she was participating, suggesting that rather than feeling good about how she could participate in the moment, she was embarrassed because she had to use the tablet to participate in

8 the read aloud while her classmates did not. In another moment, I perceived what looked to me like Xi Xi Lu hunched over the tablet, perhaps hiding her face and voice, as another example of understanding oneself as incompetent with the tablet, such as Madeline had expressed. Yet Xi Xi

Lu disagreed with my initial analysis (see Figure 1.2, top right) . She felt good in this moment, she said.

Yet another moment that challenged my conceptualization happened during a group math activity (see Figure 1.2, bottom center). Xi Xi Lu’s assigned partner had seemingly taken over the pencil and worksheet such that Xi Xi Lu was not working on the activity, was slumped in a chair, looking at the ground. Through a human-oriented understanding of language practices, I was habituated to viewing Xi Xi Lu’s way of acting as passive.

Figure 1.2. Card sort interviews—Xi Xi Lu and Madeline disagreed with my initial interactive analysis.

9 Xi Xi Lu was not interacting with her partner in a way I thought was “active” during group work such as talking, moving her body, facing toward them, and looking in the direction of peers. I initially thought Xi Xi Lu’s partner (illustrated on the left of the bottom photo of figure 1.2) was marginalizing Xi Xi Lu’s potential role in the activity, perhaps, I reasoned, because Xi Xi Lu’s ways of knowing did not enable her to participate in an activity that included knowledge of

English words, how to glean information from grocery store sales circulars, and how to go about grocery shopping in the U.S., all necessary for the activity. Yet Xi Xi Lu disagreed with my initial analysis. To her, this math activity where she was slumped in a chair was an engaging moment where she was participating. To Xi Xi Lu, she was engaged because she was partnered with an American peer of high social status in contrast to working with her usual partner

Madeline, who often asked her lots of questions. Xi Xi Lu also understood herself to be engaged because this was math class, a subject she felt good in and more competitive than the majority of her peers, despite the fact that this activity was not focused on computational math and might not even be identified as ‘math’ to the casual observer of the classroom. She could relax in the space of math, she reasoned. Besides, Xi Xi Lu noted, dramatically sprawling on the large lawn chair in a reenactment, she could “relax”, on this oversized lounge chair. The “chair was comfortable” she said. This lounge chair, brought by the teacher from home, was one of a few chairs in the room which were not of a uniform industrial school model. This relaxing math moment along with the other moments above are several examples that suggested the need to expand how I was theorizing engagement in the classroom.

Reconceptualizing Engagement. What if engagement is not only orchestrated by children and teachers as agents? What if it were also the dynamic agentic connections formed between multiple agents, both children and non-human players and partners in the classroom that

10 produce engagement? By considering additional conceptualizations of engagement, what follows is that many more opportunities to engage can be recognized in classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children that we are not habituated to noticing.

To expand conceptualizations of engagement in classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals, Springgay and Truman’s (2018) notion of re-thinking participating beyond the logic of inclusion is particularly insightful to my project of conceptualizing engagement in classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals. Citing Manning (2016), they call for how to differently conceptualize the complex experience of participation. Two of Springgay and

Truman’s critiques of what they term “participation as inclusion” are particularly helpful to conceptualizing engagement in Room 246. By this term they are characterizing normalized ways of perceiving participation as people included in an activity such that they can actively interact through having choices, being recognized, and being democratically represented. The first critique is that Springgay and Truman question whether participation can always be visualized.

They question how it is possible to know “what participation is, what it looks like, how it operates, and what it does. The belief that researchers and observers can recognize and represent participation is problematic” (p. 74). Likewise, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline had different ways of conceptualizing engagement in the classroom moments noted above that were initially invisible to me as researcher.

The second is Springgay and Truman’s critique that participation aligning to a rhetoric of inclusion creates a binary between active participation and passive viewing. Thus, by categorizing Xi Xi Lu as “passive” and not participating because she was slumped in a chair, her body not actively taking part in close proximity to peers in ways I was expecting, I was overlooking other ways of being active. The concept of intra-action (Barad, 2007) further

11 suggests that engagement is the dynamic agentic connections between multiple agents, human and non-human classroom participants. Through an intra-active analysis, to be elaborated in the coming pages, players and partners are always engaged, always participating, moving and buzzing with a variety non-human and more-than human partners, often in addition to humans.

By participating not foregrounding a child, teacher, or researcher actively included, dis- engagement or non-participation is not possible. Therefore, Xi Xi Lu, her high social-status-

GoPro-wearing classmate, oversize chair, not being with Madeline, and working in the space of math is a taking-part-in differently. Such a variety of engagement is different than engagement as expected. Following the lead of Springgay and Truman (2018), engagement in this dissertation does not seek to rule out children, teachers, and researchers participating with each other, but rather to conceptualize how additional players and partners in alliance can be ‘active’ in language making, and how these relations are continually iterating and different.

How Does ‘Language’ Matter

How is language engaging? This surprise of multiple ways of conceptualizing engagement led to noticing the language of Room 246 differently. Particularly, I came to realize that while language is about communicating, where signs are symbolizing and signifying such that they are recognizable and representative, it’s also about so much more. Language is also about other things that are engaging: affective connections, forces felt between players and partners in a classroom, and what language does in a classroom. An inquiry focused on the making of the construct of “language” might seem surprising since this study asks that we not only include, but move much of our focus of analysis beyond the verbal and written, as well as that which does not necessarily represent. It might be assumed because of this focus of inquiry, the term “language” would be minimized. In fact, there is a movement toward a de-emphasis of

12 this term across much of the interdisciplinary scholarship I work with, with some scholars, for example, emphasizing factors that I propose could be part of language as those that operate

“outside or alongside language” (de Freitas & Curinga, 2015, p. 249).

While de-emphasizing what is referred to as “language” might be expected in the work of feminist new materialisms, an area of scholarship I elaborate on later in the chapter, a reluctance to work with the term “language” also exists in the area of socio and applied linguistics from which I draw inspiration (Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2018a; Pennycook;

2017). Such reluctance from linguists perhaps stems from the term “language” historically being linked to structural linguistics which to these scholars would be limiting to communicative possibilities.

Barad (2003) too would likely find working with agential realist concepts to make sense of what I am calling “language” making in Room 246 to be surprising given her emphasis on material as matter rather than what she notes is the hegemonic lens of language.

“Language has been granted too much power. The linguistic turn, the semiotic turn, the

interpretative turn, the cultural turn: it seems that at every turn lately every “thing”—even

materiality—is turned into a matter of language or some other form of cultural

representation” (Barad, p. 801).

Yet despite this push for recognition of phenomena in analysis wider than words that represent, how “language” has historically and narrowly been conceptualized, the term

“language” is critical to this dissertation. Key to the orientation I take in this study is that the term “language” is in fact a powerful area of focus in advocating for emergent bi/multilinguals in

K-12 schooling contexts because it is ‘language’, as we are historically habituated to viewing it, that often minoritizes emergent bi/multilingualism in classrooms, rendering children in ways that

13 categorically view them as less-engaged or as passive in classrooms rather than active. Through the categorization of “English Learners”, children such as Xi Xi Lu and Madeline are labelled and noticed because of their language difference compared to peers, teachers, and the dominant linguistic school culture.

Therefore, in this project, I suggest language educators be sympathetic to Barad’s statement calling for a broader attentiveness to “matter”. Barad argues everything/one is non- hierarchically “matter”, which is overlooked, and dynamic rather than passive, bearing significantly on what transpires in the world. She goes on to suggest that matter’s dynamism has been overshadowed by what is thought to mean more, or count more, to make sense of the world—i.e., “language”. Yet I differ from Barad’s perspective in that what I consider language making is a mattering of language. Therefore, language is matter.

Barad’s argument is based on the historical signification of the word ‘language’, which is ironic considering her adherence to the “performative”, which seeks to “challenge the representational belief in the power of words to represent preexisting things” (2003, p. 802). In this dissertation I take up many of Barad’s concepts under the umbrella of her agential realist orientation (to be expanded on in chapters one and two), yet as a differently productive way to consider language. That is, language making is concerned with, “language” as it might perform outside representation, or outside the signification or indexicality that has historically been ascribed to it.

In this work, ‘language’ is a ‘mattering’ for the purpose of recognizing greater opportunities for emergent bi/multilingual children. Thus, ‘language’ needs to be conceptualized more broadly and as more multiple. This approach asks that we work with the term ‘language’, not only as it is historically recognized as words that signify or index meaning that symbolizes

14 and can be recognized, but that we also break open normalized ways of seeing, hearing, and feeling language in classrooms. The term “language” therefore operates in this dissertation as a material, a force, that hold the arguments of the dissertation productively in tension. Such an approach to ‘language’ as not necessarily verbal and written in focus, not necessarily signifying, and often a-grammatical, already exists outside the field of linguistics and teaching emergent bi/multilinguals in K-12 schools. For example, drawing on the language philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (2004/2007), early childhood and qualitative research scholar MacLure (2013/2016) proposes a conceptualization of language that is sympathetic with the approach taken in this study. MacLure asks that we attend to what she calls the “materiality of language itself (p. 658)”, which she defines as potentially “non-representational, non-interpretive (MacLure, 2013, p. 663).

In her work this includes the characteristics of sound, rhyming patterns, tones, pitches. Thus,

MacLure’s work, just as this dissertation, asks that we focus our inquiry around the term

‘language’, but call on it to become something else. de Freitas and Curinga (2015) likewise urge us to consider the materiality of language in classrooms as movements of bodies, as affective, which constitutes language as material expression rather than discursive communication. They urge us to consider language as they evocatively write, the “tissue of classroom interaction” (p.

250) and “material entanglement of sign and body” (p. 255).

The Many Ways of Conceptualizing Language in Room 246

Critical to how I conceptualize language making in this study is the recognition that in

Room 246, there were multiple ways that language was conceptualized in the classroom. The children, teacher, and I had different ways of making sense of language, which were often contradictory and changed over time. While I write of children, teacher, and researcher’s ways of making sense of language in Room 246 as different approaches, it was often more complicated

15 than each of us having separate and consistent conceptualizations of language. For example, we often orally stated we understood language one way, but our actions suggested language was something else. The more time spent in Room 246 emphasized the need to take part in seeing, hearing, and feeling language differently. By not bringing together multiple ways of conceptualizing language, we risked not noticing connections and relations that might make additional ways of connecting in an intercultural classroom visible. In the following section, I suggest how language was conceptualized differently by the many players and partners in Room

246.

Children: English, Chinese, Korean, and ‘Bonjour’. The classroom soundscape in

Room 236 could be characterized by the dominant repeating rhythm of children and adult voices sounding Northeast American English talk mixed with rhythms of Mandarin chatter and discretely whispered Korean. The sound of Cockney-like accented English occasionally sounded from a second-grade boy wearing cowboy boots, who convinced his peers he spoke a unique language that he coined called “Bonjour”.

When I began this research project, having been a second language educator for just over fifteen years, I thought of language as a wonderful play with meshes of words, phonemes, and morphemes that could be cleverly combined to signify or make different meanings and ways of making sense of the world. Just as children, I initially made sense of language as “Chinese” and

“English”, as it was labeled on spine of the bilingual books checked out from the local library by the classroom teacher. Second graders too consistently reported making sense of language in their classroom as English and Chinese. Such named languages was how Xi Xi Lu and Madeline referred of the Chinese characters they wrote on the lined pages of their writer’s workshop notebook. This was also how Madeline described what she wrote in the diary she brought into

16 the classroom, where she perfected the characters that she spent hours at home learning, making strokes in a very particular order on the square Hanzi grids her parents kept on a clipboard in her kitchen (field notes home visit, 2/1/17).

Children noting language as largely verbal was evident when they were asked to draw pictures of language in their classroom and discuss their pictures as a whole-class. For example, children largely drew people with speech bubbles coming out of their mouths in conversation.

Furthermore, when Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classmates viewed videos of the science investigation and other video from classroom activities throughout the school year and were asked “what was happening”, what children reported noticing were the sounds and text/logographs of English, Korean, and Chinese. “That’s Chinese! That’s Chinese! That’s

Chinese”, they shouted, seemingly excited upon seeing the logograms Madeline and tablet created together on a blog post (5/3/17 focus group interview). When I asked children to record what was important to them in the classroom, they often recorded hour-long videos of the text on their paper, often forgetting they were recording and moving on to pursue activity elsewhere. In another example, during a bilingual read aloud (noted in Blair et al., 2018), children steered the topic of the literacy discussion to the meaning of the Chinese and English words on the page rather than the teacher’s intention of having children attend to the sound effects of the audio book and how this was part of the story’s meaning. Rare exceptions where language was seen by children as beyond named verbal and written communication included when child Ruby drew a picture explaining how to her, the language of school included gestures, smiles, art, and math

(4.21.17 interview). In another instance, when I asked a leading question, Ruby claimed she used her body as a language, and rationalized that body movement was language because it made her friend laugh (3/30/17).

17 The categories of English and Chinese and their meanings separated children within

Room 246. For example, while Xi Xi Lu and Madeline worked frequently with their classmates during teacher-assigned heterogeneous group work, if not assigned to work with peers, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline often worked with each other or with one of the many adults in the classroom.

During the dozens upon dozens of times I ate lunch with children in Room 246 and went out to recess with them, Madeline and Xi Xi Lu ate and played with each other apart from their classmates, sounds of Mandarin emanating from their togetherness. Adding to this separateness,

Ruby and Sapphire, who were learning Chinese, both noted on different occasions that they were reluctant to try to speak Chinese with Xi Xi Lu and Madeline because they didn’t know much.

Another peer said she knew songs in Mandarin but was reluctant to sing them because she wasn’t sure how to make the sounds.

Xi Xi Lu and Madeline too noted on numerous occasions they didn’t feel confident with

English, yet this seemed to bother Madeline more than Xi Xi Lu. In the English as a Second

Language (ESL) classroom, children referred to each other by the number of months they had been in the U.S., when they were returning to China, and how much English they knew. To Xi

Xi Lu and Madeline, their incapacities with English, but capacities with Chinese made them different from their peers. To Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classmates, they were interested in how bits of Chinese and English comprising their individual repertoires didn’t cancel each other out and could co-exist together. For example, across the school year, classmates that didn’t know

Chinese asked Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, “Do you still know what it is in English?” when Xi Xi Lu and Madeline demonstrated reading words in Chinese.

The conceptualization of language as English, Chinese and Korean that children, teachers, and I held were perhaps institutionally influenced by the national WIDA Consortium

18 standards and assessment rubric, adopted by Oakville school, which foregrounds language as the social practices of verbal and written languages (WIDA Can Do Philosophy). The WIDA standard and assessment rubric and corresponding yearly standardized test, WIDA ACCESS 2.0, was one of multiple factors that categorized Xi Xi Lu and Madeline as “English Learners”. On the WIDA, English language was defined by the categories of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. A grid of “Can Do descriptors” defined and measured the English language that an individual child was able to demonstrate: English syntax, identifying and applying a variety of vocabulary valued in academic settings, English writing to adhere to particular genres of school writing, and using visuals or one’s body as tools to convey information (Board of Regents of the

University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium, 2016). While Chinese wasn’t assessed by the WIDA or Oakville, the WIDA standards Framework and Theoretical

Foundations, draw on scholarship in bilingualism/biliteracy and WIDA Guiding Principles to

Language Development and advocate for students’ multiple languages and cultures to be brought into the classroom as a way to support academic achievement in English (Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium, 2014).

Teacher: Origami and Music as a Language. To Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classroom teacher, a science leader in her district with training in early childhood education, language was the multiple modes of expression enabled through the hands-on doing of science: image,

Chinese, English--“not necessarily paper/pencil”, she noted. While she said she had never heard of the pedagogical theory of ‘hundred languages of children’ (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman,

2012) that undergirds the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, this pedagogical approach parallels how Caitlin made sense of language in her classroom. The ‘hundred languages of children’ attends to the unique nature of children’s meaning making, theorizing

19 children are capable meaning-makers who do so in creative, multiple, multimodal ways, often not dominated by verbal and written communication, but rather oriented toward sensory, embodied, and material resources. Take, for example, the numerous times throughout the school year that Caitlin noted to me and children that language was sound, art, color, and movement.

For example, during a bilingual read aloud in her classroom at the end of the year, she prompted children listening to the story to recognize that sound was language. “So, what did the authors or recorders in the book use as a language that we could all understand?... Even if we didn’t quite understand the beginning part (in Mandarin)?”, she asks. Then later, “How interesting that some of the sounds can tell us something without there being words.” Drawing attention to the music, she asks, “do we need a language to know that?” Several months earlier, after watching Xi Xi Lu and Madeline fold paper in ways their peers didn’t know how, she questioned me, “Is Origami a language?” (3/3/17). Toward the end of the year, during one of our many de-briefing sessions, she questioned, “I don’t know if you could say the language of color or the language of art…(would count as language)” (5/23/17). During the science investigation in chapter three, what was significant to Caitlin were the multiple modes of expression enabled through the hands-on doing of science that created the possibility to participate. She noted, “(Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline) did not need language to build that ice (cube keeper). They could participate like everyone else that day..they did not need…to use their English to do…to make it, to build it, to do anything…” (1/31/17 interview)

Frances: Language-ish? Language-ing? Observing language from a different perspective, wanting desperately to feel between the vertical and horizontal lines of the WIDA assessment rubric and Hanzi, I observed language making in Room 246 at Oakville school as also a dynamic entanglement of movement, sound, and image. How might language be

20 significant without necessarily signifying? This was the hidden world of language in Room 246 that I was just beginning to explore. Despite years as an ESL teacher, working in Room 246, I saw what language could be. This different way of seeing, hearing, and feeling language continually transformed how I thought of myself as a language educator, one that continues to shift. At Oakville school, even though English was considered to be the language of instruction, the doing of language could be seen as so much more. What if language could be comprised of multiple components including but beyond English and Chinese, such as sounds, images, objects, and bodies transforming what could become possible for each other in ways that no one expected and hardly noticed?, I mused.

In the first four months after Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s arrival from China, they could be seen with their classmates who didn’t know Chinese, silently touching each other’s shirts, hair, and each others’ faces. In place of English or Mandarin syntax, morphemes, or sounds, language making as I was beginning to notice it, was the raised texture of Hello Kitty on pink cotton underneath silver painted stars or the weaving silky hair into braids (see Figure 1.3, middle of top row) For one of Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classmates, in lieu of not being able to speak or move most of his body without assistance, language making was as I was beginning to notice it, his eyes gazing, his legs jerking and head rolling as the sides of his wheelchair pushed back on his body. Language making was the sound from the assistive audio device, pre-recorded with voices of classmates’ topic-appropriate phrases that sounded when his aid took his hand and pressed the large red plastic button (see Figure 1.3, middle of top row). In another moment during working with math groups, I noticed language making as the colored plastic bear counters that Xi Xi Lu and Clarisse, an English-dominant peer that knew no Chinese, put on top one another’s’ heads as they worked together on a math worksheet (see Figure 1.3, bottom right) . In another moment

21 walking in a line during a field trip while hugging each other, language making was Xi Xi Lu and Clarise mimicking each other’s sounds and tones back and forth in the pattern of a conversation –a seemingly non-sensical and very playful game of ‘yes-no’. The game went like this: a stream of ‘yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes’ vocalized by a child is suddenly and unpredictably interrupted with a quick ‘no’ by the other child, or vice versa—like the children’s game of paper- rock-scissors, yet with different sounds. Or, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ were playfully combined in different ways, making up new sounds, ‘yessnnnooyesnononoyesssssss’ (see Figure 1.3, top right). In this case, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ did not necessarily answer a question or serve to give information, just as head jerking, bear counters pouring, shirt touching nor hair braiding did. ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ instead operated as simple sounds able to be vocalized by both human players in different combinations, sometimes surprising to both children. During the science investigation in chapter three, experimentation with a wide range of materials seemed to inspire an experimentation with meshes of verbal/written language, sound, video, images, and more.

Figure 1.3. Excerpts from Room 246 classroom video.

22 Yet in another moment, language making was children’s bodies moving when a classmate who didn’t know Chinese dramatically mimed a dog scratching while asking Xi Xi Lu

“do you have a pet?” while writing about animals during writing workshop. In other moments during science, documenting science investigations on the classroom blog was children working with tablets, tangrams, bugs, and cocoons hanging from a screen top of a fish tank (see figure

1.3). During moments of writer’s workshop and literacy, language making was the illuminated logograms and letters and the heat from the overhead projector, Google translate neural network with tablet application sounding what seems like Mandarin and English, children and pencils sketching onto notebooks, creating comics and text. During indoor recess, language making was children with Chrome tablets playfully improvising their own fluent verbal languages that I refer to as “gibberish”, yet the children never called it as such. During a bilingual read aloud, language making was hearing sounds of Mandarin with synthesizer music producing forces that seemed to move children’s bodies, despite the Mandarin words not communicating to peers (see figure 1.4).

These noticings of Room 246 are largely missing in scholarship on young emergent bi/multilinguals. A significant exception takes a Bakhtinian perspective, writing about how newcomer children not having similar verbal and written languages connected through smiling, touching, building with blocks, and imitating each other’s drawing styles (da Silva Iddings,

Haught, Devilin, 2005). Yet different from this perspective is that language serves the purpose of communicating information or intention as meaning, which was not always the case in Room

246. In contrast, the noticings I had in being part of in Room 246 resonate with Deleuze and

Guattari’s (1986) examples orienting toward the materiality of sound, the “warbling”, gibberish- like “blurred words” that children playfully speak very fast where the playful act rather than the

23 meaning of the words are what are significant—sounds of “consonants rub[bing] leadenly against each other” and vowels sing[ing]” (p.21-23).

Figure 1.4. English-dominant children moving to Mandarin sounds they don’t understand.

Language Enfolding from Spaces and Times Outside Room 246. Influenced by scholarship on emergent literacies and emergent literacy encounters (Davies, 2014a; Leander &

Boldt, 2013), during fieldwork in Room 246, I couldn’t help but mash up these in-classroom noticings with my own parenting experiences raising a child with multiple home languages and extended stays in India and Poland. For example, while second graders made up gibberish-like languages with Google Translate enabling them to form social connections with peers, I overheard my son Neel having regular conversations with Siri, Apple-product’s voice-controlled automated assistant. “Siri, are you alive? Do you have eyes and a bed?” Whereas Xi Xi Lu and

Clarisse played a game of ‘yesno’, the game of sounds, I witnessed Neel playing a very similar and regular game of ‘yesno’ with Marathi-speaking adults in India, and then six months later,

24 with Polish-speaking children in the climbing play structure at the Warsaw airport. Just as with

Xi Xi Lu and Clarisse, in both of these cases, there was no shared verbal and written language, only shared hhhhhhhhh, facial expressions, and sound play.

Neel described the red toy car (“it has wheels and lights! “and red paint”… “and a spoiler!”) enabling him to connect with peers at his Indian preschool that mostly speak Hindi to him, whereas he only knew a few words. He continued to bring up attending preschool in India for a summer on a regular basis without being prompted. Much of what Neel stated suggests his discomfort with knowing little Hindi, Marathi and doing school differently than he was habituated to in the U.S.. Yet I have come to think that within what Neel reports as an uncomfortable experience, where at first noticing there appear few connections across potential mistranslations and misunderstandings in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, English, and different ways of doing schooling, there were indeed other less-recognized connections and relations happening between the red car, its lights, Neel, and his preschool classmates (see Figure 1.11). Much like the early childhood education study where children re-purposed a box into a duster, enabling a boy, Leo to gain friends (Rauito & Winston, 2015), it was working with the car and the relations between it and children that enabled Neel the possibility of a social connection in lieu of words.

25 Figure 1.5. Neel with red car, with classmates from Indian preschool.

As a novice researcher, former ESL teacher, and educator of teaching emergent bi/multilinguals with an intercultural family with multiple languages present, I began to view these non-human and more-than human relations as the bridges that connect mother and son, children and researcher, children and peers, and generations of families. Different combinations of non-human and more-than-humans as bridges served to provide openings between children and teachers in lieu of having similar access to verbal/written resources.

Hardware and Software: Algorithms, Electric Impulses, Linguistic Signs. In addition to these human-oriented conceptualizations of language in the classroom, in chapters three and five, I elaborate how there were additional perspectives of language making that worked with these different human perceptions. That is, also occurring in Room 246 was a technology- oriented language making. For example, media theory and communications suggest that there is a programmatic vocabulary between the Google Translate software application and Chrome tablet that we worked with. Such technology-oriented language is an emergent dialogue between software comprised of algorithms of numbers, electric impulses, and linguistic signs (Langlois,

2014; Manovich, 2001), and Google Translate’s dynamic human-non-human mix (Ramati &

Pinchevski, 2017) comprised of its algorithmic architecture, human input through Google

Translate community, and transnational dynamic multilingual corpora. Throughout the dissertation, I work with multiple ways of noticing language making from these human and technology-oriented perspectives.

Two Interdisciplinary Areas of Scholarship That Enable Seeing, Hearing, and Feeling

Language: A Brief Outline

26 In order to respond to the many ways of conceptualizing language in Room 246, two areas of scholarship provide a way to both push language beyond the verbal and written, making it possible to see, hear, and feel language in varied ways. In the following section, I broadly define these areas as a general framing, going into more detail in chapter two. By bringing interdisciplinary work together from the fields of socio and applied linguistics in multilingual contexts and early childhood/youth literacies, this study contributes by theorizing how the multiple varieties of sounds, words, software, hardware, Google Translate neural network, cameras, yut, pajamas, forces of power, and memories across multiple times and spaces work with children, figuring into recognizing engagement in Room 246.

A Semiotic-Foregrounded Translingualism. The first area of scholarship is a large and varied body of work situated within translingualism (Canagarajah, 2013). A translingual orientation moves away from what are seen as the dichotomies of bi/multilingualism and structural notions conceptualizing language as a system or grammar (García & Wei, 2014;

Canagarajah, 2013) or counted, named languages as bounded and oriented to a nation-state such as English or Chinese (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). The prefix ‘trans’ within this approach emphasizes the fluidity, dynamism, and hybridity of signs that comprise such practices, and that weave together truncated bits of verbal/written resources, a wide palette of meshed sounds, images, human’s embodied movements and gestures, and material objects. Thus, we can see language as humans’ embodied movement, images, and material objects, just as we can hear meshed sounds. While these signs are seen as symbolizing and signifying, a signifier is not bound to a particular meaning but rather meaning is situated or indexed (Blommaert, 2010) as predicated on the social context, time, and space. Most helpful about this work is that empirical examples of scholarship are situated in multilingual/cultural settings, aligning to my research site

27 of Room 246. Furthermore, much of this work takes cues from (multimodal) discourse analysis, which provides insight for moment-by-moment analysis of language.

A more recent shift in translingualism with empirical examples emphasizing semiotics, provides a promising pathway for recognizing how language making includes but moves beyond the verbal and written. This shift is significant given within the field of K-12 teaching of emergent bi/multlinguals, the majority of empirical examples oriented to a trans approach have overwhelmingly focused on verbal and written aspects of interactions, even though its theoretical elaborations have often included aspects beyond verbal and written components

(Canagarajah, 2013; García & Wei, 2014). As suggested by Kusters et al., 2017), such a phenomenon is due to scholars of multimodality and multilingualism tending to work in largely separate silos until relatively recently.

Examples of this semiotic-foregrounded turn include Canagarajah referring to translingual practices as “polysemiotic” (2018b, p. 5). Scholars in socio and applied linguistics are also pushing translanguaging to be considered “trans-semiotizing” (Lin, 2018), consisting of

“transmodalities” (Hawkins, 2018), and embodied (Blackledge & Creese, 2017/2020). Bilingual scholars working in K-12 schooling contexts ask we consider repertoires as “transmodal”

(Bengochea, Sembiante, Gort, 2017) or rather than linguistic resources, attend to “semiotic modes” or “tools” (Martinez-Alvarez, 2017; Vogel et al., 2018). Even K-12 teacher bilingual educator, García, who spearheaded pedagogical work in K-12 bilingual school settings for more than a decade with a linguistically-focused translanguaging (García, 2009), now calls for attention to semiotics (García, 2018). With colleagues, she furthermore states that in “successful multilingual interactions”, one of the three required qualities is “an ability to shuttle among semiotic features” (Vogel et al., 2018, p. 6). Thus, recent translingual scholarship in socio and

28 applied linguistics and teaching emergent bi/multilinguals foregrounding semiotics provides insights as to how we can expand what comes to constitute language or communication in linguistically diverse classrooms and interactions (Bengochea, Sembiante, Gort, 2017;

Blackledge & Creese, 2017/2020; Canagarajah, 2018b; Hawkins, 2018; Lin, 2018; Martinez-

Alvarez, 2017; Vogel et al., 2018).

Despite the many insights of this work for theorizing language making in multilingual/cultural classrooms, there are several limitations of it for theorizing language as it emerged over time in Room 246. First, this body of work is largely focused on adult interactions rather than the particular ways young children language. As noted by scholars in young children’s literacies, how young children are involved in language making may require different considerations than those addressed in adult-oriented studies. Furthermore, aligning to the particular semiotically-foregrounded interpretation of translingualism I work with, elaborated in chapter two, humans are foregrounded as the primary agents or users of resources that facilitate communicative practices. Therefore, this body of work does not make possible the conceptualization of language as more-than symbolizing and representing or the engagement stemming from more-than a human-foregrounded negotiation or resources.

Intra-Action in Young Children’s Literacies. The second area of interdisciplinary scholarship is broadly oriented to new materialist feminist scholarship (Alaimo & Heckman,

2008; Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2016) and a posthumanist turn in educational research in the area of children and youth literacies. This work orients toward emergent literacy encounters, following a challenging of the New London Group’s “A Pedagogy of Multililiteracies” (1996) with Deleuzoguatarian philosophies (Leander & Boldt, 2013). I attend particularly to empirical scholarship working with Barad’s agential realist ontology and concepts of “intra-action”,

29 “spacetimemattering” and “(material-discursive) apparatus” in the areas of early childhood (e.g.,

Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Murris, 2016), children and youth literacies and play (Ehret et al., 2016; Hackett & Somerville, 2017; Kuby, Spector & Thiel, 2019) and teaching emergent bilinguals (Toohey et al., 2015; Toohey, 2018).

Because identities are porous to agential realism such that every being is ontologically entangled or in a relation with other beings, this body of work makes it possible to also challenge named categories as with translingualism, but rather than pertaining to language, categories referring to social identities such as Chinese, American, and (less than) proficient

English/Chinese speakers, how Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, their teachers, peers, and I were often perceived in the classroom. What follows from such an ontological entangling is that what is produced by this collective, be it knowledge (epistemology), or in this case engagement, is also entangled. Thus, the notion of ‘trans’ is prevalent in feminist new materialist scholarship just as translingualism, but in different ways. As I explain throughout the work, ‘trans’ from a feminist new materialist orientation with translingualism makes visible what I consider the different iterations of language making and the ontological fusions un-done and re-done within this process.

Furthermore, different from work in socio and applied linguistics, much of this scholarship enables the consideration of language doing something other than symbolizing information that is recognized. Because this area of scholarship draws on underpinnings from a theory of language as elaborated by Deleuze-Guattari (1987), Deleuze (2004), and Barad’s

(2007) agential realism that calls for an emphasis on a-signifying “matter”, empirical studies seemingly intentionally do not foreground issues pertaining to language. As a result, less attention in empirical studies is paid to aspects pertaining to multilingualism or linguistically

30 diverse settings. While some empirical studies involve children working in multiple named languages or being emergent bi/multilinguals, issues pertaining to bi/multilingul or linguistically diverse settings are largely absent in this work. For example, Wargo (2017) notes children in an urban first grade U.S. classroom are ‘linguistically diverse’ in relation to their peers, but implications materializing from a potential different access to (linguistic) resources are not addressed. Exceptions include recent work in classrooms and communities with young emergent bilingual children (Toohey, 2018a; 2018b; Zapata et al., 2018). Overall, this work is most helpful to advancing how language making can be ‘felt’ (Barad, 2010), forces of difference where human bodies are changed by matter in addition to being seen and heard.

II. Research Site/Participants: Engaging and Connecting Across Linguistic Difference

Engaging in Language, Studying Engagement

This dissertation study consists of fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in second and third grade classrooms at Oakville school, a largely middle-class Northeastern public U.S. elementary school in a university town. The approach to this ethnographic inquiry diverges in some ways from more established classroom ethnographic inquiry (Bloome, 2012), even though like Bloome, I adopt the approach that moments from experiences across children’s homes and schools in the U.S. and China bare on what transpires in Room 246. In this ethnography, however, I consider the approach to be diffractive in that rather than reporting what I ‘saw’ in

Room 246, I make explicit the enfoldings and flows of intra-actions of language making, and how as researcher, I intra-actively evolve with this process (Gullion, 2018). That is, participation-observation and documentation gave particular attention to the dynamic intersecting moments of human and non-human bodies, and what could be possible in these

31 exchanges rather than a researcher’s verbal/written human-focused representation (Vannini,

2014; Ingold, 2014).

Over the course of the study, I was engaged in participating in the language comprising classroom literacy engagements in multiple classrooms at Oakville school. I was particularly focused on the perspectives of nine (emergent) bi/multilingual children in Room 246, their peers, teachers, and parents. The dissertation draws from a smaller subset of the data during the 2016-

2017 academic year, when I was a participant-observer in Room 246 for an average of two full school days a week, taking part in classroom literacies across curricular areas, community and school events, and visiting the families of children at their homes meeting parents, grandparents, and siblings.

In order to make sense of how language emerged in Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classroom,

I participated in activities and observed in the multiple classrooms that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline were part of at Oakville school including music, a daily pull-out English as a Second Language class, lunch, recess, their mainstream classroom where they spent most of the day, and their joint writer’s workshop with third graders. I attended different times and days throughout the year to follow children into all class periods, subjects, and different times of the day. In the subset of the project that comprises this dissertation, two emergent bi/multilinguals in their first year in a U.S. school, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, and I, filmed classroom activities over the course of a school year and together analyzed the video footage with their peers, parents, and teachers.

Oakville School

The site was selected for several reasons. I was interested in how engagement in literacies occur in classrooms with children of varying linguistic and cultural backgrounds, particularly for students identified as “English Learners”. More specifically, I was interested in classrooms

32 where corresponding to changing U.S. demographics, English Learners were increasingly part of suburban school communities which historically had less cultural and linguistic diversity. Such was the case at Oakville school, where even though being located in a large university community habituated to temporarily hosting children whose parents were international graduate students or visiting scholars predominantly from China and Korea, the number of students whose home languages were not English appeared to be increasing. The majority of children participants had backgrounds that K-12 school multilingual scholars García and Kleifgen (2018) would call “foreign born emergent bilinguals”, middle-class, whose former schooling experiences in their home countries were well-resourced. (p. 23). Yet in my experience over several years at the school, there were also numerous other families, originally from China or

Central America, moving to the district from nearby U.S. cities to work in area restaurants or employment not affiliated with the university. Furthermore, my pilot study during the 2015-16 academic year indicated the school itself has a growing transnational student population, with over a fourth of the students changing over the course of a school year.

Within its school district, Oakville was different demographically from other schools given graduate student housing and a large number of area apartments were in its sending district, amongst other factors. Twenty percent of students qualified for free and reduced lunch, a number substantially higher than neighboring schools. The student population at the school was listed on the website as over 60% “Caucasian”. Despite this, parents and teachers at the school, sharing my identification as White and female, often seemed to go out of their way to emphasize during conversations that they liked Oakville because of what they framed as its ethnic, racial, and linguistic “diversity”. While these comments always took me by surprise, perceptions of

“diversity” are always relative. Given the community in which the school was situated, over 80%

33 White, comparatively the school was the most racially and linguistically diverse school in the district, and even more so taking in consideration the surrounding geographic area, which was predominantly White, rural and less-affluent than Oakville’s district. Because of these demographic factors, Oakville was an interesting site to study a classroom with (emergent) bi/multilingual children in a suburban setting, a growing demographic reality in the U.S., where children from a variety of different backgrounds engaged in their classroom, yet where the access we had to linguistic resources in the classroom was different.

Second, as a member of the community where the school is located, and moreover, the parent of a child in the community, I had a personal and vested interest to study engagement in classrooms in “my own backyard”. As a parent in the community having cultivated a long-term relationship with the school, I had largely wide-open access at the school, which enabled a deep dive into perspectives in the school and classroom. A potential limitation, but also a significant opening in the research, was having different access to verbal and written resources than Xi Xi

Lu and Madeline and their parents. I discuss this more in-depth throughout the work, and how this ultimately shaped the theoretical direction of the study.

Engaging with and Identifying Child Research Participants

Engaging in an experience of research with emergent bi/multilingual children, whose verbal and written resources are also different from one’s own, is always an improvisation and act of experimentation. Connecting is always a moving target as we juggle children’s continual changing ability to express in English and negotiating how to make the tablet and Google translate neural network part of our engagement. From one second to the next, often child nor researcher knows if they have (mis)understood or (mis)translated, or been the subject of the

(mis)understanding or (mis)translation. As a researcher knowing little Chinese, throughout the

34 work, I collaborated with human interpreters both at the school and later interpreting video of literacy engagements in the classroom. Yet to my surprise, early in the research, the Chinese-

English translators I worked with were unable to understand the meaning of a wide variety of sounds that were part of classroom exchanges. Often, I assumed a particular sound I didn’t understand could have been Mandarin. Yet Chinese interpreters were often confused by these sounds, not knowing what to make of them. One interpreter shrugged off the sounds to be a wide-variety of sounds that kids make, impossible to be translated.

As an adult working with children across sounds, named languages, and movement, I often found myself wondering questions like, “Was that a strategic turn of the head, the scratching an itch? A word, a sound?” Connecting without a shared vocabulary or syntax, without a similar way of moving sound and air through the vocal cords, nasal passages, and mouth is a different way of making oneself known to each other. It’s a fusion of resources, that scholars have called material and semiotic, scrambled together in less than three seconds. Think fast. Google image, Google translate, a quick eye gaze, pencil on paper, moving bodies. No? Try again. How about this? Hhhhhhhhh. A connection without communication? It always feels like a moment where anything can happen—treading water with multiple obstacles, not knowing when or if one will have an opportunity to hold on to a piece of flotsam to rest or reach the other side.

In the middle of an exchange, it’s never guaranteed how it will turn out. Will we be understood?

Convey the wrong sentiment? Maybe both or neither? What will come out of it?

Ultimately, a significant methodological question was how could we as children, researcher, and teacher engage with each other in the classroom when we have limited knowledge of the verbal and written resources one another has available to work with? I therefore chose to research across verbal and written resources.

35 Being fascinated by the process connecting and expressing across different verbal and written languages, I wanted to explore what less noticed connections might draw together in these relationships, such that all of us in a classroom could become something other than these categories that separated us. How would an adult researcher largely not knowing Chinese and children emerging in their English expression be able to share in this second-grade experience?

How would/could children tell me their stories? How would I live these stories with children?

How could I responsibly re-tell these embodied, visual, mixed language stories to adult audiences in academic English? What would count in our exchanges and in the classroom?

Child, Teacher, and Researcher Participants Engaging

Engaging in Room 246 are Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, who are navigating the contours of freedom and constraint in their classroom—the increased freedom as they see it to have less work and more play in comparison to their school in China, having each other as brokers to navigate this experiencing of doing school in America. There is Madeline, who described herself as “a small mouse” in China, but able to act as a “tiger” in America, yet with constraints. There is Madeline’s looming test oriented to Chinese curriculum and language to be taken when she returns to China in one year which will determine whether she can be in third grade or must repeat second grade. There is the risk that by learning content in English and different content that will be tested in China, her score will be lower. There is being somewhat trapped in English, not able to express oneself, navigating a new system of schooling.

There is their peer translator, Patrick, also from China, who Xi Xi Lu and Madeline find funny. Yet they find it annoying when he rubs it in that he is more knowledgeable in English than they are, even though they sometimes succeed in outsmarting him. There are the tablets in the tablet carts with Google Translate apps, new to the classroom. While the teacher is still

36 learning how to work with them, with Madeline and Xi Xi Lu, the tablets are ubiquitous to everyday activity, sitting with children at their tables and on the morning meeting rug. While to the teacher, researcher, and children, the tablets seemingly enable Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to complete more voluminous writing in Chinese and English and participate in the content- curriculum, they feel the tablets mark them as inferior to their peers, incompetent in English.

There is Madeline seemingly wanting to challenge her mother, showing herself as a different kind of student. There is the video from the classroom that Madeline shows her mom, that shows her, as she sees it, acting as a tiger in her U.S classroom. Also in this classroom are Xi

Xi Lu and Madeline’s peers who report wanting to work with Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. English- dominant peers, however, often reported being uncomfortable that they sometimes did not understand the meaning of Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s words. There is their classroom teacher, who desperately wants all children’s funds of knowledge to be incorporated in the classroom.

There is me as a researcher, also wanting to engage in the classroom, who regularly brings multiple audio recorders, two GoPros with different mounting options, and two Kodak touches into the classroom. Such partners lead me to be mistakenly introduced to third graders as the school technology expert by several boys in Room 246. As I pursued engaging in research, figments of memories and moments raising a young child with multiple languages present at home, experiences in the U.S., India, and Poland, throughout the five years of the project changed my ideas of language making. Similar to what Xi Xi Lu and Madeline did as students, I navigated schooling experiences between India and the U.S., as a parent and researcher. In India,

Neel was perceived as foreigner and language learner, just as Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. There is furthermore the experience of my family living in Poland, re-engaging with one of the heritage languages of my family.

37 How I Got to Know Children, Their Teachers, and Parents

Child participants, including Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, were identified by virtue of their presence in one teacher’s second grade classroom during the 2016-2017 academic year. Because

I was interested in the relationship between engagement and language, particularly including resources other than English in school, all five children within the second classroom that regularly worked in a verbal/written languages other than English in school were invited and consented to serve as focal participants. Because moments in the classroom often included peers and teachers in the classroom, these children taking part in the exchanges were also invited to be part of the study and video elicitation interviews. While clearly not able to consent other significant players and partners such as Google Translate neural network, tablets, cameras, the occasional stuffed animal that only later seemed significant to the study, these were swept into the study as participants as the study was theoretically reconceptualized over time.

Participants in the study also included parents/guardians of focal participants and were identified through contact information provided by the teacher at the research site and face-to- face meetings during the beginning of the year back-to-school nights and parent-teacher conferences in September 2016. Additionally, the teachers of focal participants in different physical school spaces, including mainstream classroom, English as a Second Language (ESL) pullout class (ESL teachers, classroom teacher, paraprofessional, and student teacher) also participated in video elicitation interviews. The classroom teacher participant was recruited

August 2016 based on my former research relationship from my pilot study at the same school.

Child participants were recruited through an in-person visit to the classroom, and letters were sent home or given to students’ parents during back-to-school night. Parents and guardians of focal students were contacted via e-mail to arrange home visits. Over the course of the study, all

38 children in four mainstream classrooms, one pull-out ESL classroom, all of their teachers, paraprofessionals, and numerous parents were consented to take part in the study.

III. A Diffractive Approach to Ethnographic Classroom Research

Diffraction was a way for all players and partners to participate in the relationship between language and engagement at Oakville School. In this chapter, I first explain the physical process of diffraction, and then how educational scholarship has elaborated what a diffractive approach can empower and produce. Next, I detail how diffraction is a useful way to methodologically story how I went about fieldwork over several years at Oakville and analysis several years after fieldwork.

What is ‘Diffraction’?

Barad (2007) explains that in classical physics, diffraction is a physical process whereby

“patterns of difference” (p. 29) or iterative changes physically occur when water, sound, light waves, and matter (neutrons, atoms) encounter an interference. When this happens, the original waves bend and spread out, forced to create new wave patterns. Significantly, the multiple ways by which waves bend or diffract can’t be predicted, nor do they have pre-existing properties.

Barad argues that water, sound, light, and matter do depend on a variety of factors including the obstruction itself and the instrument of observation.

Across her work, Barad provides several examples of diffraction in the natural world and quantum physics experiments. For example, Barad (2014) suggests that when different objects obstruct light waves, the position of shadows is changed. To Barad, what is significant about this example of diffraction is that it is a physical scientific process that illustrates how what we commonly recognize as ‘light’ and ‘darkness’—phenomena which can be thought to have

39 distinct boundaries—are in fact significantly blurred and continually on the move from moment- to-moment, depending on the circumstances in which they manifest.

For language educators, this reference to light and shadow is reminiscent of Bakhtin’s metaphorical use of light and shadow. To Bakhtin, just as many scholars aligning with a translingual lens might agree, there is a blurred boundary between the signification of words, such that words operate differently in different situations or not as it seems, for every “word” has shadows that display in certain ‘lights’ such that in meaning there is the “complex play of light and shadow” (Bakhtin, 1981, p.277 as sited in Blackledge, Creese, and Takhi, 2014, p.196). Yet

Barad clearly distinguishes her work as not a metaphorical reference to light and shadow. She instead builds her argument by extending Haraway’s (1997) metaphorical use of the term diffraction to contrast the method of “reflection”.1 To a physicist, the distinction Barad seeks to make is that diffraction is a physical and material process rather than metaphorical references to diffraction. Applied to theory as a part of research, this suggests that diffraction is a process of ontologically fusing multiple ideas together to physically produce difference or newness, whereas the process of reflection she is critical of is seen to mirror and duplicate what already has been established. For Barad, referencing Haraway’s reflection, the “epistemological gets bounced back and forth, but nothing more is seen” (Barad, 2003, p. 803). Applied to this project,

Barad’s posthuman performative alternative to representing breaks out of representing existing knowledge, and instead enables a different way of seeing what is happening in front of us, including what we might be missing.

1 While many educational researchers take up Barad’s distinction between diffraction and reflection, I concur with Bozalek and Zembylas (2017) that reflection and diffraction are not completely different approaches, nor or opposites, but that diffraction contains aspects of reflections and vice versa.

40 A second example of diffraction noted by Barad (2007) are the multiple overlapping waves in the sea encountering jetty rocks, pouring through the multiple cavernous jetty crevices, and coming out the other side still as waves, yet this time differently configured. Given no sea close to Oakville school, I work with the visual below throughout the dissertation (see Figure

1.6), in order to illustrate the concept of diffraction and how it was relevant to this study. The image is a visual created through materials collected near Oakville school including rocks from a pile near a storm drain, and the shavings of colored pencils that I carried with me into the classroom as researcher. Imagine language making as the yellow and gray waves, moving through obstacles of the classroom like jetty rocks. Through this process of coming together differently in the classroom, pouring through the cavernous jetty crevices, language making is transformed. Moving through the classroom, language making is transformed like the now- purple, read, yellow, and pink waves. Language making has been differently configured in its journey.

41 Figure 1.6. Diffraction—a visual.

IV. Research Process

From Ethnographer as Instrument to Diffractive Apparatus

When I began this project, I thought of myself as ethnographer, and as such the instrument of the research (Heath and Street, 2008). I saw myself as a documenter, gingerly surfing the waves of fieldwork in Room 246 somewhat independently, attending to my own positionality as a researcher, critical that it was ‘my own lens’ that would ultimately produce knowledge, therefore risking overshadowing other perspectives in the classroom. Yet I later came to see all of us in the classroom as if on a boat, a passenger cruise ship of sorts, rocking as we ride the rough waves of research and language in the classroom together. Such a ship, dynamically constructed and re-constructed with new sails added and knots tied, is how I visualize Barad’s notion of apparatus that underlies how the concept of diffraction worked in this study (see Figure 1.7).

42 Figure 1.7. Image of diffractive ship--tangram structure created by Xi Xi Lu.

To Barad, an apparatus, a diffraction grating, is like a machine by which the process of diffraction is enabled. Drawing on Bohr, Barad writes that an apparatuses are:

Particular physical arrangements that give meaning to certain concepts to exclusion of

others’ they are the local physical conditions that enable and constrain knowledge

practices such as conceptualizing and measuring; they are productive of (and part of) the

phenomena produced; they enact a local cut that produces “objects” of particular

knowledge practices within the particular phenomena produced. (2003, p. 819)

Just like the ‘apparatus’ during a science investigation, or a physical architecture that results in changed physical reactions of particles, the research apparatus of this project can be conceptualized as the dynamic mosaic of theoretical and methodological ideas and materials that comprise our dynamically-constructed diffractive vessel as we sailed and floated the waves of research together in Room 246 (see Figure 1.7). Imagine the methods we worked with as a ship we sailed. This theoretical and methodological ship was built, re-built, sanded, taken apart many times, sails tied with new knots, reconfigured theoretically and methodologically in order to responsively study the waves of language making, our making sense of these practices, and how our different sense-making makes possible noticing opportunities to engage in a classroom. Each physical change made to our ship affected how we moved through the waves, and the nature of the waves that were ultimately produced. As Barad (2007) notes, “the details of the diffraction patterns depend on the details of the apparatus” (p. 91). I conceptualize these reconfigured boards and sails of the research apparatus as what Barad (2003) refers to as the “material

(re)configurings/discursive practices” that produce the waves of research, the iterations of what is produced, or the “material phenomena in their discursively differentiated becoming” (p. 820).

43 Therefore, it is not me as researcher, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, tablet, or their teacher that are producing different opportunities in the classroom to engage through language. Nor is it material objects, sounds, and text. It is also the ontological fusions, the affective connections that come in-between all of us in the classroom, producing different agential possibilities to engage.

All of us are part of this difference, of what is being produced in the classroom, but not creating it ourselves. This ship, this apparatus of research is therefore what produces our evolving or becoming language of the classroom is the “knowledge-making practices” (Barad,

2007, p. 72).

A. Rationale for a Diffractive Approach to Ethnographic Classroom Research:

What Does It Make Possible?

How is a diffractive approach to ethnographic classroom research enacted? What does a diffractive reading produce? What ways of seeing, feeling, and hearing language does it enable?

What stories does this approach to ethnographic classroom research enable being told? In this section, I story this approach and what such an approach makes possible, and then return to its potential limitations or complications toward the end of the chapter.

Emergently Responding: Constructing Methods to Negotiate Tensions. The first aspect a diffractive approach to classroom ethnography makes possible is emergently responding to tensions in fieldwork with multiple methods over longitudinal research. When Mazzei and

Jackson (2019), Lenz Taguchi (2012) and Murris (2016) refer to “diffractive methods”, the focus is predominantly on different approaches to analysis rather than drawing on different methods during the fieldwork itself. One notable exception is Davies (2014a) who writes about diffraction as a process taking place within an emergent encounter of fieldwork between a researcher’s bodymind and classroom moments with children (Davies, 2014a, 2014b). Perhaps the reason for

44 this emphasis on diffraction as analysis is as Springgay and Truman (2017) note, scholars adopting posthuman lenses are often critical of research methods as pre-fabricated rather than the emergent variety that they advocate for. Other scholars have suggested that methods are often presented in qualitative research manuals require certain steps, which is contrary to opening oneself to immanent encounters as a researcher (Davies, 2014b).

In this project, rather than only drawing on diffraction in the analysis, I draw on diffraction as a way to methodologically negotiate and story the overlapping, ever emerging, and differentiated waves in different directions that I rode throughout the process of fifteen months of fieldwork and the tensions these produced. I did not begin my approach working in the classroom influenced by the notion of diffraction—rather, diffraction emerged out of necessity.

Therefore, unlike Springgay and Truman’s (2017) call, I did not intentionally place methods in tension with each other in order to provoke. However, similar to Springgay and Truman (2017), I found working with methods as productive to engaging the tensions in research, bringing together different approaches to fieldwork based on various tensions and obstacles and the new waves these produced throughout the research study as we in the classroom engaged in the making of language together throughout the school year (see Figure 1.8).

I adopt Lenz Taguchi and Palmer’s (2013) image of surfing diffraction patterns in Room

246, surfing the waves in different directions, staying open as researcher to what might occur in the classroom and moving perspectives on what language is becoming, and what all of us can become with language. Working with research questions as they evolved at Oakville school, I floated with and rode the waves in the second-grade classroom, and constructed methods into the project over time as waves encountered “(in) tension” obstacles (similar to the approach of Lenz

Taguchi & Palmer, 2013; Springgay and Truman, 2017).

45

Figure 1.8. Methodological and theoretical tensions in Room 246.

The obstacles that the waves of research encountered were the tensions resulting from not having similar access to verbal/written resources. Other waves were formed from the fact that a White adult native-English speaker and Asian child non-proficient English speaker were perceived differently in the classroom and school, enabling more voice to the researcher than those researched. More waves were the surprises emerging out of the fieldwork over time; for example, there were moments when connectives that seemingly networked players and partners in more significant ways than communication could (see Figure 1.8) . Rather than pre- fabrications, what transpired were methods re-constructed and added so as to engage the tensions of these obstacles. While I originally thought of myself as a researcher surfing through language,

I later realized I was seeing, hearing, and feeling language differently. I was no longer lone

46 researcher surfing. Instead, language making was all players and partners from Room 246 on a giant ship, floating with the swells of the waves. While for illustrative purposes, I position methods in the shape of a ship, throughout the school year this boat it was more of an assembling, reassembling like the tangram constructions that Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, their peers, and tablets constructed, photographed, and blogged throughout the school year (see Figure 1.9).

Figure 1.9. Methods comprising diffractive apparatus. Tangram configurations above from 3/1/2017 classroom blog post by Madeline.

Adding methods at various points in the project were therefore like adding retractable fins on the ship to enable an ethnographic floating and wave riding, tuning the hydraulic

47 machinery so that the fins can change angles, and welding new steel plates to accommodate new swells. Therefore, methods in this project were drawn on to responsively attend to and engage tensions. Yet these methods, like retractable fins, oiled hydraulic machinery, and steel plates, cut the waves differently and moved and shaped the water around them. Thus, these methods were instrumental in building what Barad (2003) calls a “diffractive apparatus”, in this case the methodological mechanism by which the storying and play-by-play of language in Room 246 was investigated, but also how language evolved, came to be significant for whom or what, or

“mattered”. Evoking the diffractive metaphors of waves, ship, and rocks jutting out, in what follows, I describe in more detail these three underlying tensions pertaining to the methodology,

“rocks jutting out”, or obstructions in the research, and how methods were enacted to address these issues.

Rocks Jutting Out: Tensions Negotiated with a Diffractive Approach to Classroom

Ethnography. The first obstacle encountered in Room 246, or rock jutting out , was that children, teachers, and I had different resources to work with. This could be attributed to different ways of accessing the verbal and written resources in Room 246 (see figure 1.10).

48 Figure 1.10. Theoretical/methodological tension #1.

Thus, methods and ways of going about fieldwork were taken to open pathways of expression beyond the verbal and written. At the time, this approach to fieldwork derived from a pedagogical impulse as former ESL teacher of young children to create an opening for different ways of expressing beyond the verbal and written. As an ESL teacher of young children, my teaching and ways of interacting often foregrounded visual with sound, including tangible objects and experiencing and connecting through more than the sounds of words. This rationale was supported by scholarship in early childhood, that children’s expression and ways of perceiving may be more fully or differently expressed beyond the verbal and written form (Clark

& Moss, 2001; Genishi & Dyson, 2009; Rinaldi, 2006). Having different expressive potentials beyond words is perhaps even more significant for emergent bi/multilingual children, whose ways of expressing might be in between numerous verbal or written aspects of language.

Furthermore, in a classroom with English as the medium of instruction, emergent bi/multilinguals may have different expressive potentials, or different opportunities to engage, when working with image, realia, or sound in addition to verbal or written means (Berriz et al.

2018; Wright, 2015).

Rocks Jutting Out: Our Bodies Viewed Differently in School. Working with Barad’s relational ontology, the properties and boundaries of bodies could be conceptualized as re-made and re-worked continually in a classroom. Yet a significant tension is that this is not how Xi Xi

Lu, Madeline and I were perceived in the space of the classroom and school. Teachers, peers, and parents did not view myself, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, their peers, nor the books, text, sounds,

Google Translate application, video cameras and videos that we work with as interconnected, disidentified or transindividual as Barad’s relational ontology might. Our human bodies were

49 read differently rather than as interconnected, corresponding to different degrees of power in the space of school such as identity categories of child, adult, Chinese, American, (less than) proficient English/Chinese speakers, White, Asian, machine, and human. How Xi Xi Lu,

Madeline, other children, and I were perceived in the classroom thus impacted our capacities to engage, whether we wanted to acknowledge these categories or not. I found myself grappling with theories that ask that we shatter social identity categories, yet happenings during the fieldwork that suggested how we are perceived in relation to these categories change how we can move through the space of classroom differently. (see Figure 1.11)

Figure 1.11. Theoretical/methodological tension #2.

50 During my two years at Oakville, I moved in and out of classrooms with hardly being noticed; for the duration of my research, my body was expected in that space. I was only asked once during school hours who I was and why I was there. Yet Madeline and Xi Xi Lu’s bodies were noticed. I watched as Madeline was questioned about why she was there on occasion as they walked through the hallway to the bathroom or if they went to the cafeteria to order their school lunch outside of the expected times. No one asked me what languages I spoke or where I was from based on my physical features and way of speaking, but this happened to numerous second graders including Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. Questions such as “Do you speak African, because you look like you do?”, or during another moment, “What do you mean African? I think

Octavia can speak a little of (African)”, were questions asked by second graders to classmates.

These were never questions I received. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline had little familiarity with

American public schools, while I had both attended and taught in such institutions. Their dominant language, Chinese, was not shared by any teachers at the school, aside from one ESL instructor that understood words and phrases, yet at a higher proficiency than me. Chinese was not part of the formal curriculum, whereas my most dominant language of English was. As we were recognized in the school and classroom, the boundaries between players and partners in

Room 246 were not blurred at all. We were not recognized as being transformed anew in each moment within the classroom, and differently transformed from moment-to-moment in relations.

Shared experiences and memories that Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and I melded into classroom literacy engagements were invisible: a love of singing and swimming, spending large number of hours in our shared community’s local public playgrounds and libraries, living in a household with multiple languages present, spending time/attending schools in China, experiences studying

Chinese, having graduate student parents during elementary school, parents in academia,

51 childhood experiences in Japan, and frequent family visits to Asia.

Scholarship pertaining to race in K-12 American schools and English language teaching

(Haque & Morgan, 2009; Ladson-Billings, 2001; Liggett, 2009; Motha, 2014, pp.31, 62) and early childhood studies (Flewitt, 2014, p.143; Graue & Walsh, 1998) also outline that a power differential existed in my favor in the research context in this predominantly White American public school setting, where the verbal and written language with the most institutional capital was English, my native and dominant language. Therefore, while a relational ontology urges a pushing beyond what in many ways are stagnant identity categories that separated players and partners in a classroom, I had to simultaneously attend to how this was in tension with how we were differently perceived in the classroom and school.

Rocks Jutting Out: Multiple Ways of Making Sense of Language in a Classroom. As noted previously, during the fieldwork, it became evident that teachers, children, and researcher had different ways of making sense of what language, and therefore engagement could be. In order to negotiate these different ways of seeing, hearing, and feeling language, yet another way diffraction as an approach adds to this classroom ethnography is that it provides a framework to explain how methodologically and emergently I negotiated these different perspectives, grappling with insights from both child-centered and agential realist approaches to doing research as required by the unique and emergent happenings throughout the course of research in

Room 246. Diffraction suggests there is no pre-determined definition of language, but rather language can enfold through the fieldwork, continuing to change the process of analysis once the fieldwork is complete. In order to be methodologically responsive to the surprises of research, diffraction provided the possibility to explode out of the silos of different fields and theoretical traditions, reading the insights of these perspectives through each other. I write about this in

52 detail in chapter two. Taking multiple perspectives of language is critical because conceptualizing language making as predominantly verbal and written, or as only enacted by humans, as only symbolizing and recognized, as never symbolizing and recognized, or one theoretical lens over another, we miss noticing multiple pathways of engaging in classroom literacies.

Scholars of qualitative research methodologies in education, Mazzei and Jackson (2019) consider the process of diffraction as a “setting in motion” of what they call “expression-to- come” rather than expression that is already present in the moment (p. 174). Thus, studying the iterative doings of language making through a diffractive apparatus enabled a moving with language making throughout the school year and beyond, a rolling with it, such that the ever- evolving doings of language making as it enfolds or re-incorporates differently in each iteration in Room 246 are often surprises.

Engaging in Language Making as Researcher. The second aspect a diffractive approach makes possible is as researcher I could be fully engaged in language with this research.

Diffraction is an apt approach to studying engagement given that diffraction is “a critical practice of engagement” in itself, such that the researcher can become part of the ontologically new that is created and fully engaged; it is “not a distance-learning practice of reflection from afar”

(Barad, 2007, p.90). In this way, I claim that what we might recognize in the classroom, such as

Xi Xi Lu, tablets, Madeline, myself, Chinese characters, sound, classroom walls, and qualitative methods such as video elicitation interviews, are not pre-existing with particular attributes or identities. Instead, just as ocean waves are re-constituted through encountering an obstruction such as a jetty, we are all affected and augmented differently through the interferences that produce us from moment-to-moment, and we affect each other, thus enabling (and disabling)

53 each other to act or engage in classroom literacies differently. Thus, while we might be viewed as Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, child, adult, Frances, tablet, video elicitation interview in the classroom,

Barad’s notion of agential realism suggests that we are all connected in language in more ways than our normalized way of seeing language in classroom makes possible. By noticing these perhaps hidden connections within language, we might come to see how we are more enabled to engage in the classroom through our potential connections rather than our independence of them.

As early childhood educator Lenz Taguchi (2011) notes citing Hultman’s (2011) research,

“interconnections multiply and overlap so that dependence in these relations with others and things opens up new possibilities—that is, increases your relative ‘independence’ through multiple dependencies” (p. 40).

While Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, tablet and I are perceived as representing particular characteristics or identity categories, noted differently, we are instead not only perceived as potentially different from moment-to-moment as different subjects, but also comprised as different as we are physically in motion, responding and changing with the forces produced with each other, affecting each other, blending or bleeding into each other more than is recognized, just as complex combinations of shadows and light. As researcher, just as research, who or what

I can become, or what I do in a particular moment is only possible through my associations from moment-to-moment in the classroom in a process of dynamic configurations of language making. As researcher, I, just as research, am continually morphing with different dynamic players and partners that comprise a dynamic room 246.

Stories that Matter. Diffraction as an approach to classroom ethnography also gives a way to conceptualize the stories we tell in research as material capable of re-working how educators, pre-service and in-service teachers come to see, hear, and feel how ‘language’ is

54 present in classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children. Many language and literacy researchers taking a critical approach in studying classrooms across multiple perspectives do so with the hope that their work is taken up in ways that ultimately change the realities of the schools and populations of which they advocate (Lewis et al., 2007). Yet the concept of diffraction provides a compelling way of conceptualizing how the material produced through scholarship might make a radical restorying possible. With diffraction, ongoing intra-actions form particular combinations of language, which combine and differentiate to become the source or stock from which new iterations of language making are produced. These new iterations, opportunities in the classroom to engage would be what Barad calls “agential cuts” or momentary materializations that can exist in classrooms. What is significant to a material re- storying is that the material that ultimately makes such cuts or new narratives for classrooms are the stories told of alternative ways of seeing, hearing, and feeling language, a new physical material that changes what is available for scholars, pre-service and in-service teachers to work with in a continued exploration of language making in classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals. Thus, through producing different stories of emergent bi/multilinguals in classrooms, and new ways of conceptualizing our language and engagement in classrooms, this changes the narrative, “topologically reconfigure[ing] connections” by which these children in schools and viewed (Barad, 2007, p. 381). These stories of research thus also become agential cuts, or what in Barad’s terms produce the ‘matter’ for what can ‘matter’.

B. How A Diffractive Approach to Classroom Ethnography Shaped Methods

How did these rocks jutting out, tensions, produce different methods evolving throughout the research? Methods were emergently put together and approaches to these methods re-worked in order to respond to the tensions of fieldwork. Each of these methods made engaging tensions

55 possible and a different way of seeing or listening to what was happening in Room 246. I first outline the approaches taken, and then secondly, how these methods produced new tensions, new rocks jutting out.

Figure 1.12. Methods producing field texts to answer research questions.

Participant Observation. A primary focus as a participant observer was to open up ways of connecting and expressing in research involving emergent improvisational encounters with emergent bi/multilingual children and their peers, of which our verbal and written languages were different. By working and recording with children, I too am changed, just as other players and partners in the classroom. Rather than reflecting or watching from afar, I am physically part of the moment. That is, a “direct material engagement” (Barad, 2007, p. 49) with the world, in this case, was a way for me to have a direct material engagement with the classroom. I thus began the research by listening where I attended to language as verbal but also “[paid] attention to other languages beyond the verbal” (Forman & Fyfe, 2012, p. 205) and “listen[ed] with [my]

56 senses, not just with [my] ears” (p. 234). Drawing on the Reggio Emilia philosophy of ‘the hundred languages of children’, my participant observation was also guided by attention to the senses. I was particularly influenced by poststructural scholar of education Davies (2014a), who also drew on Reggio Emilia philosophy, asking researchers to be attuned to “that which cannot yet be said” (p. xi). Because of my verbal and written linguistic differences between myself and several children, I didn’t intend to only “listen” through an interpreter, as is often the valued means of understanding bi/multilingual children when the researcher and children do not have the same dominant verbal language; I also consider Davis (2014a): “our language difference, far from becoming a problem, was an asset in opening us up to what we could each become in relation to the other” (p. 15). I hoped to turn verbal and written language difference, which some consider a methodological challenge, into an arena of discovery. My hope was that through what

Davies considers an embodied listening, I could have more insight into the complexity of classroom ‘worlds’ that players and partners, including (emergent) bi/multilingual children lived in school. Even though Davies draws on Barad’s notion of diffraction, which attends to intra- actions of humans non-humans, and more, I began my research chiefly focused on children’s peer interactions and those with the teacher. I carefully made note of the mannerisms of all players and partners: children, teacher and researcher. I noticed when children broke into a dance, clenched their stomach, made certain noises, or acted in a way that was markedly different from their usual ways of acting.

As time went on and new readings were trickling into the research, I became more aware of who and what engages in our fusion of image, text, sounds, pointing, tablet computers that constituted our ability to connect. I began recording in more detail what were on desks, resting in laps, held, and sounds heard that coincided with bodies moving and what these networks led

57 players and partners to. I began to notice how the largely unrecognized tablets, hair extensions, books, text, sounds, Google Translate application, video cameras and videos, alongside the verbal/written languages of English, Chinese, and Korean, are what changed opportunities to engage in classroom literacies. I began to notice how that in our process of creating language together, material objects, sounds, logographs and letters were players and partners with us.

As I worked with children or sat alongside them, both of us recording, I asked children questions about their work, drawings, or what they were engaging in in the moment (Flewitt,

2014; Tammivaara & Enright, 1986; Spradley, 1979). I also asked follow-up questions to understand something students said or did in literacy engagements with peers during school that I felt needed to be understood more in depth. My follow-up questions often took place during lunch and recess, such as while pushing Madeline and Xi Xi Lu on the swing, or other times I sat next to students on the carpet as they read or worked at their desks. The rationale was to create comfortable situations for children to engage that were synchronous with how children expressed/communicated. All of these noticings were recorded in written and audio field notes

(Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 2011).

I also asked children to draw in order to accompany their verbal expression (Coates &

Coates, 2006; Darbyshire, MacDougall, & Schiller, 2005; Einarsdottir, Dockett, & Perry, 2009).

Like early childhood scholars Coates and Coates (2005) and Einarsdottir et al. (2009), I emphasized the process of drawing rather than the product itself and considered the presence of peers and others on both the process and product in addition to the context. All children’s drawings of “language in school” and “school”, not only Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s, made possible understanding how Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s ideas of language and school were both similar and different than their peers. This understanding provided new information that

58 complemented and extended their verbal answers to this topic, their translations with the tablet, and embodied responses to the topic of language and school. When I asked children to draw

“your school”, Madeline asked if she could draw her school in China rather than her current school in America. This example of Madeline grappling with the topic to be expressed, a question none of her peers raised illustrates how students’ negotiation of the activity can be just as telling as the product itself. In the case of Xi Xi Lu, her drawing of her school which appears as one cohesive building on the page, was verbally explained as including a mesh of different characteristics of her school in China and those in America, something missing from each of her classmates’ drawings, who reported to represent their local school, the research site. I return to these drawings in Chapter four.

Video Recording of Classroom Activity. Video was essential to this project for multiple reasons. First, attending to the rationale of opening up ways of expressing beyond verbal and written given the children’s and my different capacities to express at the research site, I wanted to recognize children’s visual documentation of their engagements in the classroom and during video-elicitation interviews in ways that they might not be able to express verbally and in writing

(Clark & Moss, 2001; Clark, 2011). As a researcher, I too wanted to be able to express beyond the verbal and written. Inspired by the Reggio-Emilia notion of “visual listening” (Rinaldi, 2012, p.213), as a researcher with a video camera, I attempted to listen visually, attuning to particular situations with the pointing of the camera. Second, in order to answer my second research question regarding how language making is recognized from different perspectives, I sought to prioritize children’s own perspectives of the interactions, incorporating child-generated data in tandem with child-generated explanations of how and why these are important to guide the research. The camera, thus, became a partner with the children and myself. The rationale was

59 that with the camera, during both classroom activity and video elicitation interviews, this might inspire listening and perceiving visually to movement and sound rather than orally or in writing—an ability to then show rather than tell what was significant in the classroom.

Connecting to the second rock jutting out, I took care that emergent bi/multilingual children’s ‘voices’ were incorporated in the process and product of the research. I attempted to produce what I thought at the time was a more child-oriented perspective of the interaction, mindful that children were viewed as having less power compared to the researcher in the field site. Thus, children were given the choice to record with one of four video cameras, two Kodak touch cameras, and two different styles of Go Pros, Hero+ and Hero 4. Children had a choice of mounting options with Go Pro cameras such as a head mount, chest mount, or elsewhere. If children wanted to record, I told them to record “what is important to you” about what is happening. At the time, my rationale was that by children recording what was important to them in their interactions at school they would have more “ownership and agency through the act of creation” (Prosser and Loxley, 4.4). I thought this would be a strategy to balance the power dynamic between researcher and participant, where participants could become the expert, and researcher the listeners (4). The rationale was to create a shared degree of “vulnerability” between “researcher and researched”, where both could participate in different ways (Vasudevan et al., 2015). To my first research question, how is language making done, video recordings granted re-playing and analyzing the second-by-second material-discursive (Barad, 2007) movements in the classroom, or iterations of language making where material characteristics are implicated with speech acts as a mattering. Given my training in microethnography and discourse analysis, analyzing video of moments was an optimal way to give a detailed description of the moving pieces of the doing of language (Heath & Hindmarsh, 2002). Given

60 the high volume of noise and sound in classrooms with young children, I placed two Zoom audio recorders in different hubs of activity near the student or researcher-placed video cameras as a way to produce higher quality audio to be used in conjunction with video data if needed. Neither researcher nor child video was viewed as a more valued perspective, but interpretations that could lead to considering multiple truths (Kondo & Sjöberg, 2012).

Video and Photo Elicitation Interviews.

Video. The rationale for video elicitation interviews were multiple. First, because Xi Xi

Lu, Madeline, and I had different capacities to verbally express or understand each other’s words, when referring to particular moments throughout the school year, I needed to be able to visually express my question, which was aided by the video. Second, even while also attending to our intra-actions in analysis, I took care to foreground children’s perspectives by attempting to give Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and their peers opportunities to influence the research. This rationale was the impetus for children selecting videos for the video elicitation interviews and the impetus for the photo elicitation card sorts. Third, to answer my second research question, I wanted to understand how Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s peers, parents, and teachers understood the same excerpt and their potential for engagement in different moments. At the time, I thought Xi Xi Lu and Madeline might respond to the excerpts differently in different social of physical locations— i.e. with different peers at school, with parents at home, in a hallway, and on a living room couch.

Inspired by educational anthropologist and an early childhood education specialist

Tobin’s video-cued multivocal ethnography (Tobin, 2000; Tobin, Hsueh, & Karsawa, 2009), I required a research method to provide rich conversations. At the time, I was interested in the

“emotional response” that a video might produce (Flewitt, 2014, p.144) or a context facilitating

61 self-reflection (Clark, 2011, p.326). The video elicitation interviews were geared toward answering my second research question, focusing on eliciting different perspectives of language making. By asking Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, their peers, parents, and teachers to explain their understanding, I was hoping they could guide me to understand what they found important.

Addressing the underlying power-differential in my research project, I hoped that watching and commenting on student-produced data would provide a further space for children to create data in ways that provided them the opportunity to be “important contributors to debates about their own lives” and complicate my researcher-interpretation of what was occurring, which Corsaro

(2003) argued children are not often asked to do.

How this operated in the research project was as follows. After I logged and processed video data from classroom literacy activities, I turned these into short thirty-second to one- minute video excerpts. To create the video excerpts, I used Studio Code to highlight moments when children appeared engaged, such that children’s ways of acting or who or what they were engaging with were different than what I noticed from longitudinal participant observation.

Within each excerpt, I selected moments where text, images, sounds, children’s bodies, and materials seemed to come together in ways that appeared to influence the outcome of what happened in the classroom. The forty or so moments excerpted throughout the school year included activities such as drawing, touching paper, use of English/Chinese/Korean, producing different genres of literacy ‘products’, knocking a peer over with one’s body, singing, the presence of a tablet computer, bodies at desks versus kneeling on the floor, the presence of photographs or realia/objects versus not.

From September- January, after identifying video excerpts through initial analysis, I showed individual children that took part in the interaction the videos and asked questions to all

62 individuals present in the interaction. During March through May, I led ten focus group video elicitation interviews with groups of second grade children—both including Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline and sometimes not. These interviews consisted of sharing the same video excerpts previously identified as important or significant by focal participants. During the school year, I visited Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s homes multiple times; I also made multiple home visits to three other children’s homes. All home visits included video elicitation interviews based on moments that children selected prior to me showing them to their parents. Home visits were audio recorded if parents and children gave their permission. Children and I dually video recorded the video-elicitation interviews that took place at school.

Drawing on Tobin and colleagues’ studies, I generally used the same video clips to interview the children present in a scene, the children’s peers, children’s teachers, and their parents because I was interested in the multiple perspectives that may have been relevant to classroom experiences in a given situation that I as an adult not sharing the cultural, linguistic, or schooling experiences of Xi Xi Lu and Madeline might not be able to identify. In contrast to

Tobin’s approach, my interviews became only one piece rather than the focal point of my data.

Moreover, the most important video excerpts were determined not only by me or teacher, as in the case of Tobin’s studies, but in this study they were also selected by the children themselves through use of photo-elicitation card sort interviews. I write more about the significance of video and video elicitation interviews throughout the research in chapter five.

Photo. Whereas the video-elicitation interviews made possible exploring the moment-by- moment detailed responses as elicited by a moment, during the later interviews occurring

March-May, I asked second graders, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline included, to rank and sort multiple moments that occurred throughout the school year. Photo elicitation interviews thus permitted a

63 negotiation of what ‘engaged’ meant for Madeline and Xi Xi Lu over time. Inspired by ethnographic card sorting interview techniques (Spradley, 1979), I created ‘still shot’ photographs from the researcher and student created video data of different moments, and placed each color photograph on a uniform 3x5 white index card. Inspired by scholarship on visual research methods with children (Birkeland, 2013; Cooper, 2017; Rose, 2016; Soto & Garza,

2011), this activity made it possible for children to direct me to a new way of conceptualizing

‘engagement’ without having to use verbal or written means . Did the moments that children considered ‘engaged’ feature tablet computers or not? Did they occur during math, literacy, recess, ESL? With or without certain peers? With or without Chinese or English? While engaged in particular activities? Children placed the photograph cards on a sheet of paper with three emoji faces, a smiley face to indicate “I felt good about what I was doing or how people in the class saw me here”, a ‘neutral’ face, which meant “I’m not sure” or “mixed feelings”, and a frowning face indicating “I felt bad about what I was doing or how people in the class saw me here”.

In this video-recorded exchange of sorting and ranking, we also negotiated how to make sense of my adult understanding of ‘engaged’. Children negotiated their own ways of making sense of potentials they could have in each moment. For example, one student re-phrased the smiley category to “times when I felt proud about what I was doing”. Just as teacher educator and qualitative researcher Cappello (2005), I found the most productive way of initiating how one could participate, engage, contribute, or how they were enabled to act is to ask children to categorize and rank the moments based on how they felt in the situation or thought they were seen in each situation, and to explain why this was the case. It is through the process of sorting and other forms of communication during the sort (i.e. facial expressions or verbal

64 communication) that in Prosser and Loxley’s (2008) terms, students did not just “create” some of the photographs, but “‘find’ photographs that have significance for them’ (4.1).

V. Data Analysis

I view the initial diffractive analysis taking place during the video elicitation and photo interviews as I intra-actively engaged with emergent bi/multilingual children and the video data in the classroom. The second phase of data analysis is where I, with ComicLife Application, created material-discursive transcripts and entered into an open space of discovery with the material of research (data and theories), such that I, data, multiple field texts, and theories of multiple lenses transformed each other so as to construct new knowledge (Davies, 2014a;

Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Lenz Taguchi, 2012; Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2013; Mazzei, 2014;

Palmer, 2011). Mazzei and Jackson (2019/2012) encourage qualitative researchers to think of the process of diffraction as a process of encountering research, moving with it so as to tell different stories that surprise. Drawing on the concept of diffraction in the analysis, over a two-year period following the fieldwork, I simultaneously worked with different theories, iteratively trying them out with field texts in attempt to respond to them. In her work, Davies (2014b) calls this navigating the movements of “entangle(ing) intra-acting encounters” (p. 735).

In the process of analysis, I began with the data of field text themselves, the material- discursive products of the experience of research of particular moments children indicated were most significant during the second-grade school year. Field texts included video that children, cameras, and I produced of classroom literacies, children’s words in both Chinese and English, myself, parents, and teachers from fieldnotes and audio recordings of home visits, children’s writing and drawing, field notes, and sounds. I refer to these transcripts as material-discursive

(Barad, 2007), to show not only is there more than signs symbolizing in these moments, yet that

65 the process of research and analysis is a diffractive apparatus that changes how the moment can be and is storied.

The process of transcript creation was a way to think diffractively about what was coming together in classroom moments as evident through different field texts, mapping the intra-actions between children, myself, teachers, sounds, logograms and letters, material objects, and what existed in-between players and partners as we moved throughout the moment (Ehret et al., 2016). That is, transcription was concerned with what human and nonhuman bodies came together from moment-to-moment, and how these shifted and moved in relationships with each other and the action produced within micro-moments of change (Barad, 2007; Hultman &

Taguchi, 2010; Murris & Haynes, 2018). Rather than thematic coding, these field texts were collaged into transcripts influenced by graphic novel and comic aesthetics created with the

Comic Life application. Transcripts included both the original moments in the classrooms and the multiple video and photo elicitation interviews that followed subsequently throughout the school year.

I was drawn to comic aesthetics as an intra-active storying of the moment because I wanted to illustrate the theoretical ideas underpinning an intra-active approach to language in classrooms, illustrating through the comic how the multiple threads were juxtaposed, scrunched on top of each other rather than foregrounding only language as verbal and written, or parsing them into separate categories. I furthermore wanted to illustrate how the players and partners in language making played with each other, made possible through comics since speech bubbles can sit atop and behind image, and components can be both in the main frame and in the gutter between frames. Furthermore, in-line with my methodological approach to listening to and engaging with children, I chose to work with comics in the analysis because this was a popular

66 form of literacies for second graders at Oakville Elementary and enabled attending to the multiple ways of making sense of language in the classroom. Excerpts from these visual narratives can be seen throughout the dissertation.

Creating material-discursive transcripts through a compilation of field texts, I next asked

‘what was evoking what?’, when and where, or what components in their entanglings were associated with a change, shift, or pivot, similar to Boldt and Leander’s (2017) analysis of a child and adult playing together. This approach resonates with Hultman and Taguchi’s (2010) relational material approach where they argued ‘seeing with data’ involves looking for moments where components in intra-action are transformed or changed. I came to see these changes or movements to be what was central to the intra-actions—the driving forces from moment-to- moment that ran in-between the entangled players and partners of language making.

With the application ComicLife on my computer, I intra-acted with the field texts, memories of the research experiences both at home and school, the numerous occasions when I ran into former-second graders at pools, parks, and libraries in our shared community during the two years after the fieldwork, my own parenting experiences, and theoretical concepts (Barad,

2007; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Lenz Taguchi, 2010). Thus, this process involved an entangling of different times and spaces. These intra-active moments of analysis consisted of a recursive process of watching multiple videos from the moment filmed from different angles over and over, with and without the sound, slowed down and sped up, and comparing this to field notes written in-the-moment. Given the high level of activity in the videos, in order to listen and feel the moment, I found it necessary to mute the sound in moments in order to attend to the body and image that I might have otherwise missed. Likewise, in other moments I closed my eyes and attended to the tangle of sounds, what I heard as dozens upon dozens of overlapping and

67 juxtaposed sounds, their volumes, lengths, pitches—details I often missed being distracted by the visual aspect of the video. I viewed each moment from contrasting perspectives following how each was present and played in the moment. For example, during the science investigation, I attended equally to the tablet, Patrick, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, the cups, cardboard, Mandarin singing, machine-gun-like sounds.

Literacy and affect scholar Ehret (2018) describes what he calls a process of “emergence analysis”, which captures the essence of the approach I took.

watching video, sometimes without sound, sometimes listening without moving image;

listening to audio recordings, eyes closed, open, pacing, sitting; feeling moments anew

and wishing for words where words will always stumble and slip…and struggling to

compose textures and intensities that exceed language…opening new potentials of feeling

for both readers and myself. (p. 58)

Yet while Ehret writes of moments with words, carrying through the notion of language making including but beyond written and verbal components, in my analysis, I wrote through weaving words, images, and sound.

Material-Discursive Transcripts as a Language Making

With this approach to analysis, iterations of analysis and the stories produced are productive of moments where I as researcher became “affectively engaged with and moved by that which seemed to enchant and move the children” (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 540).

Just as Hultman and Lenz Taguchi write, throughout this process of visual narrative creation, the videos of the classroom worked on me as researcher as I created visual narratives. As I held the curser, creating screen shots of video during the science investigation in chapter two, for

68 example, I am affected by Patrick’s tapping of the bookshelf with a plastic game piece, seemingly trying to one-up Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and the tablet’s songs and giggles.

Not only was my perspective of language affected by intra-acting with the research, but so was that of Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, peers, and teachers. The analysis therefore does not depict a representation of the moment itself, but rather a co-produced storying between theories, field texts, my recollections and feelings of the moment itself, and moments before and after the fieldwork. As such, through different iterations of analysis “something new is created with the data. It is an effect of being affected” (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 537), meaning what

Hultman and Lenz Taguchi refer to as intensities running through the moment are what count in creating ‘the moment’. Working with the visual-sound-movement of video in the play of language throughout fieldwork and writing was often an unexpected relief and opening. On many occasions, I wanted to leap into the video, more fully entangle with it despite having no training in video or film, never having worked with it before. Such language making with video consisted of intra-actively watching and re-watching the video with and without children, digitally cutting the video, making smaller clips, dragging the curser when captivated to produce screen shots of a particular moment and angle, working with software to apply filters and change colors, all the while pixels and algorithms continually shifting. Each time I intra-acted with the data, the analysis changed slightly. Over time as I read new scholarship, continued to watch the videos over and over, juxtaposed with voluminous field notes, what seemed significant, what I was moved to screen shot and incorporate into the material-discursive transcript “glowed”

(MacLure, 2013) or changed.

I created the visual narratives, fusing my daily experiences with multiple bits and pieces, fragments of sounds, movements, and image where attempting to understand the meaning seems

69 to miss the significance of what (else) might be happening. Harwood and Collier (2019) note that different than a cohesive linguistic narrative, the material characteristics of the visual of video footage leave gaps that might make the viewer feel as though they’re missing something, producing sounds and images that are perhaps “evocative, embodied, non-linear, and unpredictable” (p.52). Thus, in these fragments of not understanding, these gaps in the creation of visual narratives produced openings that led to screenshotting moments of video that were often significant beyond linguistic representation. As Wanono’s (2014) and de Freitas’ (2015) work suggests, these visual narratives were also manipulated and distorted by intra-acting with the display technology of my laptop, Studio Code software, and ComicLife application.

Experiences of Parent Entangled in Language Making of Material Discursive Transcripts

This attention to sound and movement during watching video was entangled with my being new parent, living a process of grappling with perhaps hundreds of sounds and bodily movements I never paid attention to. For example, I began to notice of a cacophony of various shrieks, gurgles, cries, meshes of noise, moans, aspirations, breathing, gurgles, coos, that provoke me as parent but do not necessarily symbolize or can be recognized. Thus, video of

Room 246 with experiences as infant/toddler parent produces an affective response (Hultman &

Lenz Taguchi, 2010), re-shaping how the moment might otherwise be felt (Sumartojo and Pink,

2017), thus changing the content of the visual narratives.

As I create visual narratives, affecting my movements are additional experiences as a parent. There are: the peppered phrases of Bengali emanating from the living room bookshelf children’s songs from family car CD player, and the mouths of family members As parent, I repeatedly decode strings of nonsense consonant letters at request— WJFHTNVHGUTHFS

70 I hear and see Neel’s phrases in Hindi and head nods with autowallas in India, and loud sounds and movement accompanying building with blocks and car races. Neel’s phrases provoke, but don’t translate: “Chicken buoy”, “mammatupe”, AAAHHHHA I see and feel Neel’s rejections at my attempts to read and speak in Italian, my other verbal/written language that rapidly deteriorates I watch as Neel speaks to his ‘bacteria’ and then pauses to listen to his skin… his attempts to decode the black scrape marks on the frame of our bedroom door into sounds and words Before Neel can speak, I hear and feel being with him in the foam pit in gymnastics, with the giant foam squares, as my body momentarily becomes a ladder, my shoulders and head as steps The hummed tune of “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess as lullaby

As language educator creating material discursive transcripts of a second grade classroom, I began to question, “What is a sound in relation to language? What is movement in relation to language? Does language have to communicate information? What is a mark in relation to a sign? With translingualism, melding with the blur or Mandarin I don’t understand and other “kid sounds” in the classroom that the human translator note cannot be translated was the blur in our home between English and Bengali, and Neel’s words in Hindi he learned from school. Language was also blurred with what else Neel claimed to speak with these named languages such as “Minion”, referring to sounds produced by the yellow cartoon characters, another language he calls “baby”, and a made up language he refers to as “my language” which has unique and changing meanings always seemingly contrary and opposite to those of the

English I speak to him. Just as an intra-active analysis of classroom moments, entangled are my questions from home of where do I begin and end my analysis of language in my home when mark on door℘race car℘“mammatupe”℘English℘Bengali combine in the same moment, seemingly leaking into each other?

As a researcher and parent, I notice fragments of sounds, some of which might be considered gibberish, that can’t be translated. Neel’s playful sounds that are Bengali-ish, but are

71 unintelligible to any Bengali speaker and made up sounds of “mammatupe” that I can’t understand are deeply meaningful in other ways. In these ambiguous sounds, gibberish, images, and movement there’s a possibility for connection in this research and in my relatively new nuclear family out of what might not be understood. Rather than doings that mean, such are meaningful doings that in the transcript creation intra-act with what might be thought of as a largely English-dominant life in the town of Oakville school and the English-dominant classroom of Room 246. These examples of visual narrative creation suggest how Barad’s concept of apparatus is significant to my process of working with video to create transcripts, and the knowledge produced with them. That is, the apparatus of experiences as a parent negotiating multiple verbal and written languages with other ways of making language intra-acted with how as researcher I worked with and made sense of sounds, movement, and images of the video.

Barad (2007) writes that “data itself can be a constitutive force, working upon the researcher” (p.

534), rather than only the researcher rendering and shaping the data. As such, as I was affected by the research, re-working the material-discursive transcripts as novice researcher, the experience of creating transcripts in research was re-working me as a parent.

What a Material Discursive Data Analysis Makes Possible

This data analysis method makes possible different findings than thematic coding or multimodal discourse analysis for several reasons. First, rather than categorizing named themes through written labels, I can thus hone in on the simultaneous yet different stories the video data filmed by different children and myself tell. Thus, the material-discursive transcripts entangle qualitative field texts and the experience of working with them. It furthermore inspires attending to images, sound, and text that might be surprising and not fit with the given the task of a moment, exploring what else might be happening that is not expected. In addition, I can focus on

72 micro-moments that produced a visceral response in myself, teachers, and children that might not be evident through thematic coding (MacLure, 2013), such as not understanding Chinese and

English, or student’s wide variety of reported feelings toward the tablet. Last, because each original literacy moment continued to be experienced throughout the school year through video/photo elicitation interviews with recollections from schooling in China, the material- discursive transcripts also inspired juxtaposing images and text, creating a visual narrative demonstrating how for emergent bi/multilingual children, times and spaces of U.S. second grade and school in China were not linear.

VI. Potential Limitations and Complications of a Diffractive Approach

In the previous section I detailed what diffraction as an approach to classroom ethnographic research produces and what it makes possible. I now turn to what the concept of diffraction might not do. What might be the limitations or compromise of taking this approach.

Trying out multiple theories, riding these waves with data, and what these produce are as Barad

(2014) notes, returning over and over again “iteratively intra-acting, re-diffracting, diffracting anew” (Barad, p. 168).Given intra-action is an ongoing activity, this diffraction of theories and data is ongoing, resistant to closure, and open-ended. Barad also likens intra-action to an earthworm in a compost heap, “ingesting and excreting” data and theories “tunneling through” them, “burrowing” around them (p.168). While Barad notes this process enables the circulation of oxygen “opening it up and breaking new life into it” (p.168), I also endured a process of multiple near and simultaneous suffocations amid the diffraction in Room 246.

Let’s return to the image of riding the waves of the diffractive boat noted earlier—a clunky, heavy, theoretical and methodological vessel. Old waves now dismantled are still present or active in the new waves. Previous experiences of analysis still come to bear in ways on the

73 more recent analysis found in the chapters in this dissertation (Murris & Haynes, p.74). Yet it’s the heaviness, the clunkiness, the complicatedness of this ship that made me nervous. Amongst the process of open-ended surfing, in this project there were also fallings off, modifications of the boat, metaphorically reluctantly drinking large gulps of water as I nearly gagged, coming close to drowning, hanging onto this boat always in construction.

With intra-action, there’s a risk that the apparatus constructed contemporaneously, while intended to facilitate a valiant attempt of exploding out of methodological and pre-determined social identity categories, produces yet another lens or machine that needs to be exploded out of.

While the diffractive approach taken in this project emphasizes the new opportunities for engaging in classroom literacies through our connections, this also comes with significant tensions. First, there is a risk of suffocating through our connections and entanglements. For example, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline indicate tablets and the Google Translate neural network are often a limiting tether, as I elaborate in chapter four. I also wonder if a diffractive apparatus limits Xi Xi Lu, who perhaps often is trying desperately to free herself just a little bit from

Madeline, who across moments follows her around a little more than she might like, asking her lots of questions, looking up to her in ways are sometimes constraining. I note particularly in chapter six my fear that the perspective of language the research brings into the classroom threatens to masque children’s words and stories.

The noted risks of entanglement stem from intra-action (Barad, 2007), which poses the boundaries of bodies broken down. Yet this has particular ramifications for working with humans depicted as at risk of assimilation and marginalization (Brown, 2009; Compton-Lilly et al., 2016; Dagenais et al., 2006; da Silva Iddings, 2005; Devine, 2009; Katz & da Silva Iddings,

2009; Maguire & Curdt-Christiansen, 2007; Sun, 2016; Toohey, 1998; Walters, 2011; Willett,

74 1995; Yoon, 2008). Intra-action, which suggests all entities including human bodies as slightly melted, not individual, is perhaps too familiar to a melting pot ideology historically linked to assimilation and marginalization with culturally and linguistically diverse children in schools and society. Does such a concept put Xi Xi Lu and Madeline at risk of being un-noticed and their voices less-heard as they are intermixed and melded into simultaneous perspectives in the classroom?

One of the many contributions of the translingual perspective I work with is that empirical examples overwhelmingly center the stories of children and adults of non-dominant racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds in schools and communities. Canagarajah (2013), for example, suggests that with the movement of people, the semiotic resources available across differing spaces and times are not equal, spawning relations with power differences. It might therefore be critiqued that by bringing a posthuman turn in education into conversation with translingualism, there is a risk of de-centering humans who have been historically marginalized—in this case emergent bi/multilingual children not having the same privilege as bilingual or English-proficient children given being perceived as different racial, ethnolinguistic background, and cultural practices as their schools and teachers. Such a critique might be purported given the few empirical examples in early childhood literacies from a feminist new materialist perspective that consider the implications of this theoretical orientation for children potentially marginalized due to race, class, and language proficiency (see Kuby, Spector, &

Thiel, 2019; Thiel & Jones, 2017; Zapata et al.,2018 p. 490 for exceptions—a more general discussion of this critique is noted in Dernikos et al., 2019; Nichols & Campano, 2017; Rosiek,

2019; Schulte, 2019; Springgay & Truman, 2018).

75 By storying my entanglement as researcher, and the power of also less-noticed cameras and video that I worked with in the stories of research, is there a loss by not foregrounding biographical stories of children’s identities inside and outside their classrooms that we are used to reading in research with bi/multilingual children in classrooms? Attending to less normalized ways of conceptualizing meaning beyond what is transmitted through meshes of visible, verbal/written, embodied gestures, and objects, are these stories too abstract and impractical to be palatable to in-service teachers and those doing important work in schools and classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals? If these stories are not believable, does this make English continue as the hegemonic verbal/written language in schools because it is what is more easily understandable? Does not necessarily focusing language as symbolizing and suggesting an idea that is recognizable risk one means of connecting with family members across generations and peers in a school? I write of these tensions particularly across chapters five and six.

To Barad (2007), “Discourse is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said…statements and subjects emerge from a field of possibilities” (p. 146). By diffracting theoretical ideas based on statements and doings pertaining to how Madeline, Xi Xi

Lu, peers, teacher, and myself recognized language in their classroom, is this analysis being led astray? Are these different ways of making sense of language merely what were enabled and disabled at different points throughout the research —with tablet computer, as child with adult researcher, as “English Learner”, and with parental/school/university/disciplinary field expectations?

Finally, if one of the significant rationales of Barad’s agential realism is to study the play- by-play of changes in language making by which opportunities (are not) created in classrooms in schools, and for whom, how can we tease out such differences when they are entangled, not able

76 to be parsed out into entities, when “the production of the new can’t be located…” (Barad, 2007, p. 383). Thus, how can we tease out what differences matter, when differences are entangled and cannot necessarily be recognized? I write about these tensions in chapters five and seven.

Responding to Limitations

Despite these gnawings and frictions that continue to work on me as researcher, I am also invigorated by the potential; a diffractive approach to classroom ethnography can make possible a re-centering of children and the nuances that comprise and re-comprise them. This orientation aligns with Dernikos et al. (2019) who note that a decentering of human as individual does not suggest a rejection of the human or humanity. Schulte (in press) similarly elaborates that rather than a decentering, theories of posthumanism have the potential to re-center children, given that just as humans categorized as minoritized on other ways, children have historically not been considered fully human such that they have been characterized as lacking and in-process in contrast to a fully developed, rational adult. Schulte argues that rather than decentering children, posthumanist theories make possible engaging in a process of “re-centering (children) …within a broader and more complex set of material relationalities” (“teaching/working with children”, para. 4).

In this dissertation, I take the stance that a diffractive shift can widen our gaze such that when an autonomous emergent bi/multilingual child is not the primary unit of analysis, this allows attention to the uneven distribution of forces of power, intensity, and tensions that have historically constructed these children as less equal, less counted, less heard, and less understood as human. By attending to such forces in analysis, there is the potential to re-center emergent bi/multilingual children by an analysis that gets to the emergent and dynamic nuances of such

77 inequalities as they dynamically enfold. Attending to such nuances can take account of how ways of being perceived, sound, silence, written marks, and a blank page are materialized as

(not) foreign, (not) belonging and engaged. Just as such an analysis can re-center children and the nuances that comprise and re-comprise them, diffraction can similarly re-center language as a more expansive way of expressing and connecting and re-center the knowledge of different kinds of experiences and knowings that have been less counted in qualitative research (Paris &

Winn, 2013).

Despite this hope, throughout the dissertation, I continue to work the tensions as noted in this section, engaging them, and staying with them. Throughout the dissertation I also argue that it is these often ghostly and gnawing tensions themselves that are productive of what becomes engaging in moments in Room 246, even if we are not ready to recognize them as such.

VII. Significance of the Study and Outline of Proceeding Chapters

Organization of Chapters and Arguments Made

In this chapter (one), I outline in broad strokes the purpose and nature of the research. In addition, the emphasis of this chapter is to show how diffraction as an approach to classroom ethnographic research makes possible engaging the tensions present in seeing, hearing, and feeling language in ways that recognize another pathway of engaging in Room 246. I story the process of classroom research as diffractive, showing how this works both when in engaging in fieldwork and analysis. Chapters three through six show how ‘engagement’ manifests differently through the different enfoldings and tensions in language making.

In chapter two, I show how diffraction theoretically makes possible recognizing other ways of engaging in classrooms than have thus far yet to be elaborated in empirical scholarship on young English learners in linguistically and culturally diverse K-5 classrooms. In chapter two,

78 I layout the theoretical framework for language making. This consists of diffracting the socio and applied linguistic concepts of resources as semiotic (van Leeuwen, 2005) and mobile

(Blommaert, 2010) comprising children’s “semiotic repertoires” (Kusters et al., 2017) situated within translingualism (Canagarajah, 2013) with philosopher-physicist Barad’s (2003/2007) concept of “intra-action”. In chapter three I put these concepts to work to make sense of how engagement manifests in a science investigation and diffraction works to theoretically construct what I call language making in Room 246. With this example, I show how the sociolinguistic terms “repertoire”, “resource” and “meaning”, when diffracted with an intra-active practice lens, come to suggest engagement can be something different than a human participating in communication.

Particularly, I suggest that even though there were not social connections amongst linguistically and culturally diverse peers, mistranslations between Korean/Chinese/English, and different ways of doing school, there were other connections happening in the classroom that we were not recognizing. Specifically, I argue engagement transpires through 1) often a-signifying affective connections between players and partners in language (children, memories of schooling across the U.S. and China, Chinese, singing of the refrain “Méi yǒu huà , La La, La”, and a tablet computer that exist in the contrasts between how these participants can exist in U.S. and Chinese classrooms and 2) players and partners in language making (children, researcher, tablets,

Chinese, and an ice cube keeper) rework each other, becoming resources for each other. This is to say that children have different possibilities when materials do too. Children with materials are able to be viewed as ‘successful’ in science through each other. These happenings exist alongside the translingual communication of the blog post that only Patrick, Xi Xi Lu, and

79 Madeline can understand. I suggest how these together render a dynamic and collective conceptualization of “repertoire”.

Chapter four is focused on opening and making more visible the process of engaging

(machine) translation in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. By translation, the focus is not between textual language pairs, but the process of translation occurring both on and off the page and screen with moving image, text, student teacher, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, software, hardware, and Google Translate neural network. Thus, the chapter is concerned with what opportunities can be recognized and cultivated in classrooms beyond focusing on the perhaps tidier immediate translation of language, but rather the often messy connecting in language together across a moment of writer’s workshop throughout the second grade year. An argument put forward is the need to recognize the relations and collective agency between emergent bi/multilinguals and technology. This extends current empirical work in classrooms with machine technology, which are largely concerned with the question of the accuracy of machine translation for language learning purposes.

In this chapter, I tell two stories pertaining to a moment during the writer’s workshop with Google Translate that was recognized as engaging. The first is a moment of composition in translation during the writing workshop, when mistranslations abounded between student, teacher, emergent bi/multilingual children, tablet, and the Google Translate application. The second moment relates to how, over a three-year period, I work with the object of a funnel as a way to tell this story. The chapter argues that a toggling or bouncing back and forth between communicating (recognizably symbolizing signs) not communicating (mistranslation), and affective connections through the mistranslations and what each produces together create a generative pathway for engaging in Room 246 despite the risk of mistranslations and not

80 understanding. The chapter suggests that the tensions in these different iterations of language are significant because they propelled innovation and a continued experimentation with the tablet. It is this experimentation with the tablet and Google Translate that produced a pathway making it possible throughout the school year to write in English, Chinese, blog science, and social connections with teachers and later peers. The chapter ends with connections to classrooms. That is, it asks how educators might be part of engaging tensions to inspire possibilities of composing with Google Translate and inspiring translation as a moving of language making, and poses several ways this process might be put in motion.

Chapter five is the only chapter not specific to mobile technologies. This is an analysis of the third most significant moment to Xi Xi Lu and Madeline in their second grade year. During circle time second graders contest the meaning and origin of marks on sticks during a presentation of the Korean game Yut Nori. This chapter returns to ways of noticing engagement originally presented in chapter three, building upon these ideas. This analysis is theoretically oriented to space and time, and how these are significant to engagement and language. Guiding the inquiry of this moment is 1) How do the contrasts of language making across multiple spaces and times contribute to recognizing engagement? 2) How do classroom repertoires of room 246 emerge across multiple spaces and times?

In this chapter I diffract recent perspectives in sociolinguistics on scalar analysis as rhizomatic and materially-negotiated (Canagarajah, 2017, 2018b; Canagarajah & De Costa,

2016) with Barad’s (2007/2010) concept of spacetimemattering. ‘Scale’ as it operates in the socio and applied linguistics scholarship I work with is a frame adapted from social geography and world systems analysis as a way to conceptualize what comes about from the nuances of multiple spaces influencing each other and converging in different ways. Barad (2007) also

81 refers to her concept of spacetimemattering as an agential reading of scales. Diffracting these two different approaches toward scale, I consider the stories of the Yut Nori moment as meshed local/global space, time and matter, ‘transglocaltimatterings’. I borrow the phrase “transglocal” from Scott and Dingo (2012) as a succinct linguistic meshing to characterize an interpenetrating local and global space, where local/global can’t necessarily be distinctly defined.

With the post-election pajama day Yut Nori moment, I make three arguments. The first is that repertoires of the classroom during the Yut Nori moment are dis/continuous and dis/located transglocaltimemattering. That is, they are materializations comprised of multiple transglocal spaces, times, and human/non-human comings together, and the ambiguous relations of power these co-broker together in a circle on the classroom rug. I work with Barad’s term

“dis/continuous” and what through diffracting concepts I refer to as “dis/locat(ion)”, to refer to the contrasts occurring when different times and spaces are brought together. I show how the moment was flush with ambiguously enfolded relations of power linked to memories and moments across China, Korea, and America.

The second argument I make is that despite the tensions and ambiguities of language making across different times and spaces that seemingly cut players and partners in the classroom apart, these juxtapositions of the dis/continuous and dis/located harnessed with the circle in Room 246 provide yet another way to recognize engagement. For the third argument, I return to an argument made in chapter three, calling for an additional approach to conceptualizing repertoires in classrooms with young children. This argument builds upon the socio and applied linguistics concept of “spatial repertoires” (Canagarajah 2018a, 2018b, 2018c;

Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014/2017; Pennycook, 2017; 2018a; 2018b). This conceptualization suggests recognizing the repertoires of classrooms are enfolding transglocalmatterings such that

82 disjunctures within and across repertoires are engaging. As will be elaborated throughout the chapter, this is a different pedagogical approach than identifying particular combinations of objects, items, sounds, texts that combine to provide particular ways of engaging in classrooms that can be replicated.

Chapter six serves two purposes. First, the chapter serves as a summation, drawing together pivotal points that are key to the relationship between language making and engagement in Room 246, the focus of inquiry in this dissertation. Second, this chapter returns to the discussion of video and video elicitation interviews as discussed methodologically in chapter one. This chapter centers around Barad’s concept of apparatus, considering how video is a player and partner in classrooms and critical to the methodological research apparatus. Thus, this chapter explores how the knowledge-making or pivotal points of this dissertation are made possible in the relations between researcher, children, camera lenses, and viewing software that occur in the process of producing, watching, and editing video.

To this inquiry, this chapter diffracts notions of videography or photographic image making as it might exist as a body (Änggård, 2015; Canton & Hackett, 2019; de Freitas,

2015/2016; Harwood & Collier, 2019; Kind, 2013; Magnusson, 2018; Murris & Babamia, 2018;

Taffel, 2012; Wargo, 2018; Wanono, 2014) and with a human body (MacDougall, 2006; Pink et al., 2017; Sumartojo & Graves, 2019; Sumartojo & Pink, 2017). This inquiry works with scholarship in visual/digital ethnography and early childhood education to suggest how video constructs an apparatus that can simultaneously close and open opportunities for classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children. Chapter six asks the following questions: How does the relationship between researcher, children, video cameras, software, the position of harnesses and tripods attached to cameras and video created enable seeing, hearing, and feeling the relationship

83 between language making and engagement? That is, how does the material characteristics of cameras, harnesses, tripods, pixels, and software augment children and researcher as they watch, produce, and edit video of the classroom? How does this process augment what additional video is produced? How does working with video and cameras shape the knowledge creation of the dissertation and propel new iterations of language making?

Chapter seven re-states the arguments of the dissertation and contributions it makes both to classrooms with linguistically and culturally diverse children and educational research. In this concluding chapter, I first suggest how this work contributes to two academic research areas, teaching K-12 emergent bilinguals and early childhood literacies from a new materialist perspective. I next suggest connections of this work for moving with and playing in language making, such that the notion of translation can be opened in K-5 linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms and pre-service teacher education. I also propose how I intend to move this work further through an action research project working with video; in-service and pre-service teachers; and children that builds on the work of recognizing language making and additional ways of recognizing engagement in this dissertation, while also connecting to former work in teacher education and professional development in linguistically diverse schools.

84 Chapter 2. Diffracting Translingualism and Intra-Action as a Theoretical Approach to Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Language Making

This chapter is organized into two sections. First, in order to theoretically engage the multiple ways language making was conceptualized in Room 246, I introduce diffraction as a theoretical approach and what it accomplishes. Second, I elaborate in more extensive detail the two bodies of research that I work with to theorize language making in Room 246: translangualism and intra-action. While these two research areas are introduced in chapter one, chapter two more comprehensively outlines what each of these can do in analysis and gives empirical examples of how they have been put to work in previous scholarship. The objective of this chapter, ultimately, is to the set the stage of chapters three though six in which translingualism and intra-action are put to work diffractively. Specifically, I theoretically engage translingualism (Canagarajah, 2013) with the concepts of resources as semiotic (van Leeuwen,

2005) and mobile (Blommaert, 2010) together with the concept of intra-action (Barad,

2003/2007) as situated in young children’s literacies.

Diffraction: A Theoretical Approach

Theoretically, the concept of diffraction (Barad, 2007) puts the multiple perspectives of language making to work in the analysis of the science investigation, writing workshop with

Google Translate, Yut Nori sharing, and moments across the school year. The decision to play with these concepts and orientations was born out of sailing and floating the waves of research described in chapter one. In what I am calling sailing and floating Davies (2014b) calls

“listening”, “in a set of diffractive movements” (p.740). Thus, translingualism and intra-action are ‘best fits’ to listen to language making in Room 246, responding to the waves of what was produced in the course of the research. With these concepts as a framework, I attempt to “listen” to as Davies’ (2014a) notes, or rather to notice, not just children, but players and partners coming

85 together and apart in the language making of the classroom, focusing on what this does, and what this produces in terms of different ways of engaging over the course of a school year.

In putting intra-action and translingualism into conversation, I do not attempt to create a new concept or paradigm, but rather play with the “resonances and fruitful dissonances” (Barad,

2007, p.147) of these already existing concepts across theoretical traditions and scholarship. Just as Barad (2014) demonstrates through her diffractive writing and Mazzei and Jackson (2019) note, I show that diffraction is not merely bringing multiple theories together to speak to different aspects of the data. Rather, with diffraction, researcher enters into an emergent process with the theories and data so as to compose the stories these theories tell together rather than the variety of stories that each separate theory inspires. Explaining this distinction, Mazzei and

Jackson (2019) and Mazzei (2014) note that diffraction is a process of breaking open theories with data as opposed to juxtaposing them, such that they not only produce a different story together, but no longer exist in the same way, at least not when in contact with particular data.

Furthermore, theories-data do not “negate” each other when they come into contact (Murris,

2016), nor uncover a better reading or a more accurate truth (Lenz Taguchi, 2012). Instead, theories with data come together to extend each other (Murris, 2016) and produce difference as opposed to documenting where differences exist (Davies, 2014b). Diffraction serves the purpose of perhaps uncovering one of many other realities that may not have been previously visible without this intermixing of lenses. Through the process of diffraction, the following questions seek to be answered: “what does this difference produce? What is the process by which this difference came to be? What is involved?”

Therefore, when diffracting intra-action and translingualism, these concepts and orientations do not have a singular way of coming together with each other. Rather, concepts as

86 material become activated with the material of the field texts from each moment. These are furthermore joined with our words and embodied movements responding to the video differently of these moments. The ontological relationships of intra-action and translingualism blur and change. Intra-action and translingualism come together, manifesting and re-manifesting within each story and chapter, not able to be predicted. Theories with fieldwork lead to different aspects of the concepts to be put to work with each other. Some of the variations produced with the moments of the second grade school year include the consideration of “semiotic resources” with affective forces felt (story one, chapter three), “meaning” simultaneously as indexed and

“material-discursive” (story two, chapter three), “resources” with the ontological re-workings of

“intra-action” (story three, chapter three). Other materializations of the concepts with fieldwork are “communication” with “entanglement” and affective connections (chapter four), how in- tension conceptualizations of scales across approaches changes conceptualizing “repertoires”

(chapter five), and how the “apparatus” of video as and with a human body transforms stories told in research (chapter six).

Because the orientation of translingualism I work with and intra-action have ontological stances typically thought to be incompatible, the focus of analysis diffracting intra-action and translingualism often centers on the incompatibility of what happens as the stances of these concepts with fieldwork mingle in a tension-filled blend. Iterations of the concepts fusing ontologically is therefore often like discordant crashings and awkward meldings. The theoretical focus of inquiry is how the stories of such crashings produce and provide additional ways to make sense of different opportunities to recognize engagement in Room 246. Such stories of difference are significant to producing change of consequence in the world, classrooms, and society (Davies, 2014b).

87 To visualize how diffraction works theoretically, I return to the illustrations of to the rocks and pencil shavings from chapter one (see Figure 2.1). Each iteration of language making is shown by a configuration of two rocks and pencil shavings. In Figure 2.1, imagine each rock like the concepts of intra-action and translingualism coming into contact with each other. In the visual, yellow labels refer to how intra-action put together with translingualism (green labels) come together differently in each story and moment throughout the dissertation.

Figure 2.1. What diffraction makes visible with theories and moment.

Imagine the multicolored pencil shavings in figure 2.1 as the changing material of fieldwork coming into contact with the concepts. Imagine that the changing field texts and factors impacting each different moment in the classroom changes the rocks, the concepts. Over

88 the course of the school year, imagine these concepts like rocks hitting against each other, becoming jagged and chipped, then smooth again from coming into contact with each other. Just as the rocks might change from smooth, rough and then back again, so too do the concepts and orientation of translingualism and intra-action transform each other, push on each other, extend each other such that they temporarily have different characteristics without negating or destroying the other. Just as there are different iterations and formations of what we think of as the rocks, the same happens with the concepts that transform each other in analysis with fieldwork. Just like the changing of rocks affecting the patterns of waves, so too do concepts differently coming into contact with each other transform the colors and textures of the stories that can be told of Room 246.

Theories and Orientations Diffracted in Analysis

Translingualism

In this section I outline in detail the orientation of translingualism I work with and examples of how the concepts have been taken-up in empirical scholarship in settings most like my fieldwork: multilingual and intercultural settings, particularly K-5 schools. The version of translingualism I work with conceptualizes communication comprised of resources that are semiotic (van Leeuwen, 2005) and mobile (Blommaert, 2010).

Resources as Semiotic and Mobile. By semiotic resources I refer to symbols, images, and signs, written and verbal languages, visuals, human’s embodied movements and gestures, and material objects embedded in a social and physical setting that combine to make meaning and communicate (Canagarajah 2013; 2018a, 2018b). This conceptualization parallels van

Leeuwen’s work in social semiotics where the term ‘resource’ is strategically employed in contrast to the term “sign” in order to emphasize the fluidity of a sign such that it can index

89 differently situationally. Just as with van Leeuwen’s work, translingulism emphasizes a severed relationship between sign and signifier. To further characterize them as semiotic, the term

“resources” 1) implies meshes of communication beyond verbal/written where semiotic and linguistic are not parsed out as separate systems, 2) a practice-orientation to language rather than a focus on acquisition, 3) a focus on human meaning making for social everyday purposes, 4) that material characteristics of resources change the outcome of the interaction (Andersen et al.,

2015).

As Canagarajah’s (2013) conceptualization of translingualism emphasizes, a significant addition of Blommaert’s work (2010) is how resources operate across superdiverse settings, from one transnational context to another. Blommaert frames his work in the sociolinguistics of globalization, arguing that semiotic resources are “mobile”. Thus, when “linguistic signs” (text and images) are ‘re-placed’, or put in different situational contexts, they are taken up differently, matter differently, and a whole new set of attributes are linked to them. Just as van Leeuwen does, he considers “linguistic signs” as “open signs” that can be layered with multiple meanings depending on the situational context, and often do, suggesting that in different “sociolinguistic systems” even within the same physical setting, different meanings can be subscribed. The translingual orientation I work with requires van Leeuwen and Blommaert’s work together. What van Leeuwen’s conceptualization of resource adds to Blommaert’s is a focus on more-than- verbal and written aspects of classroom practices. Whereas Blommaert’s empirical examples are more focused on verbal and written examples, his theorizations are more oriented to working across transnational settings than van Leeuwen. Therefore, I claim both are needed to theorize the semiotic and mobile nature of resources in Room 246.

90 Across empirical examples in linguistically and culturally diverse settings, participants in interactions such as children, teachers, gestures, overhead projector, PowerPoint slides, tapping, and pens are thought to be ontologically separate. Resources available moment-to-moment are thought to be determined by humans’ actions, with a focus on co-constructing meaning that provides information (Blair et al., 2017; Kusters, 2017; Lin, 2018). For example, Lin’s (2018) study in a grade nine English medium classroom in Hong Kong between a Cantonese-English bilingual teacher and Urdu-dominant youth learning English argues students negotiated communication through a variety of semiotic resources such as English/Urdu words and phrases, facial expressions, and hand and body gestures in order to collectively arrive at the academic

English word “cause”. Through this example, Lin demonstrated how semiotic communication both enabled the teacher to understand student ideas in relation to the science content, and the students to initiate a topic shift from the teacher’s initial pedagogical intention. In Lin’s analysis, verbal resources seem to be given precedence given the pivot point in the featured empirical example is a spoken word. Lin’s other examples emphasizes embodied meaning-making is noted as a resource, while material objects such as the overhead projector and PowerPoint slides do not seem to count as resources in her analysis. Similar to my stance, in other empirical examples, verbal/written resources are not seen as hierarchically apart from material objects, such as Blair et al. (2018). One such example suggests that in the communication of scientific information through a blog post during a science investigation, the words “melt”, “ice”, “cup” were not needed as these were communicated through an image.

In another example in a study in a metro South-Asian market between adult deaf and hearing individuals, social anthropologist and deaf studies scholar Kusters (2017) argued a different “tray of semiotic resources” are available from moment-to-moment in different seller

91 and buyer interactions. In this case, the “tray” or palette of semiotic resources available from moment-to-moment included different combinations of Indian sign language, signifying head bobbles, gestures, mouthing of words, facial expressions, showing of material objects, pointing, and tapping. Similar to Blair et al. (2018), to Kusters (2017), but different from Lin (2018), material objects such as boxes of pens, pens, and calculator count as resources.

However, like Lin (2018), Kusters (2017) argues what is available moment-to-moment is largely determined by proceeding humans’ actions. Kusters suggests when a particular interlocutor does not take up a particular signifying gesture or word presented in the exchange, that a particular semiotic resource is dropped from the available tray, thus altering options for both participants in that moment. She argues that those with sensorial asymmetries, (deaf) and hearing people, have unequal access to semiotic resources. My stance is that similarly, children in Room 246 with differences in spoken language backgrounds have different and often unequal access to the semiotic resources needed to perform in a particular space, such as an English- dominant classroom. In the case of Room 246 there are differences not only across different named language backgrounds, but differences between different children and adult’s physical access to work with classroom resources across moment-to-moment negotiations.

Repertoire as Semiotic and Individual. The sociolinguistic term of “repertoire” is related to resources in that it is an umbrella term that describes the individual capacities produced through dynamically shifting semiotic resources (Blommaert & Backus, 2013).

Repertoire as it operates in chapters three refers to how a child, based on their capacities or skills, assembles or strategically deploys semiotic resources in order to enact communicative practice (Canagarajah, 2013). One of the distinctions with the term repertoire is whether an individual’s repertoire is thought to be largely oriented to written and verbal resources

92 (Hornberger & Link, 2012; Martin-Jones and Jones, 2000), or resources that include verbal and written with semiotic resources, which have been termed “semiotic repertoire” (Kusters et al.,

2017) and “communicative repertoire” (Rymes, 2014). In chapter four, I consider other conceptualizations of repertoire as attributed to particular spaces rather than an emergent property of an individual (Pennycook, 2018a, 2018b; Canagarajah, 2018a, 2018b).

In the field of sociolinguistics, the term of “repertoire” is one which evolved from the foundational work of linguists Gumperz and Hymes (1972/1986), which oriented toward variations of verbal aspects of language that pertained to communities rather than individuals

(Blommaert & Backus, 2013; Kusters et al., 2017). More recently within the field of sociolinguistics, due to mobile transnational realities where mobile individuals may have repertoires not tied to ethnolinguistic communities, repertoires have been considered as the unique attributes associated with each human’s individual experiences. Many scholars suggest repertoires are thus more patterned or sedimented ways that resources accumulate in particular ways over time (Blackledge & Creese, 2020; Blommaert & Backus, 2013; Canagarajah, 2018a).

Blair et al. (2018), however, drawing on Paris & Alim (2014) emphasize how children build dynamic repertoires, de-emphasizing the patterns of such capacities.

The notion of “repertoire” resonates with an asset-based funds of knowledge approach within education with emergent bi/multilinguals in schools and classrooms (González, Moll, &

Amanti, 2005) because “repertoire”, just as a “fund of knowledge”, presupposes knowledge. This is because having a particular repertoire, be it verbal/written/cultural knowledge, is predicated on knowing how to use the resources it combines” (Blommaert & Backus, 2013, p. 3). For example, in the proceeding chapter for Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, by acknowledging their combining of

Mandarin singing, ways of using the tablet and is applications, Chinese writing, and embodied

93 gestures as a repertoire to taunt their peer Patrick, I note their competence as languagers in alternative ways from knowledge of English grammatical structures (Blommaert & Backus,

2013; Canagarajah, 2018b).

Vogel et al.’s (2018) case study works with the concept of “repertoire” to illustrate six- grader Fu-han, recently arrived in New York City’s Chinatown from China, working with the machine translation software Google Translate during his English class. Similar to an interactive analysis of the science investigation (Blair et al., 2018), Vogel et al. (2018) understand Fu-han’s semiotic repertoire to be comprised of his capacity to “interact” and “tinker” with the software,

Chinese, English, and his ability to negotiate between these resources in order to make meaning and learn. Fu Han and the tablet being ontologically separate is particularly evident when Vogel et al. argue for separately considering Fu Han’s “student-generated” writing where Fu Han uses his ‘own’ words, and the “machine-translation-enabled language” (p.99) in analysis. They advocate for not attending to the “machine translation-enabled language” as the end-product, but rather Fu-Han’s full semiotic repertoire to negotiate writing in Chinese and English, both his capacity with and without the translator. While Vogel et al. advocate for legitimizing working with the translator, they also voice a concern that the nuances of Fu-Han’s full repertoire, his capacities and how he might extend his learning has a risk of becoming lost in the machine- student assemblage. Different from Vogel et al. (2018), Blair et al. (2018) emphasize children’s semiotic repertoires involve existing, but also dynamically evolving repertoires in interaction with technology, just as peers and family members (González et al., 2005; Paris & Alim, 2014).

Moving out of classroom contexts, sociolinguist and linguistic ethnographers Blackledge and Creese (2017/2020) analyze interactions between buyers and sellers in a meat market. They are interested in an individual’s capacities to communicate with their body. Blackledge and

94 Creese suggest that when having different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, buyers and sellers in a commercial environment draw on their own semiotic repertoires of embodied communication such as touching, pointing, laughing, looking at each other and in the same direction, and bodies facing each other to enable a social relationship that makes possible further commercial exchanges. This study is significant because it suggests just as in the proceeding moments of analysis, children moving their bodies in particular ways, such as falling over and laughing, demonstrates a way of knowing critical not just for negotiating information, and doing science, but also forming social connections with peers.

Intra-Action

This section outlines the concept of intra-action (Barad 2003/2007) and the empirical scholarship in young children’s literacies that shape how this concept is significant for classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children. One aspect of this body of work inspires practices of writing and literacies as including but far beyond alphabetic composing. It makes possible viewing literacies as an open-ended process-oriented experimentation where children emerge in classrooms and afterschool spaces with materials such as paper, glue, tape, furniture, cardboard, yarn and cloth (Ehret et al., 2016; Hollett & Ehret, 2017; Kuby, 2018;

Kuby & Crawford, 2017; Kuby & Rucker, 2015/2016; Kuby, Rucker & Darolia, 2017; Kuby,

Rucker, & Kirchhofer; 2015; Lenters, 2018; Sherbine, 2018; Thiel & Jones, 2017; Wargo,

2015/2017/2018; Zapata et al., 2018; Zapata & Van Horn, 2017;); sound (Wargo, 2017) and technologies such as Go Pros and iPads (Ehret et al., 2016; Hollett & Ehret, 2017; Wargo,

2018). These empirical examples underscore how children and youth are performative agents, players and partners with material objects, sound, and technologies.

95 One aspect of this work, more situated in early childhood studies, challenges the notion of an autonomous individual child, calling for attending to the complex, heterogeneous, and interdependent world between the living and non-living multi-species worlds children are part of including human, animals, technologies, forests and outdoor spaces, thoughts, and more

(Änggård, 2016; Hackett, Pahl & Pool, 2017; Hackett & Somerville, 2017; Hackett &

Somerville, 2017; Harwood & Collier, 2017; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Lenz Taguchi,

2010; Murris, 2016; Powell & Somerville, 2018; Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2016; Rauito, 2014;

Rautio & Winston, 2015; Taylor & Giugni, 2012). This emphasis on multi-species differs from an emphasis on discovering children’s worlds, which has been the emphasis on ethnographic approaches to studying children in the last few decades (Corsaro, 2003; Tammivaara & Enright,

1986). In the following sections, I elaborate how the theory of intra-action adds three additional considerations to that of the translingual orientation outlined in the previous section.

Players and Partners as Matter. The first consideration is that human and non-human bodies, players and partners in a classroom can become matter through language play. Through an intra-active lens, dynamic language making is what Barad considers “matter materializing”; that is, when bits and pieces of heterogeneous human (Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, teacher, myself as researcher ) and non-humans (mixes of sounds, diversities of text, material objects such as photograph, tablet, Chinese characters, singing, Mandarin talk), more-than humans (memories of transnational experiences, invisible ways the forces of all of these bits and pieces are felt or affect each other) ontologically form new conglomerations or bodies with each other.

By calling such heterogeneous bodies “matter”, Barad aims to emphasize several points.

One, previously mentioned, is that who we call “Xi Xi Lu” and what we call a “tablet” are not seen as distinct entitles with boundaries, nor able to be divided into hierarchical categories.

96 Second, “matter”, dynamic entangled, de-tangled, re-tangled conglomerations of language making, is both material and discursively implicated in itself, thus material-discursive. Through such material-discursivity, language making can be seen as formed, or what Barad calls

“materialized” not only through speech acts such as “没有化 , lalala”. Language is both what it can be in school (language defined as spoken and written words that signify according to the

WIDA assessment rubric, Chinese in an English-medium space being ‘foreign’ or noticed by Xi

Xi Lu and Madeline’s classmate, and content enabled to be expressed visually and not in English during science) and players and partners in Room 246 becoming matter with each other.

Emphasizing children, objects, and sounds becoming matter with each other, empirical studies in literacy and early childhood education provide numerous examples of how material objects, place, sound, and more play with each other, thus comprising new bodies. The following examples emphasize how in the mattering between Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, tablets, cups, Google

Translate, and yut, different versions of language are formed in the play of their relations. In early childhood studies, one of the most influential and earliest examples numerous scholars draw on are Hultman & Lenz Taguchi (2010) and Lenz Taguchi (2011)’s elaboration of how a photograph that might be commonly viewed as a toddler playing with sand in a sandbox, can also be read as the sand playing with the toddler. They suggest that the play in this case occurs in-between the child’s body and sand, or child-sand, where both the child and sand are performative agents.

Somerville and Powell (2018) depict a similar phenomenon in a moment of imaginative play between six and seven-year-old children, mud, and water at a riverbank, suggesting that the sounds mud and water make play with each other. Within this play, they argue mud and water

“pose questions” (p. 386) while children answer these questions through “gestures, full body

97 movement, vocalizations, songs and word…” (p. 386). Related, in their study of the intra-actions between preschool children and a forest, Harwood and Collier (2017) suggest that in-between children and sticks-tree new bodies were formed in imaginative play creating a seatbelt, writing utensils, and friends. In other examples, Änggård (2016) and Rauito and Winston (2015) illustrate how words and ways of speaking are players and partners with children. Rauito and

Winston (2015) emphasize the materiality of language rather than meaning. They argue,

“Language can thus be taken as if using children: as words, patterns, sounds and rhymes having their own imaginative dynamic, offering their own contribution in the child-matter encounters”

(p. 19).

In children and youth literacy studies, Zapata et al. (2018) provide examples of how bodies are modified through play. This study illustrates across numerous studies how boys, cardboard, paint, fabric, iPhone, playground, and enfolded stories from books transcorporally produce play and literacies. That is, these multiple human, more-than-human, and non-human bodies ‘seep’ into each other forming a “collaborative”, that ally with each other to co-produce or “co-orchestrate” literacies (p. 490). In another example, a study from a first-grade urban charter school where Wargo (2017) argues children write with sound to co-create “sonic compositions”, he argues that a body, in this case an entangled community of writers composed by sound as a “material agent” and force (p. 404) playfully stick together human and non-human agents.

Shifting Agentic Potentials Through Ontological Play. The second consideration is that through becoming matter in this ontological play, these different configurations of players and partners in alliance have different agentic potentials. Why this “matter performing matters”, or why to me as an (emergent) bi/multilingual teacher educator language being able to do more

98 than communicate is significant, is that with an intra-active lens (2007/2003) the focus is what language does or performs in the classroom without necessarily being tied to communication. In the following science investigation, through an intra-active lens, the focus is not on what the blog post, “Méi yǒu huà”, or other words spoken/written signify communicate. Rather “meaning” is what language making makes possible, such as a way of engaging that produces a blog post or

Madeline breaking out of being a follower in Room 246. What follows is that with the different combinations and comings together of matter, new opportunities for engaging in classroom literacies are possible through these newfound alliances as heterogeneous languagers entangle, de-tangle, and re-tangle.

This also suggests that as Barad sees it, with each formation of matter from moment-to- moment, material-discursive practices are continually excluding particular possibilities from occurring. This is significant for considering the power dynamics in classrooms since through an intra-active analysis, we can follow the trail of what gets left out of intra-actions, versus what can get materialized. Such close tracking of intra-actions can illuminate what interplay of factors contribute to opportunities to engage in classroom literacies.

The following empirical examples suggest how through reconfiguring bodies, different realities become possible. This is important for Room 246 because this results in children taking up different and multiple subjectivities, changing their potentials of acting and in turn re-shaping ways of existing for the intra-acting partners they play with. These examples are significant to

Room 246 because Madeline, Xi Xi Lu, tablet computer, Google Translate, and other materials re-work each other throughout the second grade school year. As will be illustrated in chapters three-six , as more opportunities to engage can exist for materials, so too can more multiple ways of engaging exist for Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. For example, Ehret et al. (2016) detail a moment-

99 by-moment analysis of three scenes of new media making where five middle schoolers and iPads create book trailers in three different school locations. They analyze how meaning is conveyed through the book trailers emerged in activity and how different paths taken depend on what combinations of participants have greater agencies from moment to moment. Through their intra- active analysis, they argue how different ideas were able to gain traction, producing different kinds of book trailers, and how certain children have more capacities to produce media than others. One example is a boy Marcus and a shoe playing as they digitally record. As Marcus drops a shoe in the stairwell, the loud sound of the shoe and floor hitting produces laughter and onlookers, effectively making Marcus, a child that previously had fewer possibilities in the classroom, a director.

In the analysis of multiple moments from an after-school setting, Thiel and Jones (2017) suggest that material objects rendering physical characteristics of an after-school setting such as bars on windows, chains, fences, and locks on the playground, intra-act with the black, brown, and immigrant bodies of children and youth intra-acting with the physical place. They argue that with these objects, bodies together produced (literacies of) raced and classed bodies as not belonging and potential criminals. Yet when these locks are removed, gates opened and furniture rearranged, different types of literacies were produced. In a previous study from the same after- school setting, Thiel’s (2015) study theorizes the two-way intra-action between a child, fabric, and how they both have different possibilities through each other, such as when fabric becomes a costume, a child becomes a superhero/warrior (p. 122).

These examples are significant for emergent bi/multilingual children in K-12 schools because it demonstrates how the ‘ethico’, or ethical dimension of Barad’s ethico-onto- epistemological approach is related to a “more-than-human, not-quite-human, and non-human”

100 relationships (Kuby, Spector, & Thiel, 2019; Thiel & Jones, 2017; Zapata et al., 2018 p. 490).

That is, such examples illustrate how in relation to different materials children who have gotten to count or can count differently than their peers in schools and classrooms can have different ways of engagement not just whom but what they come into alliance with.

Affective Connections Through Forces Felt. The third variation from translingualism is that affective connections can change opportunities to engage. In chapter one, I noted that by

‘affect’ I refer to Barad (2010) as matter making itself felt in making difference. I expand on this notion in this section. Critical to an intra-active lens are what Barad calls agentic forces2 that emerge or are enacted between bodies in intra-playful intra-actions such that they are felt. The distinction Barad’s work pushes forward is that matter has the capacity to be affected or feel, just as being felt. This is different from perspectives of affect in sociolinguistics (Wee, 2016), language learning (De Costa 2015) and linguistic anthropology (McElhinny 2010) which orient to affect as a state felt by humans. Barad (2010) considers the affect of these forces as a “felt sense of difference” (p. 240) such that matter playing “are able to affect each other so as to produce something together” (Barad, 2003, p. 821), such as possibilities to engage in Room 246.

Thus, affective connections in Room 246 are sparks or gravitations produced through matter making itself felt as it iterates in a process of language making. Such forces are the less- recognized ‘tissue’ connecting players and partners in classrooms.

2 While Barad works with the term “force” more readily than “affect”, how she conceptualizes these forces resonates in some ways with affect theory (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010) and scholars of affect (Massumi, 2002) in that they are forces that are “visceral” or felt in some way “that can serve to drive us toward movement” and often not recognized (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010, p. 2). Barad’s forces similarly resemble what Anthropologist Stewart (2007) calls “ordinary affects”: forces that shift relations, create variation, perhaps uproot, are a life of “circuits and flows”, set something in motion, are not significant in what they mean but what they set in motion (p. 2).

101 What is significant about forces felt is it is not only visible aspects of language making that are foregrounded, such as Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, tablets, the “ice cube keeper”, tablets, and

Mandarin singing in the following example in chapter three. Also significant are the invisible forces that flowed between visible players integral to language making. Thus, to Barad (2014), the trail of what gets materialized or left out of intra-actions might be more ‘ghostly’ than we are used to recognize. Barad (2014) writes, “even when information is erased, the trace of all measurement remains” (p.261). This is to say that what gets materialized is not necessarily visible or spoken words, it is also remaining traces or forces felt from former comings together of intra-activity from other moments.

Despite this emphasis on forces felt, Barad’s work seems to under-theorize the nature and shifting ruminations of such forces given her work is more interested in what these forces collectively produce. To make visible the shifting invisible forces within alliances of language making, throughout the dissertation place the symbol ℘ between participants of language making. This symbol intends to suggest to the reader two main points. First, to suggest the ontological entanglements of players and partners. Second, to give visibility to the invisible forces and connections in-between the more visible named players and partners in the classroom.

Imagine lodged (and affecting) in the visual tangle-like appearance of ℘ are invisible felt forces of contrasts, disjunctures of memories across the school year in Room 246, China, India, and

Poland. Within the twists, forces felt are also shifting relations of power.

Despite different conceptualizations of the concept of “affect”, in empirical examples in children and youth literacies and early childhood education, affect across this scholarship is most often elaborated as a force ‘felt’ by human bodies. As such, studies often depict a one-way influence of material objects on humans. That is, material object(s) can produce a force within or

102 between human bodies. Examples of children’s bodies affected by the material include Powell and Somerville (2018), who write how children’s bodies were physically affected by the felt materiality of vibration of sound while drumming amongst intra-acting bodies, objects, sound, and vibration, changing the literacies produced. Lenters (2018) furthermore writes of the material objects of books affecting readers. Ehret et al. (2016) explore the “emergent felt response” (p.

349) of bodies, materials, and places in relation to each other. In the scene of Marcus with shoes in stairwell noted previously, the authors argue Marcus is affected by the energy of intra-acting shoes, stairwell, peers, iPad, becoming more boisterous. Sherbine (2018) demonstrates how through be(com)ing affected by the teacher’s chair in his writer’s workshop, a second-grader is enabled to momentarily hold a position of leadership even though typically viewed as non- compliant. In studies of early childhood nature play, there are numerous examples of the natural world affecting children, producing a force within them to act in a particular way (Harwood &

Collier, 2017). Pertaining to Room 246, these empirical examples are influential to considering how forces felt work on children and researcher bodies. For example, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, their teachers and peers are inspired by, gravitating toward the contrasts of how sounds, tones, pitches of Chinese/English, synthesizer music, memories yut, tablets, and other objects exist differently across schooling in the U.S. and China. Yet as Hultman and Lenz Taguchi (2010) and Lenz

Taguchi (2011) emphasize, affective relationships are symbiotic. Therefore, I also go further, suggesting, for example how algorithms of Google Translate and software are also affected by children and teachers, and how these felt forces together are instrumental to what engagement can become. It is thus these symbiotic affective forces between players and partners form connections and linkages in Room 246.

103 Chapter 3. Blogging Science: Additional Opportunities for Recognizing Engagement in

Three Stories

How might additional opportunities to engage be recognized? Galvanized by a science investigation in Room 246, this chapter puts the theories outlined in chapter two to work in a diffractive process. The chapter tells three entangled stories of the science investigation that suggest additional ways of engaging. By analyzing the science investigation through multiple stories that occurred at different times, spaces and moments throughout the school year (the hallway during video elicitation interviews, the classroom, Madeline’s dinner table and living room during the winter and spring), I ask the following questions: 1) How is language made between players and partners in Room 246? 2) How does this language making make possible recognizing opportunities to engage? The three stories operate as an initial plunge into the noticings and arguments made throughout the dissertation. These initial comings together of the three stories continue to be relevant in other moments and are theoretically returned to and elaborated.

The December 16 Science Investigation. It was a mid-December afternoon, the moment

that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline would later indicate was the most significant to their second-

grade school year. It was the moment they continued to bring up un-solicited throughout

the school year and the video they wanted to show to parents and guests in their

classroom. During this forty-five minute science investigation aligned to Next Generation

Science Standards (NGSS) on the structure and properties of matter, second-graders were

asked to be designers and data collectors. The objective was to test the insulators they

improvised in making the previous day out of materials such as disposable cups, tape, and

cardboard by seeing if it would prevent an ice cube from melting.

104 My camera and I were near the front of the classroom with Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. As

the Kodak touch and I recorded, ice (not) melting is photographically and orally

documented in 10-minute intervals by second-graders with tablets, the results then

reported on the classroom blog. Sounds of the classroom teacher could be heard,

“Everyone’s job right now is to walk to their ice cube. Take a picture …” With this

signal, the frequency of sound changed from the previous slow hum of children’s voices

to loud overlapping shrieks as insulators, different sizes and shapes of disposable cups

and bowls, small pieces of pleather, sheets of aluminum foil and other materials built by

children are opened —and (melted) ice revealed.

The Kodak touch and I recorded the loud shrieks from Madeline and the teacher stopping

mid-sentence, her head turning to follow the noise, perhaps startled. The high-pitched

sound, like a baby crying “AZAAAZAAAZA” from Madeline followed the sounds of

classmates’ “yEEEEEEsss”, “awwwwww”, “oh my gosssshhhh”…. “hhhhhh”,

“wooooowwww” as the progress of ice (not) melting was checked (see Figure 3.13).

3Photographs from the classroom throughout this chapter with superimposed images, such as Figure 3.1, illustrate how simultaneously the moments can be viewed how we are habituated to see children as individuals in classrooms as working with materials, and intra-actively where language making is continually iterating where all participants are entangled and engagement is collective and dynamic, depending on each other.

105

Figure 3.1. December 16 science investigation.

Madeline run-jumped across the classroom. Back at her desk, Xi Xi Lu jumped up and down four times quickly. Madeline’s hands pushed her body up onto the desk in quick intervals as if doing push-ups. To document the progress of their experiment, rather than speaking in English about a photograph as their peers did, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline sing. A Mandarin jingle about ice, a repeating refrain of “Méi yǒu huà , la la la” 没有化4 , lalala (it didn’t melt la la la) rolls off of

Xi Xi Lu’s vocal cords and toward the surface of the glassy Chrome tablet. As Xi Xi Lu sings,

Madeline’s body seems to lose balance, leaning closer to the desk, falling into it. Her open-

4 I write the refrain sung and written in characters rather than the transliteration Pinyin Romanization as specified by the American Psychological Association (APA) in attempt that the characters will affect the reader of this dissertation written in English. Such a contrast is similar to that of the refrain in the English-dominant classroom of Room 246, and how these sounds affected children, teachers, and myself responding to this refrain in the classroom.

106 mouth hhhhhhhhh exposes the large white Chicklet teeth of a seven-year-old. Their documentation is then posted to the classroom blog: a still image of fingers around a white cup; solid ice is inside; blue Chinese Characters are superimposed noting “after ten minutes” (see figure 3.2). The ice of their peer translator, Patrick, melted in the first ten minutes. Thus, the investigation was an exciting moment to Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to have successfully competed against their peer translator.

Figure 3.2. The first blog post created.

107 Introduction

Before discussing additional opportunities to engage in the science investigation, I consider what might not be considered engaging in this moment. In a human-oriented understanding of language and engagement where signs are expected to symbolize and be recognized, as I note in chapter one, not engaging might be the following. First, Xi Xi Lu,

Madeline, and Patrick were isolated from English-dominant peers, working amongst themselves.

There were, furthermore, mistranslations and not understanding. For example, Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline noted finding their activity during the experiment off-limits to students that didn’t know Chinese. While watching the video, Xi Xi Lu noted, “Me and Madeline think this is fun, but American people don’t know what this mean so they don’t think it’s fun”. While their

English dominant peers suggested there was a discomfort in not understanding: “It seems like she was saying Chinese words in that thing (tablet) so we couldn’t really…”, (3/24/17 focus group interview) and hesitated, his voice trailing off. The same peer later noted working with Xi

Xi Lu and Madeline was interesting, but uncertain, because rather than understanding them, he claimed he had to rely on “predicting” the meaning. “We wouldn’t actually know what they were talking about”, he elaborated (5/3/17 focus group interview). For this peer, Chinese/Mandarin did not signify or index. They were merely sounds. Furthermore, it might also be critiqued that children were not working in the dominant classroom language because they did not have the resources to do so. Children were not pre-taught academic English vocabulary with images and sentence frames to work with during the activity.

In the subsequent chapter, I suggest additional opportunities to recognize engagement that exist during the science investigation. To make visible such opportunities, I make a different but related argument in each story throughout the current chapter suggesting other opportunities

108 to engage. In the first story, I argue that engagement transpires during the science investigation through affective connections between players and partners in language making (children, memories of schooling across the U.S. and China, Chinese, singing, science curriculum, and a tablet computer), as each of these are re-placed in Room 246 during the science investigation.

That is, what comes to be thought of as engaging by Xi Xi Lu and Madeline are the “felt sense of difference” (Barad, 2010, p.240) or contrasts when associations from China and U.S. schooling are brought together. In the second story, I show that through a sung refrain in Mandarin, “没有

化 (méi yǒu huà ) la la, la”, meaning is produced not only through communication that is symbolic and recognized, but also through a-signifying and non-indexing connections in language making between Madeline’s family, Madeline, and myself at her dinner table. In the third story, I show engagement during the science investigation is produced through more-than- social connections, as players and partners in language making become resources for each other, ontologically reworking each. Finally, I suggest these stories call for a dynamic and collective conceptualization of repertoire.

How do these additional opportunities come to matter for classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals? Elaborated throughout the stories, three ways emerge: First, in addition to orienting toward a child’s cultural funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005), other ways of engaging are possible. Second, there is a reciprocal arrangement between what opportunities to engage can exist for children, materials, and sounds in Room 246. That is, when there were more ways to become something else in the classroom for tablet, cup, and cardboard, there was a wider variety of what children could become. Third, there do not need to be binary approaches to the differences between education systems across countries. There is often a narrative in U.S schools of ‘this is how we do it here’, and that children and families must assimilate to local

109 ways of doing in order to be viewed as successful. What I propose is that the contrasts between schooling systems are generative, creating opportunities to engage.

Three Stories of Blogging Science

Story #1: Re-placed Resources and Enfolded Memories produce Disjunctures Across

China/U.S./home/School, Affecting

In this first story, it is the disjunctures of (in) visible and (in)audible players and partners affecting as they are re-placed across schooling in China and the U.S., home and school, that produce the capacities to create multiple blog posts. To contextualize it, let’s return to the original moment of the NGSS-aligned science investigation on December 16 from the first page of the chapter and focus on entangling languagers, or players and partners in the opening scene of the science investigation:

There is Xi Xi Lu with Madeline with tablet: “….. Madeline run-jumps across the

classroom…Xi Xi Lu jumps up and down four times quickly. Madeline’s hand push her

body up onto the desk in quick intervals as if doing pushups….a Mandarin jingle about

ice”—There is tablet with singing with Xi Xi Lu with Madeline. “….. a repeating

refrain of “没有化 , lalala” is recorded” (it didn’t melt, la la la)…As Xi Xi Lu sings,

Madeline’s body seems to lose balance…the first blog post is created”. There is

Mandarin/Chinese with tablet with singing with Xi Xi Lu with Madeline “没有化 ,

lalala”… “Blue Chinese characters superimposed….”

And a moment the following May on Madeline’s couch at her home, at the very end of the school year:

It was the video with “没有化 , lalala” that Madeline waited last to show her parents. I

was hesitant to press ‘play’, afraid Madeline might get in trouble when I left their house,

110 showing a video that might be seen as playing in school. But Madeline wanted to show it.

Madeline’s dad knew the refrain well, “没有化 , lalala”. We had sung it together at their

dinner table several months earlier. He had received the blog post that Madeline, Xi Xi

Lu, and tablet posted to the class blog through his smart phone application. Yet he had

never seen the video. When the video played, sending sounds of “没有化 , lalala” and

tablets and children twirling into their living room, Madeline’s parents, Madeline, and I

watched the computer screen—our rigid bodies next to each other on the cushions of their

plush couch. Madeline’s mom’s face was still. It was a different expression from when I

had shown Madeline sharing Chinese vocabulary to her classmates and English-dominant

peers trying to mirror her pronunciation just a few seconds earlier. The video clip ended.

Rapid Mandarin I didn’t understand louder in pitch and seemingly urgent transpired

between Madeline’s mom and dad. I never translated it. When I looked at Madeline, she

was upside down in a headstand stand on the couch, perhaps waiting for what might

happen next.

How does an intra-active with translingual lens make possible seeing what happens when tablets, Patrick, Chinese, the Mandarin singing of “没有化 , lalala”, and elementary engineering curriculum are re-placed from how they are perceived to operate by Xi Xi Lu and Madeline in

China compared to their U.S. classroom, and from Oakville to Madeline’s home? Blommaert’s

(2010) notion of resources as mobile from a translingual orientation provides a way to begin. An assumptions of translingualism is that interactions occur where Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, peers, and teacher work with the resources of their science classroom: Styrofoam cups, cardboard, a

Chrome tablet computer, glossy real-time photograph of ice in a cup not melting, ice, Chinese characters written in blue on a touch screen, singing, cups, and fingers tapping.

111 The interactions creating the blog post and “没有化 , lalala” could be said to be enacted by Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, who are understood as having a capacity to act before entering this interaction. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline are viewed as having agentic capacities to assemble semiotic repertoires (Kusters et al., 2017), from combinations of semiotic resources such as photograph from the tablet, Chinese characters singing, and Mandarin talk from knowledge and skills accumulated through their individual life trajectories such as former school experiences in China and forays experimenting with drawing apps on parents’ cell phones at home. Engaging in interactions with peers and materials in their classroom enacting communicative practices, Xi Xi

Lu and Madeline could be seen as expanding their repertoires, developing “toolkits” that involve ever-changing sets of “tools” (Orellana, Martínez, & Martinez, 2014), and “stocks” (Alvarez,

Ananda, Walqui, Sato, & Rabinowitz, 2014, p. 327). With translingualism, these objects and sounds of their classroom are largely being acted upon. These entities are not ontologically intertwined with children, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and their peers, nor am I as participating researcher.

Blommaert (2010) notes that when “linguistic signs” (text and images) are ‘re-placed’, or put in different situational contexts, they are taken up differently, matter differently, and a whole new set of attributes are linked to them. Blommaert argues that signs can index different meanings when different individuals (with different histories and repertoires) consume them in different global spaces. In this way, during the science investigation, Mandarin singing in Room

246 would mean something very different than if these lyrics were sung in Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline’s former Chinese classroom. Their layered associations are very different in each schooling situation.

112 Yet intra-action invites an extension of Blommaert’s notion of mobility. Diffracting

Blommaert’s notion of mobile semiotic resources with an intra-active lens, I argue that rather than these re-placed signs communicating and symbolizing meaning differently, they do something different in this American science classroom from what Xi Xi Lu and Madeline report they could do in China. Diffracting the term “languagers” (García, 2018) with an intra-active lens, I suggest that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline are not the only the only agents of languaging, as

García intends with her use of the term. On the contrary, Chinese, Mandarin singing, science curriculum, tablet computers are also languagers engaging in the mattering of language together.

In this case, non-human or more-than human objects in the classroom such as tablet, the cup, and cardboard would not only be stagnant backdrops, nor “little bit of nature….passively awaiting signification” (2003, p. 821), but rather also performative agents in alliance with Xi Xi Lu. With such an intra-active lens, Xi Xi Lu and tablet cannot be distinctly human or non-human as both are tinged with non-human, human, and more-than human characteristics.

With intra-action, I suggest that what Blommaert would call resources, such as Mandarin singing or tablets, produce felt forces with each other. These felt forces run alongside the communication of the blog post, yet it is only communicating to Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and

Patrick, not the other twenty five children and teachers in the room.

Expanding on the notion of felt forces, the “felt sense of difference” (Barad, 2010, p.

240) and energy created through affective connections between participants in the classroom as they are replaced, are:

• While tablet computers were ubiquitous to their U.S. classroom, according to Xi

Xi Lu and Madeline, they were unthinkable in their classroom in China. Xi Xi Lu

and Madeline noted memories from school in China where tablets as part of

113 classroom work would never have been possible, instead being confiscated by the

teacher (3/21/17 field notes/interview).

• While Mandarin/Chinese was expected and more prevalent in their school in

China, re-placed in their English-medium classroom, it was less prevalent even

though it was allowed by their teacher. To Madeline’s parents, in the U.S.

Mandarin Chinese was only expected if it was in a negotiation to arrive in an

English translation. Madeline reported finding it “very very very very very very

CRAZY!!!” (school interview 4/5/17) that it was possible and considered a

legitimate answer to sing in Mandarin and produce a photograph of ice not

melting in order to document the science investigation.

• For Madeline, while science curriculum was expected in their U.S. second grade

curriculum, it was not a part of her the curriculum of her Chinese schooling until

third grade. Madeline’s dad, a scientist was a supporter of the Engineering

curriculum and praised the design of the activity when watching video of the

classroom (home interview 5/18/17).

• Whereas singing was expected in their after school musical theater training where

they sang together, Xi Xi Lu as Cinderella and Madeline as the mouse (field notes

home visit 2/1/17), singing re-placed in science was not expected. Singing

evolving through this new intra-action, that was not after school, but in science,

where singing had never been part of documentation or science literacies before,

made the moment unthinkable, hilarious, and happy, according to Xi Xi Lu,

Madeline, and peers (3/24/16, focus group interview). Yet singing was not

114 seemingly an expected response to a classroom activity according to Madeline’s

mom.

• What was also significant is that Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and Patrick, all of whom

had experiences of schooling in China, were re-placed as players with Chinese

and singing in their American classroom where these ways of acting were

permitted, whereas such play wouldn’t be during their school in China. For Xi Xi

Lu and Madeline, they note that with Patrick, the science experiment also

enabled a way of acting, a friendly competitive taunting that they reported

remembering being expected in their Chinese classroom, but that was less

common in their U.S. classroom. To Madeline and Xi Xi Lu, they found the lack

of competition amongst peers in their U.S. classroom “boring” , and something

they recall missing from their Chinese schooling experience (school interview

3/21/17).

An intra-active lens makes it possible to consider other aspects of language affecting children in the classroom in addition to aspects of language that were visible or heard such as screaming and gestures. Significant are also the invisible, silent, yet physically-present disjunctive memories across experiences in China and Room 246, working as players, lodged in the twists of ℘ that affect, evoke, and move in-between the more visible and audible languagers of Chinese, singing of “没有化 , lalala”, tablet, science curriculum, and children. Such recollections, bits and pieces or traces of other times and spaces from previous intra-actions in schooling in China and other times during the school year, speak to what Barad calls

“enfoldings” and “marks left on bodies” (p.176). To Barad, within new intra-actions produced, ghostly remnants from previous intra-actions are ‘enfolded’, or kneaded into the new intra-

115 action. Imagine enfolding like a dough starter, continually fermenting, worked into a new batch of dough. These ‘marks’ or traces from former intra-actions, like incorporated fermented dough, are reminiscent of what Barad calls “the sedimented historialities” that “matter carries within itself” as “it produced as part of its ongoing becoming” (p. 180). These continued fermentations work similarly to what Barad (2010) calls “spooked” entanglements (p.4), such that when previous components of intra-actions aren’t present, or perhaps are present in different ways, having different ‘marks’, these hauntings still affect each other virtually, the hauntings still present in the here and now. This spookiness, or fermenting, is the matter of former intra-actions from schooling in China and across the U.S. school year.

I suggest it was these spooky disjunctures across China and the U.S. that produced

Madeline’s run-jumps and push-ups on the corner of her desk, the continued refrains, Madeline’s body losing balance, peers’ cautious yet curious looks from afar, blog documentation in the classroom written about in this paper, yet also the continued reprise of the refrain and blog posts that followed. It was furthermore these disjunctures carried into Madeline’s home five months later as she waited in a headstand on her couch to see how parents would respond to the video footage of the science investigation while I sat body rigid, wondering if showing the video was a mistake, causing Madeline to be punished. I also suggest these contrasts speak to Madeline’s contention that the moment is “very, very, very CRAZY!!”

Adopting an intra-active lens, I suggest felt forces are not only those felt by children.

Forces are symbiotically felt by the tablet. This happens as electrical impulses occur as programmatic vocabulary is modified when the See Saw blog application came into contact with the Chrome camera application through finger taps and Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s voice

(Langlois, 2014; Manovich, 2001). Through its dynamically augmenting software, the tablet has

116 the capacity to ontologically change rather than being recognized as stagnant. Thus, I argue that it was not just children’s bodies affected by entanglements but also mobile technologies (see

Ehret et al., 2016). Also augmented through these forces are the blog post and what is possible in science and this elementary classroom.

Through an intra-active lens, juxtaposed memories provoke new moments. Within the twists of ℘, what Barad calls “matter”, remnants of previous intra-actions were felt by children’s bodies (Ehret et al., 2016; Lenters, 2018; Sherbine, 2018), as the science investigation was experienced anew as the original moment enters new intra-actions with focus group video elicitation interviews several months later. Thus, contrasts were still felt when Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline’s peers noted, “I guess it was kind of like a crazy day…Kind of rushed… Excited because some people’s ice didn’t melt” (3/22/17 focus group interview). During another moment, the video of the original moment produced collective sounds, “uuuhhhhhhhhhwwww” and “that was bad and good memories” (3/24/17 focus group interview).

Davies (2018) adopts Barad’s intra-active perspective of memory to show memories are dynamically created anew in an event of art-making. In this process, she writes of events across times and spaces, author, words, paint, magazine clippings, box, and kitchen together; memories are intra-actively produced anew. Memories are not only ‘what happened’, but what are dynamically happening anew, stories being materially re-storied in Davies’ cases and in the construction of a pained, collaged box. Likewise in Room 246, memories during the science investigation weren’t just working their grittiness into the cracks of these intra-actions between tablets, children, Chinese, and “没有化 , lalala”, affecting them like a pebble in a shoe. As I will elaborate in chapter six, memories for Madeline and Xi Xi Lu, just as for peers, were

117 simultaneously being re-opened and fluid through new enfoldings during the video elicitation interviews, changing how they were able to engage in the classroom.

Memories were provoked by intra-acting children, Chinese, singing, and tablet computers in this moment (Story #1) as Madeline, her parents, and I, video of the science investigation, and couch awaited what would happen next. As “没有化 , lalala” manifests at Madeline’s house, rather than communicating meaning, the affective forces linked with this refrain appear to have accumulated as the refrain moves across time and space. Thus, for Madeline upside down on her couch, it is “没有化 , lalala” as a carried resource from multiple moments across the school year that is spooked with an affective breaking out—as a way of acting as a different kind of student than her parents have seen her as before.

Story #2: Different Ways of Meaning Across a School Year: 没有化 , lalala Reprise

In addition to communicating the taunting “the ice didn’t melt” to Patrick, “没有化 , lalala” becomes something else in this story I am about to tell. 没有化 , lalala was a material, a resource, a component of language making that affectively connected. Just as Xi Xi Lu’s and

Madeline’s English-dominant peers, I too was affected by not understanding what was happening during the science investigation, lost in the high-pitched screaming accompanied by ‘

没有化 , lalala . Even though this refrain did not signify to me as it did for Patrick, it was nevertheless captivating for me, leading me, the Kodak touch camera to zoom in on their activity. The following vignette I share is when the refrain of “没有化 , lalala” continued on several months after the original moment, this time in early February at Madeline’s home.

February 2. At Madeline’s ground floor apartment. I am soon to spend forty minutes

watching Manga in Mandarin on the couch with Madeline on her dad’s laptop while he

serves us steamed sweet red bean buns. We are soon to sit down in the living room to

118 search Google Maps Satellite view for Madeline’s former home in China, her school, and her town, scrolling through many pictures of her seven years before coming to Oakville.

When I enter, Madeline pulls my hand. In a torrent of giggles she nudges me to stand next to her dad, back-to-back in a height comparison. She places her hands palm to palm with a gap between them. Madeline takes my slumping snow boot next to the door and holds it up to her dad’s shoes, comparing the footbed length. We’re now at the dinner table. Madeline’s dad is translating for Madeline’s mom, English to Mandarin. I attempt to make up for my clumsiness—inadequate Mandarin talk, my large fleshy fleet under the table, exploding two inches out of the sides and back of what for me are petite cloth slippers. I attempt to show off in an improvisational dialogue with the varieties of heterogeneous materials at the dinner table. I engage in what I hope are savvy movements with chopsticks, prowess de-boning fish with fingers, cobbled together sounds and morphemes. I mime with my curled hands and fingers when Madeline’s dad asks me if I can identify parts of the chicken on the table. I’m not sure what to do with the bones in my bowl when I’m offered soup. I’m moving my body more than I usually would if using

English at the elementary school. I’m trying to experience but simultaneously concerned with keeping the interaction moving. I’m desperate to form a connection with my gracious hosts, people I care about. There’s a moment of awkward silence. The reservoir of linguistic resources have dried up. Think fast. Keep it moving. Think fast. “méi yǒu huà , lalala”, I sing spontaneously. It is the first thing that comes to my mind. In this second, “没有化 , lalala” is re-purposed. To my surprise, Madeline’s dad sings the refrain back to me, the same tune. He shows me the blog app from the school that he has on his

119 phone. He had remembered the refrain from two months earlier. He is in on our second-

grade joke.

With the concept of resources as semiotic (van Leeuwen, 2005) and mobile (Blommaert,

2010), resources available for me to work with at the dinner table were English, bits and pieces of Mandarin, chopsticks, fingers, curled hands, smiles, silence, and singing. For Madeline and her dad, resources included Chinese, English, a smart phone, pulling my hand, singing, silence,

Madeline’s hands held palm-to-palm signifying length. Given that resources did not inherently have determinate meanings (Blommaert, 2010), at the dinner table, “没有化 , lalala” no longer indexes “no it didn’t”, or “the ice didn’t melt”, as it did for Patrick during the science investigation. Through these numerous examples, a translingual lens (Canagarajah, 2013) it is possible to see and hear how different combinations of resources produce enriched, clever, and varied communication across linguistic difference. With semiotic resources as mobile, resources available to me at Madeline’s dinner table were different than at school, even though these locations were less than a mile apart. While at school, to communicate “chicken feet”, I would have likely spoken a word in English simultaneous with showing a Google image from my computer. Yet at Madeline’s dinner table, I dramatically curled my fingers to convey the meaning. Resources available to Madeline at school were also different than what were available to her at this table. At school, she would have spoken in English, worked extensively with the tablet and Google translate application, perhaps handing me the tablet to read the message. She might have also spoken in Mandarin to a human translator, which would get translated back to me in English. At her dinner table, however, Madeline smiles, yet she is largely quiet, interjecting at moments in a sing-songy Mandarin that might be heard by certain English-

120 speaking audiences as whiny. Perhaps she is embarrassed to speak in English in front of her parents, the less-expected verbal language at their table, despite their encouragement.

At Madeline’s house, I didn’t know how to navigate my role as researcher as I did in the second-grade classroom. At Oakville school, the size of my feet, body length, and how my body moved were hardly noticed. I moved in and out of classrooms and the hallways with no one asking questions—a white female, clothes similar to other teachers, speaking a particular variety of English. All of these made me unnoticed at Oakville. At Madeline’s house, however, to

Madeline, the size of my feet and height in relation to her dad were noticed. This was the first thing Madeline emphasized when I walked through her front door. When Madeline’s dad and I sang “没有化 , lalala”, I felt little control. It was a feeling of vulnerability at the crossroads of existing in a largely Chinese environment without having verbal resources, and at a cross-roads no longer knowing what I could be or how to act, of needing to move into a different way of being.

Just as Blackledge and Creese (2017/2020) note, what many scholars taking up a translingual lens might call “non-verbal communication”, these ways of moving human bodies were ways of forming social connections in lieu of words. Working with this notion made possible a continued relationship between myself and Madeline’s parents through the school year and beyond. Yet diffracting an intra-active lens with the notion of resources, just as material objects like fish bones and chopsticks have particular characteristics that change what they do in each moment, so too do humans in different situations, moment-to-moment. For example,

Madeline and my capabilities in different moments in Room 246 are not only linguistic, but how we are perceived in different intra-actions as child, adult, large, petite, Chinese, American, foreigner, and not foreign. At Madeline’s house, I experienced converse tensions to what she

121 experienced at school. My body was less expected, more noticed, just as Madeline’s at school. I had little control and was vulnerable, not having verbal resources, not knowing how to act. This parallels Madeline, often not knowing how to act in English with classmates, teachers, and the adult researcher who was often with her.

Diffracting an intra-active lens with the notion of resource, I show that the focus is not on what the blog post “没有化 , lalala, or other words spoken necessarily come to symbolize or be recognized as communicating. In this moment, the language making at the dinner table consists of many resources or components of language playing with each other to produce a new formation of 没有化 , lalala. These together produce agentic possibilities such that working across verbal and written languages enabled us to connect in a way that is meaningful, at least to me as researcher. This particular dinner at Madeline’s house and spending time with her family for several hours afterward, was one of my favorite, and most intimate moments of the research.

Barad (2007) notes that “meaning and matter are not separate elements. They are inextricably fused together” (p. 3). Therefore, in this research, “matter” is playing together, affecting each other, producing meaning in their play, and my being played by Mandarin, by chopsticks rather than a fork, by fish bones rather than the American supermarket variety of de- boned filets most readily found near Oakville school. I play back at these resources, attempting to work with bits and pieces of Mandarin, engaging in what I hope are savvy moves in navigating eating dinner. All the while, we are affected by our blood sugar soaring with the thick sugary pink children’s drink that Madeline picked out for our dinner, our mouths warm with umami chicken broth made by Madeline’s mom, and the shared memory of the science investigation where Xi Xi Lu and Madeline felt they had an opportunity to act differently. In this dinner tablet moment, with different access to verbal resources, the body of

122 chopsticks℘fingers℘hands℘food,℘没有化 , lalala become the shared material of our language—the conduit forming a connection.

Barad (2007) writes, “meaning is not a property of individual words or groups of words, but an ongoing performance of the world in its differential dance of intelligibility and unintelligibility” (p.149). While communication is happening at this dinner table, from an intra- active lens, it’s perhaps not what is most important or meaningful for myself, Madeline, and her family. The meaning of the words themselves, “没有化 , lalala”, “the ice didn’t melt”, index differently for us at the dinner table on this cold February night, yet it is not recognizable how.

They are unintelligible, rather than the intelligible signification this refrain had for Patrick during the science investigation. Instead, I suggest there’s an affective connection through singing these familiar lines, which is the meaning of what becomes possible in this moment. “没有化 , lalala” is a player with myself and Madeline’s parents as a force, a material (Änggård, 2016; Rauito &

Winston, 2015; Wargo, 2017). It’s the material that 没有化 , lalala becomes and the singing of these a-signifying lines as a continuing force.

Diffracting a translingual and intra-active lens, the refrain of “没有化 , lalala” enabled different ways of meaning across a school year—first, as a way for Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to communicate winning to their peer, Patrick, and produce a blog post that rendered them engaged, and second, a material that connected myself, Madeline, and her family at her dinner table, connecting across linguistic difference.

Story #3: Resources for Each Other, Extending Boundaries of Bodies Through Paralell Re-

Working

In this last story, I return now to the science investigation on December 16 to show engagement during the science investigation is produced as children, researcher, tablets, Chinese,

123 and an ice cube keeper, become resources for each other, ontologically reworking each other in parallel ways. As such, “repertoires” appear to be dynamic and collective, particular to each iteration of language making, as opposed to attributed to a particular classroom activity or individual. I show this through the analysis of four different moments where the activity of the forty-five minute science investigation shifts.

An intra-active lens pushes the boundaries implicit in the conceptualization of resources in Blommaert (2010) and van Leeuwen (2005), making each player and partner more ontologically porous, not entering into the science investigation with pre-existing properties, but rather develop these dynamically re-working each other in a “shifting entanglement of relations”

(Barad, 2007, p. 35). Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline℘Patrick℘tablets℘Chinese℘singing℘memories could be seen as a collective player, affecting each other, and producing together (Ehret et al., 2016;

Hackett & Somerville, 2017; Harwood & Collier, 2017; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Lenz

Taguchi, 2011; Zapata et al., 2018).

As these human and non-human players of language making, we are resources for each other, we are intra-playing, and as Barad writes, we are “reconfigur(ing),” each other’s possibilities when we come into contact, “borrow(ing) or exchang(ing) properties with each other” (Hultman & Taguchi, 2010, p. 529). During the science investigation, this is how Xi Xi

Lu, Madeline, Chrome tablets, Mandarin singing, tape, cardboard, cup, ice, and myself with my

Kodak touch camera reshaped each other’s potentials of how we could act, what we could do and what we could become in the classroom, only through each other.

Creating Blog Posts: Language Making Between Tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline. In the first shift, consider the moments when Xi Xi Lu/Madeline and the tablet first produce the refrain during the science investigation. In these moments, it was through intra-mingling with

124 each other that Chrome tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline re-worked each other to more than English novices and a translator, as they most often existed during second grade. In this re-working, the tablet was becoming a camera, simultaneously reworking Xi Xi Lu/Madeline as a photographer.

As the tablet was reworked to a recorder, Xi Xi Lu/Madeline were singers of Mandarin and composers of songs. As the tablet became an audiovisual player, Xi Xi Lu/Madeline were re- worked as a broadcaster of a successful science investigation, able to taunt their competitor and classmate Patrick. What matters is that as tablets are re-worked into becoming something different in each moment, so are Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. With intra-action, in this moment of blogging science, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, nor tablet are no longer bound to individual social identity categories like machine as translator and child as English novice, as they were previously in the classroom. Instead, they are an entangled collective. By recognizing Tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline as mingled we can see that the capacities to do science, engineering, school, winning, produce a blog –engagement—can only be attributed to this linked alliance. Figure 3.3 illustrates

Tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline comprised of b) Madeline c) Xi Xi Lu h) 11/10/16 Xi Xi Lu, tablet, and student teacher during writing workshop i) Image Madeline said reminded her of former schooling in China j) Former science class—Xi Xi Lu, tablet, classmate, cocoons creating blog- post k) Tablet as translator through Google Translate o) tablet as photographer, recorder, projector.

125

Figure 3.3. Tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline.

Ice℘cups℘tape To Create Insulator. In another shift, in the moment the first blog was created, cups, tape, and cardboard were also reconfigured by becoming an “ice cube keeper” or insulator with each other, as illustrated in Figure 3.4, rather than separate materials as they were previously. Through becoming an insulator with each other, the cups weren’t only for drinking, the tape not only for sticking paper, nor was the cardboard confined to its original box state for storing or sending as they were prior to the investigation. Instead, the cups, tape, cardboard in this moment worked as insulators to keep an ice cube from melting. Figure 3.4 illustrates the multiple components comprising this entanglement: l) ice n) ice cube keeper p) cardboard q)

Styrofoam cup r) water (melted ice).

Early childhood educator Änggård (2016) argues that the material characteristics of a steep rock, the slippery friction-reducing material of children’s pants, and gravity, produced children’s bodies as sliding fast. Similarly, it was the material characteristics of the plastic-lined paper cup that kept the ice cube contained in a small place, the physical properties of the

126 Styrofoam cup, made of polystyrene, “a hard thermoplastic resin” (Oxford English Dictionary,

Polystyrene) that limited the thermal transfer of the warm air of the classroom from reaching the ice cube in the plastic-lined paper cup. Forming the base of the insulator, it was the cardboard that sealed the large open space of the cup, further blocking the ice cube from the warm classroom air. It was the stickiness of the tape that further stuck these previously separate items together to comprise the insulator. It was the energies fueled through the ice not melting, the successful “ice cube keeper” that called for the event to be documented in a new spontaneous way, reworking in parallel ways the tablet and Xi Xi Lu to documenters through Mandarin singing, and a photograph superimposed with large blue Chinese characters.

Figure 3.4. Parallel reworkings of Ice℘cups℘tape to create insulator.

127 Insulator Breaks Apart and New Blog Post Recorded in Book Corner. The following vignette elaborates on two other shifts. First when the insulator breaks apart, and second, when new blog posts are recorded in the book corner.

Four minutes after the first 没有化 , lalala, Madeline and Mandarin singing, “没有化 ,

lalala”, once again vibrates off of Madeline’s vocal cords. The sound “没有化 , lalala”

enfolded from the previous moment, still moves through the scene. As Xi Xi Lu’s hand

touches the “ice-cube keeper”, the balance of the disposable cups shifts as gravity pulls

the cups toward the table. Ice and water fall onto the desk. “AAAAHHHHH”, “Xi Xi

LUUUUUUUUUUU”, Madeline screams. The “ice-cube keeper”, the insulator, by

accident, has become momentarily dismantled. In this moment of falling apart, the cups

are returned to being potential drinking vessels. The cardboard no longer served as a

base. Water was on the table, no longer ice, a solid. The “ice-cube keeper”, the insulator,

was temporarily no longer. As this occurred, the intra-action that produced possibilities of

engagement in the previous moment: Xi Xi Lu becoming photographer, composer,

singer, broadcaster, writer; tablet becoming camera, recorder, audio/visual player, slate;

cups, tape, and cardboard becoming the “ice cube keeper”; the feeling of tablets from

other places (in classroom/home/China), and Mandarin singing and the insulator as an

engaged component and the thread holding the moment together, untangle.

A few minutes later, the insulator is put back together. Xi Xi Lu with tablet produces yet

another blog post while walking on her knees in the book corner. Madeline, Patrick , and

I follow behind, also on our knees. As Xi Xi Lu with Chrome tablet records, Patrick picks

up a game card found on the floor and waves it in front of Xi Xi Lu℘tablet, seemingly

trying to distract. Xi Xi Lu and tablet push forward in Mandarin song, seemingly ignoring

128 Patrick. Patrick picks up a large plastic game piece on the floor. There are loud booms as

the game piece is crashed against the nearby bookshelf, right next to the tablet with Xi Xi

Lu. Thus, there is a competition between the classroom soundscape of

Patrick℘materials℘sounds and Xi Xi Lu℘tablet.

During the science investigation, Patrick was no longer expert and more knowledgeable than Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. Yet with the dismantling of the “ice cube keeper”, Patrick’s body emerged in tandem with the pieces of the deconstructed ice-cube keeper —a piece of cardboard, the former base of the ice cube keeper; the Styrofoam cup, the former insulator, the water, the former ice cube (see Figure 3.5). “Hhhhh, your ice” Patrick says in Mandarin, alternating pitches. The players and partners are re-enlivened, moving to new configurations, new iterations of language making. Madeline and Xi Xi Lu’s fingers tap on the tablet’s glass rarely breaking gaze with the screen. Patrick’s hand takes the cup. He rubs a piece of cardboard on the desk, picks it up and releases. The cardboard falls on the desk multiple times. “Use this to clean”, he says in Mandarin, turning over the cardboard. The cardboard is becoming something else with

Patrick’s hand: it is now a rag to soak up water rather than a box or a base of the ice cube keeper.

With the cardboard and cup Patrick becomes a disruptor.

Mandarin talk interspersed with loud undulating sounds unrecognizable to the adult

Chinese-English translator that I worked with, and machine gun–like sounds, never before or after heard outside the science investigation, were sonic disruptors that drained out Mandarin singing, changing the classroom soundscape. Rather than the sound of Mandarin singing “没有

化 , lalala”, it was instead the rapid “TTTTTTTTTT” machine-gun-like sounds from Patrick’s hand-mouth, cups, and cardboard that reconfigured Patrick’s body to disruptor. There’s the potential that Mandarin talk would be understood collectively by Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and

129 Patrick. Instead, new sounds and movements appear to take its place—loud repeated machine gun sounds vibrate off Patrick’s vocal cords, while Xi Xi Lu’s body and chair come together to block Patrick’s fingers from tapping the tablet. With Patrick, waving a paper card and booms between plastic game piece and bookshelf threaten Xi Xi Lu with tablet. In this moment it is the collective capacities between machine gun sounds, booms on bookshelf with game piece, cardboard, and Patrick that challenge and silently provoke the Mandarin singing and doing science of Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and tablet. Figure 3.5 illustrates the components entangling in this moment (a) Frances and Kodak touch camera g) 2/8/17 ESL pull-out class, Patrick as translator p) cardboard s) Recollections/feelings of Patrick with head on desk and ice cube keeper with melted ice from four minutes earlier t) Recollections/feelings of Patrick and tablet with student u) Mandarin talk v) Machine gun sounds w) Patrick’s hand).

Figure 3.5. Patrick ℘ Materials ℘Sounds.

By considering these moments together, I suggest that children with materials can be perceived as successful in science by their teacher and peers through each other. With each other,

130 they are more-than English novices, and more than translator. They are more than cup, cardboard, and more than not participating. It is these doings of language that simultaneously happen alongside the communication of the translingual blog posts that only Patrick, Xi Xi Lu, and Madeline can understand.

Classroom Repertoires as Dynamic Suggesting Engagement as Collective

Through each of these three vignettes, I story instances during the science investigation where engagement is not happening in ways that have been theorized in K-5 teaching emergent bi/multilinguals. If this is the case, what constitutes this moment as “engaging” for myself,

Madeline, and her family?

Through these stories, I argue that by diffracting concepts of resources as semiotic (van

Leeuwen, 2005) and mobile (Blommaert, 2010) with “intra-action”, we are provided with an expanded lens to see, hear, and feel how language making is engaging in ways that include but move far beyond social connections that symbolize and are recognized. By doing so, we are enabled to notice and tap into other connections, many of which are affective and non-indexing that initially went unnoticed by players and partners Room 246. Across the moment, it makes possible recognizing engagement as

• Xi Xi Lu ℘Madeline ℘Patrick℘ Chinese℘ Mandarin Singing ℘Tablet

℘Memories across U.S. and Chinese schooling experiences ℘Ice cube keeper

producing a blog, and creating possibilities to engage for all of them than in

previous moments in the classroom —doing science, doing school, doing

winning…

• Tablet℘Xi Xi Lu℘Madeline producing new possibilities in the classroom as the

tablet computers are reworked to more than a translator to cameras, recorders, and

131 players, and Xi Xi Lu and Madeline are reworked to being more than novice in

English to photographer and dependent on a translator to singer of Mandarin, and

writer of Chinese…

• Water℘cup℘cardboard℘tape producing an “ice cube keeper” enabling ice to

not melt, producing Xi Xi Lu and Madeline as they saw it, successful in the

science investigation

• Patrick ℘ Materials ℘Sounds producing Patrick as participant, moving from his

former position as head and body resting at desk…

• First Blog Post℘ Madeline℘Tablet ℘Frances℘ Camera producing the

possibility to break out of being the usual follower of Xi Xi Lu…

• Umami edibles ℘New iterations of “没有化 , lalala” ℘Xi Xi Lu and Family ℘

Frances producing a social connection not possible only through words…

• Video footage of the science investigation and “没有化 , lalala”℘ Xi Xi Lu’s

parents producing the possibility to break out of the kind of student Xi Xi Lu

thought her mom wanted her to be…

These collectives during the science investigation extend ways of conceptualizing the socio and applied linguistics concept of individual semiotic “repertoires” (Kusters et al.,

2017). Repertoires are dynamic, they change and iterate continually during activity. They do not sit still, but continue to iterate. Repertoires can also be collective, not only individual. The concept of repertoire is a reminder to not lose sight of why Xi Xi Lu and Madeline found this moment and many others significant: “We could do it and not Patrick”, Madeline noted, and in another moment, “Only the three of us knew”, Xi Xi Lu told her mom about the moment when I visited her home, referring to Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and Patrick knowing in a way their classmates

132 did not. These comments from Xi Xi Lu and Madeline refer to viewing themselves bringing different resources into the classroom than peers. Remnants from former moments when Xi Xi

Lu and Madeline are seen as more novice and Patrick seen as more expert, just as English- dominant students seem to be more expert in the class compared to them, move into the new intra-actions of the science investigation.

Diffracting Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s words with an intra-active lens, “repertoire” cannot be attributed to who we call “Xi Xi Lu” or “Madeline”, given that what children are or ‘what

‘they’ bring to the word are radically different from moment-to-moment given the different circumstances they are entangled with (Murris, 2016). With this lens, Madeline and Xi Xi Lu have many capacities that are realized differently across times and spaces in alliance or collectively with others. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, however, do not recognize their entanglements, as noted in their comments as to why the moment was important.

Diffracting translingualism and intra-action with the science investigation, these collectives of players and partners amplify who we come to think of as Madeline and Xi Xi Lu, and what they can do. Significant to repertoires as collective is that human-non-human capacities coming together make possible ways of noticing engagement in this moment as expanded: doing science, school, winning; producing a blog; enabling ice not to melt; a child physically participating and breaking out of being a follower; a researcher-family connection across verbal/written borders; and children, researcher, tablets, Chinese, and ice cube keeper reworking each other in parallel ways in order to act differently. According to Barad (2007), these entanglings are held together with the agentic forces that human and nonhuman bodies with more-than human recollections/feelings from former moments create with each other. In what

Barad calls “re-materializations”, what I consider iterations of language making, so too did

133 children and researcher have further opportunities to engage or different ways of participating.

Therefore, recognizing such connections within language making enables making small steps to move beyond a focus only on human players doing language, and doing so with words—ways that seemed to limit connections during the science investigation.

Implications for Teacher Education and Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms

What translingualism with intra-action produces aligns in many ways with previous scholarship on the classroom experiences of students with transnational experiences. For example, Bhatia and Ram (2004) and Jaffe-Walter and Lee (2018) suggest children and youth simultaneously negotiate connections from previous or multiple countries in tandem with new ways of doing schooling in a new country (Bhatia & Ram, 2004; Jaffe-Walter and Lee, 2018).

Furthermore, repertoires as dynamic align in many ways what multicultural educator Paris and linguistic anthropologist Alim refer to in their call for a culturally sustaining pedagogy (2014), calling educators to conceptualize culture and language as dynamic, involving evolving ways of living culture and language in dynamic classrooms in concert with what might be considered heritage or “traditional” cultural-linguistic practices. Nevertheless, translingualism with intra- action extends the argument of Paris and Alim and scholarship on transnational experiences of schooling. Repertoires as dynamic and collective suggest that rather than culture or language in a classroom chiefly created by children and their teacher as agents, culture and language making in a classroom is produced by ontological entanglements of agentic memories, sounds, material objects of classrooms, as they have different capacities through their collaboration. Second, players and partners have different affective potentials as they are re-placed across

U.S./China/home/school and that the repertoires that these players and partners produce together are thus affective. Just as Barad’s notion of “enfolding”, language making does not exist in the

134 rolling out of chronological present to future. Instead, in Room 246, language making is entangled with former moments from Oakville school and former schooling experience in China.

Similarly, I argue that it is engaging when former moments from China/U.S. enter into new intra- actions during the science investigation, producing new experiences in these new moments.

Third, as educators working in culturally and linguistically diverse schools and with families whose lived experiences may be different than our own, connections that build bridges in not only classrooms, but schools and communities, might not symbolize or be recognized. A language making that is also affective, such as the sung refrain of “没有化 , lalala”, and food shared with Madeline’s family such as chicken broth, bony fish, and fruit punch at her home, were among the conduits or players and partners to facilitate connections. This is significant in preparing in-service and pre-service teachers who will teach emergent bi/multilinguals given that future and current teachers are often taught by in-service teacher curriculum that food and music are more ‘superficial’ aspects of culture, and that teachers should pay more attention to what is thought to be more consequential aspects of culture such as socially-constructed attitudes/views, ways of doing school, and raising children (Hamayan, 2012; Wright, 2019). Such critiques derive from initiatives such as multicultural potluck food celebrations that schools often organize under the guise of multiculturalism and connecting families and students, but yet do not entertain what are considered the more consequential aspects of culture according to many scholars.

While the impetus for this critique is well-founded, it risks an unfortunate de-emphasis and under theorization of connections occurring with food, sounds, and combinations of more- than human players that might be significant in favor of socially constructed perspectives emphasizing patterns across cultures. This chapter illustrates how these were far from being trivial, as they spurred the linkages to connections with children and their families and different

135 ways of engaging that were more usual in the classroom. Providing a way to theorize aliment as significant to intercultural relational encounters where these conduits are agents in alliance with others, has been theorized outside the field of teaching emergent bi/multilinguals (see Powell &

Schulte, 2016).

This chapter suggests that in working with pre-service and in-service teachers, we need to continue to critique what might be empty performances of multiculturalism that would be critiqued by Banks (2018). However educators working in linguistically and culturally diverse schools and classrooms must continue to stay open to emergent, significant ways of connecting, in our daily school and classroom experiences. These are the comings together of moments that perhaps involve sound, food, material objects, and the forces these produce together with humans, that make it possible to form relationships with children and their families, and risk being overlooked.

136 Chapter 4. Google (Mis) Translate: Recognizing Additional Opportunities for Engagement Through Tensions Across Screen and Linguistic Borders Introduction In this chapter, I explore the enormous potential in opening and making visible opportunities for engagement with machine translation in classrooms. Inspired by Xi Xi Lu,

Madeline and their student teacher’s sense-making of a moment from writer’s workshop, I ask how does translation as a negotiation between hardware, software including Google Translate neural network, teacher, and emergent bi/multilingual children change ways of recognizing engagement? I theorize translation as a complex experience of moving in language in Room 246 together, and recognizing the often invisible connections that come out of this messy and often tension-provoking process. Translation in this moment is not only conceptualized as text-to-text correspondence occurring between textual language such as English/Chinese, Chinese/English, text on a page, and semiotically produced meaning by children and teachers. Rather, I set aside common questions of “is the translation accurate?”, “what is the meaning?”, and “what was intended?” to attune to what else translation might become both on and off the page and screen.

With this writing workshop moment, I also tell how over a three-year period, I work with the object of a funnel as a way to tell this story the surprise for me as researcher as I encountered translation differently. These stories together suggest that discovering the multiplicity of what a funnel can do inspires additional ways of theorizing engagement in this moment in the writing workshop.

Through intertwined stories, I show how engagement manifests in the tensions between different simultaneous ways of seeing, hearing, and feeling language, when theories are agentially cut by different theoretical constructs. By “(agential) cut”, I refer to Barad

(2007/2011), as what dynamically materializes, and that we recognize as materializing, combining amongst so many other options from moment-to-moment to create what we consider

137 language in Room 246 i.e., the “materializing effects” of a material-semiotic language making and its “particular ways of drawing boundaries between ‘humans’ and ‘non humans” (Barad,

2011, pp. 123-124). Why this is significant to room 246 is that together these theories produce what Barad calls “boundary-making practices” (p. 821), which in this case are the additional opportunities for engagement through the act of translation. I begin by introducing the writing workshop moment that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline noted as being so important.

Translation in the Writing Workshop

The writing workshop mini-lesson in Room 248 has finished. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, in

their first few months in a U.S. classroom, are in the back of the room at the bean-shaped

table with their student teacher. During the previous day in preparation for writing, Xi Xi

Lu glued a photograph, brought from home, of she and her sister eating ice cream when

they lived together in China. Xi Xi Lu labeled her photograph with English words such as

“ice cream” and “sister”. Madeline drew a picture of herself watering what appeared to

be a seedling sprouting from the ground (see Figure 4.1). Yet the dotted lined paper in

their writing workshop binder now sits in front of them at the table. The lines and dashes

primed for and awaiting English letters are looming (see Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.1. Pre-writing: Xi Xi Lu’s photograph (left), Madeline’s drawing (right).

138

Figure 4.2. Screen shot from video produced by Madeline with Go Pro.

Xi Xi Lu and Madeline can’t yet speak English sentences. The student teacher doesn’t

know how to speak Mandarin Chinese. In the weeks that follow this moment, Madeline

notes that the tablet with Google translate is the only bilingual one at the table. Between

them they engage in a material-semiotic blend of head nods, pointing to images, and

scrunched faces. “Charades” is what the student teacher called their communication,

referencing a game where players guess a word from pantomime.

The student teacher asks questions to attempt to understand what is happening in Xi Xi

Lu and Madeline’s drawing. Yet image and drawing alone were not sufficient ways of

producing meaning in the writing workshop. Text on a page often appeared most valued.

Children, for example, were often told not to “worry about pictures” and to leave space

for them after text was composed. “What if you’re done with your picture, do you still

have to write?” asked Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classmate on an earlier day. “Yes!” was

the teacher’s emphatic reply (9/9/16 field notes). This was a narrative that teachers often

reluctantly practiced in their negotiation of curriculum standards (1/27/17; 11/10/16 field

notes).

139 In this moment of writer’s workshop, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s classroom teacher notes wanting them to write in Chinese. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline indicate wanting to write in English, and also wanting to be free of their peer translator and friendly competitor, Patrick, the only other person who knows Mandarin Chinese in Room

246. In this moment, Patrick writes next to them, silently, belly down on the floor under the tablet where we all sit, seemingly ignoring the translation happening at the table above him. As a researcher in Room 246, Patrick’s silent English-writing body brushes up against my feet as I record the following moment: Finger tap on glass screen. Xi Xi Lu speaks. Mandarin sounds fill the space between them. The neural network of Google Translate is activated. The tablet responds “house”, even though Xi Xi Lu is seemingly negotiating the translation for 屋 (lǎojiā, hometown). “no, no, no, no, no”, Xi Xi Lu speaks to tablet in response to this translation. “In your house? Is that your house? The student teacher responds to the Google Translation. Head nod side to side by Xi Xi Lu. “No?” the student teacher says. Xi Xi Lu hops back, with her eyes on the tablet screen (see figure

4.3).

140

Figure 4.3. Xi Xi Lu hops back after finger taps on tablet.5

Student teacher finger taps on smooth glass screen. Xi Xi Lu speaks. Student teacher

finger taps on glass screen and then says to tablet: “In your house you were eating ice

cream?”. Tablet is then pushed to Xi Xi Lu. An algorithm comprised of hundreds of

numbers, a processing of bilingual corpora, English-Chinese, the semantics and hidden

material between the corpora, what Google Translate calls “interlingua”. Translation

projected by tablet. “no, ehhhh”, from Xi Xi Lu. Finger tap on glass screen. Xi Xi Lu’s

face is close to the tablet. She speaks in Mandarin, 冰冷店 (Bīnglěng diàn—ice shop)

(see figure 4.4)

5 The images in Figures 4-6, cut together video from research-Kodak touch footage and a collage of screen shots from multiple video cameras with text spoken and produced with tablet, Google Translate, children, and student teacher. These diffractive images suggest the simultaneity of communicating, not communicating, and affective connections with the concepts translingualism entangled with intra-action.

141

Figure 4.4. Xi Xi Lu speaks to tablet with Google Translate after what is understood as mistranslation.

This back and forth between finger taps, Mandarin, English, passing tablet with Google

Translate continues for a while, and then the student teacher writes seven words on a

post-it. “I –was- at- an –ice- cream- shop”, handing it to Xi Xi Lu. Xi Xi Lu copies the

seven words on her lined paper. An English sentence is produced. A few minutes later,

when the student teacher speaks to the tablet, “protect the environment”, Google

Translate and voice activation hears “pregnant”. Xi Xi Lu’s sister’s name is furthermore

translated to the English word ‘blue’. There is perhaps relief, joy, awkwardness

manifesting through the covered mouth and giggles of the mistranslations of this moment

(see Figure 4.5).

142

Figure 4.5 Mistranslation of Xi Xi Lu’s sister’s name as “blue”.

Reconceptualizing Translation as a Way to Engage

How can translation and engagement be conceptualized in this moment? Initially influenced by a human-oriented understanding of language and engagement, I was most able to see this moment of composition and translation as a funneling, a reduction capturing and squelching of the resources children have in Room 246. From this perspective, there seemed to be fewer ways for Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to be engaged during the writing workshop moment.

For example, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline weren’t expressing in Chinese, the written resource they had the most access to. They were copying stilted English sentences. They were sitting with an adult in the corner of the room, away from their classmates. More contact was happening with tablet computers and teacher than peers.

If interactions with peers and teachers were what mattered this most, this moment could be considered isolating. If linguistic-semiotic expression on a page that communicates is what matters as literacy, this moment might be seen as reductive. If we are focused on a child’s individual semiotic and linguistic repertoires, then it could be theorized that children’s learning risks becoming lost in the machine-student assemblage—an alienation and disempowerment with

143 technology, as one of the few studies supporting Google Translate for pedagogical purposes in

K-12 classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals argues (Vogel et al., 2018). Yet Xi Xi’s,

Madeline’s, and teacher’s sense-making of this moment throughout the school year suggests that we divert our attention to what additional opportunities for engagement might come out of this moment that we cannot recognize.

Language Making with Google Translate: A Funneling?

For a year after I participated in this moment, the funnel was the visual image of how I had come to see the writing workshop moment as reductive of what children had the potential to contribute. The visual image of the funnel nagged at me for years until only recently with Neel, three years after the original moment, I purchased a funnel at a hardware store close to Oakville school to write this chapter, not entirely knowing where it was going to go.

When Neel and I brought the funnel home from the hardware store, we began to fill it with water from the tap in the bathtub. The funnel moved from the heavy force of the gushing stream of liquid. With the funnel’s tapered bottom blocked, water poured over the sides of the top. When the tapered bottom lifted from the bathtub floor, the blockage was freed, the liquid changed shape, moving faster on the bottom than the top, making a smooth narrow cylindrical ribbon. We then filled the wide mouth with bolts, nails, screws, and Legos. Unlike the water, the small jagged pieces became stuck, jammed in the funnel’s elephant-like snout. Just as when the funnel’s bottom was blocked by the bathtub bottom and Legos, so too could Google Translate be viewed as funneling and squelching the more expansive resources available to Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline to play in language making. From this perspective, Google translate could be thought to render Xi Xi Lu and Madeline as silenced, just as with water in the blocked funnel in bathtub, where nothing can come out of the bottom, only overflow out of the top.

144 Extending (Machine) Translation in K-5 Classrooms by Working Across Interdisciplinary

Fields

The funnel, then, could be a way to view machine translation in classrooms. With the prevalence of web-based machine translation software such as Google Translate, there is a growing body of work in second language studies, largely in higher education settings, pertaining to classroom practices. The largest focus of most recent work centers on how machine translation software, funnels and sifts text from one language to another. There is an emphasis on how accurate or not these translations are with its target language pair, and how Google

Translate as a tool might hold different potential benefits for learners across target language proficiency levels (Case, 2015; Garcia & Pena, 2011; Groves & Mundt, 2015; Vogel et al.,

2018). There are few studies supporting Google Translate for pedagogical purposes in K-12 classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals (exceptions include Lake & Beisly, 2019; Vogel et al., 2018).

Machine translation can be conceptualized in classrooms with young children differently than a text-to-text correspondence that communicates, potentially marginalizing children.

Inspiring such a notion is empirical work in early childhood studies and children language and literacies addressing children working with the hardware of iPads and tablets (Burnett, 2017;

Dagenais et al., 2015; Dagenais et al., 2017; Knight & Dooley, 2015; Rowe & Miller, 2016;

Toohey & Dagenais, 2015; Wohlwend, 2017); affective intensities between children and youth’s bodies, hardware, and place (Hollett & Ehret, 2017; Lenters, 2016; Wargo, 2015 ); work in media theory that addresses additional considerations of software (Langlois, 2014; Ramati &

Pinchevski, 2017); and work in literary translation (Scott, 2019). Consider again the funnel. How might the funnel be reconceptualized through these additional perspectives? How might a

145 different way of conceptualizing the funnel change the way of understanding this writing workshop moment with Google Translate differently than has been theorized in empirical scholarship in the field of teaching emergent bi/multilinguals?

Building from Literacy Translation.

The work of Clive Scott, literary translator, provides a starting point for how to reconceptualize translation differently. Scott writes:

What if translation is an adventure not in meaning but…the experience of language?

What if reading is looked upon not as a process of interpreting, or extracting meaning

from, text but as a process of existential/experimental … coordination or …

orchestration? What if translation is not a test of comprehension but of the fruitfulness of

our inability to comprehend?... The central motor principle of translation is morphism, a

sliding across languages or linguistic material, across the senses, across the participating

body, in order to achieve an ever-changing … variational play. (2019, pp. 88-89)

Considering Scott’s conceptualization of translation, I pose the question: how might we look comprehension in the eye, and yet before getting an answer, slide down the curves of the black and gray letters and characters on the Google Translate application, explode outside of the rectangular boxes on the screen that expects us to derive signification, and from this momentum spring into other variations of what could be happening in translation exchanges, that we perhaps don’t fully understand? Scott might suggest that rather than avoiding the risk of the funnel (the threat), we should stand on the edge of the funnel’s mouth. We should stick our head in and walk around, poke our hands inside and engage with the sloshing material inside. With Scott’s conceptualization of translation, we get sucked into the funnel despite the risk. With Barad’s

146 concept of intra-action, I claim we’re already in the funnel in ways we might not recognize, and that the funnel might look different than we imagine.

Potentials for Children with Hardware and Software of Tablets.

Much of the conversation in children’s language and literacies research is concerned with what opportunities are brought about through the material characteristics of the hardware for children. These characteristics include the size and portability of the tablet changing how one’s body can be positioned (Knight & Dooley, 2015); the visible tablet screen making work less private and more sharable and applications providing instant audiences (Burnett, 2017); giving instant feedback (Wohlwend, 2017); and keyboards with different orthographies enabling writing in different languages (Prince, 2017) yet also constraining if a particular orthography is not represented (Dagenais, et al., 2017); and sound-to-text applications providing opportunities for children with less familiarity with written text (Dagenais et al., 2017).

Work in children’s language and literacies suggest that the hardware of tablet computers and software applications are significant to creating additional opportunities in classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children for multiple reasons. First, hardware and software are noted as having the potential to redistribute relational connections between children and teachers by bringing home languages into the classroom and by encouraging the process of making meaning with resources that extend beyond traditional verbal and written forms (Dagenais et al., 2017;

Mundt & Groves, 2016; Prince, 2017; Rowe & Miller, 2016; Toohey et al., 2015). Tablet computers and software applications are noted as furthermore producing an ambiguity over who was more knowledgeable or the “native speaker” (Knight & Dooley, 2015; Lawrence, 2018;

Toohey et al., 2015). They additionally make different proficiencies in English reading and

147 writing less relevant compared to experiences with media and innovative approaches to composing (Smythe et al., 2014; Toohey & Dageneis, 2015).

Digital Devices: Transformations, Affective Connections, Algorithms, and Human-non-

Human Networks.

Another strand of children and youth literacies scholarship has begun to theorize the two- way exchange between shape-shifting tablet computers and digital technologies, and what children and youth can do and become with these transformations (Burnett, 2017; Burnett &

Merchant, 2017; Ehret et al., 2016; Hollett & Ehret, 2017). This body of work suggests we miss significant aspects of exchanges by foregrounding human bodies working with hardware or what is visible on a computer screen. Instead, this literature asks that we attune to the often invisible affective intensities produced through intra-actions of children and youth’s moving bodies, and the material characteristics of digital devices and place (Hollett & Ehret, 2017; Lenters, 2016;

Wargo, 2015). Scholarship in media studies adds to what else might be invisible in exchanges suggesting we must also attend to interactions with software invisible at the user-interface-level.

For example, Langlois (2014) suggests we reconceptualize meaning as “software applications that talk to each other” (p. 29). By ‘talking’, Langlois refers to language making from the perspective of technology, which to her is an emergent transmission of signals where “different kinds of physical and chemical signals turned into electricity, binary data, and linguistic signs” are networked with a human’s words (p. 13). Langlois points out that when working with technology, it is rarely one software application involved in exchanges with media, but rather multiple software programs that send signals to each other. From a software perspective, then, this exchange is multiple and networked, even thought it might be viewed by the end-user as a singular software application such as Google Translate. Furthermore, media theorists Ramati and

148 Pinchevski (2017) note that Google Translate and the translations its neural network as a human- non-human algorithmic mix. To Ramati and Pinchevski, our analysis must consider Google

Translate as more than one player and partner, including multilingual human and non-human translated texts, software applications, and human end-users.

Bridging Insights of Diverse Fields Toward Extending (Machine) Translation in K-8

Classroom.

Bringing the insights from these three diverse fields and theoretical orientations in children’s language and literacies and media theory together suggests translation in classrooms is more-than word-to-word correspondence. Put together they suggest (Machine) Translation in classrooms includes a networked process of emergent bi/multilingual children, hardware, software, algorithms working together and the affective potentials such players and partners bring together. With Barad’s concept of intra-action, the argument of literary translation scholar

Scott is extended, suggesting that language making, an adventure of translation, is not primarily orchestrated by a human translator experiencing between an original source text or language and target text and language. Therefore, by bringing empirical work and theoretical approaches across fields together, it becomes clear that current scholarship pertaining to machine translation software in language studies are significantly underestimating the complicated and multi-way give and take negotiation of the relational exchanges between students and software (Case, 2015;

Garcia and Pena, 2011; Groves & Mundt, 2015; Vogel et al., 2018).

Analysis I: By Children, Student Teacher with Tablets, Human Translator, Google Translate

149

Figure 4.6. Video elicitation interviews and ranking of writing workshop moment.

I begin the analysis of the writing workshop moment with children and tablets in the classroom, and then move to a second round of analysis in a subsequent section by diffracting translingualism with intra-action. Over the course of school year, what children and teachers noted about the writing workshop moment changed depending on when the conversation occurred throughout the school year and whether exchanges involved myself, tablet computer, different human translators, and different ways Google Translate’s continually changing neural network was activated. This resonates with Canagarajah’s (2013) and Barad’s (2007) orientation that relations of power change depending on who and what are involved. With one human translator, when I asked Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, “What do you think the kids in (your) class think when they see you with the tablet”, Xi Xi Lu initiated “會覺得我們比較那個吧… (it seems like we’re…)”, and Madeline completed her sentence, “我們像笨蛋 (we’re like idiot )” for working with the tablet . Xi Xi Lu then noted that their peers “覺得我們奇怪吧 (they might feel weird)” when they see only Xi Xi Lu and Madeline with tablets. Indeed, Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline’s peers sometimes reported feeling uncomfortable when not being able to understand the Mandarin with tablet. Yet other times, as the teacher noted, their peers without access to

150 Chinese “don’t even seem to notice, sometimes they are curious as to what they are doing and stand behind one of the girls…when they’re translating and just kind of watch it because they think it looks really cool”, she noted. Yet ‘Cool’ is not how Xi Xi Lu and Madeline made sense of working with the tablet in this moment and how this made them appear to their classmates.

This held true for Madeline across moments throughout the school year, though was less prevalent for Xi Xi Lu, who in other moments thought she was perceived as capable with the tablet. ‘Cool’ is seemingly not how Xi Xi Lu and Madeline felt when their English-dominant peers sometimes asked them if they needed ‘their tablet’, likely well-intentioned. For example, when Clarisse, Xi Xi Lu’s peer asked one day over-enunciating in a baby-like voice perhaps in attempt to convey care, “can you say it in English, or do you need your tablet?” (4/21/17), I noticed Xi Xi Lu’s body slump and eyes move to the side as she quickly shook her head side to side, “no”.

With a different human translator, Xi Xi Lu reported feeling nervous (感覺緊張) because the tablet always translated it (her desired meaning )wrong (因為它總是說錯了) (3/17/17 interview). Madeline responded to Xi Xi Lu, “yeah…I don’t like to use it very much, but if without it, I don’t know how to communicate with the teacher” (是不大喜歡用

但如果不用了話 就不知道怎麼跟老師說了). (3/17/17 interview). Madeline’s dad reported a similar dilemma during a home visit that tablets were necessary, but not ideal. To Madeline, with the tablet’s access to Mandarin Chinese and images to facilitate communication brought them further away from an immersion in written and spoken English. With tablets there was a greater risk, as she saw it, of not acquiring the verbal and written English so valued in the narrative of

American schooling, and once returning to China.

151 When watching the video of the moment with a human translator, a few days after the moment occurred, Madeline noted that between the student teacher, it was the tablet that could do more in this instance, because it was the only one that knew Chinese and English. Madeline disagreed with Xi Xi Lu. She noted no one could do more in this instance because the student teacher didn’t understand Chinese, and she didn’t understand English. While the student teacher initially agreed with Xi Xi Lu, “I would say the tablet (has control) more than me”, a minute later noted she was able to take control of the powerful tablet, harnessing it to maintain control. “The tablet was my control of the situation where I would say if I removed the tablet, they would have been writing in Chinese” (11/16 video elicitation interview). For the classroom teacher, she wanted Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to be writing in Chinese and saw the tablet as a force preventing them from doing so: “now they won’t even try to write in Chinese. Something that we’ve done with everyone is that you have to try it first and I will help you fix it later.…because I would love for them to write it in Chinese to keep going” (9.26.16 field notes). To the teacher, the tablet with Google Translate interfered with her writer’s workshop pedagogy of valuing fluency of expression and text production over accuracy of grammar and vocabulary.

Despite these noted tensions with the tablet, many other times when watching the video of the moment in the last few months of the school year, the moment was re-storied to be significant and very important because it was so funny. The reason Madeline noted ranking the moment as one of the most significant was her reasoning in English that “the tablet says b(l)ah b(l)ah b(l)ah”, that the tablet speaks nonsense. It was clarified: “the translation is funny because the translation is wrong” (see Figure 4.7).

152

Figure 4.7. The translation is funny because wrong.

More Possibilities with the Funnel? Translation Beyond Screen and Linguistic Borders

Returning to the funnel, how might the funnel guide making sense of these words of Xi

Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher and their multiple and often contradictory ways of perceiving the tablet and Google Translate neural network as both restricting, yet a significant moment that is so funny in its mistranslations? To explore additional ways of recognizing engagement, I return to the story of working with Neel and the funnel before considering how this changes the analysis of the moment.

***

Before we left the hardware store, watching Neel negotiate the large plastic contraption of the funnel, it seemed the funnel could be and do more than what I imagined it could when participating in the original moment when I primarily saw the funnel as a sieve and narrower.

With Neel in the hardware store, in the span of three minutes the hard plastic cone of the funnel transformed to a wizard and gnome hat, a pirate spyglass, a gun, a telescope to view the moon, and a megaphone that announced “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN” through the corridor of hardware store aisle eleven. With the funnel, Neel could be more than what the hardware store employee with orange vest that began to watch us might think—a young boy in a shopping cart.

Just as I, the writer of this story with the funnel, can become more than the mama pushing a little

153 boy with the funnel in a cart as I tell this story of the funnel. A few minutes later, walking in the door to our house, with Neel, the funnel became a horn instrument. The warm air from Neel’s lungs and mouth placed on the narrow spout produced a booming “dun-Dun-dun-dun”, close to my ear. The felt force lead me to scrunch my face and shoulders while it sent a chickadee on the nearby cherry tree to flee quickly.

Several days later, as part of a science experiment to create a volcano, we poured baking soda into the funnel attached to a glass bottle and white powder became stuck. I banged and shifted the funnel with bottle repeatedly until the powder slowly fell into the bottle below. On another day, Neel placed the funnel on an empty shampoo bottle and added water to the top of the funnel. No water moved outside the funnel, only the inside. The bottle was filled quickly, something not possible without the funnel given the bottle’s narrow spout. On another occasion,

I carried a fifty-pound bag of sand from our garage and placed it in a baby pool for Neel to play with. It was left over from Neel’s second birthday party over two years before. I remembered the silky sand from two years prior and how it made dust clouds as it was poured, so I was surprised when my pouring rendered sticky, damp sand ideal for sandcastle building. The moisture of the garage and time had transformed the sand of my memory. Neel took the funnel and immediately began to roll the funnel in the damp sand like a rolling pin. The sand quickly became flat, smooth and taught. It formed sinking indentations in response to my finger pokes, and then became smooth and flat when Neel and the funnel forced it flat like a tamper. Horizontal, when the funnel is flipped on its side like a rolling pin, gravity doesn’t pull the sand to the narrow spout on the other side. Sand is spread and flattened. There is a smaller risk of something falling out the other side, unlike with water in the bathtub.

154 In these moments, when Neel℘ water℘funnel are entangled differently, be it in the bathtub, with volcano making, the hardware store, with sand, on the front porch, there’s a play with the funnel, a push and pull between different relations of Neel℘ funnel of what they enable each other to do and become. The funnel as vertical produces Neel as quick bottle filler to wash soap out of hair before it stings his eyes. The funnel as wizard hat produces Neel as book series character. Funnel as pirate spyglass produces Neel as daring captain. Funnel as telescope produces Neel as scientist. Funnel as horned instrument produces Neel as musician and augmenter to bird’s habitat. Funnel as rolling pin produces Neel as momentarily a construction worker, tamping roads to his sand city. Yet while these small moments challenge the initial haunting idea of funnel as limiting, funnel as reducer of possibilities, all of these possibilities still remain. In each of these moments, opportunities might be changed in a matter of a second if the funnel is lifted, filled, pushed on its side or remains vertical.

Analysis II: Returning to Analysis of the Writing Workshop Moment with the Funnel

I return to the analysis of the writing workshop moment several years later after watching the videos with Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher in the classroom. The funnel now sits on my desk as I write. It’s large, wide voluminous open top graduates into a foot-long narrow tapered spout smaller than my pinky finger. I find its large, clunky shape grotesque. I am afraid of this funnel. It evokes memories of the sense of risk I initially experienced conceptualizing the tablet and Google Translate neural network as an isolator and marginalizer in the classroom. It’s this fear, however, staying with me, just like the potential of the funnel to transform the relations between the activity, Neel, and myself, that tells me it must be important.

What can happen in this new analysis with funnel is just as the many possibilities of what

Neel and the funnel can become when entangled together. The funnel then begins to seem less

155 limiting than I initially imagined when I first witnessed the writing workshop moment. What does this suggest for a different analysis of composing in translation with Google Translate in

Room 246? Just as with the funnel, there’s a seriousness in the risk of reduction. Google

Translate neural network and tablet often produce what is considered a mistranslation, one that is not infallible. From a humanist notion of intentionality, it often does not produce the informational equivalent that Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, teacher, and I might note we are seeking. Yet, the funnel can also be so much more, just as engagement can be in this moment. And so, after three years, I oblige the funnel’s request to engage in an analysis with it.

Engaging in Tensions Through Toggling

Can writing do something other than express? Can the language of translation do more than communicate across written language pairs? Let’s return to Scott’s (2019) translation as an adventure in the experience of language, the sliding across linguistic material with participating human body. How do diffracted concepts of translingualism and intra-action make possible conceptualizing this sloshing linguistic material during the writing workshop? It is possible to not only see the funnel as a vertical sieve where material has the potential to get stuck in its narrowed bottom. With concepts diffracted, the funnel can also be viewed as a long generative incubator tipped on its side (see figure 4.8).

156 Figure 4.8. A pathway of toggling, a thick and dense mixture—cuts of language making from enfolding from figures 4.9-4.11.

Just as with Neel rolling the sand, the funnel acts as a dowel of sorts, rolling and re- rolling, flattening the hierarchy between players and partners in the classroom together differently. In the funnel on its side as incubator (Figure 4.8), Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, student teacher, and researcher can enter the funnel and engage with the splattering material.

With the funnel now on its side, imagine the writers workshop moment anew, where players and partners are in different configurations. Together logograms, words, algorithms, chemical signals, finger taps, children and teacher bubble and gurgle, slosh around, co-join, re- join in a material-semiotic mashup. With the funnel on its side, translation can be more than an isolating practice of humans with text and machine. Rather, as this mashup of linguistic material becomes momentarily activated with each other there is a variational play of translation, a toggling. Toggling is the back and forth, forth and back of communicating and not communicating (recognizing and not symbolizing signs) and non-indexing/a-signifying affective connections where the tensions between these are engaging. Barad (2014) writes, “even when information is erased (within new intra-actions), the trace of all measurement remains” (p.261).

Such toggling, then, is engaging due to the affective connections still existing from former intra- actions even when we have seemingly moved on to a new moment of translation. Affective connections are thus the contrasts of what still remains of Xi Xi Lu and Madeline feeling incompetent with tablet computers with what they call “funny” simultaneously existing in a new moment.

In the following section I suggest how translingualism and intra-action make it possible to recognize additional pathways of engagement in Room 246. I begin by zooming in to analyze

157 iterations of language making from moment-to-moment during the writing workshop to emphasize tensions between communicating, not communicating, and non-indexing/a-signifying affective connections. In this zooming in, I also consider tensions of the ambiguous and reluctant entanglements of this linguistic material. Next, I zoom out to suggest how toggling between these language matterings propelled a continued experimentation with the tablet by recognizing the experimentation that provided a pathway of connections for surviving as novices in an

American classroom, such as opportunities throughout the school year to blog science content- knowledge, connect with teachers and peers, and journal write in Chinese.

Not composing a written product in English, not socially connecting, what might be described as frustrations

I begin by telling of one zoomed-in freeze-frame iteration of language-making during the writing workshop to begin the story of the toggling that occurs in the funnel on its side. This is the tension produced between two factors: not composing a written product in English, and not socially connecting (see Figure 4.9).

158 Figure 4. 9. One cut of language making producing the risk of no written English, not communicating, nor socially connecting with peers/teacher.

Recall the opening moment of the writing workshop moment, as players and partners from the bean-shaped table together engage in translation. There is Xi Xi Lu, Madeline and student teacher at a close angle next to each other. The tablet hardware has brought their bodies in proximity in order to hear and speak with the voice activation software (similarly noted by

Burnett, 2017; Burnett & Merchant, 2017; Knight & Dooley, 2015). Tablets have transformed the rhythm/speed of the moment (Hollett & Ehret, 2017), a back and forth, forth and back like a slow-moving metronome of sound to text translations and long pauses of waiting in between

(Knight & Dooley, 2015; Wohlwend, 2017).

As Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher pass the tablet like game dice back and forth across the bean-shaped table, it might seem like ‘nothing’ productive is happening in these mistranslations. Yet something is happening. The English word ‘house’ is more than the meaning of the words mistranslated from Google Translate’s transnational corpora of books, websites, and feedback from human translators through the Google Translate Community (see

Johnson, Schuster, Le et al., 2016; Ramati & Pinchevski, 2017). The Mandarin lǎojiā spoken by

Xi Xi Lu and head nods are furthermore more than the meaning of the words translated by

Google translate as “house” and “no”. Between Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher, these meshes of sounds, finger taps, tablet, logograph, image, pointing to a drawing, asking questions in English, and scrunched facial expressions or stares are not only a performance of seeing and hearing communication suggesting the translation is incorrect, as it might from a translingual lens. Translations are felt (Barad, 2007).

159 Felt is lǎojiā, a force of sounds that the student teacher is not trained to hear and has little access. This force of sound and not-good-enough translation is felt by Xi Xi Lu. Xi Xi Lu then responds by spawning ever new Mandarin sounds, head nods, “nononononono”, “no, ehhh” and finger taps, which are perhaps a desperate scavenging of material to push forward and survive in this moment in Room 246 where words that index are sparse. Felt is the force of Xi Xi Lu’s words, a child talking back to the Google Translate neural network, a talking back I never saw her do with student teacher. These words of Google Translate and Xi Xi Lu are felt by the teacher, provoking her to tap on the glass tablet screen: “tap. tap. In your house? Is that in your house?” and “tap. In your house you were eating ice cream?”. Felt by the algorithms of the voice activation software are these urgent sounds and taps, which in response produce numeric streams, calculating and re-calculating as they intersect with the architecture of Google Translate numerically surging and morphing. Thus, translation as forces felt are forces of sound, talking back, and sound with finger taps that change algorithms, all of which change what translation can be in that moment.

This language making, a sloshing of linguistic material felt and miscommunicating, produces the risk of frustrations: not composing a written product in English and not socially connecting. Yet these apparent frustrations and tensions are more profound than the simple explanation of mistranslations produced by Google Translate. Diffracting translingualism with intra-action, I suggest tensions exist because the players and partners noted during the writing workshop moment are reluctantly and ambiguously entangled.

Tensions as a reluctant entanglement are Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher’s apparent reluctance toward their relationship with the tablet and Google Translate neural network as they express during video elicitation interviews in words such as being perceived as “weird”,

160 “idiot”, “nervous”, “don’t like to use it”, the tablet being bilingual while they are not, and “the

(tablet) has more control than me”. Analyzing these words with translingualism suggests in the retrospective narrative accounts of the original moments, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher can express meaning about the original moments and perhaps their intentionality through their spoken words and actions (Canagarajah, 2013).

Through a lens of translingualism these words spoken, actions performed, and pointing to objects such as the continual finger taps, tablet flashing logographs, Xi Xi Lu’s “no, ehhh”, and student teacher’s questions in the original moment can also be analyzed to indicate specific meanings in the specific context of the writing workshop (Kusters, 2018; Lin, 2018).

Translingualism further suggests that in the original moment, intentionality may be expressed through the continual usage features (Canagarajah, 2013), such as the repeated finger taps and guessed phrases like “in your house you were eating ice cream?” These could be considered an intentionality of continually searching for a particular way of propelling the interaction forward.

It further suggests that being an independent writer is a possibility.

Yet the tension comes to play because also using an intra-active lens leads one to question to whom we can attribute these words. Through the lens of intra-action, the voices that comprise the supposed reluctance of the moment such as wanting to break away from the tablet that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline think position them as stupid or idiot, not wanting to be different than peers who don’t need to work with the tablet, working tutorial-style with an adult teacher rather than peers, and copying from the post-it, are a not those of Xi Xi, Madeline, and student teacher. Rather, the reluctant voices and felt frustrations are a multivoiced toggling. The toggling of this ‘voice’ speaking of the original writing workshop moment is the emergent transmission of signals being transmitted through the tablet, where “physical and chemical signals (are) turned

161 into electricity, binary data, and linguistic signs” (Langlois, 2014), and a dynamic neural network comprised of transnational digital texts and websites, human input, Xi Xu, Madeline, teachers, and tablet. Thus, diffracting intra-action with translingualism, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline can never be the independent writers they claim they want to be given their ontological entanglement with tablet and Google Translate neural network. Yet this cut of language making where there is a risk of no written English, not communicating, not connecting breaks apart quickly.

Writer in English, no longer dependent on peer translator, writing not expressing intentions

Continuing to story the toggling in the funnel/incubator on its side, I show that iterations of language making from just a few minutes before are re-combined, producing yet another material-semiotic mashup. Frustration and risk do not sit still. Recall during the original moment when the translation finally seems good-enough, the student teacher writes English words in black letters on Post-it: “I-was-at-an-ice-cream-shop”, and Xi Xi Lu copies this in her notebook, becoming a writer in English.

What is good-enough about this translation is perhaps the relief in contrast to the previous moment where language is not symbolizing and cannot be recognized. Thus, zooming in to yet another iteration of this moment is the tension between being writer in English and not dependent on peer translator, and writing not expressing and symbolizing. To the classroom teacher, aligning with the philosophical underpinnings of the writing workshop curriculum, what could seem like an opening of becoming a writer in English, is simultaneously a closing. It is seen as reductive because this version of writing is not an activity of expression rendering reflections of real-world experiences. It is a copying of a stilted English sentence. While this teacher-facilitated copying presents a reductive form of literacy for the classroom teacher, writing as expression is not what Xi Xi Lu and Madeline note is important to them. To Xi Xi Lu

162 and Madeline, there is a slight loss that they must compromise on the meaning of their story. Yet expression is not only what matters in this moment to them. What is significant is that this process of translation it is producing something other than expression and story they are telling.

Mattering to them is that the lines on their writer’s workshop notebook that were once looming are now filled, producing Xi Xi Lu as writer in English and therefore no longer dependent on the peer translator, Patrick, her top competitor.

Figure 4.10. A second cut of language making producing Xi Xi Lu as writer in English, no longer dependent on peer translator, writing not expressing.

In the funnel as incubator, there is a further tension that runs through this iteration of language making. Attending to the ambiguity of the entanglement, translingualism and intra- action with each other leave open the question as to the nature of the entanglement. It brings into question the certainty of who are the players and partners in translation at the bean-shaped table.

Just as what Google Translate consists of from each moment to the next remains in question as transnational texts and algorithms dynamically come together to comprise its ever-emergent

163 corpora, so too are Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, child, student, and teacher. This tension of tablet and children having porous identities is one explanation for why ‘control’ cannot be clearly located by children and teachers. As the student teacher noted, “The tablet (has more) control than me…the tablet was my control”, and to Madeline the tablet could do more, because it was the only one that knew Chinese and English. Inferred from student teacher and Madeline’s words is that teacher and peer translator are no longer constructed as having more ‘control’ in the classroom than Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, as was often the case in Room 246.The tablet and

Google Translate Neural Network could therefore be viewed as players that change the status of power between children and teacher in the classroom (see also Knight & Dooley, 2015;

Lawrence, 2018; Toohey et al., 2015 referring to iPads). For example, for the classroom teacher,

Google Translate neural network with tablet threatened a ‘control’ of practicing their language ideologies in pedagogical practices, a role often attributed to adult teachers. It prevented her from fostering Chinese in children’s writing practices while for the student teacher, Google Translate neural network, as she says, is her control of enforcing monolingual language ideologies centering English. For teachers, an entangling with Google Translate neural network therefore both threatens and makes possible their ‘control’ of practicing their language ideologies in pedagogical practices.

Yet according to Madeline and student teacher, it is unclear who and what has this

‘control’ during this moment of translation. The notion of identities being porous and agencies existing in alliance from an intra-active lens is perhaps why ‘control’ feels uncertain and can’t be located in the way Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher are perhaps searching for it, attempting to attribute this control or agency to tablet, Google Translate, themselves, or each other. Such a notion of porous identities and distributed agency with an intra-active lens perhaps

164 threatens the independence Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher assume is possible. Yet the student teacher seemingly having less ‘control’ does not also suggest more agency for Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. Even though children and teachers may be changing the dynamic network through their finger taps and oral language, ultimately Google appears to be the owner of this network to which they may be entangled with (Beer, 2009; Langlois, 2014).

Child-teacher Connection, Yet Not Understanding or Being Understood

To Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, what is most significant about this moment of writing is what occurs a few minutes later. Ending the story of language making with a funnel on its side from the writing workshop moment is another cut of language making producing a child-teacher connection, yet not understanding or being understood. Iterating and re-iterating, the translation morphs. Recall the moment of mistranslations and laughter. Zooming in, hhhhhhh

℘tablet℘student teacher℘children ℘(not) good-enough translations finger taps℘head nods℘Mandarin and English sounds℘Google Translate neural network, slide across each other

(see figure 4.11).

165 Figure 4.11. A third cut of language making producing a child-teacher connection, yet not understanding or being understood.

These components bump into and connect with each other. Imagine that “Protect the environment” and the name of Xi Xi Lu’s sister, words thought to index by student teacher, a potential searching for communicative meaning to link to Madeline’s drawing, are quickly changed into a numerical form, then back into the alphabetical form “pregnant” and “blue”. Yet despite this momentary understanding of these words, there is an overall miscommunication, a

(not) understanding and (not) being understood as to what is happening in the pictures. Yet as Xi

Xi Lu notes, the translation being “wrong”, the “blah, blah, blah” of the tablet, according to her, is what produces the moment as “funny”. It is this funniness, this juxtaposition of an affective connection between child-teacher-Google Translate neural network-tablet, yet not understanding or being understood, that matters to Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. It is this mattering of funniness that produces a child-teacher connection, despite the miscommunication and not understandings that for them renders the moment as engaging. Yet intra-acting with this apparent funniness is the feeling of being seen as “weird” and incompetent with the tablet.

Toggling as Generative for Translation and Engagement

The zoomed in iterations of language making storied as toggling occurring in a funnel on its side emphasize the moment-to-moment tensions in how language-making feels and how it can be heard and seen differently. This process of toggling in language making emphasizes the tensions of these different ways of making sense of language, communicating, and not. Yet it is beyond these individual cuts and iterations that warrant our full attention. Where recognizing additional opportunities for engagement is most evident is when zooming out to view these iterations of language-making together as a toggling between communicating, not

166 communicating, non-indexing/a-semiotic affective connections in ambiguous and reluctant entanglements across these micro-moments.

Engaging the tensions between what from an intra-active lens is the reality of the entanglements and from a translingual lens, a stated desired reality of the entanglements, suggests what Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and teachers report holding them back may simultaneously be what is pushing them forward to a different kind of agency that they are not fully able to recognize. Therefore, toggling between communication, miscommunication, and affective connections in this instance is therefore an ambiguous and reluctant process of negotiation, where Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, teachers, and Google Translate neural network are perhaps drawn to the very thing that they report rejecting. For example, Google Translate and tablet, noted tethers, make possible producing text on lined paper, feeling independent, connecting in funniness and confusion, communicating, and enacting pedagogical practices. Yet this agency is one that to Xi

Xi Lu and Madeline is masqued as “weird”, where they are “idiot”, and to teachers as having less control than they assume they should have.

What is significant about this iterative toggling, is that in this experimentation, it provides what early childhood educator Lenz Taguchi calls a

thick and dese mixture of different kinds of ‘material-discursive ‘structures’… a

pluralism and multiplicity…that happen and run together or against each other—connect

and disconnect—in all different kinds of directions and with different kinds of intensities,

force, and speed (2010, p.137).

Therefore, engagement in this moment is not created in each of these individual cuts, but rather it is all of these cuts put together, in a back and forth toggling. Becoming engaged in this moment and throughout the second grade school year were these iterations of language with Google

167 Translate, tablet, children, student teacher, put together in a ‘thick and dense mixture’, driving us to continue to experiment and work with tablets and Google Translate despite reported frustrations and discomfort such as feeling “weird” and incompetent with the tablet. Diffracting translingualism with intra-action makes visible how language making is like a toggling of linguistic material heated in an incubator, continually creating new combinations, which communicate, miscommunicate, and do something else in classrooms. Just as innovation often comes from a space of dissatisfaction and impulse to create something other than what is immediately tangible, wanting resolution and a feeling of comfort is the impulse that spawns these individual cuts to continue from moment-to-moment to break apart quickly, enfolding into each other, onto the next, seeking out a more desirable future. If each cut were less tension-filled,

Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher in working with Google Translate and tablet might stay with each of these individual cuts longer—stalling such a potential pathway of toggling and experimentation. If the residual discomfort of working with tablets enfolding through each intra- action was not present with the comic relief of the mistranslation, and with the aspiration of being an English writer with the tablet, experimentation might have been extinguished.

Therefore, it is the tensions that propel the experimentation with tablet. This experimentation produces additional opportunities to engage throughout the school year such as blogging in science, writing in English, writing in Chinese, connecting with teachers, and later peers. These are happenings that likely would not have occurred if such tensions had not spurred experimentation with the tablet.

168 Connections to Classrooms: Engaging Tensions in Toggling to Inspire Possibilities in

Composing with Google Translate

What might these tensions suggest for classroom practices with tablet and machine translation software such as Google Translate? How might we engage these tensions? How might we cultivate a pathway to facilitate possibilities of translation in classroom practices in the often-messy tensions between communication that signify and not, and connections of language making often not recognized? In linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms, what opportunities can be recognized and cultivated in classrooms beyond focusing on the perhaps tidier immediate translation of language rather than the often messy connecting in language together across spacetimes?

Lenz Taguchi (2010) asks us to consider, “what can I do? What can I do to set another wave of diffractions in movement and in another directions? How can I slow down the movement and re-enact and counter-actualize it, and then maybe speed it up again and take it someplace else?” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p.178). What Lenz Taguchi is asking us to consider is rather than educators steering pedagogy and curriculum or conducting it, that we instead are enabled to be nurturers and cultivators with the conditions, rhythms, and movement in language making in classrooms of which we as researchers and educators are also a part. Putting Lenz

Taguchi into conversation with Scott, I argue translation in Room 246 is a process of experiencing language, where teachers, Google Translate, tablet, children and researchers can play in language together.

Translation as Moving of Language Making in Room 246

With Barad’s (2007) agential realism, I claim an ethical pedagogy is what educators facilitate in language making by our playing with human and non-human players and partners in

169 the classroom. As educators, we therefore might consider how to move with the ecology of our classroom practices, drifting with and embracing the toggling of pushing push back and forth in uncomfortable moments with and without Google Translate, where each seems imperfect. We might consider how to be open to and part of dissolving each iteration of language, enfolding it into something else. Perhaps as educators and research we can move with these tensions, just as we were moved by the affective connections produced in classroom language making. Langlois argues that in interactions with media, communication that is meaningful is both an “exchange of information and as authentic encounter” that does not necessarily transmit, signify, or index information (p. 146). Bringing Langlois’ work to translingual classrooms, I suggest we might consider that conceptualizing communication in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms as including affective, felt forces between classroom players and partners that are both a- signifying/non-indexing and not, crashing into each other. Together, connections that mean in ways that are not necessarily patterned and cannot be tidily described might bring tensions to normalized ways of recognizing language. As educators embracing ways of connecting in moment-by-moment entanglements in our classrooms with children, software, and hardware, what if we embraced these tensions despite the discomfort they might provoke? Where might following the tensions lead language making in classrooms?

Recognizing Language Making in Translation

Ethical classroom practices of composing in translation include also recognizing the entanglements of each moment of language making in the classroom, just as I attempt to consider in the previous analysis of the writing workshop moment. It asks us to consider what comes together to produce what’s left out versus what remains in, what’s enabled by each cut of language making, and how engagement is re-worked in different iterations of language making.

170 Thus, in classrooms, we might find ways to notice and recognize language making with software, hardware, and applications beyond the ‘right’ translation or what children can do with and without Google Translate and tablets. What might that look like? Just as what had begun in

Room 246, alongside children, pre-service and in-service teachers, we might take photographs, video, and watch language making in progress in order to make visible the material that we are transforming and is transforming us in language making—ideologies, material objects, notions of language, technologies, text, sounds, color, images, and more. We might engage the tensions between named languages, meshes of the material and semiotic to ask how these are productive of what we often consider knowledge production, learning, or findings. What if Google Translate and tablet playing in language are cut in and counted in, projected on a screen for the whole class together, no longer a covert hidden on the side operation predominantly between emergent bilingual children and teachers? What if the translations created through these whole class sharings included meshes of sounds, images, scent, color, material objects, and words that were invited not to signify and index, changing the focus of analysis? What if different types of machine translation software were tried out simultaneously and compared with alternative translations proposed by children, teachers, and what the other players and partners in the classroom inspire? Rather than focusing on what translations are ‘accurate’, how might we explore the different meanings these different translations put together can illuminate?

What if we shared and talked about in classrooms with children how playing in language, experimenting with how software such as different applications, hardware (cameras, tablets), compilation of sounds, images, and color change the different translations and the stories that can be told? What if we recognized the different associations in classrooms connected to transnational schooling experiences, just as the transnational multilingual corpora or translated

171 texts and websites that make meaning? What if we recognized electrical impulses of keyboard strikes and long strings of numbers to how we include technology as part of classroom language making. Might we recognize that such components of matter with words create forces that propel?

Lenz Taguchi asks that we “look for the material is productive of what children do and say, and how the intra-activities between the material conditions and the actions of the children alter their understandings and strategies” (2010, p. 177). Through this she suggests that by recognizing these less-noticed intra-activities of language making and translation could be a first step to putting this recognition to work in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms and an additional way to compose in translation.

172 Chapter 5. Post-Election Pajama Day Yut Nori: Engagement as Dis/Continuous and Dis/Located Transglocaltimematterings

This chapter begins with making sense of a moment during circle time that bilingual

Korean-English speaking second grader, Sapphire, described as confusing. It took place during a morning in January, when the entire second grade class, with me, teacher, and video cameras were sitting on the classroom rug. Ruby and Sapphire sat facing us, demonstrating the Korean game Yut Nori while wearing pajamas. This occurred the day before Lunar New Year and eight days after U.S. President elect Trump began his term in office. The game Yut Nori, a traditional

Korean board game played during the Korean Lunar New Year, involves casting sticks (hereafter referred by their name in the game, “yut”) in lieu of dice to determine how many spaces to move ahead on a game board. Yut from Sapphire’s former home in Korea were brought into the classroom because Sapphire and Ruby were writing about Korean Lunar New Year as a non- fiction writing topic in their writer’s workshop class. While the yut from the January moment never work their way into the classroom again, the yut are referenced and felt throughout the school year differently by different players and partners taking part. In the weeks and months after the original moment occurred, memories of this January moment were enfolded, re- incorporated into video-elicitation interviews. In the following excerpts from different video elicitation interviews, there is much discussion of the ambiguous marks on the yut.

March 30, 2017: Sapphire tells me, “At first I didn’t realize that it was similar to

Chinese, and I was thinking, why didn’t I think of that before?”. Sapphire says, “They

(Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, Patrick) seemed to know what was written on there (the yut), but

they seemed like they didn’t exactly know what they mean…so like Korean mixed

Chinese”, she says, her pointer and middle finger making air quotes when she says the

words “Korean” and “Chinese”. “It was sort of like the basic language of Korean”, adds

173 Ruby, her Korean-English bilingual classmate. “Until a king made up a different

language. And then it’s sort of like half Chinese, half Korean”, adds Sapphire (see Figure

5.1)

Figure 5.1. Air quotes and photo elicitation cards.

April 28, 2017: Xi Xi Lu, Madeline and Google Translate neural network reported that

they too knew the relationship between Chinese and Korean, but that other peers in the

class didn’t. “Madeline said Korean come[s] from Chin[ese]”, Xi Xi Lu reported,

translating what Madeline and the tablet negotiated together from Google Translate a

second earlier. At our table in the hallway, Madeline shows me the tablet on which is

written “South Korean used to be from China”, and then a second later “South Korea is a

small country so they cannot protect themselves.” (see Figure 5.2)

Figure 5.2. Xi Xi Lu and Google Translate Neural Network.

174

May 3, 2017: Watching the video of the moment months later, Bella, a classmate in

Room 246 that reported only knowing English, noted, “It was surprising that they (Xi Xi

Lu and Madeline) could read it (yut), but they didn’t know what it meant.”

May 28, 2017: Contesting Bella’s impression that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline didn’t know the meaning, when Xi Xi Lu watched the video of this moment, Xi Xi Lu claimed she did know what the yut meant. “Me and Madeline know these three words, but we don’t know this word”, said Xi Xi Lu, pointing to the words on the yut. “Oh, so you knew the three words on top?” I say. “Yes!”, replied Xi Xi Lu and Madeline. Xi Xi Lu wraps her arms around her body. “Oh, everybody’s together?”, I guess. “yeah”, affirm Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline, Madeline adding, “and very safe” (Madeline) “and eating, talking, TV, and play (Xi Xi Lu). “So, how is it that you know but Sapphire and Ruby [do] not know?”

“Because it’s in Chinese”, replies Madeline. “Yeah”, affirms Madeline. “and they don’t know Chinese”, Xi Xi Lu reports. Xi Xi Lu follows up by stating that her classmates are surprised because “they think this is Korean, but it is Chinese”…and Sapphire don’t know, WE know. So they are very surprised”. “and Ruby don’t know too”, adds

Madeline.

May 3, 2017: “you know Xi Xi Lu and Madeline actually told me they knew what it said”, I say to a group of children during a focal group interview. “SERIOUSLY?” Ruby and Sapphire say at the same time. “they told me it was Chinese”, I replied. Sapphire was quick to disagree, “it wasn’t Chinese”. “It might be”, Ruby tries to persuade her to reconsider, but Sapphire shakes her head adamantly, seemingly unwilling to take up this

175 idea. Ruby again persuades, “ Sapphire, it might be”, Ruby exclaims. Sapphire, owner of

the famed yut had the last word. “it’s NOT Chinese”, she said.

May 23, 2017: Through card sorts throughout the year, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline agreed

this moment was the second most important of the second grade school year due to

bubble-gum pink footed pajamas, the presence of Chinese, and that unlike the rest of the

classroom, she and Madeline were able to read the marks on the yut. Xi Xi Lu reported

finding wearing pajamas at school “crazy”, and whenever the word “pajamas” came up

during interviews, Xi Xi Lu would smile, sometimes dance, and make bursts of sounds

(See Figure 5.3—5/23/17 interview).

Figure 5.3. 5/23/17 interview.

Focus of Inquiry: Post-Election Pajama Day Yut Nori

In this chapter, I first outline the focus of inquiry, followed by an explanation of the guiding theoretical framework, short story of the Yut Nori moment, and analysis. I return to the conversations that open the paper in the analysis. Guiding my inquiry of the post-election pajama

176 day Yut Nori moment are the following questions: 1) How do the contrasts of language making across multiple spaces and times contribute to recognizing engagement? 2) How do classroom repertoires of room 246 emerge across multiple spaces and times?

In this chapter I diffract recent perspectives in sociolinguistics on scalar analysis as rhizomatic and materially-negotiated (Canagarajah, 2017, 2018b; Canagarajah and De Costa,

2016) with Barad’s (2007/2010) concept of spacetimemattering. ‘Scale’ as it operates in the socio and applied linguistics scholarship I work with is a frame adapted from social geography and world systems analysis as a way to conceptualize what comes about from the nuances of multiple spaces influencing each other and converging in different ways. Barad (2007) also refers to her concept of spacetimemattering as an agential reading of scales. Diffracting these two different approaches toward scale, I consider the stories of the Yut Nori moment as meshed local/global space, time and matter, ‘transglocaltimatterings’. I borrow the phrase “transglocal” from Scott and Dingo (2012) as a succinct linguistic meshing to characterize an interpenetrating local and global space, where local/global can’t necessarily be distinctly defined.

With the post-election pajama day Yut Nori moment, I make three arguments. The first is that repertoires of the classroom during the Yut Nori moment are dis/continuous and dis/located transglocaltimemattering. That is, they are materializations comprised of multiple transglocal spaces, times, and human/non-human comings together, and the ambiguous relations of power these co-broker together in a circle on the classroom rug. I work with Barad’s (2013) term

“dis/continuous” and what through diffracting concepts I refer to as “dis/locat(ion)”, to refer to the contrasts occurring when different times and spaces are brought together. I show how the moment was flush with ambiguously enfolded relations of power linked to memories and moments across China, Korea, and America.

177 The second argument I make is that despite the tensions and ambiguities of language making across different times and spaces that seemingly cut players and partners in the classroom apart, these juxtapositions of the dis/continuous and dis/located harnessed with the circle in Room 246 provide yet another way to recognize engagement. For the third argument, I return to an argument made in chapter three, calling for an additional approach to conceptualizing repertoires in classrooms with young children. This argument builds upon the socio and applied linguistics concept of “spatial repertoires” (Canagarajah 2018a, 2018b, 2018c;

Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014/2017; Pennycook, 2017; 2018a; 2018b). This conceptualization suggests recognizing the repertoires of classrooms are enfolding transglocalmatterings such that disjunctures within and across repertoires are engaging. As will be elaborated throughout the chapter, this is a different pedagogical approach than identifying particular combinations of objects, items, sounds, texts that combine to provide particular ways of engaging in classrooms that can be replicated.

Theoretical Orientation: Diffracting Scalar Approaches

Rationale

The rationale for a diffracted scalar analysis of the Yut Nori moment brings together

Madeline, Xi Xi Lu, and my sense-making of the Yut Nori moment with what is well- documented in scholarship in language and literacies. First, ‘scale’ is important to consider given what have been noted as the interpenetrating and blurred binaries between the local and global that affect schools, classrooms, communities and the children and youth that take part in them

(Brandt & Clinton, 2002; Canagarajah, 2013/2017; Canagarajah & DeCosta, 2016; Collins,

Slembrouck & Baynham, 2009; Hawkins, 2018/2014; Ghiso, 2016; Lam & Warriner, 2012;

Stornaiuolo et al., 2016). The Yut Nori moment was similarly an intermixing of many times and

178 spaces that had already begun, from moments across the school year in their U.S. classroom, and those in Korea and China. Threaded together in this moment, reverberating, was the year of the monkey according to the Chinese Zodiac with the beginning of US president Donald Trump’s first term in office. Trump had just won running on a nationalist campaign responding to the time-space compression of a current era of globalization by promising to build a wall to keep out, deport, and suspend immigrants, while also provoking a contentious relationship with China.

Yet rather than the year of the monkey and Trump’s politics coming together in this moment, what was perhaps more noticeable to the majority of children in Room 246, was that the moment also coincided with a school holiday called “Pajama day”. This day is a phenomenon of

American public school culture originating around the 1980s, where on a few select days per year, children are encouraged to wear sleepwear to school as a way of having fun and showing school spirit.

Another rationale for considering a scalar approach is that Madeline and Xi Xi Lu suggested through their drawings and words that their time at Oakville was a mix of different times and spaces. For example, when Xi Xi Lu was asked to draw a picture of her school, when talking about the picture (see Figure 5.4), she noted that she visually combined features of her school in the U.S. and China. Xi Xi Lu said she began by drawing Oakville, but then when couldn’t remember all the details, filled these in with how she remembered her school in China.

She then showed me what appeared as a fence at the top of the drawing, noting that this was a feature of her school in China, not Oakville. When Madeline was asked to complete the same task of “draw your school”, she clarified the directions, asking if she could draw her school in

China rather than Oakville.

179

Figure 5.4. Xi Xi Lu’s map of school--mix of Oakville and former school in China.

Theoretical Approach

The following section outlines the theoretical approach taken to analysis given diffracting conceptualizations of scales from sociolinguistics and Barad’s (2007) agential realist reading of scales together. What is made possible by bringing these two together is attention to space as being composed of local and global emergently constructed, imbibed with power in a process of mattering. Both conceptualizations are needed because not fully theorized by Barad’s work is space as meshes of local and global infused with considerations of power, which is a focus in work in socio and applied linguistics (Canagarajah & De Costa, 2016; Canagarajah, 2013;

Stornaiuoloo & LeBlanc, 2016). Conversely, scholarship in socio and applied linguistics does not fully theorize time as part of a spacemattering mesh, nor theorize the forces felt from disjunctures of spacetimematterings. While work in sociolinguistics tends to draw on Lemke’s

180 (2002) conceptualization of time scales and Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of chronotopes to consider meshes of spacetimes, matter as part of this mesh is not accounted for as enfolded with spacetimes as it is in Barad’s (2007/2010) work. Furthermore, while some empirical work in socio and applied linguistics attends to material considerations such as how objects and texts change spaces, there are few empirical examples.

Diffracting the transglocal nature of scalar analysis in sociolinguistics with Barad’s spacetimematterings, I suggest language making of the Yut Nori moment is a transglocalmattering, a materialization comprised of multiple transglocal spaces, times, and human/non-human/more-than human comings together, and the ambiguous relations of power these co-broker together on the classroom rug. Bringing these different conceptualizations of scales together does the following. First, language making is a performance that can change the space of Room 246. Second, it makes visible how the then penetrates the now, just as the local penetrates the global. Adding to this, it brings attention to the disruptions and contrasts between the here and now, local and global. These contrasts also change the space of Room 246. These considerations inspire an analysis of what Barad would consider is ‘ghostly’ about the transglocal, suggesting the many remnants of other times that penetrate transglocal spaces.

Playing with the prefix ‘dis’ just as Barad, a diffractive analysis furthermore encourages a consideration of how participants in the classroom might be dis/oriented through these transglocalmatterings, and what additional stories these dis/orientations provide.

In the following section, I outline the diffracted approach to scales that guides the analysis: scales as a) marbled and enfolded b) where power is emergently negotiated c) as a mattering where multiple participants in Room 246 broker scales with children, and d) marbled and comprised of ontological fusions that provoke forces felt.

181 Scales as Marbled and Enfolded. In this chapter, scales are conceptualized according to work in socio and applied linguistics suggesting scales be considered rhizomatic, or “non-linear”,

“unpredictable”, “non-synchronous” (Canagarajah, 2017) and “multidirectional” (Canagarajah &

De Costa (2016). This is in contrast to the majority of work in socio and applied linguistics oriented to scalar relationships as laddered (Collins, 2012; Dong & Blommaert, 2009; Kell,

2013; Mortimer, 2016), layered (Blommaert, 2007; Gu & Ho, 2012), and nested (Clonan-Roy,

Rhodes & Wortham, 2016). Scales as rhizomatic is more resonant than other scalar work in sociolinguistics with what Barad’s calls an “agential enfolding of scales” or spacetimematterings such that scales enfold “through one another” (Barad, 2007, p.245). Barad’s conceptualization of scales inspires theorizing scales as marbled, thus intermixed such that each scale is tinged in essences of the other rather than separate distinct entities that are layered. Barad’s concept of spacetimemattering suggest scales oriented toward mattering do not order bodies, communities, nationalities, or global locations hierarchically in terms of size, nor as separate, as evident from a conceptualization of scales on a continuum of centre-perifery and global-local. An ontological marbling of scales thus makes it impossible for scales to be “jumped” (Blommaert, 2010;

Canagarajah, 2013; Kell, 2013), or “moved across” (Dong & Blommaert, 2009), an image that to me conjures changes to a new position or fixed point on a grid. Rather than a layering which conjures material entities assembled on top of and overlapping yet separate, Barad’s work pushes on conceptualizing separate layers to materializations interpenetrating each other horizontally, ontologically enfolding as matter. Rather than a laddering or continuum of local and global, with marbling, just as Canagarajah (2013) theorizes, it’s often impossible to distinguish what is ‘local’ and what is ‘global’, as they are fused.

182 Scales Where Power Is Emergently Negotiated. In linguistically and culturally diverse contact zones where mixes of the local, translocal, national, transnational, and intercultural “rub”

(Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014), power is emergently negotiated in the here and now of classrooms and schools. Scholarship in language and literacies note what is critical about this attention to power is it provides explicit attention to how (in)equities manifest in education (Canagarajah,

2013; Stornaiuolo et al., 2016; Stornaiuoloo & LeBlanc, 2016). In contrast to approaches to scales attending to laddered relationships linked to a priori degrees of power, the orientation I work with is that scales do not begin with pre-existing categories of power, but rather involve emergent negotiations of power and (in) equality. This is significant because when these marbled transglocal spacetimes come together, this changes the dynamic of power in a space, transforming how engagement can be recognized.

Emergent negotiations of power also align with scholarship advocating for a rhizomatic approach to scales and an agential enfolding of scales (Barad 2007/2010). An a priori assumption of inequality prior to a particular entanglement is not taken, as it is acknowledged enfoldings of inequalities can enter into intra-actions emergently. To Barad, just as affective forces, forces of power are always shifting. Working with Barad’s perspective, I suggest (in)equalities can lie dormant, surfacing across intra-actions in different ways. Furthermore, ways of being perceived in the classroom, such as race, class, gender, and age, intra-actively come together, enfolding at different speeds. Such categories often thought of as structural constructs could be explained not as a sedimentation, but rather as slower moving components. Working with an intra-active perspective, I suggest (in)equalities associated with these tinges may always present in some way, but may still dissolve, implode, and re-enfold at any given second. Thus, I pose these intra- active tinges do not suggest that children, teachers, and researchers move in the spaces of school

183 in similar ways, but that we cannot assume how these tinges will operate prior to each intra- action.

Mattering where Players and Partners in Room 246 Broker Scales with Children.

Much scholarship in sociolinguistics is oriented to humans as the agents of scaling (Canagarajah,

2013), just as the process of scaling is noted as foregrounding “social” life (Canagarajah & De

Costa, 2016; Prinsloo, 2017). Aligning with Canagarajah (2018b) and Canagarajah and De Costa

(2016), scaling is conceptualized in this chapter as oriented to material negotiations in Room

246. Canagarajah and De Costa (2016) note that the “material world” is agentive, such that scales can be brokered by non-humans. From this orientation, I suggest that children in Room

246 negotiated what might be called the scaling of language making in partnership with multiple players and partners in the classroom—children and teachers, yet also yut. There are still few empirical examples in sociolinguistics where humans are not the primary agents of scaling.

Empirical work that pushes closer in this direction is work in adult literacies, such as Kell

(2013), that foregrounds the work of the text and semiotics with the individuals that composed the text, and work in youth literacies that align with Barad’s agential enfolding of scales

(Juelskjaer, 2013; Wargo, 2019).

Marbling: Ontological Fusions of Scales that provoke Forces Felt. Barad’s (2007) conceptualization of scales as agential enfoldings worked into analysis makes possible a different kind of analysis so far not theorized in socio and applied linguistics. The distinction with Barad’s conceptualization of scales compared to posthuman-oriented work in applied linguistics is Barad notes an ontological fusion of material as matter rather than attention to material. Barad (2010) writes what she calls ‘quantum entanglements’ “are far more ghostly than the colloquial sense of

‘entanglement’ suggests. She clarifies that “Quantum entanglements are not the intertwining of

184 two (or more) states/entities/events”, which is what is the orientation of post-human perspectives in socio and applied linguistics suggests, but as Barad notes, “a calling into question of the very nature of two-ness, and ultimately of one-ness as well” (p. 251). This has significant implications for Room 246 because it suggests being attentive to the physical nature of the classrooms would not be sufficient. Barad (2013) work would likely critique such an approach as attending to

“brute matter situated in space and time” (p. 29). To Barad, matter is not situated in spacetimes, but rather is productive of creating spacetimes. To Barad (2007), space, time, and matter are differently configured with each iteration of language making, what Barad considers a phenomena: “space and time (like matter) are phenomenal, that is, they are intra-actively produced in the making of phenomena; neither space nor time exist as determine givens outside a phenomena” (p.383). I take the orientation that prior to a particular instance of language making, or language mattering, space and time cannot be defined.

A second distinction has to do with how power and meaning are understood as being negotiated across scales. Canagarajah and Blommaert’s (2010) work in scales is tied to indexicality, that is different meanings that are negotiated across and between different scales.

Indexicality is seen as being significant to power relations because the meanings linguistic and semiotic resources ‘index’ in particular scales might be different, leading to different outcomes

(Blommaert, 2015; Canagarajah, 2013; Stornaiuolo et al., 2016; Stornaiuoloo & LeBlanc, 2016).

The approach taken to scales in this chapter is that the symbolizing aspects of communication is one small part of what is engaging about language making.

Short Story— Post-Election Pajama Day Yut Nori Moment

In the following section I present a short story of the original moment of the Yut Nori demonstration referred to at the beginning of the chapter. This telling is collaboratively told with

185 children, Kodak Touch camera and Go Pro. An analysis of the story and moments follow the story.

Yut, are introduced to the class by Sapphire, who wears very large dog slippers. There are

four wooden yut about a foot long, with the narrow circumference of a broom handle (see

Figure 5.5). Marks of some kind appear vertically down the yut in black.

Figure 5.5. Yut and Sapphire during post-election pajama day Yut Nori moment, 1/17.

Second grader Clarisse with the ultra-wide-angle lens and barrel distortion of the

Go Pro strapped to her chest, records simultaneous to me and Kodak touch, sitting

a few places to my left. Through this view, the class can be seen moving from

facing forward to sitting cross-legged in a circle, a large ‘O’ where all eyes are on

Sapphire and Ruby.

Sapphire and Ruby explain in detail to their classmates how to play the Korean

game called “Yut Nori”, requiring four yut and a mat. In the moments that follow,

the yut draw considerably more attention than the mat. We watch, attention

seemingly focused as blood sugar soars through puffed rice and corn chips, juice

186 boxes, skittles, and grocery store apples, details significantly less visible with

researcher and Kodak touch lens (see figure 5.6).

Figure 5.6. Video footage from Clarisse with Go-Pro--circle, apple core, skittles.

Ruby casts the yut in the air several times. When the yut hit the rug, they make a hollow

sound—soft, like the strike of wooden candle bowling pins, or a wooden block structure

crashing down. Markus nearby scrunches up his face as if responding to the noise. He

stops from chewing an apple for a second, pausing mid-bite. The sound is repeated as the

yut are thrown and fall to the floor a second time. Ruby continues to move the yut as she

explains the game directions. Again, the yut clank. Xi Xi Lu enters the circle by walking

through it after arriving from her pullout ESL classroom. Her pajama-clad legs walk over

the yut. Her steps slow as she steps over the yut and looks down momentarily. Yut with

marks face upward. They have seemingly caught her attention (see Figure 5.7).

187

Figure 5.7. Sharing Yut, Xi Xi-Lu walks through middle of circle.

“Can you tell us what is written on each of those sticks?”, says the teacher. Ruby says, “I

have no idea”. “My grandma I don’t think even knows what it says”, replies Sapphire.

It’s what happens next that is a moment of surprise. One of Xi Xi Lu’s classmates

described Xi Xi Lu’s “jumping out” of the circle to read the yut as a “big moment”

because as her classmate noted “she (Xi Xi Lu) came up out of nowhere and said ‘hey,

what’s that. Maybe I can help out with that.” (interview 5/5/17). I too was surprised,

never having seen Xi Xi Lu voluntarily speaking out in front of the whole class before.

Xi Xi Lu raises her hand halfway up by her side. Xi Xi Lu later stated she didn’t put her

hand up higher because she didn’t know if she would be able to read the yut or not. “I

think Xi Xi Lu has an idea”, says her teacher, seemingly noting Xi Xi Lu’s hand. “Xi Xi

Lu, do you know what’s on those sticks?” Xi Xi Lu zippered into footed pajamas with

images from the DreamWorks movie “Trolls”, walks slowly toward the yut, her back

hunched, to the front of the circle. One stick is now in her hand. The yut marks tilt toward

188 her face. When Xi Xi Lu speaks, it sounds like she is decoding in Mandarin, pronouncing

syllabus slowly (see Figure 5.8). She looks at the stick, scrunching up her face.

“ENGLISH PLEASE”, I hear second grader Markus say, noting this in my fieldnotes.

Figure 5.8. Decoding marks.

Three seconds later Madeline, hops up, moves to the front of the circle and holds one

stick with both of her hands (see Figure 5.8). Her fingers layer over the logograms

like a net. Madeline too later remarked she wasn’t sure if she would be able to read

them. Madeline pronounces slowly in Mandarin in front of the whole class. “What

does it mean?”, asks their teacher. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline don’t respond to the

teacher but negotiate between each other for several seconds in Mandarin, so soft it is

not recorded. Patrick then jumps up from his place in the circle (see Figure 5.9) and

joins Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, grabbing the stick out of their hands.

189 Figure 5.9. Patrick attempts to decode yut, video footage from Clarisse-Go Pro.

Patrick silently places his pointer finger on several of the characters on the stick and

then shrugs his shoulders. “You don’t know?”, says the teacher. “It’s all Chinese”,

says Patrick. “I don’t think it’s Chinese”, replies his teacher. Madeline, with Google

Translate and tablet later explain the confusion as to why the marks didn’t look like

Chinese—they were written in a stylized manner such that “it looks like cursive”,

making them hard to read (5/5/17 video elicitation interview) (see Figure 5.10). Yet

as noted in the beginning of the chapter, the explanation of the marks on yut was

contested, never to be fully realized, although we all have our guesses as to what was

going on. Throughout the second grade year, we never reach a consensus of the

language of the yut or what they say.

Figure 5.10. 5/5/17 video elicitation interview, Madeline and tablet.

Analytical Retellings of the Short Story: Dis/continuities and Dis/locations

This "beginning," like all beginnings, is always already threaded through with anticipation of where it is going but will never simply reach and of a past that has yet to come. It

190 is not merely that the future and the past are not "there" and never sit still, but that the present is not simply here-now.

Multiply heterogeneous iterations all: past, present, and future, not in a relation of linear

unfolding, but threaded through one another in a non-linear enfolding of

spacetimematterlng, a topology that defies any suggestion of a smooth continuous

manifold. (Barad, 2013, p.17)

The global and local interpenetrate each other. The global is instantiated in the local,

and vice versa (Canagarajah & De Costa, 2016, p. 4)

In the following analysis, I bring together the short story of the Yut Nori moment, children’s words and embodied movements during video elicitation interviews, and the diffractive theoretical approach to scales. I suggest that the players and partners in language making co-broker transglocaltimematterings of post-election pajama day Yut Nori. Such iterations of transglocalmatterings are the language making of the moment. These iterations are each attributed with different capacities or repertoires that change ways of engaging from moment-to-moment. These brokerings morph power relations, redistributing them. The players and partners creating the spacetimemattering of engagement are a circle of children and words, yut with ambiguous marks, Troll pajamas, and the enfolding transglocaltimes these provoke.

Through this analysis, I suggest that with in the focal moment, there’s the anticipation of knowing what the yut will mean. Yet we never come to know what they say, in the way we hope to know.

On the classroom rug, we are moving, steeped in a multiplicity of transglocal moments, all of which are still working themselves out, continuing to enfold as we sit in a circle. The future, then, of what these transglocal moments will produce is yet to come. The future and past

191 of these transglocal moments are not “there”, but yet not existing without other relations, what has become our “here” in this circle. The present is as we hear, see, and feel it in the language making in the circle is “not simply here-now”, as Barad writes. Yet it is not simply ‘there’, as an interpenetrating local and global suggest (Canagarajah & De Costa, 2016). Past, present, future—moments from Ruby’s home, the local library, and Oakville School; moments from living in the U.S., China, and Korea are threaded through each other. Moving through this moment, these iterations are heterogeneous, bumpy, turbulent, fragmented, and scrappy.

I consider the following analysis an analytical retelling of the chronological short story of the Yut Nori moment. The analytical re-telling occurs over six excerpts of transglocaltimematterings. Through the first five excerpts, I suggest how during the Yut Nori moment we might be seen as cut apart in this moment through the ambiguousness of transglocaltimes and the power relations, tensions, and contentedness moving with these.

Through the sixth excerpt, I suggest how we are simultaneously cut together as all part of a circle on the classroom rug.

Transglocaltimemattering 1: Xi Xi Lu℘Chinese as Bounded℘Pajamas℘A Lunar New Year

Monkey℘In-between time of day

When Xi Xi Lu raises her hand, “jumping out” in what her classmate described as a “big moment”, it could be seen as an act where relations of power shift as Xi Xi Lu in Pajamas with the yut initiate a new relation of the moment through standing up, walking over, and beginning to de-code the yut. In this act, these players reconstruct what ‘the’ language of the yut and classroom are thought to be. Forces of power moving through the moment change relations in the classroom of how language in Room 246 is recognized. For example, English is challenged, as is

Korean. Korean being challenged is significant in Room 246, since Koreanness is a narrative that

192 has come to suggest being able to slide more easily into ideologies of successful migrant at

Oakville school such as the academic gifted program, being seen as class monitor by Madeline’s dad, and the non-tonal whispering of Korean in the classroom that is perhaps less aurally juxtaposed to American English than tonal Mandarin.

With this hand raising, standing up, and jumping out, forces of power with Xi Xi Lu and pajamas transforms the language of the classroom from the English-text-on-page-dominated space of writing workshop, to Sapphire and Ruby writing about Korea and Korean Lunar New

Year, to suggesting Chinese too has a place in this circle. Such relations of power resonates with

Canagarajah’s (2013) suggestion that with others, migrants, in this case, children who might be seen as more recently arrived, can co-construct norms and values in translocally negotiated spaces, producing complex articulations of power with these relations. Forces of power are thus emergently negotiated with Xi Xi Lu, pajamas, and yut. This “out of nowhere” as phrased by Xi

Xi Lu’s classmate could not be more apt. It is a dis/located nowhere marbling between Room

246 of this moment with others, with ways of being able to decode in Mandarin, learned in her former school in China and home.

Such forces of power, perhaps are not linked to bounded categories of a nation state, but rather are forces that enfold and move at a slower speed than others. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline tell me several months later during a video elicitation interview that they know the meaning of the first three words on the yut because the words are Chinese. They know, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline report, “because it’s in Chinese”…“and they don’t know Chinese”…“they think this is Korean, but it is Chinese”…and Sapphire don’t know, WE know. So they are very surprised”. “and Ruby don’t know too” (4/28/17 video elicitation interview). Taking into account Barad’s notion of spacetimemattering, I suggest this statement is a dis/continuity with the original moment. There

193 is a continuity of enfolding, slower moving forces of power perhaps continuing to flow from the original moment. Yet during the interview, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline speak in a state of disjuncture, perhaps cut off from being formerly being known “newcomers”, at least to themselves, having learned more English and becoming more habituated to doing school at

Oakville almost five months later. Perhaps it would not have been possible for Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline to make such a seemingly confident statement right after the moment occurred. I suggest it was the dis/continuous enfolding spacetimemattering of multiple moment enfolded with the original moment, tablet computers, hallway and in-class interviews that together produced such knowledge. It was furthermore video with researcher questioning coming together to crystallize the notion proposed above during our video elicitation interview

Let’s return to Canagarajah’s (2013) mention of ‘others’, those with whom Xi Xi Lu in relation can co-construct what Canagarajah calls norms and values in her classroom. ‘Others’ in this case are not only those of her teacher, Sapphire, Ruby, Patrick, Clarisse, and Madeline. They are also the relations between pajamas and pajama day across times and spaces. As Canagarajah and De Costa (2016) note “treating human beings as agentive should not lead to ignoring the influential role of other non-human agents (p.3). Scholars of applied linguistics (Canagarajah,

2017; Canagarajah & De Costa, 2016) suggest we consider how material characteristics can “re- scale”, or in Barad’s terms enfold spacetimematterings. For example, despite Xi Xi Lu being adamant that Chinese made the moment significant, as noted at the beginning of the story, in other moments it appeared that pajamas and pajama day is what made the moment significant to her. In one such moment, such as when we watched the video of the original moment on 5/23/17,

Chinese and Korean aren’t noted as being un-important, yet bubbling under the surface of what came to together was pajama day storied as “crazy” by Xi Xi Lu, a dis/continuity provoked by

194 the disjuncture of pajama day that enabled the pink Troll pajamas to be visible, not possible during a usual school day. Thus, pajamas in this moment with Xi Xi Lu could “re-scale” or be productive of enfolding spacetimematterings. It was the disjuncture and dis/location with memories of her former school, where the global penetrates the local. If Troll pajamas such as Xi

Xi Lu’s and dog slippers such as Sapphire’s were worn at her school in China, it would be really

“crazy”, a dis/continuity and dis/location, given “pajama day” was not practiced. This disjuncture is perhaps what propelled Xi Xi Lu to smile, dance, make exclamations, and re-rank photo elicitation cards to rank the moment as more important with the mention of ‘pajamas’—

“this, this” (see Figure 5.3).

Engagement therefore could be attributed to the pink Troll pajamas acting on Xi Xi Lu, transforming her to act in a way she hadn’t before in school—a disjuncture of physically getting up to answer a question in a whole-group setting. The juxtapositions of this dis/continuity and dis/location are, do pajamas and pajama day thus provoke the possibility of un-doing English and un-doing Korean, bringing Chinese into a different relation of power? Does the dis/continuity and dis/location, the “craziness” un-do Xi Xi Lu seeing herself as newcomer when watching the video? Do pajamas unhinge ways of acting, being, and forces of power in the classroom? Is it the dis/continuities and dis/locations of the video elicitation interview that make possible telling these dis/continuous stories?

The ambiguous transglocalmatterings provoked by pink troll pajamas with Xi Xi Lu create what Canagarajah (2018b) notes is a space between the local and global. Pajamas enfolded into the here and now of pajama day in the U.S. classroom, an in-between type of day on the

U.S. school calendar. This was enfolded with the lunar calendar, and how pajamas in school would be in China, where pajama day wasn’t practiced. Both of these once a year holidays are a

195 disjuncture, infrequently occurring, yet have a continuity of an expected routine to follow on their given day. This was enfolded with how it is on days when wearing day clothes, a continuity, rather than wearing night clothes to Oakville school. Might the ‘craziness’, the dis/continuity, also be that Xi Xi Lu is the only one out of she, Madeline, and Patrick dressed up for Pajama day, an American school holiday, making her outward appearance on this day more similar to the longer-term residents of Room 246 rather than newcomer classmates of Patrick and

Madeline?

The pink pajamas with DreamWorks Troll characters that might be seen to bring

Americanness into the moment, are in fact a transglocal mesh enfolding U.S. pajama day, transglocal pop culture, and capitalism shaped by a Chinese market, where global penetrates the local. It was the DreamWorks animated movie Trolls that premiered in China by Oriental

DreamWorks one week before its American release, a company strategy to cater to a growing

Chinese box office market (Song, 2018). Thus, Xi Xi Lu with pajamas and yut enabled different possibilities than tablets and Google Translate neural network, a continuity from other times of the year. Just as with Google Translate as noted in chapter four, pajamas just as yut (re) made relations of power as ambiguous. For Xi Xi Lu, it was pajamas and Chinese that made the moment significant. Yet perhaps pajamas in the moment were more Chinese than they appeared to be given Hollywood’s catering to a Chinese market? Maybe it was not only the pajamas, but the ghostly presence of a clever the monkey, making its way into the start of the Lunar New

Year, provoking Xi Xi Lu?

Entangled with Lunar New Year are other matterings across time and space from

Oakville across the school year—there was an emerging realization that in this moment Xi Xi Lu and Madeline could do and say more than Sapphire and Ruby, peers that Madeline viewed as

196 leaders; memories across the school year where Patrick, their peer translator and competitor, could seemingly do so much more in the classroom than Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, but were different from this moment. This time was further meshed with this in-between time of day—not math, not literacy, not only snack, not writing, nor on the calendar of the day that was visible from our spots on the classroom rug.

Transglocaltimemattering 2: Patrick℘Chinese as bounded℘Marks on Yut

During the original moment, when Patrick holds the yut announcing, “It’s all Chinese”, he, just as Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, suggest marks on the yut are not ambiguous, but rather named and bounded. Diffracting Canagarajah’s (2013) and Barad’s (2013) work makes visible how a bounded language such as Chinese works as a continuity. Working with Barad’s concept of spacetimemattering, I argue that such a continuity might be conceptualized as enfolding operating at a slower speed. To Canagarajah (2018c), this is explained through indexicality and language ideologies where “certain words index certain places and communities, and develop identities as distinctly labeled or territorialized languages. Indexicals sediment over time to gain an identity as belonging to one language or the other, with a specific grammatical status in that language” (p.37).

Patrick’s adamant announcement of the marks being Chinese is an interesting juxtaposition given he is not able to decode the marks—a disjuncture. The marks are dis/continuous and dis/located. They leave us in tension, just as Sapphire and Ruby are expected to know the language of the yut, but realize they do not. The marks are a dis/continuity given what might be logograms are conventionally expected to signify, yet they do not, at least to all of us in Room 246 in that moment. Even though the marks seemingly somewhat signify to Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, they only report this information several months later (5/28/17 video elicitation

197 interview). Furthermore, the marks don’t signify for all readers of Chinese in the room. The marks are furthermore a disjuncture because Patrick is expected to be more knowledgeable than

Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, as he is usually the peer translator:

They seemed to know what was written on there (the yut), but they seemed like they didn’t exactly know what they mean… (Sapphire, 3/30/17 video elicitation interview)

It was surprising that they (Xi Xi Lu and Madeline) could read it (yut), but they didn’t know what it meant (Bella, 5/3/17 video elicitation interview)

In this disjuncture, it is the anticipation of where it is going, at least where we might think the decoding of the yut is going, that we never reach. Barad writes of the disjuncture:

a disruption, bringing us up short, disrupting us, disrupting itself, stopping short before

getting to the next one. A rupture of the discontinuous? A disrupted disruption? A stutter?

The reiteration not of what comes before, or after, but a disruption of before/ after.

(Barad, 2013, p. 30)

Perhaps it’s the material characteristics of the ambiguous marks on yut that shape the moment. Are what I call here ‘marks’, logograms, letters, scribbles, a thing, an image, or something else? Might it be the ambiguous black marks that lead Patrick to shrug, enabled to be seen by Xi Xi Lu from across the circle? Could it be these marks that render tentative sounds as

Xi Xi pronounced slowly, leading Sapphire to note, “My grandma I don’t think knows what is means”?, and the teacher, “I don’t think it’s Chinese”, and Google Translate neural network with

198 Madeline and tablet to explain their ambiguity as “looks like cursive”? Could it be not understanding the meaning of ambiguous marks on yut, what were thought to be Korean, not necessarily signifying, that propels engagement in the moment? Considerable forces of power move with these ambiguous black marks.

Just as the yut perhaps disrupt who and what can be the expert, Patrick’s decoding incomplete, ending with a shrug, stops short before getting to the anticipated translation. Yet it is also these marks on yut that mark a disruption to Sapphire’s notion that Korean and Chinese are separate: “at first I didn’t realize that (Korean) was similar to Chinese”, she notes. A disruption is that we might not get to the bottom of this mark on yut conundrum. As will be returned to in a few paragraphs, it is the disruption, this dis/continuity and dis/location of enfolded relationships between Chinese and Korean across hundreds of years, in China, in Korea, playing out in this moment at Oakville school. With the yut, a monolingual ideology, the possibility of their being

‘just one’ is disrupted. Before/after and cause/effect are disrupted as the marks do not seem to signify to anyone, at least during the original moment. Marks on yut shift relations, just as pajamas, pajama day, an in-between time of day, Patrick, Xi Xi Lu, and Chinese as bounded. Do the relations marks on yut spawn produce them having a greater capacity to act, perhaps, than the human participants are expected to in this moment?

Transglocaltimemattering 3: Yut℘Korean℘Sapphire

Chinese is a force invited to materialize when the yut come into the classroom and Xi Xi

Lu raises her hand attempting to decode the yut, and makes more progress in doing so than anyone else in the circle. For Sapphire, the force of Chinese brought into the classroom with yut is contested. For Sapphire a dis/continuity is how she perceived Korean with the yut and how she does now: How it is now, how it was then. Sapphire suggests: “it wasn’t Chinese”… “it’s NOT

199 Chinese”. Cut into Sapphire’s words where she will not give in that the yut are not Korean despite persuasions from her friend Ruby, is that maybe she is not returning to Korea as originally anticipated. This was a frequent topic of conversation with Sapphire and her mom during the course of my time at Oakville. The relations of power the yut with Xi Xi Lu enfold into the moment with Sapphire is a disjuncture as to how Sapphire sees the moment as Korean— what for Sapphire is a continuity, then, that time, over there. The yut have become a dis/continuity across generations, across time.

Cut into Sapphire’s words are perhaps the continuity of remaining Koreanness of the yut, becoming under threat in the disjuncture of the moment. Thus, to Sapphire with yut, Chinese is not a possibility, both at the time (“it wasn’t), and in the present video elicitation interview (“it’s

NOT”). The yut to Ruby’s mom, Sapphire, and Ruby, enfolded are memories of Korean Lunar

New Year in the U.S. and Korea, a holiday based on a lunar calendar system different from that of Oakville school. To Ruby and Sapphire, the yut bring a continuity of stories across generations. For example, there are Sapphire’s announcement that her grandmother couldn’t read them, and Ruby’s mom recollection that when growing up she used to play Yut Nori regularly during large gatherings of friends and families, but now the game for her family was played solely during Korean Lunar New Year. The dis/continuity of how it is now/how it used to be. For

Sapphire the yut are one thing that remains of Korea, a continuity to her, the narrative of how it used to be that she has been told but can’t remember. The yut with Hanbok, traditional Korean dress, and other aspects of this moments bring together a stitching of moments across Ruby’s life, that she has just now, according to her mom when watching the video of the moment, put together as a narrative of Korean Lunar New Year. To Ruby’s mom, Ruby’s teaching of the class

200 is a dis/continuity —that time, that time, that…time, stitched together, rolled together, in this time.

In empirical studies adopting a scalar analysis in sociolinguistics (Collins, 2012; Gu &

Ho, 2012), power is noted as shifting transglocally. Yet what is different in the post-election pajama day Yut Nori moment, is that power is often ambiguous in its shifting. At Oakville school, through a lens of dis/continuous transglocaltimematterings, it was ambiguous where the relations of power resided. For example, while the majority of the school population was White and English the medium of instruction, Koreans were more represented in the academic gifted program for the grade that year. Koreanness was perhaps viewed as fitting in more to ways of doing at Oakville school than Chineseness. Yet in the curriculum and pedagogy, there was the prevalence of celebrating Chinese New Year through art projects and book reading in school with Korea being less represented. Until this moment, it was never mentioned that Korea in addition to many other countries would also officially celebrate Lunar New Year on the same day that year. There was the recognition that China is a geopolitical power, and Sapphire’s words that Chinese was the most dominant and fastest growing language in the United States. There was Caitlin bringing Chinese and Korean verbal and written languages into the classroom. There was Trump’s nationalist politics. There is a disjuncture in the moment with pajamas, yut,

Korean, and Chinese that challenges English monolingual ideologies. Yet the competition over the language of the yut suggest a continuity: the notion of one named language needing to be a winner in a wrestling to become the language of the classroom. In this case, monolingual-cultural ideologies were not only linked to English.

Transglocaltimemattering 4: Korean℘Chinese

201 Cut into the words of children is the continuity of how Chinese/Korean used to be, and how they are there, now. For example, Ruby, and Sapphire as well as Madeline and Xi Xi Lu with tablet, in separate video elicitation interviews, suggest there are continuities, complex relations between the bounded languages of Chinese and Korean. There is the statement by

Madeline and Xi Xi Lu, cut with tablet and Google Translate neural network, noting a bounded

Chinese, separate and more powerful than Korean: “Korean come(s) from Chin(ese)”, and

“South Korean used to be from China”, and “South Korea is a small country so they cannot protect themselves.” (4/28/17 video elicitation interview—see Figure 2, Xi Xi Lu with tablet). In a separate conversation, Ruby explains, “It (the language on the yut) was sort of like the basic language of Korean until a king made up a different language (modern Korean)” (3/30/17). Yet this information, the continuity that Ruby, Madeline, and Xi Xi Lu enfold into the moment about the historical relationship between Chinese and Korean, produces a moment of disjuncture where

Sapphire reports to just be learning of this relationship in the circle at Oakville school: “At first I didn’t realize that it (Korean) was similar to Chinese” (3/30/17). This realization is significant for Sapphire given to her Korean serves as a continuity, an anchor. Korean is under threat for

Sapphire. She has recently learned she might remain at Oakville instead of going back to Korea after second grade as planned. Also significant is that Sapphire begins the moment thinking she is teaching her classmates about the yut, yet the yut end up teaching her: “At first I didn’t realize that it was similar to Chinese, and I was thinking, why didn’t I think of that before?” (Sapphire,

3/30/17 interview).

This connection is one that went missing from the sense making of English-dominant peers in the classrooms, including my initial analysis. It was the words of Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and Ruby with tablet that led me to investigate this relationship. In a recent article on

202 spatiotemporal disjunctures in a Chinatown in Incheon, Korea, Jerry Won Lee and Jackie Jia Lou

(2019) note the historical relationship between Chinese characters and the Korean script,

Hangeul, including that Hangeul was not promoted as the script of Korea until following colonial occupation by the Japanese in the twentieth century this not and a contemporary push to remove

Chinese loan words in Korean. They write:

Prior to the invention of Hangeul by King Sejong (1397–1450) of the Joseon Dynasty,

Koreans did not have their own script and relied exclusively on the Chinese writing

system. Today, while the use of Chinese characters and loanwords from other languages

(especially Japanese and English) is quite common, there is an active movement toward

language ‘purification’, attempting to ban the use of loanwords and even Chinese

characters.

Framed by this historical knowledge, the Yut Nori moment is an example of diverse local intra- actions in Room 246 penetrating a historical global debate on Korean language purity and political relationships. It is a ghostly influx of generations of language debate playing out in the circle in Room 246.

Yet despite these words of Xi Xi Lu, Sapphire, and Ruby that suggest Korean and

Chinese are more bounded and separate, Korean, English, Chinese, embodied movements, and objects might have in fact be more meshed. Sitting on the classroom rug, while the words between Xi Xi, Madeline, and Patrick were not a word-level blend of Chinese and English, sounds of Mandarin and English flew back and forth across the circle of bodies. While marks on yut being Chinese is an impossibility for Sapphire, as previously noted, mixed or meshed versions of named languages, resonating with a Translingual orientation is plausible to Sapphire.

She notes, “so like Korean mixed Chinese”, later making air quotes around the words ‘Korean’

203 and ‘Chinese (3/30/17—see Figure 5.1). Ruby speculates the marks on the yut are “sort of like half Chinese, half Korean” (3/30/17). Likewise, in contrast to Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s words with Sapphire’s contention at times that Korean as distinct and separate, Sapphire and Ruby note the relationship between Korean and Chinese as porous or potentially more complicated than their boundaries suggest. As previously noted, Sapphire discovers a connection between Korean and Chinese she didn’t realize before (3/30/17), while Ruby and Sapphire suggest Korean is dynamic, referencing how what we know now as modern Korean was different than earlier versions.

Transglocaltimemattering 5: “English Please”℘ Bonjour!℘ Chinese

Contesting what Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and Patrick note as being Chinese, is their peer

Markus on the classroom rug who interjects “ENGLISH PLEASE.” This statement might have been a pivot point, where relations of power shifted in response to the soundscape of the classroom transforming. “English Please” as a disruption to the disruption, a dis/continuity brought into the circle by the bounded/meshed Korean and Chinese, their relations with pajamas, different calendars, a ghostly Lunar New Year monkey, and ambiguous marks on yut. This could be viewed as disrupting the continuity of how it used to be, and the dis/continuity of how it is here, eight days after the election of Trump. Cut into these words of “English Please”, a phrase depicting a narrative that one might see on a political bumper sticker, could be enfolding the rhetoric of President elect Trump’s nationalist campaign, and the narrative of not getting left behind in a globalized economy, where in the Room 246 circle on the classroom rug, the majority of children did not have access to decoding the yut in the middle of the circle even if the marks were Chinese or Korean. It is unclear who or what is in the center of periphery, as noted in more hierarchical conceptualizations of scalar analysis (Dong & Blommaert, 2009; Mortimer,

204 2016). For example, “Use your English please”… “use your good English please” were phrases that could frequently heard in the ESL teacher classroom next door (field notes 1/27/17), yet never spoken by their classroom teacher.

“English please” could be viewed as gender and class re-negotiation by White male

English-dominant classmate Markus, a contesting of what the yut, but particularly Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline, Asian migrant females bring into the circle. Shifting relations of power with this phrase could be seen as contested, an attempt to shift power back in Markus’ favor. Such could be seen as a global nationalist debate playing out on a local scale. Yet with this story there is another that needs to be told. It’s ambiguous where the relations of power are located with the escaping of the words “English please”. There is perhaps a morphing of power relations of the dis/continuity in the soundscape drafting away from English, but simultaneously the relations of power pushing a paradox of mobility at Oakville school, a school where middle-class mobility was continuous in the sense it continued backgrounded, less noticed. I didn’t recall, for example,

Markus being able to answer during a math class when classmates accurately knew how many hours it would take to fly from their school to a variety of different countries, referencing parents’ trips. “Bonjour!” is what Markus often yelled out abruptly during video elicitation interviews with peers, and the name he gave to the made-up language he told everyone he knew.

The experiences Markus brought to Room 246 were very different in comparison to the majority of his peers’. They were noticed as different, just as Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s, but in a different way. Markus, thought to be a local, was a foreigner at Oakville school, just as Madeline and Xi

Xi Lu.

In the moment when Markus spoke the words “English please”, he was eating an apple the teacher brought him for snack, as she did every day, while his peers ate snacks brought from

205 home. Yet Markus was part of the circle at this moment. Taking into consideration Barad (2007),

I argue that the material of Bonjour!, a made up verbal and written language that sounded like

English with a Cockney accent, was a material that put into action changed the construct of class, re-shaping how Markus could operate at Oakville school in relation to his peers. It’s also the apple that negotiates class in this moment, yet the yut in action that interrupt Markus’ apple chewing. He stops from chewing an apple for a second, pausing mid-bite. It’s “Bonjour!”, not signifying but evoking. “Bonjour!” evokes “listen to me. Look what I know”. While Bonjour! was noticed by the classroom teacher, me and peers as something interesting that came up throughout the semester, no one seemed to notice “English Please” during this moment. Do

‘made up’ languages at Oakville redistribute relations? Does Bonjour! materialize foreignness in a way that is palatable to classmates at Oakville, teacher, and researcher in Room 246?

Transglocaltimemattering 6: A Circle

The previous five transglocaltimematterings emphasize the dis/continuities where in many ways players and partners are separated in the ambiguous, complex, and contested power- infused relations. The following story suggests how despite being cut apart, given that we are all part of a circle on the classroom rug, we are simultaneously cut together. As part of the circle we co-broker a transglocaltimemattering of engagement together.

The perspective of peer Clarisse with ultra-wide-angle lens and barrel distortion Go Pro

Camera foregrounds yet another perspective—the striking ‘O’ that we make together on the classroom rug. The ‘O’ we are in the classroom was a timeless form (see Figure 5.11) in that this

‘O’, the beginning had already clearly begun, or rather the beginning will never arrive (Barad,

2013, p.17)

206

Figure 5.11. Engagement as a circle of bodies.

Barad writes matter is

a doing, a congealing of agency… agential relatings and differences across, among, and

"between genders, species, spaces, know ledges, sexualities, subjectivities, and

temporalities. (Barad, 2013, p.17)

In this example, The Go Pro lens with Clarise suggests a compelling visual of how we as a circle of bodies, of agency coagulating, are matter. We are the energy of our entanglements, threading through each other. Drawing on the work of literacy scholars inspired by Barad’s concept of “spacetimemattering” (Juelskjar, 2013; Wargo, 2019), I suggest that we as a circle are produced through materialization of enfolded matter across times and spaces, relations of power, and the affective forces that change us. As a circle we are moving human bodies, pajamas and pajama day, yut, sounds of Mandarin, Korean, English, spaces of Koreannness, Americanness,

Chineseness and different ways of doing and being negotiated across many different moments across what we’ve come to know as the U.S. school year, China, and Korea. We are

207 ontologically crystalized in this moment in the circle during the post-election pajama day Yut

Nori moment, not existing just the same way neither before nor after.

We are of the geometric shape of the ‘O’ that works and re-works the energies of the dis/continuous language making. The circle holds these ambiguities, complex, and contested power-infused relations, propelled by the tension of categorical binaries oriented to forces of narratives of geographic locations and bound languages as detailed in the transglocalmattering excerpts 1-5. The circle harnesses other timesspaces of sharing in Room 246 such as when we watched videos students brought from home of what they did and cared about outside of school, read alouds after lunch, and morning meeting, enfolding a sense we must listen attentively, demanding our attention because something important is supposed to happen. The circle suggests an impulse to act a particular way. The circle includes Markus, and embraces Xi Xi Lu, who has just returned from her pull-out ESL classroom when the Yut Nori demonstration begins.

Of the circle of matter, harnessing and augmenting these dis/continuities are teacher

Caitlin sitting crossed-legged next to children rather than physically and vocally taking up a position of leadership. The teacher’s moving of the language making, circle mattering, is silent.

She is allowing the yut, Madeline, and Xi Xi Lu negotiate the experience without her words. In moving in silence, the teacher Caitlin did not steer the circle to her prepared literacy lesson for the day, which she never wound up initiating. The circle of matter harnessed us in-between curriculum.

Part of this matter circle as researcher, I film with a Kodak touch screen camera, sitting crisscross on the rug in this circle, made possible without furniture. The energy of this language- making mattering, is fueled by the debut of yut in American classroom being recorded, appearing for the first time several continents away from their location of purchase and likely

208 manufacturing site. The dis/continuities jittering in the circle play tag with the back and forth buzz of passing yut, the hollow sound of yut hitting the floor, soft, like the strike of wooden candle bowling pins, or a wooden block structure crashing down, their portability enabling the marks to be read up close. They play further with the foot-long one side-flat of the wooden yut that fit into children’s palms, lightweight and slender, turning with Xi Xi Lu’s wrist and move to face-level, enabling all of us sitting on the carpet to see some kind of marks in attempt to crowd- source their meaning. The dis/continuities play with the yut that evoke Xi Xi Lu to walk slowly and look, and their hollow clanking evoking grimaces.

As visible by the Go Pro video footage, further hyping this jittering game of the circle is glucose in the form of chips, juice, candy, and fruit, boosting the vitality of circular matter (see

Figure 5.6). Perhaps it was the pajama-clad, glucose-fused body circle that wrapped around Xi

Xi Lu, Patrick, and Madeline, focusing the dis/continuous activity as yut and children move to the center of the circle together (see Figure 5.9).

While work in socio and applied linguistics makes possible conceptualizing how ‘space’ in the classroom changes with resources available in activities (Canagarajah, 2018a, 2018b,

2018c), Barad’s (2007/2010) concept of “spacetimemattering” makes possible how seeing language making of the classroom is always on the move and never stagnant. Diffracting these orientations, just as language making of the classroom, the place of the classroom and spaces of engagement, are being re-made in the post-election pajama day Yut Nori moment. This moment, just as others are “performance(s) of spacetime (re)configurings” (Barad, 2013, p.16) where in this moment, matter as a circle decoding Chineseish, Koreanish, ambiguous marks on yut, wrist twisting of yut, hand raising and getting up, English phrases, pajamas never performing quite this way, “does time” (Barad, 2013, p. 16) . Thus, this performing, this language making as mattering

209 does not to suggest that we as languagers, a circle of bodies, move in and evolve in a spacetime as a container. Rather, our movements, our matterings of language making create the spacetime.

Barad (2013) writes, “here-now, there-then have become unmoored-there's no given place or time for them to be” (p.29). The same could be said of the transglocal in that the local-global have become unmoored in their dis/location. Thus, combinations of resources, matter splicing, creating the many spacetimes of language making, is what creates the moving transglocaltime of

Room 246.

In this circle of bodies that is matter of dis/continuous transglocaltimes, we produce in our movement a spacetime of engagement. Engagement is made in this harnessing, pumping up, wrapping aroundness of the dis/continuities of transglocalmatterings. The circle of engagement is a particular transglocaltimemattering that re-shapes entangled energies of power ambiguities and contestedness of excerpts one through five. What is significant about this spacetime of engagement created with the circle is that the composition of the circle by players and partners is what Barad (2007) might call a “specific material demarcation”. That is, working with Barad’s conceptualization, I suggest we are not creating an imagined or conceptual space, but one that is created in the physical relations of children, yut, and narratives of Chinese, Korean, and English across spacetimes. Also significant is that the transglocaltimemattering of engagement is not attributed to one of us in the circle, as has often been the focus in studies of bi/multilingual classrooms, but rather Room 246 as and of a circle.

How are we implicated in this transglocaltimemattering of engagement? How do dis/continuous transglocalmatterings in a circle become engaging? Barad (2013) writes, “This dis/jointed movement is intended to produce a felt sense of difference…differentiatings that cut together/apart” (p.16). In this way, in the circle we feel the juxtapositions of transglocaltime, the

210 dis/continuities and juxtapositions of the excerpts told in stories 1-5, just as we hear and see them. Yet we also feel the dis/jointed movements in the circle of bodies, the connectedness of the marbling in language making, just as the dis/jointedness when a different transglocal time is entangled. We see, hear, and feel language making in the classroom enfolding, iterating. We feel the juxtapositions of ambiguities and power. In the circle of dis/continuous transglocaltimematterings, we are each changed and changing as we have the possibility to be part of the disjunctures and continuity coming together, threading into each other all around us.

Let’s return to the quote by Barad in the beginning of the chapter : “the trace of all measurements remain even when information is erased” (Barad, 2010, p.261). Children’s verbal comments during the video elicitation interviews, what might be considered ‘information’, largely has to do with negotiating the boundaries between Korean, Chinese, and English in this moment. Barad’s notion of traces of former intra-actions remaining implies that even if these comments were not spoken, or before they were spoken, as if ‘erased’, traces of forces are still felt. For example, traces felt yet not visible were those harnessed by pajamas; how Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline saw themselves in relation to Patrick, Ruby, and Sapphire; Koreanness to Ruby and

Sapphire; the lingering rhetoric of Trump’s campaign; the apple; the sounds of Mandarin; the marks on yut; global pop culture; and the relationship between the bounded languages of Korean,

Chinese, and English. These were the ghostly entanglements that worked all of us in the circle to make the moment, even though more readily recognized were children’s words, Xi Xi Lu’s hand raising, standing up, and jumping up.

This felt sense of difference of the ghostly entanglements is what makes the moment engaging. What is engaging is that as players and partners in Room 246 in a process of inquiry, we feel, hear, see in language making, yet there is seemingly no answer as to what this means.

211 We are “dis/(oriented)” (p.16, 2013), of the circle, our orientation in the here and now of the Yut

Nori presentation, but distanced elsewhere. Thus, our dis/orientedness is what is engaging, the

“craziness” for Xi Xi Lu. It is the ambiguity and contentedness of the transglocaltimemattering of language making that is engaging, the experimenting in language-making, discovering and rediscovering. We are affected by the “dis/jointedness of time and space” (Barad, 2013, p. 16). In this dis/jointedness, there is a rising to the challenge to solve the puzzle of these ambiguous yut, not knowing if it can be solved, and not getting to the bottom of it. As a circle of bodies, in a beginning that has already clearly begun, a transglocaltime of engagement is created.

Repertoires of Language Making in Room 246

The following section considers how the diffracted scalar analysis of the Yut Nori moment requires a consideration of repertoires in Room 246 as enfolded transglocalmatterings, more collective than individual and more dynamic than patterned. Such a conceptualization of repertoires builds on notion of spatial repertoires from socio and applied linguistics (Canagarajah

2013; 2018a,b,c; Pennycook 2017, 2018a, 2018 b) and Pennycook and Otsuji (2014/2017).

Despite their differences, both of these conceptualizations of spatial repertoires consider repertoires as capacities available, attributed to the activity in a particular environment as opposed to the approach to repertoire as attributed to an individual child, or adult.

I begin with the productive additions of these already established conceptualizations of spatial repertoire, followed by the limitations of these approaches for the analysis of the Yut Nori moment. First, a productive addition of Pennycook and Otsuji’s (2014/2017) conceptualization of spatial repertoire is that they foreground how material characteristics of a location shape communicative possibilities, i.e., yut on carpet in a circle in Room 246. Yet less relevant for

Room 246 and the theoretical concepts worked with in this chapter is that with Pennycook and

212 Otsuji’s (2014/2017) and Pennycook’s (2017, 2018a, 2018b) conceptualization of spatial repertoire, place is conceptualized as constant and bounded, with spatial repertoires coming about from the materiality of the genres associated with what they call artefacts and activities of physical locations such as Bangladeshi-owned shop in Tokyo and Sydney (Pennycook and

Otsuji, 2017) or a restaurant kitchen (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014). Different from Pennycook and

Otsuji’s orientation to place, the orientation taken in the Yut Nori analysis is that what might be thought of as a physical place such as Room 246, or to Pennycook, a Bangladeshi-owned shop, is also continually moving with the dynamic spaces of language making. Therefore, the analysis aligns with Barad (2007) and the orientation of spatial repertoires (Canagarajah, 2018a, 2018b,

2018c) in conceptualizing place such as Room 246 as not fixed.

Elaborating, Canagarajah writes that “space has the resources to complicate, layer, and reconfigure place so that homogeneous meanings and ownership do not remain fixed.“ (p.4).

Thus, a dynamic space is continually creating place as dynamic. Barad (2013) adds, “There is no overarching sense of temporality, of continuity, in place” (p.18). For example, writing of the city of Copenhagen, Barad (2010) writes that what we name Copenhagen is “not a place… but rather a nonplace, and nontime, a dislocation, a referent, a fracture, a rupture, a disjuncture, an opening” (p. 262). Thus, not theorized in Pennycook and Otsuji’s (2014/2017) work is that in the

Yut Nori moment the circle, Oakville school, Room 246 is never the same ‘place’ given the dynamic transglocaltimematterings of language making that are continually shaping and re- shaping these so-called places. If Room 246 is continually in flux, what follows is that so too must be the combinations of components and resources that comprise language making—thus repertoires as dynamic.

213 Canagarajah (2013, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c) inquires how the spatial repertoires of activities changes communicative practices. For example, Canagarajah (2018c) argues that significant is that the patterns of communication (repertoires) afforded in a translocally negotiated space of a university classroom suggests that the repertoires of what is available in the space includes the combinations of a semiotic intralanguage of drawing, moving the body with board, pauses, and using select field-specific words that renders a lecturer ‘successful’ in teaching despite having a lower English proficiency (Canagarajah, 2018c). Taking a similar approach to spatial repertoire during the Yut Nori moment might suggest naming the patterned repertoires of sharing and negotiating in a circle. This might include determining what semiotic features occurred in the practice of sitting on the floor in Room 246 without desks, the yut, hand raising, classroom talk in English and Mandarin, and movements of the body, such that the usually quiet Xi Xi Lu and Madeline talk and share information. The rationale of this orientation might be to find a right combination of factors so that we can know what combinations available might allow Xi Xi Lu and Madeline to contribute to class discussions through actions such as raising hands, talking, and sharing information, ways that engagement is often recognized in classrooms. Canagarajah’s conceptualizations of spatial repertoires are useful to the Yut Nori moment because it provides examples of how in a linguistically and culturally diverse classroom, the languages available depend on more than Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s capacities of English and

Chinese.

Nevertheless, in the Yut Nori moment, just as other moments in Room 246, a classroom with young children, there are many different considerations to make that are different than in

Canagarajah’s empirical examples in higher education with adults. First, there are multiple activities co-occurring. For example, it is unclear whether the activity is sharing and listening,

214 reading, eating a snack, a cultural and historical presentation, a class meeting, or all of these. In the circle of bodies, these activities morph together, they aren’t separate or distinct. It’s unclear how to break them apart. Second, in the case of the example in the university classroom (2018c), it appears that teaching through boardwork was a repeated activity in the math classroom, just as college students filed in and sat in their seats, and the lecturer presented material of different content on the board. Yet activities operated very differently in the fast-moving elementary classrooms with young children of Room 246, often not repeating and transpiring in new ways with rapidly growing children, and changing seasons. For example, during my five months in the

ESL classroom, all of which began with what might be considered a continuity of morning meeting sitting in a circle, this never provoked similar relations to the post-election pajama day

Yut Nori moment in the mainstream classroom Room 246. In the same way, in Room 246, the yut never entered into the classroom again, despite my persuading to Sapphire, and later to her mom, to bring them back. Pajama day only occurred this one time that I was aware of during the second-grade school year, just as Lunar New Year. While extending research to Madeline’s elementary classroom in China is beyond the scope of this paper, having seen pictures of her former classroom with nearly fifty students in a room and desks in rows, I suspect there would be no room for such a furniture-less circle of bodies in her former classroom, nor could it still be the classroom I thought I was seeing in the picture. At the time of writing, president elect Trump had only been elected to office once. This language making, therefore, seemingly never occurred in quite the same away again within other activities of sharing, or other numerous activities in the circle on the rug.

Pennycook and Otsuji’s scholarship (2014/2017) also turns our attention to what might be the repertoires of an activity of sharing given the materiality of different physical locations. For

215 example, during the Yut Nori moment, sitting in a circle might be a genre of American public elementary schools, resulting in particular communicative activity. Yet when we sat in the circle, often multiple times a day, what might be thought of as a continuity, our sitting was different.

Student-brought videos into the classroom, read alouds after lunch, and the morning meetings continued to happen on a daily basis, bringing us into a circle on the classroom rug, yet language making was different in each of these new sittings. On some occasions we were with science equipment, on the morning before this sharing, we had engaged in something called the “stinky shoe greeting” in morning meeting, where we dropped our shoes in the middle of the circle and said hello to each other by returning each other’s missing shoe to their owner. In each of these moments, language making became something else.

What I suggest, then, is that with the Yut Nori moment, just as moments throughout the school year in Room 246, we cannot find a patterned doing associated with particular activities and the materiality associated with this doing. Such a proposal that foregrounds the dynamism of repertoires rather than their patterned nature is a departure from empirical work to-date in posthuman-oriented socio and applied linguistics with scholars working with the term “spatial repertoires”. For example, in the case of the university lecturer (Canagarajah 2018b, 2018c), the way of doing board work in this particular university classroom seems to be what consistently makes him a successful lecturer. In Pennycook and Otsuji’s (2014/2017) work, it is what they call the genres and sedimented historicicity of places that create different repertoires. In empirical work both Pennycook and Canagarajah therefore seem most interested in attending to the fixity and patterns as they exist within fluidity (Canagarajah, 2018; Pennycook, 2017).

Perhaps in empirical work involving adults, there is a greater impulse to focus on the patterning within fluidity. Yet in Room 246 with seven and eight-year-olds, language making,

216 bodies and minds and that with what we work are constantly buzzing and changing. Clothes and shoes are continually getting too tight on rapidly growing children’s bodies, just as ways of reading, writing, and the world are being (re) discovered for the first/next/another time, just as

Google Translate neural networks are constantly in movement. As such, identifying patterns of language making in Room 246 is comprised of spaces continually on the move, perhaps a focus that is less suited in adult-oriented fieldwork.

Even though Barad’s (2007/2010) focus of inquiry is not on what are considered culturally and linguistically diverse settings such as that of Canagarajah (2013; 2018a,b,c),

Pennycook (2017, 2018a, 2018b), and Pennycook and Otsuji (2014/2017), her work is helpful to consider an emphasis on the dynamic rather than patterning of repertoires. Diffracting Barad’s work with the post-election pajama day Yut Nori moment and other throughout the school year, I suggest that in a transglocaltime that is continually mattering and changing, such patterns or repertoires of language making, what capacities exist in a moment, remains ambiguous and ephemeral, unable to fully define, just as the spacetimes that they are continually being created by and creating the language making. There is no “going back” or “restoration of a present past”

(Barad, 2013, p.28-29). To Barad there are only moments threading through each other. To

Barad, the here-now and then-there are unmoored during the dis/continuities of the Yut Nori moment. Therefore, a focus of inquiry in the Yut Nori moment is a move away from considering patterns, genres, and combinations of sedimented repertoires of language making.

By diffracting Barad (2007) with Canagarajah and Pennycook’s work in socio and applied linguistics, I suggest that by identifying patterns of difference and how boundaries are created, this does not suggest an identification of combinations of visible objects, gestures, verbal/written languages, in classrooms and markets such as those named in detail in

217 interactional discourse analysis. In fact, despite Barad’s ethics of making “ghostly entanglements visible”, such that what is materialized and not in intra-actions are made explicit, this does not suggest it is possible to name patterns across repertoires to the extent that empirical work in socio and applied linguistics call for. Barad writes that with the “iterative nature of intra-active practices … the production of the new can’t be located… (p. 383). What Barad’s work suggests is that we cannot identify what is new, just as what is not new. Furthermore, different from work in socio and applied linguistics, “even when information is erased”, as Barad (2014) writes, or in this case, words aren’t spoken or necessarily convey information, “the trace of all measurement remains” (p.261). That is, the trace that remains are not necessarily visible as in an object or gesture, but is felt in the forces across transglocalmattering, coming together in the intra-activity of language making. Thus, such difference might not be visible, but invisible forces felt that spawn differentiation.

Therefore, to Barad, through the process of enfoldings, the twisting and re-twisting or marbling cannot fully be traced, as these injections are far too ghostly. These injections of forces felt that do not stay long enough to fully be recognized as a defined, named pattern. Working with Barad’s notion of intra-action, I pose that what Canagarajah and Pennycook refer to as a fixity is not a sedimentation. Rather, I propose that continuities are perhaps components intra- acting and enfolding at a slower speed than others. Furthermore, disjunctures in the moment, what Pennycook and Canagarajah refer to as fluidity, are not wholly new. This suggests that tensions of different speeds of intra-action, what socio and applied linguistics consider fixity and fluidity, can exist within repertoires. Why this matters is that as noted in the Yut Nori moment, it is the disjunctures of repertoires and the affective forces produced between the dis/locations and dis/continuities between time and spaces across memories of home and school during the U.S.

218 second grade school year, China, and Korea, that are engaging, not only the combinations of resources themselves. Each repertoire, each transglocalmattering, is a muddled, twisted, marbled mesh of past and future. Thus, in Room 246, I argue there is a need to consider this mattering highlighting dis/continuities as just as significant as identifying combinations of particular visible objects, items, sounds, texts that combine to provide particular ways of engaging. We should furthermore not consider that these repertoires can or should be replicated given that each iteration is always different, and will continue to be.

219 Chapter 6. Recognizing Engagement with Video: Tensions and Agency of Video as a Research Apparatus

This chapter centers video and video elicitation interviews as critical to the methodological apparatus of the research. Different from the focus of other chapters, this chapter gives particular attention to how, as researcher with a video camera, I am entangled in the material relations of Room 246. Considering scholarship in digital ethnography and early childhood education, I diffract notions of videography and photographic image making both as a body (de Freitas, 2015/2016) and with a human body (MacDougall, 2006). This theoretical framing makes possible the exploration of another aspect of mobile technologies in classrooms, i.e., video as an apparatus that simultaneously creates tensions and agency in recognizing engagement in classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children.

Video actively constructing knowledge aligns to de Freitas (2015/2016) and Ruppert,

Law, and Savage’s (2013) argument that the material characteristics of digital devices taking part in research must be analyzed in the research knowledge they generate. Emphasizing how video actively constructs knowledge making, Ruppert, Law, and Savage (2013) call for social science researchers to explore the particular characteristics of digital devices, such as “how they collect, store, and transmit numerical, textual, or visual signals” that change the research produced (p.

29). de Freitas (2015/2016) poses a similar question in relation to the images produced in classroom video research, asking that we “confront the algorithmic nature of digital devices as we accept as common practice the reliance on digital data in education research” and that we

“experiment with digital algorithms rather than submit to them, to enter into contact with them rather than simply submit to the software that is handed down to us” (2015, p.334).

Given this inquiry, this chapter is focused on three questions: 1) How do the material characteristics of cameras, harnesses, tripods, pixels, and software change what is possible for

220 children and researcher as they watch and produce video of the classroom? 2) How does this process create new moments of language making? 3) How does working with video and cameras shape the knowledge creation of the dissertation?

Surprises with Video in Room 246

I was compelled to center the inquiry of this chapter around video because working with video was significant to the dissertation in so many ways. First, video brought many surprises to the research. For example, the fish bubble lens of the Go Pro cameras produced very different images of the classroom. When sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearers of the wide-angle chest-mounted Go Pro recorded the wearers’ legs, arms, laps and the carpet and food on the floors that went unnoticed during the original moment. The Kodak touch-screen cameras enabled the videographers to see what they were filming in real-time; this seemed to increase the likelihood that children, teachers, and researchers would be filmed. In contrast, when children filmed with Go Pros without a viewer, this seemed to increase the likelihood that material objects such as the paper would be the focus. While I expected flexible-mount cameras such as GoPro’s would enable children to move unencumbered in their usual activity, cameras and mounting options often restricted children’s habituated body positions. For example, the chest-mount Go-

Pro disabled children from lying down on the floor belly-down as they often did during writer’s workshop. Children often found the head-mount Go Pros itchy, heavy, awkward, and drew significant attention from peers. Further surprising was that when I would show children the

GoPro videos initiated by them, children didn’t seem interested. Children seemed to be more interested in the video I produced with Kodak touch than that which they created with GoPro.

Because of this, moments that they indicated were most significant were largely those based on my filming with Kodak touch. As noted by scholars of young children’s literacies, this video

221 footage appeared to be more of a by-product of a once-engaging activity where the product itself was not as valuable (Dyson, 1997).

What happened during the video and photo elicitation interviews was also surprising and not what I intended going into the research. While interesting conversations ensued about former moments in response to the video, new moments were also created in the interviews where children and tablets played, engaging in new transformations with each other. For example, as I elaborate later in this chapter, focus group interviews turned into lunch play sessions where children spun around the room in response to videos, made up new gibberish-like languages with

Google Translate and each other, and took pictures and videos of each other engaged in this play.

I also initially underestimated the power of the video to unstick and open up memories of former moments and how engagement would be re-storied with bits and pieces of the former enfoldings to produce something new.

Figure 6.1. Children’s unsolicited experimentation with video recordings during video elicitation interviews.

222 Given these experiences with video cameras and watching the videos together during interviews, I became interested in the agency of video cameras with children. I also became interested in the material characteristics of the hardware of the camera such as size, feel, way of positioning and standing, and the capacity of different lenses. I further became interested in how the characteristics of the technology comprising video affectively worked with children and researcher, morphing us into a different way of acting, creating, or filming.

Before describing the multiple ways in which video was significant, I first present insights from qualitative research in early childhood studies, media/film studies, and anthropology that foreground two perspectives of the material characteristics of video with children and researchers and the relations they produce and make visible together.

Two Theoretical Points of Departure: Diffracting Video as a Body and With a Human Body

A translingual practice lens (Canagarajah, 2013) nor Barad’s (2007) agential realism theorize specifically about the process of children and researcher working with video as a part of the research process during and after fieldwork. Because of this, I consider other scholars’ work that theorize video in ways resonant with the different concepts and orientations that inform language making in this dissertation. There are two theoretical points of departure brought together to conceptualize video in this chapter. The first is what I call video as a body (Änggård,

2015; Canton & Hackett, 2019; de Freitas, 2015/2016; Harwood & Collier, 2019; Kind, 2013;

Magnusson, 2018; Murris & Babamia, 2018; Taffel, 2012; Wargo, 2018; Wanono, 2014). The second is what I term video with a human body (MacDougall, 2006; Sumartojo & Graves, 2019;

Pink et al., 2017; Sumartojo & Pink, 2017).

The first, what I call video as a body, conceptualizes video as focused on the relations between players and partners that together comprise video as a body. Pertaining to Room 246,

223 this perspective suggests viewing video as a relational body comprised of camera lenses, digital participants such as software, and algorithms, children and researcher moving bodies, and the position of harnesses and tripods attached to cameras. In tension with this is empirical and conceptual work from visual anthropology/ethnography conceptualizing video with a human body. Work conceptualizing video with a human body broadly suggests children, researchers, cameras filming images are ontologically separate, even though still having a symbiotic relationship.

While I emphasize the differences between these approaches, it is important to note that across areas of scholarship, both would broadly agree that the camera, video, and humans are dependent on what each other can do and produce, even though not all scholars refer to the term

‘apparatus’ as Barad (2007) does. Furthermore, while not all scholars refer to the term ‘material’, across the approaches of video as a body and video with a human body there is the shared notion among much of this scholarship that working with digital video is a material rather than immaterial process, resonating with the digital as “matter”. That is, even though pixels cannot be held and seen by the human end-user, digital aspects of video are physically present in the machines we work with. Pixels, then, have a physical presence that can be considered beyond an esoteric ‘virtual’ since pixels change the digital video (see Allen-Robertson, 2015; Dabek, 2017;

Pink, Ardévol, & Lanzeni, 2016; and Taffel, 2012 for discussion and insight on the relationship between material/immaterial in the fields of new media and anthropology).

Given these similarities, the point of divergence across the scholarship brought to this chapter is the nature of the relationships between humans, video, cameras, and other players and partners in a classroom. How might they be ontologically entangled, as in the case of scholarship aligning to de Freitas (2015/2016) and Barad (2003/2007)? How might they be ontologically

224 separate though still having a relationship (MacDougall, 2006; Pink et al., 2017; Sumartojo &

Graves, 2019; Sumartojo & Pink, 2017)?

Video as a Body: Digital Participants℘Researcher℘Children

I begin with considering the many components comprising video as a body. Scholarship of this orientation would agree that what is considered ‘video’ is a much wider body of players than is often given credit to. According to scholars adopting a video as a body framework, what transpires is more than an agentic child or researcher pressing a button to achieve an intended result. For example, according to media studies scholar Taffel (2012), light and sound waves from Room 246 are focused through the lenses of video cameras onto a sensor within each camera. The sensor collects an electrical charge dependent on the amount of light coming into contact with each pixel, and then produces a voltage which ultimately composes the frames that make up a video. Simultaneously, sound waves are translated to an electrical signal, then a string of numbers representing the sound wave.

The image of the video is comprised of a digital code such that its shape and image can be described through a mathematical function, suggesting image is not ‘what happened’, but what algorithms comprise it (Manovich, 2001). The audiovisual dataset I collected from Room

246 is stored electronically, which I then transferred to a 1 terabyte hard drive once I returned from the classroom. Once outside the classroom, this data was further manipulated with the display technology of my laptop and Studio Code software on my computer, all of which comprised the mix of how video clips were created to show to children, teachers, and their parents as part of video elicitation interviews. Why this matters is that moments in the classroom that we watch and that shape the narratives constructed in Room 246 of what language and engagement can be, are produced by more than children and research, but also the video.

225 Aligning to Taffel (2012) and Manovich’s (2001) recognition of video as including digital participants along with researcher, children, audience, and more, are a number of empirical studies across fields of early childhood (literacy) studies (Änggård, 2015; Canton &

Hackett, 2019; Harwood & Collier, 2019; Murris & Babamia, 2018; Wargo, 2018) that emphasize digital aspects of video with children in mutual relationship with hardware. Other scholarship focuses on how the materiality of software, pixels, and strings of digital numbers are continually re-doing or un-doing the video produced (de Freitas, 2015; Wanono, 2014). Despite these different areas of focus, each of these studies broadly sympathize with de Freitas’

(2015/2016) call for reconceptualizing how we document bodies in classroom research working with video. de Freitas’ claim is that video in qualitative research should not be limited to the human body visible on video. de Freitas writes that when she refers to ‘body’ in a classroom being recorded, she attends not only to human bodies but body as assemblage that is “constantly assembling, dissembling, and reassembling” (2016, p.568). She argues that video research in education is dominated by a focus on the micro-gestures and movements made by the human body, the information this conveys, and how this might be learned from to replicate in order to facilitate learning in other educational contexts.

Working with Deleuze’s (1989) concept of the time-image, de Freitas suggests that contemporary cinema suggest a “new kind of unrecognizable body…no longer contained within conventional organic boundaries, but is dispersed across a field of light or energy, an unthinking body without the usual sensory-motor skills” (2016, p.567). She draws on Deleuze, following

Bergson, who theorize a “body without organs…the flow of intensity that contracts— provisionally—into a body” (2016, p.567). de Freitas thus suggests that video doesn’t portray a realistic or accurate visual of a particular activity, but rather constructs a reality in what comes

226 together in the encounter of video. While Barad’s theorizations do not consider video specifically, resonant with that of de Freitas’ ‘body’ or corporeal is her concept of phenomena as material-discursive, the dynamic fusions of non-boundaried humans and non-human components, that as Gullion (2018) writes, “form, hang together, move, (and) dissolve” (p.113).

What is significant about this perspective is that it encourages viewing the video created in

Room 246 as more-than representing what we often consider real-life phenomena. Rather, it emphasizes the relations that contribute to what we might think we are seeing in a classroom.

This is a very different way of recognizing video in research most prevalent in K-5 studies with emergent bi/multilinguals in classrooms.

Video with a Human Body: Human-to-Human Connections with Video

While still acknowledging aspects relating to the digital, another body of work is explicit about foregrounding the human in digital-video-human relationships. Across this work, despite acknowledging that “algorithmic and code-based aspects of the digital” (Sumartojo & Graves,

2019, p.6 ) are essential to theorizing digital encounters along human sensory perceptions and experiences of the event, empirical examples highlighting the digital are noticeably absent. For example, in the anthropological study on shared experiences of self-tracked bicycle commuting,

Pink et al. (2017) acknowledge the significance of the technology of the Go Pro, even considering the GoPro one of many participants of watching and producing video. Yet they also make clear that their focus of inquiry centers on a human-to-human empathy, even though this empathy is made possible by watching and making video together. Thus, there is a strategic de- centering of the material characteristics of the Go Pro from their analysis.

MacDougall’s concept of “corporeal image” (2006) is another way of conceptualizing video with a human body. This concept suggests that the filmmaker is embodied in the product

227 of the film. That is, the film is the embodiment of the filmmaker’s gaze, their cultural ways of noticing, knowing, and consequently what they choose to film or edit into the film. McDougall writes:

We see with our bodies, and any image we make carries the imprint of our bodies; that is

to say, of our being as well as the meanings we intend to convey…We invest with it

(record) desires and heightened responses. The images we ma[k]e become artifacts of

this. They are, in a sense, mirrors of our bodies, replicating the whole of the body’s

activity, with its physical movements, its shifting attention, and its conflicting impulses

toward order and disorder…corporeal images are not just the images of other bodies; they

are also images of the body behind the camera and its relations with the world (p.3)

With this excerpt, MacDougall notes that it is the filmmaker’s human experiences in the world that have produced or shaped a gaze, cultural ways of noticing, and knowing. MacDougall’s concept suggests that the filmmaker, the child and researcher with camera in Room 246, have particular sedimented cultural ways of knowing and noticing, that will consequently form a particular kind of imprint on the video created. Therefore, the making image of video is the product of these different ways of seeing image as well as the image made by those filmed, with the intimate activities and involvements of human bodies.

There is an assumption in the concept of corporeal image that the filmmaker, or researcher, has an agency that exists before and after the moment of filming. There is furthermore an assumption the filmmaker has a choice in filming and editing that does not consider the materiality of lenses or harnesses, a departure from the co-agency emphasized in approaches to video as a body in early childhood education (Änggård, 2015; Canton & Hackett,

2019; Harwood & Collier, 2019; Murris & Babamia, 2018; Wargo, 2018), to be elaborated in the

228 subsequent sections. What shapes the filming and editing to MacDougall (2006) is the filmmaker’s intended meaning and investments which seemingly pre-exists the moment of filming, at least to some extent.

At first, what MacDougall considers human experiences embodied in image parallels

Barad’s (2010/2013) agential realist perspective on memories intra-acting. Yet a very significant distinction is that what Barad calls memories can exist in relation to humans, but are not of the human, as is the focus of the concept of corporeal image, where experience and video produced are of and made by the filmmaker. To Barad (2010/2013), an agential realist perspective of memories is that they are constructed emergently with the video, still incorporating fragments of former intra-actions. The distinction with MacDougall’s (2006) concept of corporeal image is that memories are not brought into the video by only researcher and child. Furthermore, Barad’s work questions a pre-existing intention, as intra-actions occur within activity rather than pre- exist them. I return to how these theoretical distinctions and similarities are significant in the following section.

Video as an Apparatus of Knowledge Production: Producing Image, New Video, and Social

Connections

In the following section, I suggest how the relations between players and partners in

Room 246 produce the original video of the moments, create new video, social connections, and ultimately produce the stories of Room 246 that get told. To do so, I put the tensions of the theoretical ideas of video as and with a human body to work with examples of video created in

Room 246 throughout the school year.

How Video of Room 246 is Produced

229 Analyzing the video after leaving Room 246, I noticed something striking: the same moments created by different cameras and videographers told very different stories. One example is from the Yut Nori moment depicted in Chapter five. With Clarisse filming with Go

Pro, rather than foregrounding Clarisse, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, or Patrick’s expressions, Clarisse’s arms and legs take center stage in the video footage alongside the gray classroom carpet, yut, circle, and skittles. (see figure 6.2). In contrast the footage on the right shows the expressions and bodies of children as foregrounded.

Figure 6.2. Differing perspectives of yut nori moment.

Different stories also become evident during a video elicitation interview of the Yut Nori moment. While children began answering questions about the Yut Nori moment itself, their attention waned. Holding the Go Pro and passing it between themselves, Clarisse, and Rachel, other classmates of Xi Xi Lu and Madeline, produced video containing several children’s expressions, including one of Xi Xi Lu, close up, twirling shots of stuffed animals, fruit

230 gummies, and a clip-on feathered hair extension that were not in my video footage of the same moment.

Figure 6.3. Different perspectives of video elicitation interview.

Differing stories are also evident with video of the Writing Workshop moment with

Google Translate elaborated in Chapter four with Madeline free-holding Go-Pro and myself with

Kodak touch on tripod. Madeline with free-roving Go Pro changes the angle of the lens to produce video that shows close-ups of a blueberry muffin she is eating while writing. Without tripod or harness, the small mobile camera is frequently moved, focusing from moment-to- moment on different directions depicting images of me, when I popped up unexpectedly to adjust the camera, and her hand repeatedly gently crunching and running her fingers over the multiple

Post-its the student teacher hands her with words in English so she can copy these words into her notebook. The camera also shifts to Xi Xi Lu, then tablet, student teacher, and lined paper

231 (see figure 6.4 where the black circles emphasize the story of the moment from the perspective of Madeline-Go Pro). In figure 6.4, I diffract still shots by overlaying video from both cameras that were filmed the same moment, from different angles, with different lenses.

Figure 6.4. Diffracted video from Madeline-Pro (in black circle) and Frances-Kodak Touch.

How do these different perspectives of video matter to the knowledge created through this research? Examples from Room 246 with empirical scholarship orienting toward video as a body suggests that children’s movements, the material characteristics of camera lenses, harnesses, tripods, and software are all critical to the video produced that become the data we analyze in video elicitation interviews. Emphasized is also that it becomes impossible to attribute a perspective of video delineated by what can be attributed to a child or researcher versus what can be attributed to the material characteristics of camera and Room 246, as these work in tandem, simultaneously re-shaping the other to change the video produced.

232 How do different notions of video provide a way to theorize what accounts for these different angles? I begin with insights from empirical work that aligns to Freitas’ (2015/2016) notion of video as a body. This work suggests that it is the relations between children and the material characteristics of lenses, harnesses, tripods, things in the classroom with children, and algorithms of software that produce the different stories told with video.

Video as a Body

Work in film studies (Favero, 2016) and studies in early childhood education suggest the size, shape, colors, and textures of materials were more visible with the Go Pro more than other cameras (Canton & Hackett, 2019; Harwood & Collier, 2019). Thus, I suggest in Room 246 it was the materiality of the zoomed-out, wide angle that the Go Pro lens produced compared to the closer-up images of the Kodak touch. Harwood and Collier (2019) note that such difference of lens matters because textures, movement, and sounds highlighted by the Go Pro lens make possible noticing the intimate link between children and their surroundings. Thus, during the Yut

Nori moment, the Go Pro lens emphasized the geometric shape of the ‘O’, legs of pajama-clad children, the hollow sound of yut hitting the floor. Children’s faces are de-emphasized, and Xi Xi

Lu, Madeline, and Patrick’s bodies appear further away than I remember from experiencing the moment (see Figure 6.2).

As a researcher with Kodak touch, taking part in creating the video during the Yut Nori moment, I held the camera on a small flexible tripod. Rather than Clarisse with camera mobilized to her chest, I could rotate the camera, push it forward, back, zoom in by moving my arm further away, further facilitating a video appearing more zoomed-in in comparison to that of the Go Pro (see zoom difference in Figure 6.2, despite Clarisse and I filming sitting next to each other). With chest mount, Clarisse-Go Pro footage was fixed, changing direction or zooming in

233 only if her body moved, or she directed the lens with her hands, pulling on the elastic of the harness upward, as she sometimes did to seemingly change the angle of the lens. Likewise,

Canton and Hackett (2019) and Harwood and Collier (2019) suggest the film is also changed by the angle of the chest harness in that it de-emphasized children’s faces. Wearing the camera rather than holding it led Clarisse perhaps to squat, sitting on her heels rather than crisscrossed legs on the ground, in order to record at a higher position than if sitting with crisscrossed legs.

Criss-crossed of the circle, I’m holding the camera lower, hand extended so as to watch the screen while filming. The cameras as changing our postures are similarly noted by Änggård,

2015; Wargo, 2018; and Murris and Babamia, 2018.

What happened when the Go Pro harness was removed? Just as noted by Canton and

Hackett (2019), when children removed chest-harness with Go Pros, the free-standing camera on the move created different behaviors in children, symbiotically changing the research and video.

This occurred due to tilted camera angles created by the camera’s movement unobstructed by

GoPro mounting straps and instead moved by children. The contrast of how harnesses, or lack there of, influenced the video, is evident during the Yut Nori video elicitation interview. As can be seen by the still shots on the right, facial expressions of children are evident as they held the cameras to themselves and passed them around, speaking to the lens to address the camera and virtual audience directly, (see Figure 6.3).

It was not just the cameras changing our body positions, but the cameras with other material characteristics present in the classroom (see also Murris and Babamia, 2018; and

Wargo, 2018). For Clarisse with Go Pro (see Figure 6.2), for example, rather than soft carpet compelling her with camera to record, it may have been the plush polar fleece pajama top she was wearing to school that day that rested under the Go Pro harness. For Clarisse and Rachel

234 during the video elicitation video, this might have been the rubbery, squishy fruit gummies, the silky long feather of the hair extension, or the plump polyfilled stuffed animal with hard gumball-sized eyes that dominated the content of the film (see figure 6.3, bottom left image).

Yet work in early childhood studies suggests that during each of these moments, it is not only the material characteristics of the lens that creates different angles, but the relational agency that children and cameras have together (Änggård, 2015; Kind, 2013; Magnusson, 2018; Murris

& Babamia, 2018). In this vein, I suggest that during the Yut Nori moment, Clarisse’s tugging on the harness in order to morph the angle that the lens is recording cannot only be attributed to the material characteristics of the lens that creates different angles. Clarisse also works with the Go

Pro, changing what it records, whether intentional or not.

Anthropologist Wanono’s (2014) and de Freitas’ (2015) work suggests that the video we see, hear, and feel during video elicitation interviews also involve the intra-acting algorithms of

QuickTime Player and software on my computer. As Wanono shows with her work, by changing the algorithms of the software of which video is viewed, the image and sound of video is radically changed to forms that appear as blurred patterns and indefinite morphed shapes. To

Wanono and de Freitas, what comprises video can be continually adapted if the algorithm of the viewing and listening software is reassembled and “disassembled through distributed networks of digital becoming” (de Freitas, 2016, p.565). Emphasizing the adaptability of video, Manovich

(2001) notes that media such as video is programmable in that the proportions of the image are changed by adapting the algorithms through which it is viewed. In a similar inquiry experimenting with classroom video data, de Freitas (2015) demonstrates how working with an experimental software application that differently reads the digital strings of numbers that comprise video data, she is able to analyze classroom video data through intensities of color and

235 light variation. This work demonstrates how through implementing different software in a process of analysis, the same video can be analyzed noting forces dispersed in a classroom rather than its previous analysis of children’s micro-gestures.

Video with a Human Body

Diffracting the concept of corporeal image (MacDougall, 2006) with the previous section suggests it is not only the materiality of lenses, cameras, the harnesses, with children and researchers that produced different angles of video of moments, rendering language making ambiguous and contested. The concept of corporeal image brings a different and simultaneous story to be told of how researcher6 with Kodak touch created images that foregrounded children

(see figures 6.2-6.4, contrasting researcher-camera footage), which is in tension with how I wrote about language making in chapters one and two. MacDougall’s (2006) concept of corporeal image suggests that it was me as researcher in-the-moment with the camera that desired to foreground the intercultural minglings and connections between children. Working with corporeal image, I suggest that similarly, children preferred to emphasize other aspects than peers, teacher, and researcher, as evident by the stuffed animals, gummy-infused images they created with Go Pro (see figure 6.3, child-camera footage).

Furthermore, I suggest that as videographer, I have particular ways of knowing and noticings because of experiences as daughter, spouse, mother, granddaughter, immersed in crisscrossing stories of immigration and living transnationally that informs the recording.

Working with the concept of corporeal image, as I record, these ways of noticing and knowing

6 I focus this section on memories/experience with researcher and camera because I don’t have such evidence related to children filmmakers. During the Yut Nori, writer’s workshop, and video elicitation interviews addressed in this section, Madeline and Clarisse did not offer a rationale for filming in a particular way (or not), nor did they seem interested in this inquiry. It is not to say that their experiences did not figure into these moments. They undoubtedly did, yet these remain unknown.

236 are activated, leading to producing a video that foregrounds the bodies of children. It could be noted I am intentionally shooting and editing the video because these experiences guide me to emphasize Xi Xi Lu in her classroom in a particular way. For example, working with the concept of corporeal image could suggest that through the camera lens, seeing Xi Xi Lu dressed up for pajama day, returning to her classroom after her pull-out ESL classroom, raising her hand, reaching for the yut (see Figure 6.2, right), provoked a heightened response in my human body holding Kodak touch.

With corporeal image, it could be argued I was captivated, injecting into the video experiences of teaching, where I show one of my undergraduate classes archival photographic images and family photographs. One of these images I show is that of the Melting Pot ceremony at Henry Ford’s English school on July 4, 1917 (Collections of Henry Ford, 1917, https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/254569/). In this image there is a giant cauldron at the bottom of a stage labeled "The American Melting Pot", where factory workers wearing clothing supposed to resemble traditional clothing from their country of origin, descend into the pot from the stage, and emerge on the other side of the pot in a suit and tie, waving an American flag.

Working with the concept of corporeal image, I might have injected other images and family stories might into the video. These are the image of my great grandmother, my namesake, and images of my paternal grandparents that I have only recently begun to show my undergraduate classes when teaching about immigration and assimilation. These relatives worked in factories in industrial towns in the Northeast U.S., sewing wedding dresses, zippers into coats, and welding sheet metal into ducts in factories, not un-like that of Ford’s workers.

237 With the concept of corporeal image, when I see and hear Xi Xi Lu and tablet, where Xi

Xi Lu seemingly hides at her place at the back table with student teacher while speaking to the

Google Translate neural network, this noticing could be precipitated by experiences with the grandparents whose pictures work their way into my classroom. They spoke Polish, sang Polish hymns, and the only bread in their kitchen was rye bread from the local Polish bakery, yet growing up, their children did not become proficient in Polish. To my grandmother, it seemed important not to be hyphenated Americans. Polish in America was perhaps a marker of difference, perhaps a marker like the tablet to Xi Xi Lu. Further working with the notion of corporeal image, I gravitated toward the sounds of Xi Xi Lu and tablet because of the sounds of the Bengali children’s song Baburam Sapure that fill our car as Neel and I drive to school each morning near Oakville school. Neel refers to these sounds as “my music”, but insists we roll the windows up so no one in our majority-English town, that of Oakville school, will hear the

Bengali sounds streaming from our car.

Thus, these examples suggest how with the concept of corporeal image, researcher experiences, noticings, and attention could also been seen as producing a change to the direction of the lens. Furthermore, that such a changed lens direction led to a focus of the video being Xi

Xi Lu, Madeline, and student teacher, in contrast to the skittles, rug, and legs with pajamas, that was prevalent throughout footage composed by Go Pro’s and Clarisse. Considering the concept of corporeal image, I claim that the video produced thus carries the imprint of researcher experiences as daughter, granddaughter, mother, and spouse. With corporeal image, if it weren’t for these experiences causing me to foreground children, new to a country and classroom, challenging, standing up, the lens would likely be projected elsewhere, producing different images.

238 What MacDougall (2006) would call ‘experiences’ and Barad ‘memory’ both have in common that they posit many of the aspects that produce differences that are invisible but can be felt, just as they can also be seen in the video. That is, they cannot necessarily be seen in the video. What Barad’s (2010/2013) agential realist perspective to memories as intra-active adds to corporeal image is that what MacDougall considers human experiences, to Barad are not tied to a distinct identity of me as novice researcher, nor simultaneously identities of parent, granddaughter, and teacher.

What Barad’s perspective of memory suggests is that the elements that shape the story that I write in this section are emergently created and stitched together in the story of the chapter with images of the melting pot, family members, and recollections of Xi Xi Lu in pajamas with yut—fragments of former intra-actions. Furthermore, the story I tell in this chapter is one that has and will change when I return to the story in a different moment, for different purposes and audiences. To Barad’s perspective of memories as intra-active, the image of Room 246 that I see when looking through the Kodak touch lens are like a hot oiled pan, producing an affective reaction with other narratives and images of memories that slosh around (great-grandmother, rye bread, melting pot), working with me, not of me. To Barad’s concept of memory as intra-active, seeing the image through the Kodak touch, these narratives and images splutter like the mustard seeds that pop when hitting the pan on my kitchen stove. Just as the mustard seeds that spray and overlap in different itinerant directions, narratives-images-memories of researcher enfolding with image through the Kodak touch lens create a collaging of image, memories, and the story told in this chapter of the video.

How this matters to the knowledge making of the dissertation is working with different conceptualizations of how the video is produced, also leaves the process of what language

239 making can be as multiple, contested, and up for grabs—one of the arguments of the dissertation.

Theoretical and methodological perspectives of video as and with a human body together emphasize in just how many different directions language making in Room 246 could be seen, felt, and heard.

How Video Inspires New Video and Child-Researcher Connections

I return to the refrain of “没有化 , lalala . During video cued interviews throughout the year, as the original videos play from December 16 with “没有化 , lalala” vibrating from the speakers of my computer, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s bodies are seemingly instinctively activated.

Upon hearing “没有化 , lalala” when re-watching the video, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s response often involved few words. Yet it evoked an embodied response, ways of acting that were different from being in the classroom. One time after watching the video, Xi Xi Lu skip down the hallway, creating yet another version of a song, attempting to post it to the blog (see Figure

6.5). On March 21, when Xi Xi Lu and Madeline meet a translator for the first time, Madeline gets her tablet and shows her the blog post with “没有化 , lalala”, grabbing her stomach and closing her eyes as she laughs. In response to videos, there were new songs, a new dance, and new twirls (see Figure 6.5). My Kodak touch and I too were activated by the video and Xi Xi Lu and Madeline’s response. I too had an embodied response. I was silent, filming with Kodak touch, not sure how to react.

Figure 6.5. Responses to 没有化 , lalala from three different video elicitation interviews.

240 During the video elicitation interviews such as those noted in the vignette above, language making incorporating remnants of previous intra-actions were felt by children’s bodies

(Lenters, 2018; Sherbine, 2018; Ehret et al., 2016), as the science investigation was experienced anew as the original moment enters new intra-actions with focus group interviews several months later. In this section I trace how “没有化 , lalala” carried across the filming of the entire school year, particularly those newly created iterations of song or movement as the original moment is played back for peers and translators with the play button on the tablet, or during video elicitation interviews.

Video as and with a human body

In considering these moments with “没有化 , lalala”, in the following section I first work with the notion of video with a human body (MacDougall, 2006; Pink et al., 2017; Sumartojo &

Graves, 2019) and Barad’s (2007/2010) notion of spacetimemattering to demonstrate how video affectively connected us to form a child-researcher connection while watching video elicitation interviews across disjunctures of spacetimes.

Responding to the original video where 没有化 , lalala is originally sung, and the subsequent iterations that follow throughout the school year, children and researcher could be said to experience a felt force (Barad, 2007) with the video that in turn produced more songs, and children-researcher connections in Room 246. Kind (2013) noted that during photo elicitation interviews, children were affected by the images, thus acting out new scenes and re-enacting events that relate to the original photographs/videos. Similarly, during video elicitation interviews, when Xi Xi Lu and Madeline created new iterations of songs and dances to “没有化 , lalala” and I watched them with Kodak touch, recording, we created what Sumartojo and Pink consider a “moving forward” in knowledge and experience (p.430). This is not a duplication or

241 repetition of December 12. Rather, in these acting out and responding to scenes, we fold, “没有

化 , lalala”1.0 into “没有化 , lalala” 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, each version different, each sweeping up bits and pieces of the new moment and former with it. This produces what I call in chapter five transglocalmatterings, a materialization comprised of multiple transglocal spaces, times, and human/non-human/more-than human comings together.

Pink et al. (2017) note how watching video footage together creates empathy for differences of experiences through seeing the camera’s perspective, the filmmaker’s (recorder’s) perspective who may have directed the camera with the researcher’s experience. Likewise, during the video elicitation interviews I write about (see Figure 5.6), Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and I see the moment of December 12 with the perspective of Xi Xi Lu’s iPad recording in this new dis/continuous moment. I with human translators and tablets ask their perspectives through questions and conversations spanning English and Chinese, pointings, and gestures. Working across transglocaltimematterings, Xi Xi Lu and Madeline hear my perspective in the new moment of the video elicitation interview of what might have happened in another moment.

Perhaps by showing it to them suggests the moment is significant, and that the science investigation moment which is constructed by some teachers and parents as playing around in school is ‘okay’. This perhaps implies that Xi Xi Lu and Madeline might not be the novices they often see themselves as. Like Barad’s (2010/2013) agential realist notion of dis/continuous memories, the memories of the science investigation and schooling in China and the U.S. for

Madeline and Xi Xi Lu, just as for me during the video elicitation interviews, were simultaneously being re-opened and fluid through new enfoldings.

In the video elicitation interviews, children and I respond to the different perspectives of the camera lenses. Watching the video of the moment looked so different than experiencing the

242 moment. Yet despite this different perspective, perhaps in these videos there is what Sumartojo and Pink (2017) call a ‘trace’, resonant with Barad’s enfolding, such that there is an element that remains in the video from a particular environmental, sensory, and affective configuration that might not be recognized in the moment of creating the video (Sumartojo and Pink (2017), but is realized anew in watching the video together. For example, the rush of the original moment, such as laughing, being together, knowing more than Patrick, tablet, blue text, bright screen, might not have been noticed during the original science investigation in December, but is when we watch it together again in March. Sumartojo and Pink’s (2017) work could suggest that in the watching of the video, this trace, or enfolding from the former moment as Barad would write, affects the human viewers (Sumartojo & Pink, 2017). I suggest it is in the video that these traces are felt as

Madeline, Xi Xi Lu, camera and I respond to watching their play, forming a child-researcher connection that bridges differences of perspective, and how we are perceived in the classroom differently in relation to named languages, age, and race. Recalling Barad’s notion of forces felt,

I suggest what Sumartojo and Pink (2017) consider ‘traces’ are affective, producing child- researcher connections in Room 246 because of the dis/continuity of these moments felt together.

As these examples suggest, watching the video during the dis/continuous video elicitation interview of “没有化 , lalala”, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, myself, and camera are affected by watching the video, forming connections with each other through entertaining different perspectives. Why this matters is that this aligns with an argument made throughout the dissertation that affective connections change opportunities to engage. Through our response to the videos, we in turn change the video footage over the course of the school year, creating additional versions of “没

有化 , lalala” (figure 6.5). Furthermore, the videos across the school year upon which the

243 analysis is based brings together disjunctures of space, time, and matter, which render meaning being more than communication, and often unclear. v Social Connections and Language Play

I was surprised by a video elicitation interview at the end of the school year on Xi Xi

Lu’s last day as part of Room 246. She would return to China the following day. After watching the videos, second-graders initially responded to questions about the video itself as might be expected. Yet what occurred next was not expected. Children began to make up gibberish-like languages together, experimenting with Google Translate in verbal languages that no children commonly shared. This process of play with children, Google Translate, tablets, and video recorded by peers and tablets produces another example of toggling, similar yet different to chapter four. In this new way of toggling, as the tablet speaks words in German, children make up gibberish-like languages with each other and tablet, speaking to Google Translate. They pause, waiting for the response from Google Translate. It seems they hope the neural network will understand and then translate something in response. Yet information through these words is not being conveyed. No one understands the meaning of the words in this emergent gibberish play (see Figure 6.6).

244

Figure 6.6. Social connections made with emergent gibberish-like play with Google Translate Neural Network, and video cameras on tablets.

Video as a Body

How did this language intra-play come about? Perhaps in this moment, affected by the video of Yut Nori, the traces of ambiguity over marks on sticks, and not understanding the meaning of these words, language not being understood was not contested as it had been in other moments. Perhaps it was the affective forces of Xi Xi Lu’s last day, twisted forces of spaces and times as the moments being watched were dis/continuous. For example, Room 246 from the video children watched was different than Room 246 at the time of watching the video. In the process of watching the video, these two times and spaces meshed with each other. Perhaps it was from these dis/continuous forces of then second-graders/now-almost third graders, and the dis/location of Xi Xi Lu now in Room 246/soon to be in China. Perhaps it was as Änggård

(2015) found, that child-to-child encounters were facilitated by materiality of hardware. In this case children recorded each other’s play with camera application on tablet. In Änggård’s study,

245 cameras spurred social activity, acting as a bridge to social opportunities between children. For example, the pointing the object of the camera at peers became a way of greeting or attending to other children, just as running to take pictures of children were critical to a game of tag.

Änggård’s research shows how taking pictures and looking at pictures together also created what she calls “a way of creating affinity” (p.11), resonant with what I call a social connection.

In this moment of language making in Room 246, the creation of new video was perhaps propelled as classmates filmed each other engaging in this language play, propelling Xi Xi Lu,

Madeline, and peers to play as if a performance. The showing of hardware, cameras and tablets, focusing the camera on peers, and finger tapping with Google Translate application was thus a way of noticing and playing. What is significant about this movement is not the creation of gibberish language play, but rather what comes of it. What is productive about this affecting toggling, back and forth with tablet, translations in German, Spanish, Irish, English with Google

Translate neural network and camera, is that a social connection between peers in a classroom is formed, as noted by Änggård (2015) and Wargo (2018). This social connection between Xi Xi

Lu, Madeline and other peers in their classroom was significant to them. Xi Xi Lu and Madeline noted wanting to be friends with more than just each other, but connecting with other peers unless an assigned partner often didn’t happen when working in English.

In summary, examples of how video shapes the knowledge making of the dissertation are the following. The argument that multiple iterations of language making and the repertoires associated with these can seem as ambiguous is directly related video creating different angles and simultaneous stories being told such that there is never one narrative. The contrasts between different angles of video and what is identified through speaking and visually with video keeps open what language and engagement can be. The argument that there are child and researcher

246 connections and peer connections and language play are directly related to the video from different times and space being brought together and producing affective connections in video elicitation interviews. Furthermore, the argument that communication is unclear is related to working across times and spaces.

What Video in Room 246 Produces: The Tensions and Agency of Multiple Perspectives

The next section describes tensions in how the apparatus of watching and creating video both produces difference and makes possible noticing difference in Room 246. In this section, I return to the image of diffraction with pencil shavings and rocks (see Figure 6.7) . Just as in chapter one, I consider the tensions as rocks jutting out: the contrast of how children and I without the camera (verbally and in writing) versus with the camera report seeing, hearing, feeling language making in Room 246; tensions of losing a verbal/written language and the risk of losing a way of connecting with family and communities; and the risk of assimilating a human body. I argue these tensions propel ways of engaging, including those that I can and cannot recognize as productive in this moment.

247 Figure 6.7. Rocks jutting out, or tensions, with apparatus of video.

Rocks Jutting Out: Contrasts in Words versus Video to Conceptualize Language in Room 246

Recall that during the science investigation when hearing 没有化, lalala and looking at the blog post, children were invested in attending to language as English and Mandarin Chinese.

For example, “That’s Chinese! That’s Chinese! That’s Chinese”, Madeline and Xi Xi Lu’s

English-dominant peers noted. In contrast, I report being interested in the language of the refrain differently, such as what the refrain did at Madeline’s dinner table with chopsticks℘fingers℘hands℘food. The tension is that with video, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and I tell a contrary story as to what language is. For example, recall during the video elicitation interview what children with camera documented as the language making of the moment were my computer, tablet screens, and a wider variety of material objects that were not present in my video such as stuffed animals, books, and food. Whereas with the video camera I produced images zoomed-in on children, their bodies and facial expressions. As these examples suggest, our human-camera noticings produced something different than we produced without them

(MacDougall, 2006). Thus there is a disjuncture in how children and I without the camera

(verbally and in writing) versus with the camera report seeing, hearing, feeling language making in Room 246. Therefore, the research apparatus of video in this dissertation makes it possible to recognize language in the classroom differently than with words. The language making that follows is difficult to pin down as we seem to not give a consistent answer across words and video, complicating a project of educational research where readers may expect more clear-cut findings.

Rocks Jutting out: The Risk of Losing the Boundaries of Human Bodies

248 A further tension, or rock jutting out, is the risk of losing the boundaries of human bodies, when bodies of Xi Xi Lu Madeline, and Patrick in an English-dominant American classroom may be at risk of assimilation. Working with the concept of corporeal image, I suggest that during the Yut Nori moment, given particular ways of knowing and experiences, I perhaps unknowingly foreground human bodies in the viewer of Kodak touch. I further suggest front and center images of children stem from experiences whereas educator I am critical of an assimilating human body physically jumping into what appears a paper mâché cauldron, the metaphorical melting pot at Henry Ford’s factory. In doing so, I create an apparatus that tells a particular story. Furthermore, I suggest such images are produced from experiences negotiating the immigration of multiple generations of my family from Poland, Ireland, and India. With the concept of corporeal image, human bodies as entities are at risk, and I empathetically respond to such a risk with the camera. Yet such an analysis is in tension with the boundaryless human and non-human body of what comprises video for de Freitas (2016) and Barad’s notion of intra- active bodies where human and non-human bodies have no boundaries. The tension is that in engaging multiple concepts, there appears to be a dual risk. There is a risk in losing attention to the relations between players and partners in the classroom during the Yut Nori moment and how this provides additional ways to conceptualize engagement, if we like MacDougall (2006) view components in a classroom as largely separate entities. Yet if viewing the same Yut Nori moment with de Freitas’ conceptualization of video and Barad’s concept of phenomenon—an assembling, reassembling, and disassembling of what comprises a body—such melting begins to resemble assimilation, a process of boundary-less melting suggested by the melting pot image in

Henry Ford’s factory. Without children’s bodies and faces foregrounded in the images I create with Kodak touch and show in my undergraduate classroom— Xi Xi Lu dressed up for pajama

249 day, Henry Ford’s immigrant workers celebrating assimilation by descending into a melting pot, and images of my family—there is arguably a process of forced assimilation, where a destroying of human boundaries are imposed. The tension is that through writing stories of fused relations between players and partners, am I as researcher cooking up a bubbling cauldron like Ford in

1917, promoting a boundaryless assimilation, yet of a different variety? Are the intra-active stories of this dissertation materializing a paper mâchéing of words and images that create a cauldron of melting like in Ford’s factory, misportraying players and partners as having equal ways of moving and playing in the language making of Room 246?

Rocks Jutting Out: The Risk of De-Centering Written/Verbal Means of Connecting Across

Families and Communities

A third tension is that as language educator, I am captivated by language but simultaneously wanting to push beyond what language is often conceived to be in an academic and professional field, centered on verbal and writing forms and meaning that signifies and symbolizes. Learning to be a researcher and parent, with the camera and by working with the video, I am a player and partner in making language something else. Yet by the impulse to not necessarily foreground verbal and written languages and communicating meaning, there is the risk of losing one means of connecting in a family and across communities. With my Polish-

American family, one written/verbal means of connecting and communicating was lost when this heritage language was not continued. Ironically, however, parallel with my inclination to consider language as not-signifying throughout doctoral work, a written/verbal means of connecting and communicating through Polish was regained in my own family. Simultaneously, a written/verbal means of connecting and communicating is continually being negotiated with my Bengali-American family. In multiple sides of my family experiencing immigration and

250 relocation to America in different ways, verbal/written named languages that signify and symbolize are one significant aspect of connection, just as Mandarin Chinese was a shared way of connecting between Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and Patrick. When considering the risk of losing verbal and written heritage languages within families and classrooms, languages doing something does not seem enough. Yet this conceptualization of language is in tension with language making as intra-active as I write of it in Room 246, as it turns the focus of inquiry to be more expansive, perhaps in turn de-emphasizing verbal and written meaning that may communicate significant information. Barad (2010) writes of time as “threaded through one another, knotted, spliced, fractured, each moment a hologram, but never whole (p.243). The same could be said about language (making) in this dissertation, that it is a dynamic coming together of hologrammed fractures of movement, sound, and image across transglocaltimematterings of novice parent and researcher, grandchild, spouse, and daughter.

Agency of Multiple Perspectives

When the tensions and risks of losing the boundaries of human bodies and de-centering written/verbal means creating potential disconnections across families and communities are placed with the images from chapter one of pencil shavings and rocks (see Figure 6.7), such diffractive images affect me differently as researcher. For example, when I wrote about the pencil shavings in chapter one, I noticed their brilliant colors, and the potentials of movement that each small shaving seemed to suggest. Yet with these different tensions and risks presented in chapter six, the pencil shavings look destructive and broken, like something important has been left behind. Put with the tensions of chapter six, the pencil shavings now remind me of rapid, choppy waters. Tensions, it initially seems as I look at the images with writing, may not always be productive in a way that can be recognized in a particular moment. Returning to the

251 pencil shavings as waves as I discuss in chapter one, I see that sometimes the rapid waters overturn the boat and we’re not sure why. Even though in this moment of writing I cannot recognize these tensions as a way toward how I want to be able to recognize engagement, I still consider them as productive even though I am not yet sure how, nor may never know.

Early childhood education scholars in literacies and speech, Murris and Babamia (2018) and organizational study scholars, Mengis, Nicolini, and Gorli (2016) argue that different video- recording practices, and particularly the angles each of these afford with children and researcher change the knowledge produced by the study. Mengis, Nicolini and Gorli write that

“combinations of camera angle and movement used to collect data…constitute a configuring device, which has a performative effect on the phenomenon of interest and does not simply record (p.306). As such, video and recording practices must be considered participants in what constructs moments in Room 246. Recall the differences in and diffracted images of child- camera and research-camera images depicted in figures 6.2-6.4 of the Yut Nori moment, video elicitation interview about the Yut Nori moment, and writing workshop. The differences of these images not only change the stories of language and engagement, but keep open what language and engagement can be. Barad’s orientation is that that being explicit about what comprises the different combinations of camera angle and movement to collect data, such as differences between stories told in words versus images, juxtaposed angles of videos made with zoomed in

Kodak touch lens, and the fish bubble of Go Pro with children, creates ethical tellings of research. Yet despite making explicit these materializations of video in the research, I still work in fear that these stories with video could also be viewed as distortion upon distortion, and hegemonic, trapping the endless other stories that could be told of Room 246.

252 How as ethical researcher can I reconcile tensions that I have trouble recognizing as productive? The theoretical and methodological apparatus of this dissertation suggests that researcher experiences and memories with video create a potential for a multiplicity of stories to be told, just as the tangram structures children in Room 246 dynamically built, took apart, and then re-built throughout the school year.

Such a methodological and theoretical apparatus that might in moments feel hegemonic also has trap doors which open to different pathways, as the surprises of toggling with children, tablets and the Google Translate neural network suggest. In Murris and Babamia’s study (2018), they experimented with boundary-making processes between views of a classroom from GoPro mounted to the ceiling of classroom, a camera person filming at a distance yet following the human action, and researcher with iPad recording at floor-height, zooming in and out on human and non-human bodies. Their argument, aligning with Mengis et al (2016), is that knowledge production is changed, adding dimension, when combining and contrasting angles of cameras and different video-making processes of an event or process. This is what Kind (2013) might call

“complicated ways of seeing…recogniz(ing) partial views and ambivalences” (p.429).

What Kind (2013) calls “complicated ways of seeing” aligns to the potential of diffractive video and theories in this dissertation to speak and translate, engaging across linguistic borders. Such an engagement is moving in a language making that includes, but goes far beyond words that signify, symbolize, and represent. The translation of moving back and forth between moving images, sounds, words, numbers, pixels, frames, and human perspectives enables an opening of what children, cameras, researchers, and others might produce together.

It’s a way of making a joint perspective known (Mazzei & Jackson, 2017, p. 1091). Such a perspective is multivocal, aligning to Mazzei and Jackson’s (2017) contention of “a posthuman

253 voice not as a possession but as a thing entangled with other things” (Mazzei & Jackson, 2017, p.

1091). This is to say that the “voice” in the stories of the dissertation is produced jointly by sounds, Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, peers, images, mobile technologies, and other materials entangled together than those of researcher or children. Furthermore, with language making, the telling and showing of perspectives are not only a storying through words and images that communicate meaning, but rather perspectives that are seen, felt, and heard. Such joint perspectives open pathways for not only telling one story, but also creating the expectation/understanding that there are more stories that aren’t being told. It suggests that if we were to combine different angles from different cameras, different filmmakers, an infinite number of alternative stories can be told.

It is the corporeal images (MacDougall, 2006) children and I produce with camera, yet also those produced by children and camera fused with each other, that are significant. It is these juxtaposed angles (Murris & Babamia, 2018), these tellings together —multiple co-existing perspectives of material characteristics of cameras lenses, harnesses and tripods, children and researcher with cameras, software, intra-active comings together of transnational memories, along with words and movement—that produce such a joint perspective critical toward the knowledge of the moments elaborated in chapters one-five. Together these perspectives suggest that human bodies such as Xi Xi Lu, standing up, defying a potential assimilation into an

English-dominant classroom are critical to ways of engaging in Room 246, just as the material characteristics of soft plush animals, skittles, blueberry muffins, Google Translate neural network, yut, post-it notes, and lined paper that are also players and partners in this process.

How can I reconcile the agency of these multiple perspectives, despite the tensions and risks that exist simultaneously? I do not want to lose sight of potential risks, such as assimilation

254 and losing a written/verbal connection to family and communities, particularly those that don’t feel productive in the way I expect. However, I also want to push forward to harnessing these tensions into a potential richness of engagement in classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children. What I propose then is what is gained through multiple perspectives bringing both the voices of emergent bi/multilingual children and their relations in a classroom to matter is greater than the risk of what we feel like we might be losing.

What is gained? As Murris and Babamia’s (2018) work suggests, emergent bi/multilinguals and their often complicated and interesting relations in a classroom, are considered and accounted for. They are part of the entanglements of Room 246. How these stories are told with a theoretical and methodological apparatus that create particular stories, also gets to count. Significant in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms is that these particular narratives of emergent bi/multilingual children, classroom, and researcher entanglements can physically change the landscape of how we conceptualize engagement and participation in classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children. Thus, looking at the pencil shavings yet again, the colors remind me of the many players and partners of language making throughout moments of Room 246, and how each of these iterations of language making, like the tangram constructions of Room 246, present a different piece to be considered in storying engagement in Room 246, even though in these different stories of engagement there are many relations and tensions existing within them that are blurry, and that I cannot or am not ready to recognize.

255 Chapter 7. Enfolding Forward: How Does Moving with and Playing in Language Making Create Openings for Recognizing Engagement in Classrooms?

This chapter is an enfolding forward of the empirical and theoretical work presented in chapters one through five. The focus of this final chapter is 1) contributions of this research to future work across research fields, and 2) openings for recognizing engagement in other K-5 classrooms and schools and teacher education uncovered by the moving with and playing in language making as theorized and inspired by Room 246

This study suggests that just as mobile technologies (video, tablet computers, Google

Translate) and objects (yut—sticks with marks) are multiple from moment-to-moment, so too can language be recognized as more multiple than verbal, written, communicating, and belonging to named categories such as English and Chinese. Language making is multiple and contested. Language making is communicative, not communicative (signifying and symbolizing, and not) and produces a variety of ways of recognizing engagement, often at the same time. As such, repertoires of a classroom are dynamic and collective. This matters to classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children because it suggests that by whom and what they come into alliance with, children too can have multiple ways of engaging, doing, and becoming in the classroom that is more expansive than primarily drawing on their cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge suggests (González, Moll, Amanti, 2005).

As suggested across the moments of the science investigation, writer’s workshop with

Google Translate, Yut Nori demonstration, and other moments across the second-grade school year, engagement in classrooms with emergent bi/multilinguals can be characterized by the following:

256 • Emergent bi/multilingual children and their often complicated, tension-filled, and

interesting relations with other players and partners in their classrooms.

• Reciprocal opportunities for children and materials as they are reworked with words,

sounds, movements, and objects including mobile technologies, as evident during the

science investigation.

• Affective connections, words that provoke yet don’t necessarily signify, such as singing

没有化, lalala at Madeline’s house

• Contrasts between repertoires coming together from moment to moment and the

funniness of these disjunctures as evident with tablet and singing across schooling

experiences in the U.S., China, home, and school.

• The toggling between not understanding the meaning, understanding, and a child-teacher

connection inspire experimentation with the tablet that opens opportunities for

connections throughout the school year, as evident during the Writer’s Workshop

moment and continuing into other moments

• The tablet speaking German, and made up gibberish-like languages between children and

tablet, such as during an end-of-year video elicitation interview

• The opportunity to demonstrate knowing differently than parents and peers such as Xi Xi

Lu working with tablet applications, including Google Translate

These multiple ways of recognizing engagement suggest what children can do and become in the classroom is enhanced and significantly more multiple when in alliance with other players and partners. It therefore makes possible recognizing less-noticed, networked ways of connecting in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. Thus, in classrooms and schools permeated with language difference, such additional ways to recognize engagement suggest that

257 we should notice, project, and talk about less-visible connections between children of differing linguistic and cultural backgrounds and hardware, software, algorithms, materials, and sounds.

When we consider all players and partners, we can harness such connections in order to spur and continue the pathway for additional connections and bridges in intercultural classrooms and schools between children, families, in-service, and pre-service teachers.

In this chapter, I first begin with contributions of the dissertation to academic fields, and then suggest connections for moving in and playing in language making to open translation and working across linguistic and cultural borders in K-5 classrooms.

Contributions to Academic Fields

K-5 Bi/Multilingual Classrooms

This work makes contributions to two broad research areas: teaching K-5 (emergent) bi/multilinguals and early childhood literacies. In the areas of teaching K-5 emergent bi/multilinguals, language making in Room 246 aligns with second language educator Kelleen

Toohey’s (2018a, 2018b) work that asks the implications for teaching and advocating for young emergent bi/multilinguals if we extend our focus from grammatical structures and social relations and identities which have historically dominated the field of language studies. For example, attending to the entanglement of social and material relations that occur during the science investigation, writing workshop, and yut nori sharing in Room 246. Conceptualizing technology as a player and partner in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, this study also builds on scholarship in K-5 multilingual classrooms attending to the hardware and software of tablet computers and Google Translate (Dagenais et al., 2017; Rowe & Miller, 2016; Smythe,

Toohey, & Dagenais, 2014; Toohey et al., 2015; Toohey & Dageneis, 2015; Vogel et al., 2018).

This research study extends scholarship in K-5 multilingual classrooms by complementing it

258 with insights in early childhood and youth literacies that attend to the affective intensities produced through intra-actions of children and youth’s moving bodies, along with the material characteristics of digital devices and place (Hollett & Ehret, 2017; Lenters, 2016; Wargo, 2015); work in media theory, communication, and educational research that addresses how the algorithms and pixels of software affect intra/interactions (de Freitas, 2015/2016; Langlois,

2014; Manovich, 2001; Taffel, 2012; Wanono, 2014); and work in intersemiotic literary translation that reconceptualizes translations as word-to-word correspondence (Scott, 2019).

Together this scholarship conceptualizes differently the use of tablet computers, machine translation, and video in classrooms with young children of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds. Particularly, this study suggests that current scholarship pertaining to machine translation software in language studies are significantly underestimating the complicated and multi-way, give-and-take negotiation of the relational exchanges between students and software

(Case, 2015; Garcia & Pena, 2011; Groves & Mundt, 2015; Vogel et al., 2018) and the knowledge production of research produced with children, researcher, video, and cameras

(Änggård, 2015; Canton & Hackett, 2019; Harwood & Collier, 2019; Kind, 2013; Magnusson,

2018; Murris & Babamia, 2018; Wargo, 2018).

The focus on classrooms with bi/multilingual children of this dissertation is not oriented to whether technology should or shouldn’t be part of classrooms, or the most accurate way of working with machine translation software. Rather, the argument is we need to account for the relations between children and technology such as arrangement of pixels, hardware of metal, and algorithms of software. We must acknowledge that in making language in classrooms, children activate a pervasive, yet less visible dimension of technological language through their finger taps, and vocal sounds. Reciprocally, what children can do in the classroom is often contingent

259 on this electrical signals of software, arrangement of pixels, configuration of metal, and algorithms.

Such moving with and playing in language making calls for the addition to the many ways of conceptualizing translingualism (Canagarajah, 2018d). I propose a translingual orientation focusing on resources as mobile (Blommaert, 2010) and semiotic (van Leeuwen,

2005), diffracted with feminist new materialist work in early childhood literacies and play, which calls for a material-oriented translingual practice particular to K-5 classrooms with young bi/multilingual children working across transnational schooling settings. Given that the majority of empirical examples attending to material aspects of classrooms and orienting to translingual paradigms focus on adult higher education settings, I argue a way of conceptualizing translingual repertoires oriented to classrooms with young children is a needed contribution. Such an agential realist conceptualization of repertoires builds on work in socio and applied linguistics orienting to the concept of “spatial repertoires” (Canagarajah 2018a, 2018b, 2018c; Pennycook & Otsuji,

2014/2017; Pennycook, 2017; 2018a; 2018b).

While each of these perspectives is oriented toward fluidity and making explicit the many components coming together in a classroom, they have slightly different areas of focus. With spatial repertoires, empirical examples highlight the patterned aspects of repertoires, noting particular combinations of objects, items, sounds, texts that combine to provide a variety of ways of signifying across different activities and environments. What I propose through an agential realist perspective of repertoires in classrooms with young children is more oriented toward the dynamic aspect of repertoire even though enfoldings of other intra-actions are continually reincorporated. Rather than being focused on the variety of significations, the focus is on the contrasts between affective, communicating (signifying and symbolizing), and non-

260 communicating forces felt across translational spaces and time, and what these tensions do in a classroom. It suggests that in addition to a focus on individuals or places as titles such as university lecturer (Canagarajah, 2018b, 2018c) and Bangladeshi-owned shop (Pennycook &

Otsuji, 2017) , the focus is on players and partners in a classroom as they continually ontologically re-work each other in alliance.

The contributions noted thus far also extend the argument of anthropologists and educators Paris and Alim (2014) and scholarship on transnational experiences of schooling

(Bhatia & Ram, 2004; Jaffe-Walter and Lee, 2018). Aligning to Barad’s contention that there are not pre-existing binaries between nature and culture, it expands how we conceptualize doing

‘culture’ dynamically, materially-discursively, in a classroom in that it may also be composed through networks of players and partners in a classroom that affectively change, un-do, and re-do each other.

Paris and Alim’s (2017) call for culturally sustaining pedagogy argues that in asset- oriented research in multicultural settings, there is too much emphasis on culture as reified, fixed traditions. In fact, they emphasize the “shifting and changing practices of students and their communities…(where) culture as dynamic and fluid, while also allowing for the past and present to be seen as merging, a continuum, or distinct” (p.8). Paris and Alim’s work is therefore focused on how schools can create communities that are hybrid, such that this community includes a blend of dynamic ways of doing and being that also incorporates different traditional practices.

Paris and Alim are interested in “contemporary enactments of communities” (p.4), with their conceptualization of community focused on who they refer to as “young people”, particularly those of color that enact “race, ethnicity, language, literacy, [such that their] engagement with culture is always shifting and dynamic “ (p.7).

261 Together with Barad’s concepts of intra-activity (2003/2007) and spacetimemattering

(2007/2010), Paris and Alim’s notion of community in classrooms is extended by this dissertation in several ways. First, Barad’s concepts suggest that not only are ways of doing contemporary enactments of community, but so is the notion of classroom continually in motion.

As such, moving with and playing in language making in classrooms, such that players and partners are part of what is considered ‘language’, does not call for us to build a dynamic school or classroom community. For example, this ethnography does not seek to develop or describe a dynamic community of Room 246, but rather make explicit what comes to make and re-make

Room 246. As Springgay and Truman, cite Manning (2012): “[a]ccountability shifts from being responsible for, to a response-ability-with” (p.7). Thus, language making as intra-active in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms turns our attention to being responsive to the temporariness of what might come together as ‘community’ and classroom from one moment to the next, as exemplified by the circle in chapter five. Moving with and playing in language making in classrooms also asks that we are responsive to the dis/continuities in language making, since this is one way that fuels and creates the pathways for additional opportunities for engagement.

Furthermore, as educators moving with and playing in language making, this work asks that we extend who these ‘enactors’ of culture and language making are, broadening to who/what can be included in school and classroom community/culture. Barad’s work necessitates an extension to what Paris and Alim call “ways of being” to not only the people in the circle, on the classroom rug as in chapter five. Just as in the circle, it suggests culture and community are composed through networks of players and partners in a classroom that affectively change and augment each other. For example, wearing pajamas might have changed how Xi Xi Lu raised her

262 hand to become an expert in the Yut Nori moment, a different way of acting in comparison to

Madeline and Patrick, who wore their more everyday clothes. In the post-election pajama day

Yut Nori moment, material characteristics of the yut, dragon, and pajamas were productive of different possibilities for shaping community and culture in that moment. For example, the yut created different ways of recognizing the hybridity of Korean/Chinese, and brought different investments across spacetimes. In another example, during the writer’s workshop moment,

Google Translate machine translation software and its neural network enter the community of negotiation with student teacher, Xi Xi Lu, and Madeline, producing continued opportunities for language making that appeared more expansive than the English writing in Xi Xi Lu and

Madeline’s writing workshop notebook.

Barad’s work, as diffracted in this dissertation, is also focused on how as researcher, I evolve materially-discursively with the process of language making in the classroom. This is exemplified by the process of data analysis with material-discursive transcripts. The study demonstrates how taking account of multiple perspectives together—what children, their parents, teacher, researcher, peers, tablet computers, Google Translate neural network, video cameras in

Room 246 make possible saying, showing, and doing—enables recognizing different pathways to engagement. This perspective reemphasizes Paris and Alim’s focus on the youth perspective, such that the words and embodied movement of Xi Xi Lu, Madeline, and their peers matter, just as the apparatus that these perspectives are made with, while also not prioritizing these over other simultaneous perspectives.

Early Childhood Literacies and Play

Taking a posthumanist and feminist new materialist turn in educational research (Kuby,

Spector, & Thiel, 2019; Leander & Boldt, 2013), this work also builds on and contributes to

263 scholarship in children and youth literacies and play. In particular, the work of early childhood literary scholar Angie Zapata with what she calls translingual assemblages (Zapata et al., 2018) corresponds to the language making in Room 246. To Zapata et al., translingual assemblages are a unit of analysis exploring “multilingual writing as a production as linguistic-affectual-material togetherness” (p. 493). In Room 246, this togetherness is evidenced in the affective connections in networked language practices between humans and non-humans. Therefore, this dissertation shows that additional opportunities for engagement in a multilingual classroom are created by a greater diversity of sonic material through diverse tones, pitches, rhythms, and diverse ways of working with material objects such as tablet computers and software may join networks of language and literacy practices. Furthermore, this study suggests the materiality of language may be significant in ways yet to be theorized when intra-actions involve spacetimematterings that are transglocal in nature, an aspect less emphasized in post-human-oriented work in early childhood literacies. That is, considering many aspects related to translational schooling, such as those that come to play in Room 246, a productive empirical contribution to the theoretical work is already taking place across this growing body of scholarship.

Connections for Moving with and Playing in Language Making, Opening Translation in K-

5 Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms

How might language making as translingual intra-active performances look in classrooms? Teacher Caitlin’s way of moving with and playing in language making in Room 246 provides inspiration for how educators might ethically take part in language making in classrooms. Barad (2007) writes that “ethics is about mattering and taking account of entangled materializations of which we are part, including new configurations, new subjectivities, and new possibilities” (p.384). Therefore, I suggest that as educators we recognize our role is one of many

264 moving pieces materializing in classrooms. Likewise, Caitlin as educator in Room 246 was part of nurturing the conditions, rhythms, and movement (in language making) in classrooms rather than steering pedagogy and curriculum or conducting it (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). For example, in chapter four, I suggest how as classroom teacher Caitlin moved with and played in language making, she was of different enfoldings of language making. Furthermore, Caitlin was amenable when Ruby and Sapphire desired to make the topic of their writing workshop come to life, sharing about the Korean Lunar New Year celebration. This was not the planned curriculum for the day. In fact, the impromptu student show-and-tell that comprises the Yut Nori moment went many minutes longer than Caitlin had planned. Consequently, the literacy block never happened on that day despite it being ‘that’ time, according to the calendar of the day noted on the board.

Caitlin was one moving component on the classroom rug along with large bags exploding with a

Yut Nori game and multiple Hanboks, food, and Ruby and Sapphire’s instructions to peers of how to bow to parents.

Another way of moving and playing in language is cultivating the conditions for children and materials to do what they have the potential to do together and may already be doing. One example is during the science investigation, in which Caitlin provided opportunities for children and materials to play together, re-shaping each other, and in doing so, created different opportunities for all to engage in the classroom. Moving with and playing in language making also connects to the practice of recognizing with video in Room 246, of which researchers, children, educators, and more can take part. Toward the end of the school year, teacher Caitlin had children bring in videos that they created of what they did outside of school to share with the rest of the class. These videos were about recognizing, sharing, building empathy among difference not to understand, but consider others’ ways of seeing. One was a video a child made

265 of a Furby, a furry robot toy singing; another was of a child playing a piece of music during a piano concert; and another emphasized a classmate’s daily mobility in the town near Oakville after school and during the weekends in his wheelchair (see Figure 7.1). While watching these videos, classmates, teachers and I sat on the classroom rug watching the videos, asking questions of each others’ experiences, responding to the images and sounds.

Figure 7.1. Video sharing in Room 246.

Such a practice of recognizing in K-5 classrooms and working with video can be expanded in multiple ways. Recognizing with video also relates to what Barad considers ethics.

In Room 246, I propose that an ethical practice toward language making is working with and watching video together, allowing children and teachers to respond to the frozen frames of the image, slow down the analysis, and account for how different configurations of what comes together in classrooms from moment-to-moment can produce new subjectivities and opportunities to engage in linguistically diverse classrooms. As an extension of this practice, I

266 explore the following questions: how does a practice of recognizing become part of culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms? How might this look? As noted in chapter four, Google

Translate and tablet can be projected on a screen for the whole class to view together, no longer a covert hidden on the side operation predominantly between emergent bilingual children and teachers. Different types of machine translation software can be tried out simultaneously and compared with alternative translations proposed by children, teachers, and inspired by the other players and partners in the classroom. Translation can be expanded to a play in language in video creation and watching the image of video together. For example, as an extension to a bilingual read aloud of The Three Little Pigs in Room 246 described in Blair et al. (2018), children could create videos comprising different translations of the story including compilations of sounds, images, scent, color, material objects, where words were invited not to necessarily signify.

Watching and recognizing such videos of intersemiotic language making in translation can broaden conceptualizations of language in classrooms. Different types of camera lenses, harnesses, angles, and software can change how we can see, hear and feel language in Room

246. Projecting literacy products such as the translingual blog post during the science investigation and sharing how images, singing, Mandarin, and English were all part of what comprised communication, and something more can all contribute to these “new possibilities” in the multilingual classroom.

Furthermore, we might add electrical impulses of keyboard strikes and long strings of numbers to how we include aspects of technology as part of classroom language making. We might recognize that such components of matter with words create forces that propel ways of engaging, not only ways of representing information. We might incorporate play with software and hardware into our language making. We might experiment with different programs, change

267 the views, consider coding language, as well as images and sounds produced with software in relation to words. We might work with software such as different applications, and hardware such as cameras, tablets, and others to see how these change our language play and translation.

In classrooms, this language play and experimentation in translation with hardware and software can be discovered rather than required. For example, instead of mandating the use of a specific application, allow for exploration in the same way Xi Xi Lu and Madeline worked with Seesaw blog application and tablet during the science investigation. We might also experiment with voice sound recordings that visually indicate different levels and types of sound in this translation and language making across linguistic and cultural borders.

Connections for Pre-Service and In-Service Teacher Education: Research Moving Forward

The connections through language making elaborated throughout chapters two through six suggest it is the affective connections with both communicating and not communicating that we make in our exchanges that need to be recognized as a way to build bridges in not only classrooms, but schools and communities. Educators who work in culturally and linguistically diverse schools with families whose lived experience may be different than their own should investigate how the relational exchanges between food, sounds, material objects, children, and families may spur intercultural connections. An example of connections realized through this analysis is evident in the exchange at Madeline’s dinner table shown in chapter three, when we sang “没有化 , lalala” together.

As an educator of teaching emergent bi/multilinguals, my pedagogical philosophy is that

K-12 educators in English-medium schools should adopt the different verbal/written languages of the children in their classroom, incorporating multiple languages in instructional practices (see work initiated by the City University of New York New York State Initiative on Emergent

268 Bilinguals (CUNY-NYSIEB) aligning to this pedagogical philosophy, aiming to help teachers to develop bilingualism as an asset it through multilingual pedagogy (Celic & Seltzer, 2012).

Nevertheless, this dissertation also suggests that by focusing on verbal/written aspects of language making and/or language as only communicating, we risk significantly narrowing how we conceptualize language. Over-reliance on language as verbal/written that signifies information can attempt to relate, but it doesn’t open players and partners to the uniqueness of different relations that might come about in more emergent, dynamic ways of connecting that are not predicated on shared grammar rules and vocabulary, nor the different nuances of meaning that develop through iterations of them.

Furthermore, as noted in chapter two, pre-service teacher education should emphasize how culture can be material-discursive in nature, without a binary between nature-culture (Barad,

2007). That is, I propose that rather than predominantly discussing culture as less-visible socially-constructed attitudes/views, ways of doing school, and raising children, we need to discuss how significant (cultural) encounters might involve such components that are often treated in pre-service teacher education as outward manifestations and therefore more superficial aspects of culture, such as food and music (Hamayan, 2012; Wright, 2019).

I now propose the research work I will pursue to recognize and iterate language making by making and watching video together. This new project brings together training in educational leadership and collaborative research in professional development in linguistically diverse schools (Sherman, Haneda, Bose, & Teemant, 2019) with this dissertation on recognizing language making and additional ways of engaging. Such a project will involve a co-inquiry in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms and schools with researchers, children, in- service, and pre-service teachers, where all play a role in recognizing openings for engagement

269 in schools and classrooms. The project will focus on how video can be a player and partner in exploratory professional learning opportunities in schools, as a fruitful way for children, pre- service, and in-service teachers to recognize different ways of engaging in their school and classrooms as part of an action research inquiry. Just as video was shared in Room 246 (figure

6.1), such a project envisions different sharings of video filmed and displayed by different partners and players: children, in-service and pre-service teachers, researchers, cameras of different lenses, cameras attached to different objects, depicting different angles of activity, and playing the video through software of different algorithms. Just as Murris and Babamia (2018) suggested, this co-inquiry, which could be part of a university pre-service/in-service teacher education course of professional learning community, would juxtapose these videos, such that multiple are watched together by groups of children, pre-service, in-service, teachers, administrators, and researchers. As such, this project is oriented to the tensions and agency of multiple perspectives in culturally and linguistically diverse schools in order to harness the synergy to recognize the productive differences and tensions between different players’ and partners’ ways of seeing, hearing, and feeling language and engagement.

Key to such an action research project would be how video and software may place multiple perspectives side-by-side (Murris & Babamia, 2018), produce fruitful disjunctures for recognizing, and how watching video footage together may create empathy for differences of experiences through seeing the camera’s perspective, and the filmmaker’s (recorder’s) perspective (Pink et al., 2017). This proposed research is inspired by the work of de Freitas

(2015) and Wanono (2014) who call for attending to the technical apparatus of research through software. This project also aligns to and de Freitas’ (2015/2016) call for the use of experimental film practices in classroom video research such as superpositioning of images and montage and

270 experimentation with how algorithms produce video differently. This inquiry will be a partnership between the College of Education, local schools, pre-service and in-service teachers, and the Film and Media Studies department. Such a partnership may make possible exploring how different ‘irrational’ dimensions can be explored with video in classrooms, and how changing software algorithms, may result in changed images and sound, making possible additional ways of taking account the “entangled materializations of which we are part” (Barad,

2007, p.384) .

This future action research inquiry suggests ways of recognizing language making, emphasizing what video, children, software, pre-service and in-service teachers can do with each other. Thus, the project provides a fruitful way of advocating for the mulivoicedness of what comes together in the ontological rearrangements between players and partners in multilingual/cultural schools and classrooms. Such a project would focus on recognizing how language making in other classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children may create additional pathways for engaging in classroom literacies. This project is what Rosiek (2019) calls a “creative improvisational response” to the initial explorations of intra-active language making in this dissertation. Centered on recognizing opportunities for engagement in other classrooms with emergent bi/multilingual children, this project is a language making yet to come.

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299 Frances Nebus Bose

256 Chambers Building University Park, PA 16802 [email protected] Education

The Pennsylvania State University Ph.D., Curriculum & Instruction — 2020 Boston College, Lynch School of Education, M.Ed., Educational Leadership — 2011 Boston College, Lynch School of Education, M.Ed., Elementary Education — 2009 University of South Carolina, B.A., Government & International Studies — 2003

Teaching and Research

Graduate Assistant Lecturer, The Pennsylvania State University — 2016- present Graduate Research Assistant, The Pennsylvania State University — 2014-2016 Lecturer, The Pennsylvania State University, Intensive English Program — 2013-2015 K-5 English Language Learner Teacher, Lexington Public Schools, MA — 2009-2013 English as a Second Language (ESL) Teacher, YMCA of Greater Boston — 2004 ESL Teacher, Early Learning School, Pavia, Italy — 2002-2003 ESL Teacher, L’Associazione Culturale Linguistica Educational, Italy — 2000-2002

Awards and scholarships

Dean's Graduate Assistantship's for Engaged Scholarship & Research in Education, The Pennsylvania State University — 2015-2020 New England Association for Employment in Education, Outstanding Educator Award— 2009

Grants

Education Consortium grant, Boston University School Education — 2012 Lexington Public School Grant, multicultural literature for Guided Reading Groups — 2012 Lexington Education Foundation Grant, multilingual books for school library — 2011 Lexington Public Schools Parent Teacher Organization Grant — 2011, 2012

Publications

Blair, A., Haneda, M., Bose, F. (2018). Re-Imagining English-Medium Instructional Settings as Sites of Multilingual and Multimodal Meaning-Making. TESOL Quarterly, 52 (3), 516-539.

Sherman, B., Haneda, M., Bose, F., Teemant, A. (2019). Ways of Interacting: What Underlies Instructional Coaches’ Discursive Actions. Teaching and Teacher Education, 78, 165-173.