A worksheet, a whiteboard, a teacher-learner: leveraging materials and colonial language frames for multimodal indigenous language learning

Abstract

The growing demand for Indigenous language education in the United States often relies on community teachers with widely varying proficiencies as part of local language reclamation efforts. While these English-dominant ‘teacher-learners’ play a central role in the success of classroom-based K-12 language programs, their classroom experiences and practices have received little attention in second language acquisition research. I address this gap in the literature by examining an English-dominant Ojibwe teacher-learner’s pedagogical practices in an English-dominant tribal school. I theorise the use of colonial language and materials by relying on linguistic ethnography’s multi-scalar approach to language in use as well as a focus on sign-makers’ transformations of local resources. Findings show how the teacher-learner’s reliance on relational knowledge and colonial language framing scaffolds translingual practices and opens up discursive space for learners to experiment, play, and learn. This study highlights how one teacher-learner negotiates the ideological and material conditions that shape the learning and use of an Indigenous language within a colonial institution (school) that has long been a tool of assimilation and erasure.

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