Representing Identity: The Importance of Literature and the Translanguaging Space for EAL/D Early Years Literacy Learning

Abstract

Quality literature is a natural fit when choosing resources to support learning in early years settings. This qualitative research reports how literary texts can be used to foster EAL/D students’ poetry writing and represent their identity. During professional learning, teachers were supported to select a range of engaging literary texts and design quality literacy experiences focused on thirdspace drama and other creative strategies. Students were afforded agency to respond to the texts and then employed Janks’ redesign cycle to craft identity text poems using their home language(s) and English. The lesson sequence generated a creative translanguaging space, and the poems highlight the richness of the students’ stories and give voice to their distinctive views of self and the world.

1. Introduction

Valuing the rich cultural and linguistic repertoires that young learners bring to any educational setting [1,2,3] can be the key to engaging young students and developing understandings and skills in English [4,5]. Identities are “infused or sedimented into literacy practices” [6] (p. 9), and when students are not able to understand and recognise their own linguistic resources, they “may internalize deficit views of their own skills” [7] (p. 31). Including the use of first languages or dialects (translanguaging) [8] alongside English in educational settings aligns with both the Australian National Curriculum [9] and the “Belonging, being and becoming: Early Years Learning Framework” [10]. Classroom practices that are underpinned by and enact these principles of diversity support improved educational outcomes for students from backgrounds that do not mirror the dominant linguistic and cultural background of the society in which they are being educated [6,11,12,13].

Central, therefore, to literacy education is facilitating learning experiences that help young learners of English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) to make connections to texts that ensure institutional access and inclusion. Janks argues that what we need is a “world in which we can learn from pure differences, be excited by conflictual perspectives, and all be treated with openness and care” [14] (p. 125). This project looks to identity text production as a pedagogical tool by which to foster engagement in learning and achievement and enable the development of “identities of competence” [6] (p. 17).

The key aims of the research were to:

(a)

Explore the extent to which professional learning on creating identity texts in the translanguaging space might bring about change in the classroom practices of primary teachers and create space for EAL/D students’ languages and identities to be valued and shared, and

(b)

Understand how teachers navigate any emergent tensions between innovation and the routinised ‘this is how we do things’ when EAL/D Stage 2 students redesign literary texts and present their distinctive perspectives about their home country.

In this article, we review the literature on translanguaging, the translanguaging space and the impulse towards acknowledging and using the linguistic resources of students from diverse backgrounds. We then describe professional learning undertaken as part of ‘The Identity Text Project’ by teachers from a low-socio-economic Australian primary school in which a high proportion of students have English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). Following this, we offer the findings from analysis of teacher and student artefacts generated in response to reading and redesigning Bronwyn Bancroft’s quality picture storybook Why I love Australia [15]. The article closes with a discussion of the insights gained from this study, including the positive outcomes that emerge when teachers innovate and make the classroom a place where the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of students are fostered.

1.1. Translanguaging, Language and Literacy

Strong research evidence already exists demonstrating that language development, including greater language development in the second language (L2) or dialect [16], is supported through practices and pedagogy that allow students to use their home languages in the classroom [17]). Translanguaging, a term originating from Williams’ research in Welsh settings, is now being widely used [12,18,19,20] to avoid a conceptualisation of bilingual language in which, depending on the situation, one linguistic system is privileged over the other, as is the case with “code switching” [21] (p. 7). Translanguaging has been described as “new language practices that make visible the complexity of language exchanges among people with different histories … [It] releases histories and understandings that had been buried within fixed language identities constrained by nation-states” [22] (p. 21). Translanguaging, thus, does not involve boundaries between languages [23] but rather captures the everyday practices of bi/multilingual learners as they employ flexible multilingual practices without clear linguistic boundaries to navigate their world. Garcia, Ibarra-Johnson and Seltzer [24] identify four primary translanguaging purposes:

• Supporting students as they engage with and comprehend complex content and texts.
• Providing opportunities for students to develop linguistic practices for academic contexts.
• Making space for students’ bilingualism and ways of knowing.
• Supporting students’ bilingual identities and socioemotional development (p. 7)

The purposes above emphasise the high level linguistic, cognitive and social capacities [8] inherent in communicating in more than one language and challenge the deficit perspectives of multilingual students so often present in EAL/D classrooms [7,25].

From a sociolinguistic perspective, translanguaging reflects the fluid language practices of bilingual communities. It also describes pedagogy through which teachers shape connection between the dominant school language practices and the language practices students bring with them from prior to school experiences. Increasingly the research evidence indicates that the “process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience is constructed through language so calling on ones’ full linguistic resources is integral and can be agentive” [25] (pp. 16–17). Translanguaging in early years settings can offer young children ‘joyful’ learning with bilingual students responding positively to developmentally appropriate translanguaging based authentic language experiences. Research has shown peer interaction in a buddy pair configuration using a translanguaging framework encourages students to take linguistic risks [26]. Working in translanguaging buddy pairs supported language development through bidirectionality with students’ interactions evolving from spoken to written mode leading to more complex writing and a less formulaic approach to writing [26].

Classroom practice that embraces translanguaging more easily establishes equitable, empowering language learning [2,13,23,27,28,29] by transforming teacher-student power relations [18] and shaping inclusion and social justice in an educational context. Teaching practices, however, that do not embrace the translanguaging framework can marginalise students and undermine the rights of language-minority students [22] and this is exacerbated when students are unable to even use their first language for learning [12].

1.2. The Role of Literature in the Development of Language and Literacy

Text selection in educational settings is of vital importance for both language and literacy development, especially for marginalised students. Providing many opportunities for students to use both their home languages and dialects as well as Standard Australian English (SAE) supports the development of oral language and engagement. The development of metalanguage, the language to talk about language, is especially important in the development of literacy for EAL/D students and especially for those students who are socially disadvantaged. Social disadvantage is realised in language use, or the development of orientations towards either a restricted or elaborated code of language use [30]. How language is used at home and in students’ communities may not reflect that of the school, no matter what language or dialect is spoken [25,27].

The first texts children encounter in homes and educational settings are often more spoken-like and may include repeated refrains and rhyme. These features support the development of both oral language and literacy, as developing understandings about the structure and features of familiar texts aids prediction as a text unfolds [31,32]. Spoken-like texts, which are grammatically intricate, are much easier to read than more lexically dense written-like texts, so the introduction of new concepts and vocabulary in more spoken-like texts can encourage interaction and engagement. For instance, poetry as Huisman [32] contends, can provide opportunities to explore both “levels of expression and wording” as well as “semantics and context” (p. 8). Furthermore, Duckworth and Tett [33] identify the value of narrative in enabling students to use their imaginations to connect their personal and public worlds and explore cultural dissonances, ambivalences and complexities that exist within their lives. By articulating this complex network, students are given the opportunity to examine the role of individuals, culture and community in shaping their perception of self. “It is imagination that draws us on. That enables us to make new connections among parts of our experience, that suggests the contingencies of the reality we are envisaging” [34] (p. 30). Multimodal texts which provide a link between spoken and written language can also support understandings about the mode continuum [35,36,37], the differences between spoken and written language. This in turn can provide opportunities for reflection about language use, the first step in developing the foundations of literacy [36].

Bishop [38] conceptualises literature’s capacity for connection by arguing that quality literary texts can function as ‘windows’ that open up glimpses to new and different worlds. When young learners engage with the proffered worlds of the text, the text becomes a ‘sliding door’ which provides opportunities to make connections to their own lives. “Readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author” ([38] (n.p). Literature also has the capacity to be a mirror, with Bishop posing that “when lighting conditions are just right” literature “transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own loves and experience as part of the human experience” [38] (n.p). Viewed in these ways, encounters with literature play a central role in language and literacy development in the early years.

1.3. The Identity Text Project: ‘Identities of Competence’ and Promoting Literacy Development

This section of the paper canvasses how teachers can create opportunities for their students to respond to literature by creating identity texts that enact the “kind of pedagogical initiative that is required to get students engaged with literacy and enable them to develop identities of competence” [6] (p. 9). Identity texts encourage students to draw on their lived experiences and utilise their full linguistic repertoires, including home languages, to craft creative work or performances. Creation of the texts is orchestrated by the classroom teacher within the pedagogical space of the classroom by holding a mirror up to students in which the students’ identities are “reflected back in a positive light” [6] (p. 3).

Studies have explored the creation of a vast array of identity texts including language trajectory grids [39], poetry [2], language maps [7,28,40], biographical texts [41], readers’ theatre scripts [42], multilanguage digital narratives [43,44], and multilingual flip books [45]. When shared with audiences of peers, teachers, parents/carers, and the broader school community, the texts have been shown to generate positive feedback resulting in affirmation of self in interaction with the audience(s). Identity texts therefore function as a powerful pedagogical tool that can promote equity for students from marginalised social and language backgrounds [6].

Research has shown that the creation of identity texts can:

• Affirm students’ identities as intelligent, imaginative and linguistically talented [6,13,42,46]. D’warte’s study of language mapping in linguistically diverse settings also aligns with Cummins’ definition of identity text but does not employ the term [28].
• Increase students’ awareness of the relationship between their home language and the language of the school [6,39,42].
• Encourage students to connect new information and skills to their background knowledge [6,42].
• Enable students to produce more accomplished literacy work in the dominant language of the educational setting [6,19,23,46].

Identity texts therefore represent an “instructional tool that transforms the interpersonal spaces within the classroom to enable students (particularly those from marginalised groups) to develop and showcase identities of competence linked to literacy and academic work generally” [6] (p. 32). When dual language texts are created students and teachers negotiate identities such that power is generated for both. “How students are positioned either expands or constricts opportunities for identity investments and cognitive empowerment” [6], (pp. 32–33). This perspective positions identity investment as a sociological construct in which language learners are conceived as possessing a complex identity that is reshaped through experience and across time—with the influence of social power relations and interactions experienced being central. Creative genres enable students to create enactments of identity [42] and poetry offers rich possibilities for young EAL/D writers as the medium rewards brevity and offers a safe transition from spoken to written language. It also provides a vehicle for voicing personal representations of language and identity [2,33,34]. These representations of identity are important in challenging perceptions of self, especially during early years of schooling and are valuable in cultivating a sense of belonging, relatedness to the community and enhancing learner engagement.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Research Context

Australia is characterised by a multicultural and multilingual landscape [13,47]. As such many classrooms comprise students and teachers from a range of different backgrounds. Over “350 languages are spoken in Australia, including Indigenous languages that are passed on as a mother tongue, those that are being awakened and revived, as well as emerging pidgins, creoles and lingua francas; migrant languages” [2] (p. 3). In New South Wales (NSW), the Australian state where this research was conducted, around 36.9% of students have a Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) [1]. This diversity is acknowledged in curriculum documents for example the Intercultural Understanding General Capability in the Australian Curriculum [9].

In the Australian Curriculum, students develop intercultural understanding as they learn to value their own cultures, languages and beliefs, and those of others. They come to understand how personal, group and national identities are shaped, and the variable and changing nature of culture. Intercultural understanding involves students learning about and engaging with diverse cultures in ways that recognise commonalities and differences, create connections with others and cultivate mutual respect [9].

English, however, is the de facto national language [13,48] and most Australian schools are English only settings “where common educational policies and practices target universal individual development of Standard English literacy compared and measured by high stake, traditional tests” [49] (p. 298). The major test is the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), undertaken by all Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 Australian students during their primary and secondary years. Test performance expectations have been shown to narrow the choices teachers make in relation to curriculum, pedagogy and resources [2,34].

Below, we outline the research design and methods of our study, including how the trialectic of spatiality [50,51], as manifested in Li’s Translanguaging Space [52,53], and Janks’ Redesign Cycle [54] function as frames for the research.

2.2. Research Design and Participants

This case study research was carried out as part of a larger multi-site case study professional learning project titled ‘The Identity Text Project’ in which we worked as leaders of professional learning with primary and secondary teachers from five school sites. The study is Human Ethics Research Committee (HERC) approved, all necessary permissions were sought and obtained, and all artefacts were anonymised. We report case study data from one primary school in metropolitan New South Wales, Australia, in which 92% of students were from LBOTE and 72% of students were from the bottom quartile of socio-educational backgrounds, as determined by the schools’ Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) ranking on the Australian My School website [55]. Relative to many other students, the student participants in this study can, therefore, be viewed as being marginalised. This is because the monolingual nature of instruction NSW schools does not fully value their linguistic capabilities, and their low ICSEA context has the potential to limit access to key resources and professional models that support academic success for students in other settings.

Participants were six (n = 6) volunteer Stage 2 teachers of students in Stage 2 (approximate ages 8–9 years) from the case study school and their students. The teachers worked ‘elbow-to-elbow’ with Author 2 during a 14-month period of professional dialogue, collaboration and sustained intervention based on identity texts. The case study design was employed with a view to yielding rich qualitative data around teacher practice and student-created texts in a strongly EAL/D setting, and we acknowledge the limitations this case study design places on the generalisability of results.

2.3. Analytical Lenses

The trialectic of spatial practices [50,51], as manifested in Li’s translanguaging space [52,53], was employed to examine the characteristics of and interactions between the spaces that shape the teaching and learning investigated in this study. Janks’ critical literacy Design-Redesign Dimension [54] was utilised as a complementary conceptual frame in the design of the classroom activities and in data analysis. The cycle’s four interrelated dimensions of power, access, diversity, and design/redesign functioned to support students to deconstruct existing texts and create texts that imagine new possibilities and perspectives of themselves and the world [54,56,57]. These analytical lenses are outlined below.

2.3.1. Trialectic of Spatial Practices (Socio-Spatial Theory)

Comprised of the (i) perceived (everyday practices), (ii) conceived (dominant, ideal) and (iii) lived spaces of representation, the trialectic of spatial practices [50] offers a lens through which to view educational settings. Soja [51] relabelled these spaces as firstspace, secondspace and thirdspace, and we adopt this nomenclature in this research.

Table 1. Characteristics of first, second and thirdspace in EAL/D education settings.

Space	Characteristics
Firstspace	Space of everyday routines and practice Bell times, lesson arrangements, daily routines. Resource availability/constraints. Normalisation of the monolingual classroom resulting in erosion of student agency, voice Typified by tight deadlines, sometimes pragmatic decision making. No time for creative classroom practice Narrowing of curriculum and pedagogy in response to high-stakes testing and performativity pressures. This is how we usually do things.
Secondspace	Ideal educational setting and practice as espoused by curriculum documents, politicians, those with societal power. Commentary of critique (Mockler, 2022). Performativity measures. High-stakes testing—pressure to invoke pedagogy to improves test results Resistance to creativity Resistance to multilingual teaching and learning practices This is how you should do things.
Thirdspace	Transformative pedagogy: translanguaging space. Subversion and reimagination Space to “resist, subvert and reimagine everyday realities’ (Ryan and Barton, 2013, p. 73). Possibilities for an expanded form of learning and new knowledge Remaking taken for granted practices and beliefs about monolingual language practices. Identity texts. The Redesign Cycle Thirdspace practice relating to EAL/D literacy development requires intentionality of practice to be enacted What if …?

offers an overview of the spaces in the context of EAL/D educational settings where English is the language of instruction.

Transformative or thirdspace pedagogy allows teachers to employ practices that are relevant and responsive to the language, literacies, and life experiences of classrooms typified by ‘super-diversity’ [58]. Transformative pedagogy affords students agency to depart from conventional classroom practices and social realities and instead invites them to analyse and understand their lives and settings, and to scrutinise dominant larger social perspectives and power relations [6]. Because the first, second, and third spaces are sites of contestation, individuals and school systems function as mediators to bridge the political, ideological, and practical divisions between the spaces, allowing the spaces to be interrelated. This means that teachers play a critical role in “engaging with pedagogical change” [18] (p. 7) and have capacity to invoke evidence-informed practices that challenge secondspace and firstspace constraints to bring about change.

2.3.2. Translanguaging Space and Utilising Linguistic Repertoires

The concept of ‘translanguaging space’ [52] is employed as a lens through which to explore teachers’ classroom work involving identity text creation and translanguaging. The usual monolingual, monocultural practices in subject English are challenged when EAL/D students are afforded agency to tell their distinctive stories using all their language resources. A new classroom space shaped by thirdspace pedagogy is created. Labelled the ‘translanguaging space’ by Li [52,53] this space allows students to choose when and how they employ their linguistics resources and offers a space for learners to explore dimensions of identity as Li explains:

‘ … different ‘identities, values and practices … [to] combine together to create new identities, values and practices’. [It] creates a social space for the multilingual user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity into one coordinated and meaningful performance’ [52] (p. 1223).

An innovative, open space, the translanguaging space reimagines the boundaries between old and new) and embraces criticality and creativity—the latter being an element of classroom practice under threat from high-stakes test responses in many educational settings [46,59,60]. The translanguaging space is, therefore, transformative, and allows students to explore relationships between cultures and play with identities, values and practices in ways that might lead to reshaped understandings of self and others [52].

2.3.3. Redesign Cycle

The third complementary lens informing this study is Hilary Janks’ ‘Redesign Cycle’ [54,56]. To be literate in contemporary society, students require skills and knowledge to engage critically with texts and construct meanings through a range of lenses and perspectives. This means teachers need to provide critical literacy experiences that enable students to “read both the word and the world in relation to power, identity, difference and [provide] access to knowledge, skills, tools and resources [56] (p. 227). All texts can be deconstructed (unmade) and subsequently reconstructed (redesigned) in ways that offer different representations of the world [54]. Students engaged in in a process of reading and then writing in response to a text can be invited to problematise and rewrite the world [56] in a process of design and redesign as shown in Figure 1 below.

In this project, the redesign cycle was employed to offer students from diverse backgrounds ways to engage critically with a text, identity the extent to which the text represents their voice(s) and experiences, and then opportunities to remake the text into an identity text that represents their language(s), world(s), and identity(ies). The transformative redesign pedagogy, therefore, enacts a thirdspace stance in which students might engage in learning that facilitates social action that promotes greater understandings between groups and makes a difference in the way the students think about their self and others [57,62].

2.4. Data Collection

Data collection instruments were authentic texts generated during usual classroom routines and interactions. The instruments sought to give voice to participant perspectives but do so in ways that did not add additional workload to already busy teachers. To map the complexity of the teaching and learning experiences and minimise distortion or bias, data source triangulation was undertaken via the use of three data sources. Consent was received for the following project artefacts to be released to the researchers for analysis and publication.

• Site Documents: These were collected in all phases of the research and included meeting agendas and notes created by Author 2, teaching units of work, and correspondence with the school executive.
• Work Artefacts: Teacher-gathered student work samples were collected during Phase 4: (i) Venn diagram showing planning (ii) poetic redesign of Bancroft’s literary text.
• Teacher Focus Group Reflection: The focus group was audio recorded and then transcribed, including reflections on teaching programs, teaching practices prior to the collaborative professional learning, and teaching practices after the ‘Identity Text’ unit of work. Data were collected at the end of Phase 4 and were recorded during a staff meeting.

Phase 1: The initial phase of the project involved a series of meetings over several school terms, attended by teachers and EAL/D specialist teachers from the school and members of the school executive. Attendees engaged in professional dialogue and reflection regarding possibilities for developing student literacy. The aim was to achieve improvements within a framework that fosters wellbeing and eschews narrowing pedagogy and curriculum and to pursue creativity and innovation in classroom practice—in other words, thirdspace pedagogy. Identity text production was suggested and agreed to as the focus for a Stage 2 unit of work framed around representations of identity and home country. Students would be supported to read and critically engage with published literary texts and then create their own identity text poem through the cycle of design-redesign [54]. A workshop titled ‘Who let the poets out?’ was offered to introduce the power of poetry for personal expression and its capacity to be a transgressive medium offering scope for cultural expression and the exploration of national boundaries.

Phase 2: The second phase involved the development of sustainable and easily implemented protocols and procedures for data collection by participating teachers. These included: purposive selection of three students from each class from whom artefacts would be gathered and who were representative of the range of academic abilities and had strong attendance; assignation of teacher roles including hard copy and scanning of work artefacts and a recording and transcription of a reflective discussion about the project at its conclusion.

Phase 3: The third phase comprised a two-month period of collaborative professional learning attended by Stage 2 teachers and members of the executive (n = 10). Author 2 conducted an initial workshop during which teachers were introduced to and explored the nature and potential benefits of identity text production including the way identity texts and the translanguaging space can disrupt a transmission pedagogy that views EAL/D students as blank slates [2,6,39]. During a series of meetings and informal elbow-to-elbow mentoring, teachers were then supported to design and implement the learning and teaching sequences that would support students to write the identity text poems. The ‘Fostering an inclusive creative pedagogy for EAL/D principles’ (Figure 2) model was employed to plan the lesson activities for the literature-focused redesign cycle. The strategies and resources employed during the identity text unit of work are shown in

Table 2. Supportive Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms framework.

Element	Strategy and Resources
Creative pedagogy	Use of ‘Walk in Role’ and ‘Advance Detail’ to explore characterisation and point of view in texts. Use of poetry scaffold ‘X is like …, Y is like …’ (Koch, 1990) to support redesign of the student selected literary text representation of Australia.
Real world task	Interviewing family member to gather an oral narrative from home/community.
Authentic texts	Creation of redesigned poetry text or collaborative creation of an original script for Readers Theatre. Use of translanguaging encouraged to: - Support learning - Represent cultural background in events and dialogue
High expectations	Reading and critical analysis of literary texts and their perspective of Australia. Scaffolded redesign task. Student agency in authorial decisions. Realistic but defined deadlines.
Cognitive challenge	Transformation of medium from original picture book to poem. Redesign cycle using Why I love Australia (Bancroft). Use of textual conventions and form.

.

Phase 4: This final research phase involved the teaching of the redesign unit of work that incorporated the strategies and resources outlined in Table 2. Researcher 2 maintained site visits and worked elbow-to-elbow with teachers as they implemented the identity text focused suit of work, explored quality literary texts and shaped a translanguaging space for their students.

2.5. Data Analysis

The data analysis lenses employed in this study position the identity text unit of work in the firstspace, secondspace and thirdspace, and then refine the analysis of the thirdspace practice using the Redesign Cycle as a frame. Braun and Clarke’s [63] reflexive thematic analysis approach was employed with the coding representing our interpretations of the patterns emerging from the data set. We employed a theory-informed or deductive approach.

Data coding was an iterative process with multiple, independent spaced readings conducted to generate the ‘bones’ of the analysis [64]. In Phase 1, each researcher independently familiarised themselves with the data, making analytical annotations, researcher notes, and analytical memos. The researchers then assigned descriptive labels to the data (Phase 2). In Phase 3, the theoretical frame of the trialectic of spatial practices [50,51] was employed to analyse (i) site documents and (iii) teacher focus group reflections data sets. The themes of firstspace, secondspace and thirdspace were independently applied to the data and sub-themes identified. Each researcher generated a code book and agreed definitions were then decided upon and employed in a 2nd sweep of Phase 3 data and in the Phase 4 data sweep. The themes and sub-themes were reviewed to ensure the codes form a coherent pattern and offer an apt representation of the data. The code book with definitions for each theme/sub-theme was then finalised and data items including work sample extracts and focus group quotations were selected for inclusion in data reporting.

Second-tier deductive coding of the thirdspace theme was undertaken through analysis of (i) site documents, (ii) student work artefacts and (iii) teacher focus group reflections. Janks’ three principles of critical literacy theory were employed as themes: (i) naming the problem; (ii) imagining new perspectives; and (iii) promoting improved understanding of and relationships with others [54]. Janks’ principles reflect and prompt new literacy practices and so align well with the innovative nature of the thirdspace. The titles of Janks’ three critical literacy principles were fleshed out to create labels that better represent the patterns in the data sets (see

Table 3. Themes utilising socio-spatial and redesign cycle frames.

Theme	Subtheme
1. Firstspace	English-only practice. Talk/drama strategies in preparation for writing. Textual choices: use of literary texts to support development of identity texts.
2. Secondspace	Search for strategies and resources to enhance student engagement. Literacy development aims. Desire for high quality literacy PL. Interest in fostering community connections.
3. Thirdspace	Naming the problem: understanding the power of texts to position readers. Imagining new perspectives: literary texts that value identity Promoting improved understanding of and relationships with others: connectedness to and within communities: Identity texts and translanguaging space.

) and sub-themes were identified. The use of Janks’ principles as a lens is adapted from Mantei and Kervin’s [57] approach in their study of the ‘Redesign’ process in a series of Grade 6 critical literacy lessons.

A third tier of deductive coding was undertaken on the student work samples. The second and third of Janks’ principles were employed namely ii) imagining new perspectives, and iii) promoting improved understanding of and relationship with others with close textual analysis used to identify the stylistic features employed by the students.

Detailed notes were kept and intercoder reliability checks were conducted at each phase mitigating against single coder subjectivity. Discrepancies were minimal and were resolved with minor amendments or refinements to code book descriptions. Coding definitions, researcher annotations and notes, and textual analyses were retained as an ‘audit trail’ [64].

3. Results

This section reports data from all data instruments with the themes based on the first, second, and thirdspace from socio-spatial theory. Janks’ three principles of critical literacy theory (naming the problem, imagining new perspectives, and promoting improved understanding of and relationships with others) are employed as thirdspace subtheme frames. An overview of the themes and subthemes is shown in Table 3.

3.1. Firstspace

Analysis of site documents and teacher focus group reflections show the impact of firstspace routines and pressures on teachers’ choice of strategies and resource selection.

3.1.1. English-Only Classroom Practice

The data show that, prior to undertaking the identity text project professional learning, classrooms of participating teachers were English-only spaces with translanguaging not encouraged. Despite most teachers being multilingual, home languages were not encouraged, and teachers did not seek space for sharing stories that draw on students’ cultural backgrounds. Following the identity text PL and unit of work, teachers demonstrated a shift towards embracing the translanguaging space. This perspective is exemplified in the following comment: “My students found it very interesting to bring input from family from home … I’d give more opportunity [in the future] for them to bring in artefacts or photographs that they could elaborate on in terms of their writing”. Another teacher voiced a common view when stating they would continue to encourage the use and creation of identity texts because “personalizing it with their identity intrigues them more so they’re more involved in their learning … obviously everyone likes talking about themselves!”. Other examples of the shift to valuing translanguaging include:

“We did some drama skits, and the kids were like ‘Yallah’ it was really, really natural to them, … they were bouncing off each other”.

“Encouraging the students to use home language which they found quite interesting and excited to use in their writing. A lot of them started to put brackets, meaning English, what it is, and they were happy to share and reflect on each other’s writing.”

Teachers also embraced the translanguaging space, with several reporting a shift to using their own language(s) in class to create a safe space for multilingual talk: “I started speaking … the way my parents would, so they got the confidence to start speaking in their own language”.

3.1.2. Talk/Drama Strategies in Preparation for Writing

Amongst the busyness of day-to-day routines, teachers initially reported rarely using drama strategies, seeing them as challenging and time consuming. Likewise, the use of classroom talk as a collaborative preparation for writing was not routine but following the identity text project professional learning, most teachers reported they would now be more likely to incorporate talk into their everyday classroom practice. In response to the question ‘What had an impact on the quality of writing?’, Teacher L responded. “We recorded them … and got them to listen to themselves”. Another teacher noted “If you can speak it, you can write it” (Teacher J). Teacher R’s response when asked ‘What would you extend as a result of this project?’ was representative of the views of the teachers in relation to an intention to place greater emphasis on the drama-based talk tasks encountered in the project: “… definitely incorporate more time for talk before they start writing, more collaboration … rather than speak to one person, speak to a number of people”.

3.1.3. Textual Choices: Use of Literary Texts to Support Development of Identity Texts

All teachers in the study reported being interested in using literary texts that offered rich opportunities to explore identity and construction of meaning and power but agreed the firstspace pressures left them with minimal time to explore new literary texts. Feedback on the rich literary texts suggested during the professional learning workshops and then utilised in class by teachers was positive, for example, “I initially found the students very engaged orally when they were given the opportunity to discuss and speak and listen to others … this increased their confidence overall in writing or my students” (Teacher J). Teachers reported intending to continue to use the texts to support literacy development and to engage their students.

3.2. Secondspace

From the outset, this was a project intended to generate change that would move teaching and learning towards meeting ‘ideal’ secondspace policy and curriculum aims. The impetus for the professional learning project stemmed from the school Executive’s desire to foster student engagement and literacy. Analysis of meeting documents revealed the following key themes:

• Search for strategies and resources to enhance student engagement;
• Literacy development aims;
• Desire for high-quality literacy PL.

The executive embraced our recommendation to achieve these aims via a teaching unit based on identity texts and drama/talk strategies. They also expressed keen interest in the possibility that the identity text work might, in addition to the above stated aims, foster community connections. The quotations below from teacher focus group reflections demonstrate the impetus towards meeting the above secondspace aims noted in the data.

“When it is focused on them and their history, their family obviously they’re more engaged and more inclined to talk about it”.

“Khadija … her story was like something you wouldn’t have imagined … but it was so detailed as well, and it actually got chosen by her group to be performed. It was that interesting to the, … it was a way for her to engage in writing without engaging in writing per se … She had the group there to support her to do it”.

3.3. Thirdspace

3.3.1. Naming the Problem: Understanding the Power of Texts to Position Readers

Every literary text studied in an early years’ classroom represents a distinct perspective on the world and one that may not align with that of a student who is reading the text. Because a text represents a distinct perspective on the world, it privileges the interests of some people and ideas and marginalises others [57]. The texts, textual features and contextual information are summarised in Figure 3 below.

Historical recount and picture book analysis activities (Figure 3) in the unit were designed to help students develop and articulate understanding of a text’s power. They did this by exploring the ways in which the text represents a particular perspective on the world—a perspective shaped by the author’s context, the author’s stylistic choices, the purpose for creating the text, as well as the context of the reader responding to the text. Analysis of the teachers’ text selection showed that they provided a range of perspectives, which, while naturally limited, encapsulate the origins of Australia in the colonising of the original First Nations and the resulting waves of migration from Britain and other countries around the world. Working with these texts represented thirdspace innovation for the teachers, as both the texts and the perspective-focused approach were new territory for the teachers.

The purposely selected texts included two by Indigenous Australian authors: Why I love Australia by Bronwyn Bancroft [15] and excerpts from the poem Stories by Lionel Fogarty. The latter was read alongside the poem ‘My Country’ by Dorothea Mackellar to provide two very different perspectives. It is important that the Indigenous author of Why I love Australia, Bronwyn Bancroft, was included, as the text provides an insight into why a minority First-Nation person loves Australia as she shows there is already a gap between her perspective and mainstream perceptions about Australia—a wide enough gap to invite others to share their perspectives. The stories in Australians All also provided students with further contextual information about the groups of people who have made their homes in Australia and help form contemporary Australian society.

3.3.2. Imagining New Perspectives: Literary Texts That Value Identity

Central to the development of identity texts were rich experiences with quality literary texts. The unit of work site documents show that teachers worked collaboratively to design a range of literacy-based activities that would enable students to:

(a)

Engage with stories from their own lives and language backgrounds, for example: interviewing family members and creating readers’ theatre from family stories.

(b)

Read and engage critically with literary texts: What aspects of Australia/Australian life does the author tell us about? What aspects are selected for praise? How does the author show us they like/dislike aspects of Australia/Australian life? Do I agree with the author’s perspective? Is the author’s Australia the same as/different to my Australia?

(c)

Write a poem that redesigns one or more of the literary texts about Australia. In preparation, students respond to the prompt ‘X, my home …’. Students were given the option of employing the poetry scaffold ‘X is like …, Y is like …’ developed by Kenneth Koch in his book Wishes, Lies and Dreams [65] or appropriate stylistic patterns from one of the literary texts they had studied.

When lesson tasks from the teaching programs were mapped against the ‘Supportive strategies for multilingual classrooms’ (Figure 2), analysis identified that a suite of arts-based EAL/D targeted strategies was also implemented to support reading of the literary texts, scaffold movement from spoken to written on the mode continuum and facilitate the design-redesign process in response to the literary texts about Australia. Data from the teacher focus group reflections support this finding. Creative pedagogy that was utilised included: (i)Walk in Role: where students represent the emotions of a character as they “walk” in role as the character and answer questions from class members [66] and (ii) Advance/Detail I which a student (Teller) tells a story from their life in Australia and their partner (Listener) can say ‘Advance’ to encourage the Teller to move ahead in the story or say ‘Detail’ to invite the Teller to provide additional detail about the people/events being described [66]. Teacher L reflected in the following way: “… ‘Advance Detail’ … it just got them to have that discussion and then increase the information they were putting in, utilizing the language that they had spoken by getting their partner to scribe exactly what they said”.

Cognitive challenge is evident in students’ preparation for their production of the identity text poems. Students constructed Venn diagrams mapping three perspectives, namely, that of the student, the author of one of the texts the student had read in class, and a family/community member the student had interviewed. The task prompted students to identify the aspects of Australia the author and family member chose to represent and then articulate their own perspective. Stage 2 student Nemaan’s representation of three perspectives (self, Bancroft and grandma) in Figure 4 is representative of the patterning identified in the participants’ Venn diagrams with the three perspectives being largely distinct.

The representations created using the prompt ‘Why I love Australia’ draw attention to the alignment and differences between the three perspectives and validate the students’ perspective alongside that of a published author and a respected family or community member. It is a high-challenge task (Figure 2). The differences in choice of elements being listed demonstrates student autonomy and independence of voice and a keen imagining of new perspectives.

The main text that was used to develop the poems below was Bronwyn Bancroft’s Why I love Australia. The Indigenous perspective Bancroft provides starts with the land, and in the rich text she offers both verbal and visual descriptions of scenes from Australian cities and country. The redesign was foregrounded by the students’ perspectives of Australia which focused on local places, family and community and the poem was shared with class members and family. Writing the poem thus enacts the authentic text and real-world task dimension of the Supportive Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms framework (Figure 2). Students were able to appropriate vocabulary, structure and grammatical features to describe their own towns or aspects of Australia that they love. Bancroft often uses just an extended noun group to describe an image in her book, and students borrowed this and other sentence structures to write their own poems. The Stage 2 participants are all aged 8 or 9 years old, and many have only their limited experiences on which to draw. Nonetheless, the lyrical qualities of the original text are obvious in students’ redesigns. Typed versions of Eal’s and Nabel’s handwritten poems are provided below.

‘Lebanon my home’

The Lebanon breeze is like a smooth and untouchable flowing storm.

The loud music of drum beats banging and clicking across the city town of Tripoli..

The enormous and deafening waves splashing and roaring along the chikka beaches …

The green Cedar trees standing confident with cheer and pride!

The mixed blends of tasty Kafaneh squeezing freshly into your mouth with a crunch, crunch, crunch...

(Eal Stage 2)

‘Australia my heart’

In Australia our fireworks go Kaboom, Kaboom, Kaboom from our spectacular Harbour Bridge

Sparkling glitter down the midnight sky every year.

Colourful bright rides at Kuna Park looks like diamonds shinning (sic) between my brown eyes

The billowing waves crushing on the wet golden soft sand

Kangaroos hopping, hopping, hopping with their joeys in their pouches.

(Nabel, Stage 2)

Allowing students to draw from their personal experiences but scaffolding their efforts to express their ideas during the redesign process, generated creative responses that value identity and first languages but also enact the creative use of English. This is exemplified by the excerpts in the Figure 5 analysis. The poems have been annotated to identify figurative elements from Bancroft’s text that have been remade in the students’ identity text poems.

3.3.3. Promoting Improved Understanding of and Relationships with Others: Identity Texts and Translanguaging Space

One of the ways that student agency was developed in this project was by encouraging students to choose the country they would write about. The range of choices of the sixteen texts produced were: Australia (6), Afghanistan (2), Fiji (2), Lebanon (5), Iraq (1). While the written text of Bancroft’s Why I love Australia is brief, the language used is complex and the visual images are rich and engaging. Why I love Australia (Bancroft) [15] and showcases beautiful illustrations and the evocative imagery of the written text. A comparison with the students’ poems demonstrates the extent to which the students have appropriated the language patterns and other stylistic elements of Bancroft’s literary text to represent their relationship with their chosen country and the people that inhabit the various landscapes they describe.

The thirdspace learning for the teachers was through the process of designing a complex task and by also providing a scaffold in the selection of a complex literacy text which students redesigned. Analysing the students’ texts showed development of literacy in the use of grammatical features and the structure of the poems as well as a keen awareness of audience in that they include descriptions aimed at painting evocative pictures of their chosen landscape, including the utterances and people that symbolise the various dimensions of their community.

The data demonstrate that the redesign process empowered students as experts and brought about shifts in how they were positioned relative to others in their classroom. Clear about the purpose of their texts, the students took on the role of teacher in translating for an audience who did not share their own unique cultural and linguistic repertoires. Teachers reported that informal student–student and class level dialogue occurred about similarities and differences across languages and countries. Also evident was a keen sense of the need to explain ‘difference’ and the confidence to acknowledge and articulate this. This articulation of difference is exemplified in Bilal’s poem: ‘Corner shops open round the clock and shopkeepers shouting ‘Uhlan wa Sahlan’ meaning welcome in as they do business’. Similarly, Daoud and Araceli use the very rhythm of Bancroft’s text as well as some of the rich metaphors, such as “chattering under rooftops” but redesign it to give their own unique representation of their urban homes. Daoud’s “slow tyres driving by” and the touching sense of safety in a home that is “like a candle in the dark”.

‘My town’

Rows of trees with their vibrant leaves going side to side.

Chattering under rooftops, bang the balls, pound the bright yellow fence.

Red lava lights, slow tyres driving by, ticking blinkers going right and left.

A beautiful double story (sic) home with comfort like a candle in the dark.

(Daoud, Stage 2)

References to family, home languages and elements of community are indicative of a translanguaging space beyond the immediate self and focused on human dimensions of the Australian landscape, such as neighbourhood, multiculturalism, safety and the concept of home. For instance, Rebuz’ description of the local neighbourhood constructs a powerful auditory evocation of the town. “The chirpy and energetic shop keepers blarring (sic) out ‘yalla, yalla’ to the locals”. Similarly, in Araceli’s poem, several famous Sydney landmarks are selected and presented as accumulative symbols of the exciting, vibrant lifestyle associated with ‘Australia my country’.

… The cold and glowing Arz snowfields where the laughter of kids are heard as they slide down the hill tops.

The chirpy and energetic shopkeepers blaring out “Yalla, yall” to locals.

The beautiful and peaceful city of Tripoli filled with laughter and joy.

Corner shops open round the clock and shopkeeper shouting “Uhlan wa Sahlan” meaning welcome in as they do business.

(Rebuz, Stage 2)

‘Australia my country’

The superb Blue Mountains filled with adventure.

Mayhem on the streets of Luna Park as everyone rushes to their favourite rides like hurricanes.

Multiple shopping areas at every station crowded with shops and people.

Melodic, thundering music filling the Opera house like elephants trumpeting in an echoey cave

‘Brr, Brr, Brr’. …

The billowing salty waves crash on the scorching sand as cool as it’s dangerous at the beach.

Australia my country.

(Araceli, Stage 2)

In a translanguaging space, use of home language(s) is always optional, with students invited to choose from their linguistics repertoire as desired. Whilst the work sample data show that most students used translanguaging for emphasis, characterisation, and verisimilitude, one teacher noted evidence of subtractive bilingualism in play in that a few students opted not to add in their home language “because they felt really, really embarrassed [of their knowledge of their home language]”.

The translanguaging space is both a challenge to monolingual classroom practices and a conduit for developing student agency and this is highlighted in the annotated excerpts in Figure 5 and Figure 6. The evidence is seen in students translating for their audience, demonstrating the seamless use of linguistic repertoires and the development of language and literacy in English. Bancroft describes place and physical locations in Australia, and this scaffold is then used and redesigned, resulting in unusual comparisons that create a strong sensory description of the spaces students have selected to share in their poems, excerpts of which are in Figure 6.

Data from the teacher focus group also reinforce the above shifts towards an improved understanding of and relationships with others. For example, “I heard stories I hadn’t heard before … it gave me a background into who they are and what they experienced” (Teacher D).

When reporting these results, we acknowledge the limitations of this study in that we are reporting case study data from one site of a larger professional learning program and from a relatively small sample size from a specific research setting. The presence of rich, thick description, however, allows researchers and educators to make decisions about generalisability to other early years settings. Overall, the findings from our research conducted in one low SES EAL/D school show that disruption of firstspace thinking and pedagogy can be achieved through the thirdspace redesign of purposefully selected literary texts. The identity texts focused unit of work developed by the teachers following a period of professional learning, supported the: development of textual knowledge regarding how readers might be positioned by a text, supported teachers to employ creative strategies to foster talk in preparation for writing, and created opportunities to value students’ language and backgrounds.

4. Discussion

This article has focused on the extent to which professional learning about identity texts in the translanguaging space [52,53] led to changes in classroom practice that created space for the identities and languages of EAL/D learners to be valued and shared. The professional learning supported teachers to make judicious use of quality Australian literature that offered unique representations of Australia, and then develop lessons that invite students to analyse the texts and explore their perspectives of Australia in relation to the perspectives of others [61]. The project was framed by socio-spatial theory [50,51] in that it sought to mediate the everyday routines of the first space (busy, monolingual focused learning) and the ideals of the secondspace (policy acknowledgement of diversity and high-stakes testing pressures) to facilitate thirdspace, innovative practice. Teachers reframed teaching and learning in subject English so students could work in the translanguaging space, where creativity and criticality are embraced [52,53]. Janks’ Redesign Cycle [54] informed the innovative practice, with teachers supporting students to move from analysis (unmaking/deconstructing Bancroft’s text), through the redesign process (reconstructing/remaking Bancroft’s text), to the design and construction of each student’s poem. New perspectives of self and others [57] were able to be generated through unmaking and remaking Bancroft’s picture book Why I Love Australia. By considering whose story is being told and how the story is being assembled the students were able to explore notions of power and demonstrated this by identifying both shared and distinctive perspectives [54,57]. In reconstructing Bancroft’s text and bringing their experiences, linguistic repertoire and identity to the fore, students challenged the narrative offered in the Bancroft text and were empowered to imagine and articulate new perspectives.

Our analysis of site documents, student work artefacts, and teacher focus group reflection data reveals that the collaborative professional learning on identity texts supported teachers to make resource and pedagogical selections that created rich opportunities to develop students’ understandings about literature written in English and supported the development of literacy and language. As has been reported elsewhere [2,6,12,25,41,67], the outcome was students’ improved understanding of their own and others’ language and cultural backgrounds. The texts analysed in class not only prompted a valuing of student agency and voice by encouraging students to express their own perspectives on their country, but also valued the student’s linguistic and cultural repertoire [6,7,12,18,53]. For marginalised students such as those in this project, this empowerment prompted the use of fresh imagery to depict their worlds as evidenced in their identity texts. Literary texts were appropriated as a scaffold in this project, which most of these young EAL/D learners needed, but through this process their unique voices were amplified. Participating teachers reported that their students were engaged and empowered by a learning environment (translanguaging space) and process (redesign cycle), which allowed them to tell their own stories [6,42]. Participating teachers designed learning in ways that gave their students opportunities to make a direct connection between their family and their school. Students canvassed family and community members about their perspectives and compared it to the texts that they encountered at school, thus achieving the project’s secondspace aim to foster connections with community.

For the educators in this project, recognising the firstspace, the space of everyday routines and practice was the initial step. The educators wanted to develop the literacy of their students and were aware of the disadvantages their students face [but monolingual practices which solely focus on the development of English language and literacy had been commonly accepted as the best way to support students. This monolingual focus on acquiring English, however, does not recognise the complex interrelated nature of students’ linguistic repertoires [2,39,41,47,53] nor make use of the family or community as sources of knowledge [49]. Creating a translanguaging space is an innovation as it directly challenges educator’s concept of the monolingual, monocultural Australian classroom [39,46,47,49,67] as the only space to develop English literacy and language in the early years.

Prior to the project, the educators had experienced a reluctance to employ creative EAL/D pedagogy due to time constraints, minimal knowledge of appropriate strategies and a lack of support in developing translanguaging as part of normal classroom routines. After professional learning on creating identity texts in the translanguaging space, teachers in this study felt more confident to challenge firstspace and secondspace pressures relating to high-stakes testing and English-only literacy. They were able to create space for their early years EAL/D students’ languages and identities to be valued and shared. The outcomes reported in this study bode well for the future work of these teachers engaged in supporting the literacy development of early years learners. Follow-up research is, however, required to establish the extent to which the new practices become teachers’ habitus. Overall, the findings invite educators working in early years settings to reshape their practice to create a literature-focused translanguaging thirdspace that fosters students’ creativity and shapes improved understanding of self, others and the world.