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In:Innovative Qualitative Methodologies in Multilingual Literacy Development Research: Amplifying voices from immigrant, transnational, and refugee communities
Edited by Amanda K. Kibler and Fares J. Karam
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 11] 2025
► pp. 125–148

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Chapter 7
Bridging language and STEM

Using an Anzalduan framework to center Latinx Elementary and Middle School students’ understanding of robotics

 | The University of Nevada, Reno
 | The University of Texas at Austin
Published online: 7 April 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.11.07sal
Abstract
This chapter illustrates how combining an Anzalduan framework with critical ethnography and social semiotics provides a unique approach centering Latinx students’ STEM knowledge, language, and literacy use as legitimate ways of conocimiento and communicating. Using longitudinal data, authors examine how Latinx middle-grade students use their linguistic repertoires through multimodal representations to bridge their un­der­stand­ing of a real-world STEM FIRST LEGO League (FLL) challenge and their community, conceptualized through Anzaldúa’s (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983) work on mestizaje and imagery of the mestiza body as a bridge. The chapter further documents how to rethink Anzalduan theory through overlaying Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) characteristics of a minor literature as an additional lens to deterritorialize language and promote equitable research centering Latinx ways of languaging, knowing, and being.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Overview of the study and its findings
    • Traditional and critical ethnography in education
    • Multimodal literacies
    • Aims of the study
    • Research context and participants
    • Findings
    • The mestiza(o) body as a bridge
    • Bridging identity, language, and lived experiences
    • Bridging farm workers toil to fork through multilingual and multimodal literacy practices
  • Methodological discussion: Rethinking theory for more equitable research
    • Our mestizaje
    • Thinking with theory
    • Deterritorializing language through enacting the brown body as bridge
    • Deterritorializing language through multimodal literacies
    • Deterritorializing language through translanguaging
    • Political immediacy and collective assemblage
    • Connecting to Nepantla
  • Implications for qualitative research on multilingual literacy development
    • Thoughts on ethical reflexivity
    • Reconceptualizing qualitative research
  • References
References (42)
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