Learning from a community bilingual classroom: Toward a translanguaging literacies pedagogy with Chinese American bilinguals

Situated in the Midwest region of the United States, this study draws on translanguaging literacies to critically examine the discussions and sense-making that was taking place in a Mandarin-English bilingual community classroom between a Chinese bilingual teacher and three Chinese American bilingual students while engaging in discussions of language, culture, and history with children's literature. Our findings demonstrate that the teacher carefully applied translanguaging literacies as deliberate pedagogy to help bilingual students understand language in the world, normalize linguistic freedom and respect, and critically make sense of their complex identities and histories with and through their entire linguistic repertoires.