“I Want to Say the Right Thing:” Developing Translingual Literacy Practices Through Early Care Educator and University Researcher Partnerships

by Angie Zapata, Mary Adu-Gyamfi, and Adrianna González Ybarra

A collaborative inquiry model of teacher learning offers a distinct departure from common top-down models of early care education teacher development. In the context of the teacher and researcher collaborative inquiry model presented in this paper, we encountered an intergenerational collective of early care educators (ECEs) and university partners as they mentored one another through classroom critical encounters with translingual picturebooks and took turns holding and loving their babies during after school gatherings. The learning was enlivened not only by talk, laughter, food, and reflections of instruction, but also was animated by the vibrant colors of the translingual picturebooks that flooded the room and served as essential socio-political art to read, discuss, and inform teaching. Entering this space of professional learning committed to collaborative inquiry and equity-focused instruction often elicited astonishment from those accustomed to tidy rows of teachers silently taking notes as a one-time speaker read from slides. At first glance, you might have been unsure who the “leader” or “expert” was, because everyone was participating in the discussion.

As predominantly White ECE teachers and predominantly Black and Brown university researchers, we turned to collaborative inquiry as an innovative and collaborative model of professional learning. In this essay, we feature the experience of Tamara, a White, middle-class teacher (all names are pseudonyms) in a midwestern rural suburban early childhood classroom. Nagasawa and colleagues (2023) note that “by humanizing these issues, our aim is to show that possibilities exist, even with difficulties and within complexities” (p. 170). By featuring Tamara’s experience to highlight the critical components of a collaborative inquiry model, we locate ECE professional development within the historical systems and socio-political issues shaping early care education and highlight how White, female teachers (the predominant ECE workforce demographic in the US) experience and take up professional learning that centers equity in racially, linguistically, and ethnically (RLE) complex classrooms. By identifying the critical components of a collaborative inquiry model in this way, we also offer direct implications for ECE learning, research, and practice.