SSLW2024

In this plenary talk, I begin by exploring key ecological theories of language and literacy development relevant to multilingual writers and their writing before then describing how I have found it useful to conceptualize and apply ecological framings in my own work. Taking up the notion that ecological perspectives help us better understand both connection and disjuncture in the experiences of multilingual writers, I reflect upon the ways that a longitudinal interactional histories approach (LIHA: Kibler, 2019) helped me understand the dynamic literacy journeys of five Mexican and immigrant-origin multilingual writers over an eight-year period as they navigated adolescence and early adulthood in the United States. I also explore other studies, including how colleagues and I adapted LIHA to use with pre- and in-service teachers, and what we learned about how the ecologies in which teachers live and work impact their views of multilingual students and their writing. Such research not only highlights the profound and intricate connections between writers and the ideological, institutional, and instructional contexts in which they learn: it also underscores how linguistic and racial discrimination is deeply embedded in the ecologies that multilingual writers must navigate. Recognizing such a disjuncture allows us as scholars and educators to ask critical questions of the contexts in which we teach, research, and share our knowledge, both in terms of the power structures that unjustly inhibit the potential of many multilingual writers and the ways that we can work to disrupt those structures and systems. I close by commenting upon how our work and our field might use ecological perspectives to embrace the teaching and learning of multilingual writers as a fundamentally critical and dialogic endeavor.