Laboratory for the Study of Interaction and Discourse in Educational Research

Central to the study of language in society  is the examination of multiple layers of meaning around the histories, narratives, and intersections of race, social class, and migration status.  For this reason, attention to the ways language/discourse is used across learning contexts offers a view into how these categories are upheld or disrupted, and how they might determine learning opportunities and outcomes. We are interested in examining multilingualism and translanguaging practices as integral to learning and we study its transformative effects on pedagogy and policy. 

A central focus concern at the Lab focuses on the experiences of migration, displacement, and relocation. We also consider the spatial and temporal dimensions of Indigenous people's  transregional, and transborder, and transnational experience, including the shifting meanings of migration, Indigeneity, and Land. We examine processes of knowledge production and circulation asking who has access to knowledge (where, how, why)

• Dveloping Language and Academic Supports for Indigenous Maya (Yucatec)  Students in California Schools. Lead Researcher Patricia Baquedano-López.  

Research Assistant Emma Pontius

Project goals include the design of a sustainable model of academic support for Indigenous students and design new content and lesson plans matching CA core standards grades 1-3

• Developing Language and Academic Supports for Speakers and Learners of Mam (Maya). Lead Researcher Cristina Méndez. 

Research Assistants Alexia Guerra and Persephone Dardon

Project goals focus on  an ethnographic study  that also includes  a grassroots Mam language course to teach mostly non-Mam people about the language and culture; 2) identify and study language and cultural activism in the US and Guatemala. 

A focus in this area of work advances decolonial frameworks for transformative praxis that seek collaboration and mutual support among those coming together to learn and expand epistemological locations. This work includes, but it  is not limited to, university-school-community partnerships, projects related to Indigenous land recognition and sovereignty, Indigenous language revalorization projects in schools and community, and  transborder coalitions to support projects that recognize multiple linguistic and cultural knowledge sources.

A goal of research in the Lab is to support the development, planning, and engagement of projects that recognize and redirect research efforts and stances that impede rather than advance radical inquiry, educational equity, and social justice.