Navigating Languages: Literacies and Identities Religion in Young Lives 2016004727, 9781138824249, 9781315740805

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
Prologue
Introduction
PART I Religious Practices at Home and across Generations
1 Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson: Syncretic Teaching and Learning in a Puerto Rican Family
2 Easter Celebrations at Home: Acquiring Symbolic Knowledge and Constructing Identities
3 Coming of Age: Amish Heritage Literacy Practices of Rumspringa, Adult Baptism, and Shunning
PART II Religious Education Classes and Places of Worship
4 Socialization into Religious Sensation in Children’s Catholic Religious Instruction
5 “The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively: Language, Literacy, and African American Student Learning in the Black Church
6 Heavenly Entextualisations: The Acquisition and Performance of Classical Religious Texts
7 Moving across Languages, Literacies, and Schooling Traditions
8 Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk in a Tamil Hindu/Saiva Faith Community in London
PART III Bridging Home, School and Community
9 Joseph . . . Yousouf: Changing Names, Navigating Spaces, Articulating Identities
10 The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies in Hasidic Homes and Schools in Brooklyn
11 Engendering ‘Dispositions’ through Communicative and Semiotic Practices: Insights from the Nishkam Nursery Project
12 Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith: Ghanaian Pentecostal and Bangladeshi Muslim Communities in London
Conclusion
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities

“This complex bringing together of work in a number of fields related to religion, education, identity and literacy practices offers an original contribution that can help those already working in perhaps some of these areas to bridge and link a range of perspectives in a global context.” —Brian Street, King’s College London, UK Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities showcases innovative research at the interface of religion and multilingualism, offering an analytical focus on religion in children and adolescents’ everyday lives and experiences. The volume examines the connections between language and literacy practices and social identities associated with religion in a variety of sites of learning and socialization, namely homes, religious education classes, places of worship, and faith-related schools and secular schools. Contributors engage with a diverse set of complex multiethnic and religious communities, and investigate the rich multilingual, multiliterate and multiscriptal practices associated with religion that children and adolescents engage in with a range of mediators, including siblings, peers, parents, grandparents, religious leaders and other members of the religious community. The volume is organized into three sections according to context and participants: (1) religious practices at home and across generations, (2) religious education classes and places of worship and (3) bridging home, school and community. The edited book will be a valuable resource for researchers in applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, and early years, primary and secondary education. Vally Lytra is Lecturer in Languages in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her books include Play Frames and Social Identities (Benjamins, 2007), Multilingualism and Identities across Contexts: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Turkish-speaking Youth in Europe (co-editor Jens Normann Jørgensen, University of Copenhagen, 2008), Sites of Multilingualism: Complementary Schools in Britain Today (co-editor Peter Martin, Trentham, 2010) and When Greeks and Turks Meet: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Relationship since 1923 (Ashgate, 2014). Dinah Volk is Professor Emerita, Early Childhood Education, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio. She is co-author of “Diversity as a Verb in Preservice Teacher Education” in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and co-editor with Gregory and Long of a special issue of Journal of Early Childhood Literacy on syncretic literacies. Eve Gregory is Professor Emerita at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her books include City Literacies (joint author, Ann Williams) (Routledge, 2000), On Writing Educational Ethnographies: The Art Of Collusion (joint authors J. Conteh, C. Kearney and A. Mor-Sommerfeld) and Learning to Read in a New Language (Routledge, 2008).

Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism Edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism, University of Birmingham, UK and Joan Pujolar Cos, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

3 Multilingualism, Discourse, and Ethnography Edited by Sheena Gardner and Marilyn Martin-Jones 4 Bilingual Education and Language Policy in the Global South Edited by Jo Arthur Shoba and Feliciano Chimbutane 5 Urban Schools and English Language Education in Late Modern China A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography Miguel Pérez-Milans 6 A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora Latino Practices, Identities, and Ideologies Edited by Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo 7 Language, Literacy and Diversity Moving Words Edited by Christopher Stroud and Mastin Prinsloo 8 Global Portuguese Linguistic Ideologies in Late Modernity Edited by Luiz Paulo Moita-Lopes 9 Language and Learning in a Post-Colonial Context A Critical Ethnographic Study in Schools in Haiti Marky Jean-Pierre 10 Multilingualism in the Chinese Diaspora Worldwide Transnational Connections and Local Social Realities Edited by Li Wei 11 Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities Religion in Young Lives Edited by Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory

Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities Religion in Young Lives

Edited by Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory

First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lytra, Vally, editor. | Volk, Dinah, editor. | Gregory, Eve, editor. Title: Navigating languages, literacies and identities : religion in young lives / Edited by Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory. Description: New York : Routledge, [2016] | Series: Routledge Critical studies in multilingualism ; 11 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016004727 | ISBN 9781138824249 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315740805 (ebk.) Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages—Study and teaching— Religious aspects. | Literacy—Religious aspects. | Multilingualism in children—Religious aspects. | Identity (Psychology) in children— Religious aspects. | Spirituality. | Sociolinguistics. Classification: LCC P53.76 .N38 2016 | DDC 200.83—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016004727 ISBN: 978-1-138-82424-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-74080-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures Prologue

vii ix

VALLY LYTRA, DINAH VOLK AND EVE GREGORY

Introduction

1

VALLY LYTRA, DINAH VOLK AND EVE GREGORY

PART I

Religious Practices at Home and across Generations 1 Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson: Syncretic Teaching and Learning in a Puerto Rican Family

19

21

DINAH VOLK

2 Easter Celebrations at Home: Acquiring Symbolic Knowledge and Constructing Identities

39

ANA SOUZA, OLGA BARRADAS AND MALGORZATA WOODHAM

3 Coming of Age: Amish Heritage Literacy Practices of Rumspringa, Adult Baptism, and Shunning

56

SUZANNE KESLER RUMSEY

PART II

Religious Education Classes and Places of Worship

69

4 Socialization into Religious Sensation in Children’s Catholic Religious Instruction

71

PATRICIA BAQUEDANO-LÓPEZ

vi Contents 5 “The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively: Language, Literacy, and African American Student Learning in the Black Church

85

TRYPHENIA B. PEELE-EADY

6 Heavenly Entextualisations: The Acquisition and Performance of Classical Religious Texts

110

ANDREY ROSOWSKY

7 Moving across Languages, Literacies, and Schooling Traditions

126

LESLIE C. MOORE

8 Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk in a Tamil Hindu/Saiva Faith Community in London

141

VALLY LYTRA, EVE GREGORY AND ARANI ILANKUBERAN

PART III

Bridging Home, School and Community 9 Joseph . . . Yousouf: Changing Names, Navigating Spaces, Articulating Identities

159

161

AMBARIN MOOZNAH AULEEAR OWODALLY

10 The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies in Hasidic Homes and Schools in Brooklyn

176

AYALA FADER

11 Engendering ‘Dispositions’ through Communicative and Semiotic Practices: Insights from the Nishkam Nursery Project

193

GOPINDER KAUR SAGOO

12 Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith: Ghanaian Pentecostal and Bangladeshi Muslim Communities in London

213

CHARMIAN KENNER, AMOAFI KWAPONG, HALIMUN CHOUDHURY AND MAHERA RUBY

Conclusion

227

SUSI LONG

List of Contributors Index

235 243

Figures

1.1 Benny’s journal with Justin Bieber lyrics 1.2 Benny’s journal with religious lyrics “by no se” [I don’t know] 1.3 Benny reading the Bible with his grandmother’s mediation 2.1 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 1 2.2 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 2 2.3 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 3 2.4 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 4 2.5 Adam’s scrapbook, page 15 2.6 Adam’s scrapbook, page 16 2.7 Adam’s scrapbook, page 17 5.1 A typical text for “The Responsive Reading” 6.1 Examples of the use of English in primers 6.2 A typical example of how to articulate Arabic sounds explained in English 8.1 The Sri Murugan Temple 8.2 The peacock feather adorning the cover of the scrapbook 8.3 Drawing of the Sri Murugan Temple in glitter 11.1 Morning greetings and ‘show and tell’ in the Reception class 11.2 Sikh faith-inspired original artwork mounted in the nursery’s entrance hallway 12.1 Nuha’s mind map (front) 12.2 Nuha’s mind map (back)

26 27 28 46 46 46 47 48 49 50 91 117 118 146 149 152 207 208 221 221

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Prologue

This book is being published at a moment of unprecedented global flows of people, goods, services and ideas within and across international borders. These global flows have intensified debates over democracy, pluralism, social cohesion and the integration or not of immigrants, minorities and refugees in contemporary societies. In the context of these debates, secularism, religion and their intertwined nature in the aforementioned processes have come under close scrutiny. Yet, the study of religion in children and adolescents’ lives with reference to their learning, socialization and identities has largely remained in the margins of academic scholarship. The few studies that do exist demonstrate that children are socialized from an early age through a range of interconnected language and literacy practices into moral, cultural, aesthetic and religious values, beliefs and dispositions that shape their interactions in religious and secular contexts. Moreover, these studies illustrate that children’s developing religious subjectivities entail complex interactions among their memberships in local, national and transnational communities as they acquire knowledge and competences in rich linguistic and scriptal repertoires, discursive and embodied practices, historical and moral narratives and sacred texts. This is the first edited collection that brings together some of the most recent and ongoing scholarship at the intersection of religion, languages, literacies and identities and opens a space for dialogue in this emerging field. The Editors

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Introduction Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities: Religion in Young Lives Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory

Rationale for the Book Religious practices in the everyday lives of children and adolescents in contemporary societies have received limited scholarly attention in the social sciences. As a consequence, the investigation of religion as a force for learning, socialization and personal and collective identification is a timely task, particularly since the role of religious practices in children and adolescents’ development and educational achievement is frequently ignored, disparaged or rendered problematic in relation to school literacies (Genishi and Dyson 2009; Gregory, Long and Volk 2004; Skerrett 2013). This edited collection is about children and adolescents learning languages, literacies and other academic skills alongside ways of seeing, thinking, behaving and being in and through their religion. It is not about the learning of religious belief per se. Nor is it about religion as an organization or an institution. Rather, this book aims to emphasize the breadth and scope of learning and the development of a sense of belonging alongside strong expectations of high standards and achievement as children and adolescents participate in everyday and special events at places of worship, homes, after-school religious education classes and faith-inspired day schools. The investigations described are rooted in an understanding of children and adolescents as knowledgeable and active meaning makers in their own right and in a commitment to making their voices heard (Gregory et al. 2004; Hemming and Madge 2011; Lytra, Gregory and Ilankuberan forthcoming). The book highlights their creativity, intentionality and expertise, as they exercise agency over how they construct knowledge, come to make sense of the world, morally and emotionally, and understand the role of religion in their lives alongside family members, religious leaders, teachers and other community members who are dedicated to their learning in and through religious practices. At the same time, it demonstrates the ways that children and adolescents’ agency is shaped by institutional, social and ideological forces as well as political and historical processes of migration, globalization and post-colonialism. Indeed, as many chapters in this book demonstrate, learning in and through religious practice is both very similar to and very different from that taking

2 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory place in children’s secular schools. For although languages, scripts and other semiotic resources, content and methods of learning and material artifacts are often very different, many of the skills, forms of narrative, textual practices and bodies of knowledge developed during religious activities are often the same. What makes learning in and through them unique is that the development of language and literacy skills is not the purpose of learning; instead, the knowledge, competences and performances displayed are the means to building a relationship with a higher and eternal being (Gregory et al. 2012). While each religion, and individuals within each religion, understand the purposes and the enactment of such practices in complex and deeply theological ways, the relevance of many of these practices to children and adolescents’ lives is only now becoming clear. Thus, this book is as important for teachers as it is for students and researchers of education, anthropology, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psychology, human geography, sociology, and religious studies as well as all interested in migration and interreligious relations. Religion is regarded as a complex, multifaceted and nuanced concept (Platvoet and Molendijk 1999). Defining religion has been fraught with controversies and a broad range of definitions has been proposed from different perspectives and by many disciplines. Yet, religion does not heed subject boundaries. Although rooted in theology, it weaves a thread through and across other disciplines: anthropology, linguistics, psychology, sociology and aesthetics. It is these other disciplines that inform this book. Religion in this volume is viewed as an essential part of culture; a cultural practice underpinning many young peoples’ lives (Barton and Hamilton 1998; Gregory and Williams 2000; Heath 1983). Religion is also regarded as a resource that can cement but also challenge structural inequalities and can afford support and empowerment for individuals and whole communities facing hardship or discrimination, as the chapters by Peele-Eady and Volk argue. At the same time, religion is considered as constraint. All religions involve processes of boundary demarcation to identify those who belong to the group and exclude those who do not conform to its social and religious norms, thereby erecting boundaries within and between groups. The children and adolescents who feature in the twelve chapters of this edited book are learning to become members of a wide range of religious communities in the U.S., Europe and Africa: Puerto Rican Pentecostals; Amish; Hasidic Jews; Somali Muslims; African-American Baptists; Catholics, including a racially mixed congregation of White, Filipino, Asian and Latino young people as well as recently arrived immigrants from Latin America, mostly Mexican, in the U.S.; Polish Catholics; Ghanaian Pentecostals; Tamil Saiva/Hindus; Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Somali and Arab Sunni Muslims; and Sikhs originally from India and Africa in the UK; and Sunni Muslims in the Mauritius and Cameroon. These religious communities were originally formed at different historical moments as a result of migration,

Introduction 3 trade, colonialism, slavery and/or religious persecution and they are all minority religions in the settings described. In many, there is a strong connection between religion and ethno-cultural identity (Fishman 1989). It is important to note here that these communities and the practices described in this book are fluid and dynamic; the authors aim to provide snapshots in time and space rather than create or reinforce stereotypes. Within the social sciences, there is a critical turn to multiculturalism and multilingualism whereby researchers stress the importance of children’s voices, rights and participation in schools, and challenge the suppression of their languages, literacies and identities while advocating transformative practices (Blackledge and Creese 2010; Gardner and Martin-Jones 2012; Martin-Jones and Martin forthcoming; May and Sleeter 2010). At the same time, the role of religious practices in educational systems has been an issue of continuous and, often, contentious debate, with the interrogation, for instance, of religion as a public or private practice and of its relation to state-sponsored schools (Hemming 2011). While how religion functions in each society differs, there is an increasing recognition among social scientists of what has been aptly referred to as the “entanglement” (Baquedano-López and Ochs 2002, 175) of secular and sacred, public and private worlds, which indicates more porous and fluid boundaries between state and religious institutions. Moreover, recent scholarship has highlighted the political nature of religion and its “entanglement” with issues of difference and inequality as well as its central role in debates over citizenship, nationality and belonging in schools and broader society (Brubaker 2015; Hoque 2015). The different chapters in this book seek to alert readers to the social, cultural, historical, linguistic and cognitive significance of religious practices in young people’s lives. Equally importantly, they aspire to offer a more nuanced and critical understanding of the role of these practices for individuals and communities and challenge societal discourses and dominant representations that may under-represent or misrepresent the value of religion and disparage or ignore the languages, literacies and identities associated with religion in the start of the twenty-first century.

Theoretical Perspectives All the chapters in this book are interdisciplinary and are situated largely within language socialization and sociocultural approaches. However, they have different starting points and a different emphasis from which similar issues are addressed. Studies stressing a language socialization approach put language at the center of their work (as the term suggests) and work outwards towards the context in which learning occurs; other studies refer to the sociocultural context in which learning takes place as key and focus on the context of learning in which language is just one part (as the term suggests). Below we show key differences and similarities between the two

4 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory approaches and then highlight how the study of religious practices can offer a frame for syncretizing both. The area of language socialization has been defined by Schieffelin and Ochs (1986) as the study of socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language in certain ways. Baquedano-López and Hernández (2011) extend this to emphasize the activity of children who, as participants in socialization interaction (novice or expert) negotiate acquisition of and display of skills for competent participation in the community. Language socialization studies evolved from sociolinguistics and the ethnography of speaking (Hymes 1977; Saville-Troike 2008). They expand the boundaries of child development by examining how the trajectories of children’s learning fit into and reproduce larger systems of cultural meaning and practices and how participants recreate, resist and transform social orders. They analyze the relationship between quotidian activities and the social/historical conditions in which they occur, sometimes drawing upon the notion of “habitus” (Bourdieu 1977) or dispositions that may well result in a mismatch between the languages and literacies taking place at home and in school. An early key study following a language socialization approach was conducted by Heath (1983), whose excerpts from children as young as two attending the Black Church in the Appalachians in the southern U.S. show how the “call-and-response” patterns as well as items of vocabulary, narratives, songs and interaction patterns from Church were reflected in home narratives. Early work by Heath led to other studies by Aminy (2004), Baquedano-López (2000, 2008), Duranti, Ochs and Ta’ase (1995), Ek (2005), Fader (2008, 2009), Moore (2008), Poveda, Cano and Palomares-Valera (2005), Rosowsky (2008) and Zinsser (1986), which have provided a backcloth for studies in this book. Studies in this volume taking a language socialization approach as their starting point (Baquedano-López, Fader, Peele-Eady, Rosowsky) detail the ways in which the learning of language and literacy are inextricably linked with moral and spiritual learning. These will inevitably differ according to the different faith, origin of community, migration background, social class and language(s) spoken. Drawing upon her previous work, Baquedano-López examines the role of rehearsal of rituals (Schecter 2004) through appropriate language use and how this reflects the way modes of thinking (including religious beliefs) are acquired and displayed in culturally appropriate ways. Developing work by Keane (2003), Fader unpicks the interconnecting modes of signification and the way in which children are socialized through language to interpret texts in culturally specific ways. Both Rosowsky and Peele-Eady focus on the role of texts and meaning in children’s learning and socialization. Using studies by Austin (1962), Searle (1979) and Poveda et al. (2005), Rosowsky highlights the importance of performance and rehearsal in learning as well as the art of entextualization (the way in which texts from one context are reproduced in another) (Bauman and Briggs 1990). Peele-Eady refers back to other studies

Introduction 5 on the African-American Church, to unpick a form of “call-and-response” referred to by the Church as “Responsive Reading.” Whereas in studies situating themselves more within a language socialization approach the starting-point is language and how it might reflect culture, facilitate learning or secure identities, sociocultural studies generally start from the context of children’s cognitive, linguistic, moral, aesthetic or artistic learning attached to participation in certain practices. Sociocultural studies are anchored in the work of Vygotsky (1978) and Cole (1996), which argue for an ineluctable interrelationship and interweaving between learning within the individual (intrapersonal) and between individuals (interpersonal) (Vygotsky 1978) and the way in which, in Cole’s (1996, 116) words, “mind is interiorized culture and culture is exteriorized mind.” Rather than unpicking the role played by language in the socialization of children, such studies tend to focus more on the role of cultural contexts and practices in children’s learning and the relationship between learning and culture, the mediation and mediators of learning in families and communities, and how children “play out” different roles and thus practice different identities (Rogoff 2003). Sometimes, the roles enacted are within “figured worlds” whereby identities are configured within certain times, places and activities within them (Holland, Lachiocotte, Skinner and Cain (1998, 51). Such activities link with the notion of “communities of practice” as described by Lave and Wenger (1991). Studies grounded in a critical sociocultural perspective also attend to broader social and historical contexts, while making explicit the ways power and privilege in these contexts constrain or energize both local practices and participants’ agency as well as the ways power is apportioned in researchers’ relationships with the participants studied (Kincheloe, McLaren and Steinberg 2011; Lewis, Enciso and Moje 2007). Important work taking a sociocultural approach has been conducted by Moll and his colleagues (1992), whose research with Latino families in their homes in the U.S. highlighted the funds of knowledge held across generations in families and rooted in specific cultural practices; knowledge which was very different yet equally solid in content as school knowledge. Other work has contrasted home and school as two very different contexts for cognitive development (Gallimore and Goldenberg 1993). Further studies have questioned whether home and school practices are necessarily polarized, especially where siblings are at play together, focusing instead on the way in which children syncretize both the form and content of such apparently different contexts (Gregory 2001). Some research has shown how practices are often passed down intergenerationally through a process of prolepsis (the passing down of knowledge across generations through a projection of the older generation into the future of younger family members) and the transformations this might entail (Gregory et al. 2004). Readers of chapters drawing more upon a sociocultural approach (Volk, Kenner et al., Lytra et al., Souza et al., Owodally, Rumsey, Sagoo) will see

6 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory how faith provides a unique context for learning to take place: unique in the way it bridges formal and informal learning practices, both in the scope and nature of activities and the intergenerational learning provided. In different chapters we see different types of learning taking place. Owodally, Kenner et al., Sagoo and Moore show how children learn a sense of belonging to a community with whom they identify and how this might be fostered in formal and informal settings as well as a sense of responsibility interwoven with this. Souza et al. and Rumsey examine how learning occurs through prolepsis (Cole 1996) taking place through intergenerational learning. Volk unpicks the syncretic nature of learning as children fuse existing heritage knowledge with new ways of knowing, especially those from new technologies as well as from school. Sagoo describes in detail the “figured worlds” of very young children in a Sikh faith-inspired British nursery. The distinct feature of religion viewed as a cultural practice is that it provides an opportunity to synthesize both language socialization and sociocultural approaches; the language and texts of religion are inherently rule-bound and these rules simultaneously reflect the context of the religion. We might go further to argue that the language and texts of an individual religious practice are actually inseparable from the practice itself and an in-depth account of the learning taking place by young people needs account equally for both language and context. Religion thus provides an area whereby language socialization and sociocultural theories complement each other to highlight how children’s learning takes place. They show how children imbibe special patterns of interaction and particular ways of speaking, reading, narrating and behaving. They show how children learn difficult texts through memorization, repetition, practice and performance, how they learn what counts as beauty, what is appropriate or inappropriate and what it means to be a member of a particular group. Through all these examples of learning, we see how children might become a head taller than they are in their everyday lives. Importantly, many of the studies highlight the artifactual and multimodal nature of learning (Pahl and Rowsell 2012), showing how children learn as surely through icons and the beauty they represent, music, play, practice, performance and performativity, call-and-response routines, repetition, etc. as through the traditional question-and-answer approach to learning texts. Thus, all the chapters fuse to some extent both language socialization and sociocultural approaches, in particular through multilayered data analysis (see the Methods section later in this chapter). This synthesis is most apparent in the chapters by Volk, Moore and Rosowsky, which stress the interwoven nature of learning and context throughout.

Religious Identities The constitution of children and adolescents’ religious identities, with particular reference to language and literacy learning and socialization, is a key theme that cuts across many of the chapters of this book. Hemming

Introduction 7 and Madge (2011, 39–40) propose a definition of religious identities in relation to children and young people that encompasses the following features: “(1) affiliation and belonging; (2) behaviours and practices; (3) beliefs and values; and (4) religious and spiritual experiences.” In a similar vein, Peele-Eady (2011, 57) discusses the religious identities of African-American children and young people in the Black Church in terms of what she calls “membership identity,” which she defines as “the intersection of what children learn and how they come to represent this knowledge in the church context” individually and collectively. She elaborates that children and young people are “socialized to membership through an interactive framework of scholarship (explicit instruction), stewardship (guided practice), and fellowship (copractice alongside adults)” (Peele-Eady 2011, 59). The contributors in this book investigate the practices involved in becoming a competent member of a particular religious community. They interrogate how children and adolescents align themselves or not with the social and cultural expectations and meanings as well as the linguistic norms, principle values and behaviors of the religious community. In so doing, the chapters in question scrutinize what counts as membership in each religious community and how children and adolescents come to demonstrate responsibility and authority of membership across a wide range of religious activities, rituals and contexts. In this respect, they consider not only how children and adolescents construct co-membership but also how membership has changed or stayed the same over time and across social spaces and generations and the role of languages, literacies and artifacts in these processes. Equally importantly, they investigate how language and literacy practices and performances tied up with children and adolescents’ religious identities are shaped by both local, institutional policies and broader, societal discourses. In this respect, how children and adolescents take on, transform or alienate themselves from these practices and performances provide a window to the complex and nuanced ways they negotiate their multiple and shifting identities. At the same time, as some of the chapters illustrate, identity negotiations act as powerful ways for boundary demarcation between believers and non-believers. The chapter authors take a broadly constructionist approach to religious identities; in other words they view identities as socially, historically and discursively constructed (Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004). More specifically, drawing on social constructionist and post-structuralist perspectives, they illustrate how religious identities are relational, negotiable and performed in religious activities, rituals and routines. Moreover, they emphasize the multiplicity, fragmentation and fluidity of identities as they are affected by local and global contexts and relations of power as well as the interconnection of different identity aspects. Similar to recent monographs and edited collections (Joseph 2004; Jule 2005; Sarroub 2005; Wong and Canagarajah 2009), religion is not examined on its own but as it intersects with and is shaped by other social categories, such as gender, ethnicity, race, geographical

8 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory location, language teaching and learning and so on. It is worth noting that while the authors in the book draw on theoretical perspectives that regard religious identities as negotiated and constructed in discourse, they simultaneously highlight how parents, religious education teachers and religious leaders often reify religious identities and essentialize and romanticize languages, literacies and cultures (Baquedano-López 2000; Baquedano-López and Ochs 2002; Souza 2015). In addition, the chapter authors highlight some of the tensions and contradictions identity negotiations may engender. Recent scholarship has shown how these may arise when literacy practices, linguistic resources, artifacts, narratives and teaching strategies thought to be normatively associated with particular contexts and social spaces are used in others where they are not, such as the use of English or liturgical languages over community languages in religious texts and activities (Rosowsky 2013); when children and adolescents draw upon and engage with religious literacies for learning in secular classrooms (Skerrett 2013); or when they encounter competing perceptions of what counts as learning and being a learner in the places of worship and religious education classes and in their schools (McMillon and Edwards 2000; Peele-Eady 2011). These tensions and contradictions can generate syncretic practices and the creative enactment of multiple shifting identifications (Gregory et al. 2004; Gregory, Lytra, Choudhury, Ilankuberan, Kwapong and Woodham 2013; Volk and de Acosta 2001). They can also lead to the strategic compartmentalization of language and literacy practices and social identities across different discursive environments. For the children and families described in this book, religion is considered an important identity marker that invokes a commonly shared past, often rooted in the country of origin and tied up with their migration trajectories and diasporic identities (Souza 2015). Through religious narratives, rituals, sacred texts, and discursive and embodied practices, children are socialized to become knowledgeable about their historical, cultural and political past, as well as to become members of their present religious communities and to make sense of their current personal and collective experiences by revisiting them through the past (Baquedano-López 2000).

Method The chapter authors have used methods of data collection and analysis consistent with their goals and theoretical stances, and with the challenges and delights of working with children and adolescents in complex, multilayered, multilingual and multicultural religious contexts. As noted at the beginning of this Introduction, their studies position children and adolescents “as informed and engaged social actors” (James 2001, 251), highlighting their practices, perspectives, artifacts and voices as they learn to participate in religious communities. In order to capture these, the chapter authors have employed variations on ethnographic approaches (including

Introduction 9 autoethnography and case study) that aim to explore emic or insiders’ perspectives in “an interpretive act of ‘thick description’ ” (Geertz 1973, as cited in James 2001, 246). Researchers take a post-positivist stance (Atkinson and Hammersley 1998; Le Compte and Schensul 2010), each eschewing an unobtainable objectivity (Denzin and Lincoln 2011) by presenting a “telling” case (Mitchell 1984, as cited in Rampton, Tusting, Maybin, Barwell, Creese and Lytra 2004, 2) of religious practices rather than an essentializing portrait. As authors of individual chapters, they have taken care not to generalize or romanticize but instead to discuss complexities, contradictions and tensions as well as competencies of those engaging in practices situated in specific times and locales. The book taken as a whole represents an instantiation of the “ ‘spatial turn’ in new literacies research,” a “multisited” (Pahl and Burnett 2013, 3) ethnography that provides insight into the power and richness of religious languages, literacies and identities in the lived experiences of many children and adolescents. Conducting field work in naturalistic settings, the authors share the words, gestures, chants, stories and memories of participants as well as their artifacts and photos of their interactions. Their intent is to create a robust picture of some of the patterns and meanings of religious practices as co-constructed by participants (Atkinson and Hammersley 1998) situated in local contexts and embedded in broader social, political and historical contexts. Practices and beliefs, on the one hand, and contexts, on the other, are understood as mutually constituting (Le Compte and Schensul 2010). Researchers have collected data using audio and video recordings (some conducted by families), photos, scrapbooks, interviews, mind maps and field narratives, often engaging the active participation of children and adults. Their analyses have proceeded inductively and deductively through multiple iterations (Le Compte and Schensul 2010) and have drawn on language socialization theories; sociocultural and sociohistorical approaches, sometimes working from a critical perspective; linguistic ethnography; ethnography of communication; multimodality; transvisuals (Bezemer and Mavers 2011) and semiotics, among others. Some have investigated change diachronically or synchronically—that is, over time and space as well as simultaneously within and across sites. Many have conducted multilayered analyses (Gregory and Williams 2000), investigating talk and text-making in interactions and events in broader contexts. The ethnographic researcher is understood as the “primary tool” in the research process (Le Compte and Schensul 2010, 1) and this role has been a historically contested one, whether the researcher is a member of the cultural group studied or not and whether and how the researcher engages in interactions with participants (Atkinson and Hammersley 1998). While the insider/outsider dichotomy tends to oversimplify the ethnographer’s task of providing insight into the perspectives of community members by positing mutually exclusive insider and outsider archetypes, it does suggest the challenges inherent in that task. The authors have used a number of strategies

10 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory to get at the perspective of members: team ethnographies that include members of the group(s) studied; the participation of members of the communities studied in data collection and analysis; triangulation, in which data are collected from multiple sources; member checking, in which analyses are checked with group members; and the use of autoethnography. In many of the chapters, authors have stated their positionalities as a way to clarify their subjectivities and hence their methods, including the selection of findings to share and the ways those findings are framed (Le Compte and Schensul 2010; Orellana 2007). Such subjectivities can be both useful tools and barriers to understanding (Rampton et al. 2004).

Outline of the Book Section I includes studies of three multigenerational families, highlighting their rich, complex and often multimodal constructions of religious texts and rituals. All three families are members of cultural and language communities that found affirmation for their identities and practices in religious settings. In all three, learning was mediated by older family and community members and often siblings, too. In all three, children and adolescents were buoyed by the expectation of these mediators that they would all become literate in ways defined by their religious community as one way to ensure group cohesion. The chapters open windows into these family contexts, embedded as they were in communities of practice that are also permeable to practices from other contexts. Religion and its sacred languages, literacies and rituals were interwoven in family life, and the chapters illuminate some of the ways that families creatively perform, adapt and syncretize traditional practices. The concept of prolepsis helps explain how these families made use of knowledge from the past to create practices in the present and pass on literacies to inform the practices of the next generation. In Chapter 1, Dinah Volk uses a critical sociocultural approach to analyze a home worship service/Bible reading/reading lesson enacted by 6-yearold Benny and his Puerto Rican grandmother, members of a Pentecostal, Spanish-speaking church in the U.S. Midwest. Reading from a Spanish Bible and speaking Spanish and English, Benny co-constructed the text with his grandmother’s expert mediation. The lesson of obedience to authority, highlighted in other religious settings, was reiterated by his grandmother and provided a counterpoint to the lesson as an expression of Benny’s agency as a successful reader. Syncretizing languages and literacies, as well as teaching and learning strategies from school and church, they created a religious context that nurtured Benny’s emerging bilingualism and biliteracy. Chapter 2, written by Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham, provides an analysis on psychological and sociocultural planes of nine-yearold Adam and his family enacting their Polish Catholic identities as members of an immigrant community in London. Based on an analysis of multimodal

Introduction 11 texts (an Easter ritual and Adam’s scrapbook pages about Easter), the chapter explores children’s development of symbolic thinking and identity in family-mediated rituals and literacies. Using transvisuals to highlight key moments in the data, the authors consider the ways that food, clothes, position, gaze and movement, in addition to language, created meaning in a religious context. Chapter 3 is an autoethnography written by Suzanne Rumsey, exploring the literacies and rituals as adolescent members of her family engaged in a sanctioned coming-of-age process known as rumspringa, in which they had the opportunity to affiliate to or alienate themselves from their Amish community. The multimodal ritual of baptism was part of what Rumsey identifies as a heritage literacy, in which members learned what they needed to know, what tools to use, and how to use them “in order to maintain (or to break) cultural conformity and group identity.” She notes that “such a process is evident in the lives and literacies of all peoples, and all faiths in fact.” Section II includes five chapters analyzing literacies in religious education classes and places of worship. As with the home religious settings, these more public sites provided spaces and narratives that validated the languages, literacies and identities of children, adolescents and their families, often subjected to bias and misrepresentation by the broader society. In multimodal interactions, they were inducted into literate communities by a network of adults using a range of strategies, interweaving and/or challenging the tensions between oral, written and artifactual texts; memorization and understanding; ritual and improvisation; rehearsal and performance. Authors raise questions about competence and performance: for instance, how and when the former emerges in rehearsals, the criteria for judging both, and who does the judging, outsiders or insiders. In Chapter 4, Patricia Baquedano-López uses a language socialization paradigm to analyze First Communion rehearsals in English- and Spanish-taught catechism classes in two Catholic parishes in Los Angeles in the U.S. The students in the former class—White, Filipino, Asian and Latino, most of them second-generation immigrants—as well as those in the latter class— recent immigrant Latino children primarily from Mexico—were socialized as competent Catholics, acquiring beliefs and language-related practices through the medium of language. In these classes, teachers used the tensions between the rehearsal of rituals and the improvisations that occurred as they sought to have the children experience religious sensations pertinent to First Communion. Tryphenia Peele-Eady also explores church classes, this time in a Sunday school class for 9- to 12-year-olds in an African American Baptist church in California in the U.S. Peele-Eady sets the scene by noting the historic role of the Black Church as a socializing agent that empowers the community politically and academically, as well as spiritually. In Chapter 5, she focuses on the performance of the Responsive Reading during the church service and then its preparation during religious classes. Working from the perspective

12 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory of the ethnography of communication, she highlights the ways the teachers and adult members of the congregation, engaging the children with oral and printed texts, create validating relationships with them as they prepare to participate in their church community. The scene shifts in Chapter 6 to several Muslim madrassahs in the UK, where children and adolescents from a number of immigrant communities learn Qur’anic literacy in classical Arabic in Andrey Rosowsky’s study of liturgical literacy practices over 15 years. At various points in time, Rosowsky observed them memorizing and reciting portions from the Qur’an, using a performance lens and the concept of entextualization to describe the oral reproduction of sacred and classical written texts. Rosowsky discusses the judgments of the students’ verbal performances not only as the correct reproduction of a sacred text but also for its aesthetic qualities. His work takes a diachronic perspective as he traces shifts and transformations of Qur’anic literacy over time and space. In Chapter 7 Leslie Moore’s ethnography compares and contrasts Qur’anic schooling for children in a Fulbe community in Cameroon and in the Somali refugee community in Columbus, Ohio in the U.S. Moving across time and space in a way similar to Rosowsky’s analysis and several others in this volume, this work considers what changed and what stayed the same in both settings as well as the transfer of skills for children experiencing double schooling in religious schools and mainstream settings. Finally, in Chapter 8, Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan explore representations of a Hindu/Saiva temple in London created by 8- and 11-year-old siblings, members of the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Using a sociocultural and sociohistorical lens and studying the children’s scrapbook as a syncretic artifactual text, as well as their talk about the text, they highlight the children’s creative abilities “to represent meanings, values, and beliefs that are meaningful to them and mediate their religious subjectivities in the context of their faith community” across continents and generations. There are four chapters in Section III, all bridging home, school and community, and analyzing religious settings that are vividly distinct. Nonetheless, they have several noteworthy characteristics in common: all illustrate the ways that languages and literacy resources travel across sites and the complexities and multimodal nature of religious literacies, many of which are also multiscriptal. All illustrate the many ways that children, with the mediation of family members, teachers and faith leaders, display amazing versatility as they negotiate multiple languages and literacies, making sense of the multiple layers within the borders of their religions and communities. And all include recognition of memorization and oral recitation, both key strategies used to provide a medium of active participation and a foundation for understanding (Ran 2000), as noted in many other chapters. Chapter 9 is another autoethnography, as Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally analyzes the experiences of her nine-year-old daughter, Halimah,

Introduction 13 living in multilingual, multifaith Mauritius. Unlike many of the broader societies described in other chapters, Mauritius has officially established a more accepting context for minority languages and literacies. Nonetheless, Halimah worked to compartmentalize her life, keeping separate some aspects of her French/Kreol bilingual Muslim family, the madrassah she attended, where she spoke Kreol and learned to read the Qur’an in classical Arabic, and her Roman Catholic school, where learning took place in English and French. Like many of the other authors represented in this book, Owodally works from a multimodal perspective and takes a post-structuralist view of identity. In Chapter 10, Ayala Fader’s study of a day school for young girls who are members of a nonliberal Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York in the U.S. problematizes the long-held dichotomy between religious and secular texts. Studying a context as complexly multilingual as Owodally’s in the previous chapter, Fader analyzes the multilingual literacy socialization practices that take place as children are instructed in the “semiotic ideologies” of their religion. The ways the teachers supported the children’s learning and defended the borders of their religion are described. Describing the recently emerging practices of reading and writing online in English and Yiddish, Fader notes the ways these literacies have been appropriated for religious purposes and raises questions about the challenges they present to the community. Chapter 11, by Gopinder Kaur Sagoo, describes the implementation of the Nishkam nursery school project in Birmingham, England, founded by the Sikh/Punjabi community of practice as part of a secular/spiritual endeavor. In a syncretic process that interweaves Sikh, Punjabi and British educational, linguistic, cultural and religious themes, the teachers use the language and semiotic practices of home, family and community to configure a site where the children’s agency is expressed and their identities formed. Descriptions of the children’s and teachers’ fluid, child-centered translingual interactions are shared. Chapter 12, written by Charmian Kenner, Amoafi Kwapong, Halimun Choudhury and Mahera Ruby, hones in on part of a larger team ethnography of four immigrant religious communities in London. While Chapter 2 focuses on the Polish Catholic community and Chapter 7 on the Tamil Hindu/Saiva community, this chapter looks at learner identity and analyzes the ways that families, religious schools and places of worship together nurture the identities of six- to eight-year-old Ghanaian children who belonged to a Pentecostal church, and a nine-year-old Bangladeshi Muslim girl who attended Islamic Sunday school and weekly Qur’anic classes at a mosque. As with other language and cultural groups, these children have encountered racism and low academic expectations in mainstream schools. The chapter illustrates how the religious communities take a holistic approach to children as learners, developing strong identities and resilience in children as well as skills relevant to their everyday schooling. The book concludes with a closing chapter by Susi Long calling for the urgent need for further studies on religion in young lives.

14 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory

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16 Vally Lytra, Dinah Volk and Eve Gregory Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LeCompte, Margaret D., and Jean J. Schensul. 2010. Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Lanham, CO: Altamira Press. Lewis, Cynthia, Patricia, Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje. eds. 2007. Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lytra, Vally, Eve Gregory, and Arani Ilankuberan. forthcoming. “Researching Children’s Literacy Practices and Identities in Faith Settings: Multimodal Text-Making and Talk about Text as Resources for Knowledge Building.” In Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Approaches, edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones and Deirdre Martin. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Martin-Jones, Marilyn, and Deirdre Martin, eds. forthcoming. Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. May, Stephen, and Christine E. Sleeter, eds. 2010. Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and Praxis. New York: Routledge. McMillon, Gwendolyn T., and Patricia A. Edwards. 2000. “Why Does Joshua ‘Hate’ School . . . but Love Sunday School?” Language Arts 78(2): 111–120. Mitchell, Clyde 1984. “Case studies.” In Roy Ellen (ed.) Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct. London: Academic Press. 237–241. Moll, Luis C., Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma González. 1992. “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms.” Theory Into Practice 31(2): 32–141. Moore, Leslie C. 2008. “Body, Text, and Talk in Maroua Fulbe Qur’anic Schooling.” Text & Talk 28(5): 643–665. Orellana, Marjorie F. 2007. “Moving Words and Worlds: Reflections from ‘the Middle’.” In Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power, edited by Cynthia Lewis, Patricia Enciso, and Elizabeth B. Moje, 123–136. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pahl, Kate, and Cathy Burnett. 2013. “Literacies in Homes and Communities.” In International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture, edited by Kathy Hall, Teresa Cremin, Barbara Comber, and Luis C. Moll, 3–14. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Pahl, Kate, and Jennifer Rowsell. 2012. Literacy and Education (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Pavlenko, Aneta, and Adrian Blackledge. 2004. “Introduction: New Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts.” In Negotiating Identities in Multilingual Contexts, edited by Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge, 1–33. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia. 2011. “Constructing Membership Identity through Language and Social Interaction: The Case of African American Children at Faith Missionary Baptist Church.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 42(1): 54–75. Platvoet, Jan, and Arie L. Molendijk. 1999. The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Contexts, Concepts, and Contests. Leiden, NL: Brill. Poveda, David, Ana Cano, and Manuel Palomares-Valera. 2005. “Religious Genres, Entextualization and Literacy in Gitano Children.” Language in Society 34: 87–115. Rampton, Ben, Karin Tusting, Janet Maybin, Richard Barwell, Angela Creese, and Vally Lytra. 2004. “UK Linguistic Ethnography: A Discussion Paper.” UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum. http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fss/organisations/lingethn/ documents/discussion_paper_jan_05.pdf Ran, An. 2000. “Memorization: Rote Learning or Route to Understanding?” Goldsmiths Journal of Education 2(2): 2–12.

Introduction 17 Rogoff, Barbara. 2003. The Cultural Nature of Human Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2008. Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2013. “Faith, Phonics and Identity: Reading in Faith Complementary Schools.” Literacy 47(2): 67–78. DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4369.2012.00669.x Sarroub, Loukia. 2005. All American Yemeni Girls: Being Muslim in a Public School. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Saville-Troike, Muriel. 2008. The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction (3rd ed.). London: Tavistock Publications. Schecter, Richard. 2004. Performance Theory. New York: Taylor and Francis. Schieffelin, Bambi B., and Elinor Ochs. 1986. “Language Socialization.” Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 163–191. Searle, John. 1979. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skerrett, Allison. 2013. “Religious Literacies in a Secular Literacy Classroom.” Reading Research Quarterly 49(2): 233–250. Souza, Ana. 2015. “Language and Faith Encounters: Bridging Language-Ethnicity and Language-Religion Studies.” International Journal of Multilingualism 13(1): 134–148. DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2015.1040023 Volk, Dinah, and Martha de Acosta. 2001. “ ‘Many Differing Ladders, Many Ways to Climb . . .’: Literacy Events in the Bilingual Classroom, Homes and Community of Three Puerto Rican Kindergartners.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 1(2): 193–224. Vygotsky, Lev. 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wong, Mary Shepard, and Suresh Canagarajah, eds. 2009. Christian and Critical English Language Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas. New York: Routledge. Zinsser, Caroline. 1986. “For the Bible Tells Me So: Teaching Children in a Fundamentalist Church.” In The Acquisition of Literacy: Ethnographic Perspectives, edited by Bambi Schieffelin and Perry Gilmore, 55–71. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

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Part I

Religious Practices at Home and across Generations

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1

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson Syncretic Teaching and Learning in a Puerto Rican Family Dinah Volk

While many Latino families in the United States are defined in schools and in popular discourse by their alleged deficits and constraints (Flores 2005; Villenas and Deyhle 1999), there is substantial research that frames them as active agents who seize opportunities, make choices, and access resources to resist the poverty and racism many confront (Arzubiaga et al. 2000; García and García 2012; Nieto 2012). For some families, religion can support agency and provide spiritual, human, and skill- and knowledge-based resources. This chapter will examine some ways that one Latino family—living in the Midwest and belonging to a Spanish-speaking, Pentecostal church1— drew on religious and secular texts in Spanish and English in interactions at home that integrated literacy teaching and learning with religious lessons and school events. The protagonist was Benny Santos,2 a six-year-old bilingual Puerto Rican, who used these texts to enrich his emerging bilingualism and biliteracy, often with the expert mediation of his grandmother, Nydia. Syncretizing a range of resources and privileging none, they co-constructed literacy and moral learning. For Benny and his grandmother, the languages, texts, and practices formed a single rich reserve of resources that they drew on to enact their religious beliefs, communicate, construct meaning, and resist their constraints jointly and with expertise.

Concepts Guiding the Investigation The data I discuss here were drawn from an investigation into the literacy lives of two six-year-old first graders, Benny and another boy, Miguel, at home and in school and community settings (Volk 2011). This work was guided by a critical sociocultural perspective that frames human activity as situated in social and historical contexts and reveals issues of power and privilege. Constraining social forces are addressed, as well as participants’ agency (Lewis et al. 2007). Investigations of literacy from this perspective often explore multiple literacies, the diverse meaning-making practices that people construct in the contexts of their lives (Li 2008). Recent research urges that such studies be multi-sited, describing literacies “that flow in and

22 Dinah Volk out of context[s]” (Pahl and Burnett 2013, 7) conceived as linked, permeable, and dynamic locations. My work on syncretism, much of it with colleagues (Gregory et al. 2013; Volk 2013), also provided guidance. Grounded in anthropology, syncretism refers to the process of social, cultural, and cognitive transformation as people blend resources from distinct contexts and create new forms and practices. This highlights agency and creativity as people bring diverse elements together, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes in contradictory ways. The research on Latino families was also relevant. While some educational materials propagate a deficit perspective, framing Latino families as deviations from a White, English-speaking norm, there is substantial research describing families’ strengths, funds of knowledge, and support for children’s school learning (García and García 2012; González et al. 2005; Olivos et al. 2011; Zentella 2005). Writing about Latino families, Arzubiaga et al. (2000) argue that they “can and do make choices that often maximize the resources available to them despite their ecological constraints” (94–95). Some research has closely analyzed the literacy teaching strategies used by Latino families (Janes and Kermani 2001; Moreno and Cisneros-Cohernour 1998; Reese and Gallimore 2000). This work suggests that Latino parents tend to teach as they were taught, focusing on letter naming and sounds, emphasizing repetition, memorization, and decoding accuracy rather than meaning. Research on teaching practices with diverse families in several different religions (Kapitzke 1995; McMillon and Edwards 2004; Moore 2011) has found an emphasis on the same strategies. In addition, Kapitzke (1995), in her study of literacy in an Adventist church, noted a contradiction between church teachings emphasizing personal engagement with texts and adults’ assertion of a “privileged and authorised” meaning for children to accept (253).

Methods for Data Collection and Analysis To understand the children’s literacy lives, I used ethnographic methods to study literacy as a sociocultural practice (Barton et al. 2000). Data were collected for one year using participant observation in the classroom, homes, and community, as well as interviews with the teacher, parents, and community members. I conducted audio recordings between January and June during monthly visits to the homes, and the parents completed network maps indicating the people who mediated their child’s developing literacy and the community locations where they practiced literacy. Two cultural insiders, both Puerto Rican and one the classroom teacher, participated in the analysis of selected data excerpts with me and the study’s consultant. (I am a White, Spanish-speaking teacher educator who has lived in Latin America, and the consultant, an education professional and researcher, is originally from Argentina. We both have worked and

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 23 conducted research in the city’s Puerto Rican community.) The memoirs of Latina writers (Alvarez, cited in McClellen 2000; Ortiz Cofer 1990) added to our understandings of the data, as did the insights of Puerto Rican and Mexican-American research assistants. To analyze the participants’ construction of literacy, I drew on the tenets of linguistic ethnography, which asserts that “close analysis of situated language use can provide both fundamental and distinctive insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of social and cultural production in everyday activity” (Rampton et al. 2004, 2). To do so I used a multilayered process (Gregory and Williams 1998) to embed the language use of Benny and his grandmother (inner layer) in literacy events (middle layer), which are embedded in social and historical contexts (outer layer). Consistent with a critical perspective, the identification of themes synthesized my perspectives, the participants’, and those of cultural insiders (Anderson 1989; Orellana 2007). For this chapter, I provide information on Benny’s school, home, and church contexts, analyze one literacy event during which Benny read from a Spanish Bible, and discuss elements of all three layers.

The Broader Contexts The Latino community in the city where Benny lives has grown rapidly, increasing by 13.8% between 2000 and 2010 (Gratereaux 2013). Latinos represented 10% of the city’s total population by 2010 (U.S. Census 2010) and are now, at 17%, the largest so-called minority group in the United States (Krogstad 2014). As of August 2014, the city’s school district provided services to 3,091 children identified as English Language Learners, who made up 8% of enrollment. Of those, 75% were speakers of Spanish as a home language, and 44% of the Spanish speakers were Puerto Rican (Multilingual Multicultural Education Office, Midwest City School District, email to author). The Latino community in this city and across the country is characterized by the phenomenon of “Protestantization” (Pantoja 2001, 168). A report by the Pew Research Center (2014) notes that in 2013, 24% of Latino adults were former Catholics and had become evangelical Protestants or unaffiliated. Specifically, 55% of adult Latinos in the United States were Catholic, down from 67% in 2010, and 22% were Protestant, up eight percentage points. Of those who identified as Protestant, 16% were evangelical, up from 12% in the same three years. The Pentecostal Movement has been described as “the single-most significant development in twentieth-century Christianity” (Reid 1990, 885). Pentecostals are evangelical Protestants who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and that the personal experience of being saved through acceptance of and communication with the Holy Spirit is central. As a consequence of the former belief, Bible reading is an important element of church

24 Dinah Volk services and a frequent at-home activity. The director of Benny’s church’s religious school explained: The Bible is God’s word . . . and the best way to let you go forward is to have you read God’s word for yourself. . . . It’s one thing to teach someone what a verse means, a verse could be interpreted in many ways. . . . That’s why each person has to be able to read it himself. I can show you but you bring your own interpretation from your own life. Participation and oral expression through personal testimonies about times when Jesus has answered prayers reflect the second belief and are common elements of church services, as is repetitive and collective oral prayer and singing (Reid 1990). For example, during a church service Benny’s grandmother took him to the front of the congregation and spoke about praying that her impending surgery would go well. She added that her prayers for Benny to succeed in school had been answered. They then sang a corito or traditional hymn with the congregation.

Benny at Home, School, and Church Benny lived with his four-year-old brother and his grandmother, Nydia Santos. She had attended high school in Puerto Rico, where she worked as a plant manager. She spoke English with ease. Sra. Santos explained that Benny spoke English first and, at six years old, he was using both Spanish and English at home. The family received public assistance and Benny was eligible for the free school lunch for low-income families. Benny attended an ESL (English as a Second Language) first grade in which all instruction was in English. He was in the top reading group and had scored at the second-grade level on a standardized reading test. When asked what he thought about school, Benny, an enthusiastic participant, effused, “It’s the best!” The teacher, Mrs. Martin, Puerto Rican and bilingual, effectively integrated knowledge of the children’s cultures into the curriculum and established strong relationships with parents. She combined a meaning-based approach to literacy instruction with a strong emphasis on phonemic awareness: learning letter sounds. Participation in a Spanish Pentecostal church was at the center of family life. This was a conservative congregation with strict rules about behavior and dress. During services, singing coritos and collective praying, much of it accompanied by exuberant music, were followed by oral Bible reading, personal testimonies, and sermons—all in Spanish. During the Bible reading, Benny often stood by his grandmother’s side, watching as she traced her finger along the lines of text in her Bible or following along in his own Bible. The family attended services on Sunday followed by children’s Sunday School. Bible study and additional services occurred two evenings a week; once a month the children led the service.

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 25 In Sunday School classes, held primarily in English, the children discussed parables and were encouraged to understand the meaning for their lives in concrete ways. For example, after having the children read aloud the parable of “the sower and the seed,” the teacher asked if a seed could grow in bad ground and how they would need to act in order to grow as God wanted, like a seed in good ground. Teachers often advanced obedience as the moral children should draw from lessons. For example, after the teacher presented the story of Moses in Egypt, she stated, “God wants us to obey. Listen. In church and school. . . . Raise your hand and get an A on tests. . . . Children, niños [children], youth, jovenes [youth], men, women . . . have to obey. Pharaoh didn’t obey.” Memorization was a favored learning strategy. The director of the school explained that when the children lead the service, the young ones will memorize a verse to read to the congregation. They’ll say, “Can I practice with you today?” They feel that they have to learn. . . . The four year olds try to memorize big verses. If they can’t remember, their parents whisper in their ears. Secular Literacy at Home Shortly after I began visiting her home, Sra. Santos gave me a photo of Benny at four holding a Leapster, an electronic device for teaching reading in English used in many classrooms. This photo seemed to represent Benny’s prowess as a reader coupled with his grandmother’s determined provision of instruction. Sra. Santos regularly pedagogized activities; for example, she turned the writing of a shopping list into a bilingual spelling lesson. She took Benny to secondhand shops to buy books and, in response to his interest in maps and Puerto Rico, bought him a globe, an almanac, and a towel with a map of the island that she pinned to his bedroom wall. Benny usually completed his homework on his own and his grandmother occasionally checked it. He watched children’s programs and the news on television. Benny had a few picture books in English, nonfiction materials such as the World Wildlife Fact File, and a number of electronic devices, including a game console on which he played Pokémon, an extremely popular role-playing game featuring fictional creatures. During one observation he spent about half an hour fluently reading descriptions of characters from his Pokémon book. Excerpt 1: Reading Pokémon Benny: “Sato is a legendary Pokémon that controls lightning balls. It lives inside thunder clouds. It doesn’t need to worry if lightning strikes. That gives Sato extra power.” [After reading, with confidence] I can read anything.

26 Dinah Volk Benny was an expert at computer use, viewing cartoons, exploring his neighborhood and Puerto Rico on Google Maps, logging on to a school math site to solve problems, and singing along to Justin Bieber songs and coritos. He often copied lyrics into his notebook or transcribed them while listening to CDs of religious songs (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2).

Figure 1.1 Benny’s journal with Justin Bieber lyrics

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 27

Figure 1.2 Benny’s journal with religious lyrics “by no se” [I don’t know]

The Syncretic Literacy Event: Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson When I first met Sra. Santos she explained that she had just started teaching Benny to read in Spanish, using a youth Bible, not one for young children.

28 Dinah Volk Her rationale: she was contemplating a move to Puerto Rico and, in that case, Benny would have trouble in school if he could not read Spanish. I observed this activity on my first visit to their home in February and recorded the entire literacy event on the next visit, the third such lesson. During the first visit Benny cuddled with his grandmother on the couch with the Bible on his lap. When I returned and recorded the event, they sat together on Benny’s bed with their arms entwined and his brother watching (see Figure 1.3). In this 18-minute literacy event, Benny and Sra. Santos drew on Spanish and English, as well as elements of the church service, religious school classes, and previous Bible readings at home, along with their knowledge of happenings in school and typical instructional strategies, transforming these as they jointly created a syncretic literacy event: a home worship service/Bible reading/reading lesson. Benny’s ability to read the Spanish text though never having been taught to read in Spanish and his grandmother’s use of multiple teaching strategies were evidence of their knowledge and expertise. The literacy event began with Benny reading the story from the Old Testament about Isaac and his sons Jacob and Esau. Sra. Santos provided corrections when he needed them, asked him to explain the story, drew a lesson about obedience, then asked him to tell the story of Noah and the ark. Benny interrupted once to talk about a school event. Then his grandmother told

Figure 1.3 Benny reading the Bible with his grandmother’s mediation

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 29 him to sing a hymn, one of his favorites, and sang along with him. They discussed another school event and returned to the story of Noah and the moral of obedience. Analysis of Benny’s reading revealed that he was able to read some passages with fluency. When he hesitated or stumbled, Sra. Santos stepped in and they constructed the text together fluidly, building on each other’s turns, as in Excerpt 2. She provided the first few syllables of words and corrected the endings and pronunciations. She also used a strategy of directing Benny to the pictures, initiating talk about the meaning of the text in addition to pronunciation of the words (line 14). Benny worked in tandem with her, reading, repeating, self-correcting the tense of the verb “pensar” [to think] (lines 9 and 11), and asking a clarification question (line 15). Excerpt 2: Fluent and Collaborative Reading 1 Benny: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Sra. Santos: Benny: Sra. Santos: Benny: Sra. Santos: Benny: Sra. Santos: Benny:

10 Sra. Santos: 11 Benny:

12 Sra. Santos: 13 Benny: 14 Sra. Santos: 15 Benny: 16 Sra. Santos: 17 Benny: 18 Sra. Santos:

Ribeca . . . preparó la comida fevruta. [Ribeca . . . prepared the fevrit3 food.] No. Favo . . . Fevru . . . Favo . . . . . . vorito. Favorita. [Favorite.] Favorita. [Favorite.] De. [Of.] De su esposo Isaac (pronounced in English) pensaré . . . [Of her husband Isaac . . . will think . . .] Mm-hmm. (affirming) Pensara que el animal que estaba comiendo era el que Esú. [So that he’d think that the animal that he was eating was the one that Esú.] Esau (pronounced in English). Esaú (pronounced in Spanish) había tra .  .  . [Esaú had brou . . .] Traído a la casa. Míralo, aquí lo trajo, ¿ves? [Had brought home. Look at it, he brought it here, see?] ¿Ellos van a comérselo? [Are they going to eat it?] Mm-hmm. Lo más .  .  . sí porque .  .  . [Mm-hmm. Prob . . . yes, because . . .] Ya. [OK.] Ajá. [Uh-huh.]

Benny made errors reading in Spanish approximately 57 times (excluding his reading of names), though it was difficult to categorize his errors since some words involved multiple types. About 28% occurred when he read some letters incorrectly, or left out letters or parts of a word. For example,

30 Dinah Volk he read “abos” for “ambos” and “familiar” for “familiares.” Notably, for about 40% of the errors, he drew on his knowledge of Spanish and English syncretically, using the phonemic approach that he had learned in his ESL classroom and saying some of the sounds of the letters in the Spanish words appropriately for English and using them along with the Spanish sounds. This focus on letters contrasts with the standard approach for reading in Spanish that is based on mastery of syllables. When Benny made mistakes reading, Sra. Santos provided the correct pronunciation. For example, he read “velluda” [hairy] as “veluto” and she corrected him with “veyuda,” explaining the Spanish rule and drawing attention to “las dos L” (the two “el,” as pronounced in English). Similarly, he read “triste” [sad] as “trist,” rolling the R as in Spanish, pronouncing the long E sound for the letter I as in Spanish, but reading the word as if it had a silent E as in English. In some instances, he also appeared to be using the rules for accenting syllables in English, at times mixing in English phonemes, too. For example, he read “llamó” [he called] as “lámo,” again pronouncing the two Ls in English and accenting the first syllable. His grandmother corrected him with “yamó,” accenting the last one. As in these examples, correct and incorrect pronunciations occurred in the same word. Thus Benny read “envejeció” [he grew old] as “enveeho,” pronouncing the J correctly for Spanish, providing the English long E for the second E, leaving out two syllables, and accenting the middle syllable as in English. At other times Benny inverted letters. For example, he read “quiera” as “quería,” a Spanish word, but not a meaningful one with a different syllable accented. When he did so, Sra. Santos provided the correct pronunciation and added, “Tienes que mirar bien” [You have to look carefully]. Once Benny read “manos” [hands] as “maño,” hypercorrecting by inserting the Spanish Ñ into the word, drawing on his knowledge of Spanish phonemes. Three times Benny corrected himself, as when he read “más tadre . . . tarde” [later], and five times he substituted a real though incorrect word for the one in the text, as when he read “hombre” [man] for “obra” [work]. Six times Sra. Santos just provided the correct word or completed the word that Benny had only begun. She seemed to sense the assistance that he needed and varied her strategy appropriately. These examples suggest that Benny was focusing on decoding rather than the meaning of words. In contrast, there were instances when he seemed to be drawing on his familiarity with religious vocabulary in Spanish. For example, he quoted Isaac as saying “Tú eres mi hijo primeghen—” [You are my ____ son], starting the Spanish word primogénito [first born] using a hard—and irregular—English G before the E. Sensing that he would know the word, Sra. Santos did not provide the whole word as she did in other instances but just said “primohé—” using the Spanish pronunciation for “ge,” and Benny quickly pronounced the word correctly.

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 31 Once during the Bible reading, Benny interrupted to share information about celebrating Valentine’s Day in school, speaking in Spanish and using a few English words: “Mrs. Martin .  .  . uno de los niños le dió un heart de chocolate” [Mrs. Martin .  .  . one of the children gave her a chocolate heart]. Sra. Santos responded to his English by replying in English, “Oh, that’s good,” and they returned to the story. When the reading was completed, Sra. Santos asked Benny to explain what the story was about “en tus propias palabras” [in your own words], shifting the focus to comprehension. He replied that it was about Jacob dying because he had not eaten anything, missing the point, apparently because of his attention to decoding. His grandmother provided the correct topic and pointed to the text, asking, “¿Qué dice aquí, qué es lo más bonito que dice aquí?” [What does it say here, what is the most beautiful thing that it says here?]. Then she helped him sound out the phrase “obedecer nos beneficia” [to obey benefits us]. Subsequent exchanges illustrated the flow of literacies between contexts, a limit to that flow and Benny’s challenge. Thus, Sra. Santos suggested that Benny sing a hymn, a favorite activity, and she joined in. Afterwards Benny asked if he could sing the hymn in church and she explained that he could sing it with the pastor in front of the congregation. She and Benny then discussed an incident in school when he had been reprimanded by Mrs. Martin for saying “Oh my God.” By way of explanation, Sra. Santos warned Benny, “Tú sabes ahora ellos hacen eso y por eso hay tantas cosas tan malas que suceden en las escuelas . . . [You know, they do that now and that’s why there are so many bad things happening in schools . . .] and provided the following advice in English: “But . . . you keep it in your heart and in your mind, you know?” When Benny then noted that they had been able to mention God in a song during music class, Sra. Santos commented, “Este va a ser un pastorcito” [This one is going to be a little pastor], emphasizing his cleverness and religiosity. Interestingly, Mrs. Martin had a different explanation for banning the expression. For her, the frivolous use of the phrase represented the taking of God’s name in vain. Sra. Santos then asked Benny to tell the story of Noah, which, she noted, he had memorized. As can be seen in Excerpt 3 below, Benny knew the high points of the story and made a few errors speaking in Spanish. He self-corrected twice, once after his incorrect use of the masculine article for “tormenta” (line 2) and again when he said that Noah “is going to” and changed it to “was going to” (line 8). In the same sentence, his use of the past tense “hizo” instead of the more complicated imperfect past subjective is a common strategy for those learning Spanish. Sra. Santos ignored that error since the meaning was clear but supplied the Spanish for “drown” in the context of an earlier sentence (line 5). Overall she appeared to be focusing on Benny retelling the events and the meaning of the Bible story, as they again

32 Dinah Volk fluidly and collaboratively constructed it. The literacy event ended with Sra. Santos explaining the importance of obedience. Excerpt 3: Importance of Obedience 1 Sra. Santos: ¿Cómo fue nene, cómo fue? Cuéntame eso para recordármelo . . . [How was it son, how was it? Tell me about it to remind me . . . 2 Benny: O, era un viento, un tormenta, una tormenta y. [Oh, there was wind, a storm, a storm and.] 3 Sra. Santos: ¿Y qué iba a pasar? [And what was going to happen?] 4 Benny: La gente iba a drown. [People were going to drown.] 5 Sra. Santos: Ajá, se iban a ahogar. [Uh-huh, they were going to drown.] 6 Benny: Sí. [Yes.] 7 Sra. Santos: ¿Y, y qué pasó? [And, and what happened?] 8 Benny: Dios le dijo a Noé que hizo la arca porque él va—él iba a. [God told Noah to did the ark because he is—he is going to.] 9 Sra. Santos: ¿La Tierra se iba a quedar sola? . . . ¿Por qué? [Was the Earth going to be uninhabited? . . . Why?] 10 Benny: Porque ellos hacieron burlo. [Because they made fun of.] 11 Sra. Santos: Se burlaron. [They made fun of.] 12 Benny: Se burlaron de Noé. [They made fun of Noah.] 13 Sra. Santos: Y no creyeron, ¿verdad?, lo que Dios dijo. [And they didn’t believe, right? What God said.] 14 Benny: Sí. [Yes.] 15 Sra. Santos: Desobedecieron. [They disobeyed.] 14 Benny: Disobeyed. So that’s what they died for, they died porque hicieron eso. [. . . because they did that.] 15 Sra. Santos: Pues nos beneficia obedecer, ¿verdad? [So it benefits us to obey, right?] 16 Benny: Yeah.

Integrating the Multiple Layers The analysis of the outer layer of this event provides a broader perspective and adds meaning beyond the personal to Sra. Santos’s drive to teach Benny to read Spanish. As Puerto Ricans their lives are transnational and reflect the neocolonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico (Jiménez 2003). Mastery of Spanish represents a key aspect of their contested identity; Puerto Ricans have struggled for its official designation on the island and work to maintain it within the constraints of the English-dominated world on the mainland.4 But this troubled relationship also brings benefits. As citizens of the United States, Puerto Ricans can travel to the island without

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 33 crossing a border. Though lack of money was an obstacle, Sra. Santos could plan to visit, as many Puerto Ricans do, replenishing the Spanish of those, like Benny, who live on the mainland. As has been noted in other research with Latino communities, Spanish is also kept alive in the church domain (Espinosa 2014). While school validated Benny’s use of English, church validated his use of Spanish. Participation in church services required competence in multiple literacies in Spanish as Benny was inducted into a sacred, literate community. These literacies enhanced Benny’s rich reserve of resources and contributed to his developing biliteracy. The analysis of the middle layer revealed the complex syncretic literacy process co-constructed by Benny and his grandmother as they drew on languages, literacies, and related artifacts and practices to create their own event. Like participants described in other research (Duranti, Ochs, and Ta’ase 1995), they used a key text, the Bible, both for religious purposes, as intended, and as an instructional tool, providing evidence of Benny’s ability and his grandmother’s to use the resources at hand creatively. As recommended by recent research, this study was multi-sited, revealing literacies “that flow in and out of context[s]” (Pahl and Burnett 2013, 7) in an ongoing syncretic process. Home, school, and church were linked, permeable, and dynamic locations. Elements of school literacies were apparent in Sra. Santos’s teaching strategies and Benny’s use of a phonemic approach to reading English. Elements of the church service were replicated and also represented practice for church participation. Benny was also learning about a home-school discontinuity—one not always adhered to by teachers—and the limits of syncretism. Based on a mistaken assumption about Mrs. Martin’s intent when she banned “Oh my God,” he learned that appropriating texts from one context to another may cause tensions. Dyson (1999) refers to these juxtapositions as “unruly hybrids” (389) that provide learning experiences that help children in “differentiating, organizing, and reorganizing their symbolic and cultural resources” and their worlds (394). The central lesson of obedience to authority, the asserted moral of the biblical texts, was emphasized consistently in church and at home. This message is a familiar one for children in many religious settings (Kapitzke 1995), though it appears incompatible with both the message articulated by the head of Benny’s religious school that it is important for people to bring “an interpretation from your own life” and with the contemporary concept of literacy as a personal meaning-making practice. For Benny and his grandmother, this tension between agency and authority was played out as they created their own literacy and religious practice. The analysis of the inner layer provides evidence of Benny’s expertise as a reader in Spanish and English and his grandmother’s expertise scaffolding his emerging bilingualism and biliteracy using multiple strategies. This picture challenges the constraints of a deficit perspective of Latino children confused by two languages and of Latino parents unable to assist their

34 Dinah Volk children’s learning. It also challenges favorable accounts that describe Latino parents focusing on letter sounds to the exclusion of comprehension. Benny and Sra. Santos used both languages as resources along with a range of strategies including repetition, memorization, and an emphasis on phonemic awareness, as well as an exploration of meaning with illustrative examples. On the other hand, it is possible to interpret Benny’s errors using English phonemic rules to read Spanish as evidence that his knowledge of English was an obstacle to reading Spanish, at least at this early stage. Benny’s misidentification of the topic of the Isaac story suggests that, for much of the event, he was focusing on decoding at the expense of comprehension. This tension between English as obstacle and as resource was inherent in Benny’s emerging biliteracy. Sra. Santos focused on the positive, exclaiming how well Benny was reading in Spanish. She added, not mentioning her own modeling of Spanish and English used together, “Así fue que él aprendió a hablar español también, junto . . . Está mezclando, él mezcla” [That’s how he started speaking Spanish too, together . . . He’s mixing, he mixes]. Excerpts 2 and 3 provide insights into this mixing, what is known as “translanguaging,” in which bilinguals are understood to “draw on their full linguistic toolkits in order to process information, make meaning, and convey it to others” (Orellana and García 2014, 386), rather than sample two separate languages. It must be noted, however, that the syncretic stance that informs this work, grounded as it is in anthropology and sociocultural theory, engages more than the languages involved in Benny’s transformations. Looking across the multiple layers, Benny and his grandmother activated and created a panoply of resources for teaching and learning, which were embedded in the social, cultural, and historical contexts of their lives and interwove religious and secular artifacts, practices, and relationships. The focus was on a process of transformation that could be harmonious and/or tension-filled, rich and complex (Volk 2013).

Implications for Research and Teaching The analysis provided here indicates the value of multi-sited research as necessary for the development of culturally responsive curricula, particularly for children from marginalized communities who are often invisible to educators. In order to build on what children and their families know and can do, we need to see and privilege what they know and can do in diverse settings, tracking and supporting their syncretic use of literacies in and out of permeable contexts, including religious ones at home and beyond. By honoring children’s “breathtaking diversity” in contrast to the “uniformity, homogenization, and regimentation of classroom practices” (Genishi and Dyson 2009, 4) we expand our understanding of their multiple capabilities. Children’s playfulness, their ease of interaction with multiple modalities, and the bilingualism of children such as Benny provide rich opportunities for learning (Genishi and Dyson 2009).

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 35 Benny’s hard work reading Spanish suggests that a bilingual program, honoring literacy in both languages, would serve him well and provide a better setting for his competencies to flower than the ESL classroom. A “flexible bilingual pedagogy” making use of “whatever signs and forms [children] have at their disposal, indexing disparate allegiances and knowledge and creating new ones” (Blackledge and Creese 2010, 213)—though out of favor in U.S. schools today—would honor the ways that Benny used languages, literacies, and other resources at home. In the syncretic literacy event described here, Benny, with his grandmother’s mediation, engaged in an exercise in contrastive analysis and translation, exploring pronunciation, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, all of which had the potential to contribute to his school-related learning (Jiménez et al. 2015). The analysis also raises questions for educators in the U.S., where public schools must remain neutral vis-à-vis religion, though many frequently organize activities around common Christian holidays such as Christmas. If we are to build on the literacies nurtured in religious settings that flow in and out of these and other contexts, how do we do so in ways that maintain neutrality in school, educate about diversity, and refrain from imposing the religious beliefs of the majority on the many adherents of less powerful religions? One approach is to reconceptualize a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or home religious event as a literacy context, “a beacon of light on the pathway to literacy” (McMillon and Edwards 2004). That approach may provide access to resources for educators, too.

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Mrs. Martin for her welcoming spirit and keen insights, Martha de Acosta for her ongoing guidance, and Benny and his grandmother for sharing their lives and literacies con tanta buena voluntad y gracia.

Notes 1. Protestants belong to one of two overlapping groups, mainline Protestants and evangelicals. Pentecostals are evangelical Protestants who believe in salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the personal experience of enlightenment, and the Bible as the word of God (Pew Research Center 2014; Reid 1990). 2. The names of all participants are pseudonyms. 3. An effort was made to indicate in English Benny’s mispronunciations in Spanish. 4. The United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 after invading the island during the Spanish American War. It continues to be a territory of the U.S. and is now designated a free associated state. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens who do not have the right to vote in U.S. elections. English was mandated the official language during several drives to Americanize the island. At present, English and Spanish are co-official languages with Spanish the language of instruction in schools and English a required subject (Mazak 2007).

36 Dinah Volk

References Anderson, Gary L. 1989. “Critical Ethnography in Education: Origins, Current Status, and New Directions.” Review of Educational Research 59: 249–270. Arzubiaga, Angela, Miguel Ceja, and Alfredo J. Artiles. 2000. “Transcending Deficit Thinking about Latinos’ Parenting Styles: Toward an Ecocultural View of Family Life.” In Charting New Terrains of Chicano(a)/Latino(a) Education, edited by Carlos Tejeda, Corrine Martínez, and Zeus Leonardo, 93–106. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Barton, David, Mary Hamilton, and Roz Ivanič, eds. 2000. Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. London: Routledge. Blackledge, Adrian and Angela Creese. 2010. Multilingualism. London: Continuum. Duranti, Alesssandro, Elinor Ochs, and Elia K. Ta’ase. 1995. “Change and Tradition in Literacy Instruction in a Samoan American Community.” Educational Foundations 9(4): 57–74. Dyson, Anne Haas. 1999. “Coach Bombay’s Kids Learn to Write: Children’s Appropriation of Media Material for School Literacy.” Research in the Teaching of English 1(1): 367–402. Espinosa, Gastón. 2014. Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Flores, Barbara. 2005. “The Intellectual Presence of the Deficit View of SpanishSpeaking Children in the Educational Literature during the 20th Century.” In Latino Education: An Agenda for Community Action Research, edited by Pedro Pedraza and Melissa Rivera, 75–98. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. García, Eugene E. and Erminda H. García. 2012. Understanding the Language Development and Early Education of Hispanic Children. New York: Teachers College Press. Genishi, Celia and Anne Haas Dyson. 2009. Children, Language, and Literacy: Diverse Learners for Diverse Times. New York: Teachers College Press. González, Norma, Luis C. Moll, and Cathy Amanti, eds. 2005. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gratereaux, Alexandra J. 2013. “Latinos Are Growing Presence in Cleveland.” Fox News Latino, May 7. Gregory, Eve and Ann Williams. 1998. “Family Literacy History and Children’s Learning Strategies at Home and at School.” In Studies in Educational Ethnography: Children Learning in Context, edited by Geoffrey Walford and Alexander Massey, 19–46. Stamford, CT: JAI Press. Gregory, Eve, Dinah Volk, and Susi Long, eds. 2013. “Guest Editors Introduction: Syncretism and Syncretic Literacies.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13(3): 309–321. Janes, Helena and Hengameh Kermani. 2001. “Caregivers’ Story Reading to Young Children in Family Literacy Programs: Pleasure or Punishment?” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44(5): 458–466. Jiménez, Robert T. 2003. “Literacy and Latino Students in the United States: Some Considerations, Questions, and New Directions.” Reading Research Quarterly 38: 122–128. Jiménez, Robert T., Sam David, Keenan Fagan, Victoria J. Risko, Mark Pacheco, Lisa Pray, and Mark Gonzales. 2015. “Using Translation to Drive Conceptual Development for Students Becoming Literate in English as an Additional Language.” Research in the Teaching of English 49(3): 248–271. Kapitzke, Cushla. 1995. Literacy and Religion: The Textual Politics and Practice of Seventh-Day Adventists. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Home Worship Service/Bible Reading/Reading Lesson 37 Krogstad, Jens M. 2014. 11 Facts for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Accessed Sept. 30. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/16/11-facts-for-nationalhispanic-heritage-month/ Lewis, Cynthia, Patricia Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje. 2007. Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Li, Guofang. 2008. Culturally Contested Literacies: America’s “Rainbow Underclass” and Urban Schools. New York: Routledge. Mazak, Catherine. 2007. “Appropriation and Resistance in the Literacy Practices of Puerto Rican Farmers.” In Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice, and Power, edited by Victoria Purcell-Gates, 25–40. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. McClellen, Hilary. 2000, July 19. “In the Name of the Homeland.” The Atlantic Online. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/interviews/ ba2000–07–19.htm McMillon, Gwendolyn T. and Patricia A. Edwards. 2004. “The African American Church: A Beacon of Light on the Pathway to Literacy for African American Children.” In Many Pathways to Literacy: Young Children Learning with Siblings, Grandparents, Peers, and Communities, edited by Eve Gregory, Susi Long, and Dinah Volk, 182–194. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Moore, Leslie C. 2011. “Moving across Languages, Literacies, and Schooling Traditions.” Language Arts 88: 288–297. Moreno, Robert P. and Edith J. Cisneros-Cohernour. 1998. “Strategies for Effective Instruction: Mexican American Mothers and Everyday Instruction.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA. Nieto, Sonia. 2012. “Honoring the Lives of All Children: Identity, Culture, and Language.” In Defending Childhood: Keeping the Promise of Early Education, edited by Beverly Falk, 48–62. New York: Teachers College Press. Olivos, Edward M., Oscar Jiménez-Castellanos, and Alberto M. Ochoa, eds. 2011. Bicultural Parent Engagement: Advocacy and Empowerment. New York: Teachers College Press. Orellana, Marjorie F. 2007. “Moving Words and Worlds: Reflections from ‘The Middle’.” In Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power, edited by Cynthia Lewis, Patricia Enciso, and Elizabeth B. Moje, 123–136. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Orellana, Marjorie F. and Ofelia García. 2014. “Language Brokering and Translanguaging in School.” Language Arts 91(5): 386–392. Ortiz Cofer, Judith. 1990. Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Pahl, Kate and Cathy Burnett. 2013. “Literacies in Homes and Communities.” In International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture, edited by Kathy Hall, Teresa Cremin, Barbara Comber, and Luis C. Moll, 3–14. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Pantoja, Segundo. 2001. “Religious Diversity and Ethnicity among Latinos.” In New York Glory: Religions in the City, edited by Tony Carnes and Anna Karpathakis, 162–173. New York: New York University Press. Pew Research Center 2014. “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States.” Available at: www.pewresearch.org/religion Rampton, Ben, Karin Tusting, Janet Maybin, Richard Barwell, Angela Creese, and Vally Lytra. 2004. “UK Linguistic Ethnography: A Discussion Paper.” UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum. http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fss/organisations/lingethn/ documents/discussion_paper_jan_05.pdf

38 Dinah Volk Reese, Leslie and Ronald Gallimore. 2000. “Immigrant Latinos’ Cultural Model of Literacy Development: An Evolving Perspective on Home-School Discontinuities.” American Journal of Education 108(2): 103–134. Reid, Daniel G., ed. 1990. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. U.S. Census 2010. “Cleveland QuickFacts.” Accessed Sept. 15, 2014. http://quickfacts. census.gov/qfd/states/39/3916000.html Villenas, Sofia and Donna Deyhle. 1999. “Critical Race Theory and Ethnographies Challenging the Stereotypes: Latino Families, Schooling, Resilience and Resistance.” Curriculum Inquiry 29: 413–445. Volk, Dinah. 2011. “Warm Demanders: Caring Latino Families and Their Support for Language and Literacy Learning.” Paper presented at the 19th Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education Conference, London, UK. Volk, Dinah. 2013. “ ‘Contradictions, Clashes, Cominglings’: The Syncretic Literacy Projects of Young Bilinguals.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 44: 234–252. Zentella, Ana Celia, ed. 2005. Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities. New York: Teachers College Press.

2

Easter Celebrations at Home Acquiring Symbolic Knowledge and Constructing Identities Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham

Introduction The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed British policy-makers turning attention to the home experiences of children of immigrant backgrounds as well as recognising the relevance of knowledge acquired at home in the children’s learning and in the construction of their identities. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES), then responsible for the education system and children’s services in England, set out the entitlement of pupils as young as seven years old to learn languages and emphasised the importance of learning after school (National Languages Strategy 2002). Primary schools were encouraged to develop closer links with their local communities as a way of better supporting their pupils (Aiming High 2003). Later, in 2006, the Excellence and Enjoyment report guided teachers on strategies to support the learning of bilingual learners, including the use of their first languages as resources, whilst the Curriculum Review report (2007) recommended that issues of identity, including religion, be dealt with explicitly in order to fulfil the necessary pedagogical strategies for fostering citizenship. In addition, in 2009, the cultural and religious dimensions of a child’s background were considered relevant in promoting emotional and mental well-being (Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future, Department for Children, Schools and Families, DCSF). More recently, a publication by the Department for Education (DfE 2011) recognised as good practice schools’ offer of individual tuition to learners of English as an Additional Language at flexible times, both in school time and at weekends, to ensure it did not clash with pupils’ community/faith commitments. Despite this positive take of British policies on the culture, language, religion and identity of migrants and their children, little has been done in relation to exploring children’s experience in migrant faith settings. Therefore, this article examines the impact of religious practices on the acquisition of subject knowledge and the construction of identity of children. We start by presenting the sociocultural concepts that are the basis of the theoretical framework adopted. We then describe the research project from which the examples in this chapter are taken and present the contexts in which the data

40 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham were collected. We illustrate our discussions with examples from a nine-yearold Polish boy and show how the boy’s symbolic knowledge is developed and his skills are acquired at home through his participation in faith activities around Easter. We argue that learning at home can enrich the experiences of children of migrant backgrounds and contribute to the development of their symbolic knowledge—which could be successfully transferable to learning in mainstream schools.

Theoretical Framework Sociocultural theory, the basis of the theoretical framework adopted in this chapter, assumes that mental activity is mediated by social interactions as well as by culturally derived symbolic tools (Wertsch 1985 in Fernyhough 2008, 227) such as language (Lantolf 2000) and physical artefacts (Wertsch 1998). Although the possibility of understanding mediation by separating its human aspect from the symbolic one has been questioned (Kozulin 2002), for the purpose of organising the structure of this text, we initially present these two aspects separately in this section. Note, however, that these two aspects—human and symbolic—will be brought together later in this chapter. Learning from Others Vygotsky (1981) advocates that learning takes place at two levels. At the first level, the social one (interpsychological), children learn through interacting with others in specific social contexts. At the second level, the psychological one (intrapsychological), children learn through their mental processes. To Vygotsky (1978, 57), ‘[a]ll the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals’. For children of primary school age, these relations include the family and those in their everyday life. Hence the importance of highlighting prolepsis and funds of knowledge as two relevant sociocultural concepts to examine the impact of religious practices at home. Prolepsis was presented by Cole (1996) as the transmission to children of knowledge selected by their parents. It is through prolepsis that knowledge acquired in the past (memories) is brought into the present (interactions) with the expectation (imagination) that it will have a relevant role in one’s future. Funds of knowledge, on the other hand, is a concept developed by Moll et al. (1992) with the purpose of improving the learning experiences of Mexican-American children attending schools in Arizona. Their main idea was that by capitalising on the essential resources—i.e., knowledge and skills—held by the children’s communities for their proper functioning, teachers would see the child as a whole person. Consequently, the knowledge brought to school by the students could be pedagogically validated and drawn on as a way of enhancing their learning in schools (González 2005). The importance of the sociocultural goals of human mediation in specific communities has also been acknowledged by the concept of guided

Easter Celebrations at Home 41 participation, one of the three aspects of mediation advocated by Rogoff (Kozulin 2002). Guided participation relates to the joint activity in which learner and mediator engage. The other two aspects of mediation advocated by Rogoff (1995) are apprenticeship and appropriation. The former is when the mediator provides a model to the learner, whereas the latter is when the learner changes as a result of having engaged with the mediator. The role of interaction and participation in learning was also highlighted by Lave and Wenger (1991), who emphasised it as an ‘integral and inseparable aspect of social practice’ (p. 53). In a later publication, Wenger (2010) stresses the role of sociocultural interaction as being the location for learning and the community of practice as part of that learning. Community of practice is defined as ‘a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly’.1 They share a) the domain (members are brought together by a learning need they share); b) the community (their collective learning becomes a bond among them over time) and c) the practice (their interactions produce resources that affect their practice). Learning from Symbolic Tools The role of symbolisation or semiotics in learning is a central tenet of Vygotsky’s framework (1978), since development is conceptualised ‘as the transformation of socially shared activities into internalized processes’ (John-Steiner and Mahn 1996, 192). Through internalised socially mediated activity, children develop internally oriented signs (symbols) and externally oriented tools, the use of which limitlessly broadens the range of activities within which the new psychological functions may operate. In this context, we can use the term higher psychological function, or higher behavior as referring to the combination of tool and sign in psychological activity. (Vygotsky 1978, 55) For Vygotsky (1978), it is through mediating interpersonal processes, recreating psychological activity on the basis of sign operations, of which language is the most important, that cultural forms of behaviour are internalised. Higher cognitive functions are, consequently, the result of and inextricably linked to society and culture: ‘If one changes the tools of thinking available to a child, his mind will have a radically different structure’ (Berg 1970, 46 in Cole et al. 1978, 126). Implied in this reasoning is the argument that, if a child has access to richer symbolic interactions, mediated by social interaction with others, more complex thinking skills will develop. Language, a symbolic tool par excellence, will both contribute to and develop from such interactions and social experiences. An example of the complex relationship between cognitive development and language can be seen in the analysis of metaphorical discourse.2

42 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham Metaphors have been analysed as a form of thought, representing conceptual mappings, related to culture and originating in human experience. This analysis has led to different theories (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson 1980). However, objects, representing events and experiences, imbued with symbolism, can also constitute metaphorical representations. As such, their use in rituals and ceremonies would constitute an abstraction of meaning, social interaction and experience. Similarly to learning, identity results from a social process where individual characteristics are shaped according to the experiences one has in interaction with others, as discussed below. Constructing Identities The complexity of identity and its effect on language learning has led Norton (2000) to claim three central characteristics for identity: it is multiple, it is a site of struggle and it is changeable. The multiplicity of identity is a consequence of the diverse roles that constitute an individual and which are constantly changing across time and space. Furthermore, Norton (2011) highlights that identities are ‘constructed within diverse discourses or sites of practice’ (p. 2). Therefore, we consider identity to be the way individuals see themselves linked, in terms of knowledge and emotions, to certain structures in society, and thus it refers to a variety of components such as religion, gender, age, language and ethnicity (Souza 2008, 38). Religion and language, in particular, are considered significant cultural resources in the process of migration (Omoniyi 2012). In fact, these two aspects of identity (religion and language) have been combined with a third one (ethnicity) in the development of a three-dimensional framework (the REL-triangle) for the examination of language planning and policy in ethnic churches in the UK (Souza et al. 2012). The application of this framework to the study on which this chapter draws showed that the decisions made by the faith leaders about the language planning in their congregations were affected by their theological orientations as well as by the linguistic and cultural identities of their followers. In this chapter, we focus on how the acquisition of symbolic knowledge and the construction of identities of a child are affected by the religious activities practised at home by him and his family.

The Study The data presented in this chapter is part of a larger ethnographic study entitled Becoming Literate in Faith Settings (BeLiFS), which was funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) between 2009 and 2013. The study took place in London and included four migrant faith communities: Bangladeshi Muslim, Tamil Hindu, Ghanaian Pentecostal and Polish Catholic. In Year 1 of this study, the field researchers

Easter Celebrations at Home 43 visited places of worship and video-recorded the buildings, ceremonies, rituals and events. These recordings were made with the aim of investigating the scope and nature of literacy practices in each faith setting. In Year 2, the children were given Flip cameras (simple video cameras) and asked to record faith activities in which they participated at home. In this phase, we aimed to find out how teaching and learning of faith occurred outside the place of worship. Thus, the BeLiFS project used video recording in both a more traditional way, where the researchers went into the field and collected video data, and a more participatory way, where participants produced their own videos of their everyday practices—in this case, their religious practices. Discussions on the data collected for this study by the researchers are presented elsewhere (Gregory et al. 2013). In this chapter, we focus on the recordings made by the participants and discuss them through the use of ‘transvisuals’ (a combination of representation of data through the use of scripts and visuals) (Bezemer and Mavers 2011). In this phase, the children were also asked to make a scrapbook on the faith activities in which they participate. More specifically, this chapter focuses on a nine-year-old Polish boy, Adam, and his participation in one of the main celebrations in the Catholic calendar, Easter. This Christian festival commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the belief that He miraculously returned to life three days after being executed by crucifixion. The celebrations are full of symbols, as explored in one video-recorded event and on the three pages of Adam’s scrapbook that cover Easter. We consider these two sets of data useful in illustrating the social and the psychological levels that are part of the learning process as advocated by Vygotsky (1981) and discussed above. The video-recorded event enables us to witness the social interactions through which Adam is presented to the symbolic knowledge related to Easter celebrations, whereas his scrapbook evidences how he has appropriated this knowledge, as discussed in the two sections that follow the presentation we make of Adam.

Adam, a Polish Catholic Boy in London Polish is the second most spoken language in London (Census Information Scheme 2013), due to the Polish community’s history of five centuries of migration to the UK. The largest flows of Polish migrants were after World War II and after Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004 (Trevena 2009 in Souza et al. 2012). These migrants brought their faith with them from Poland, where 95% of the population is Catholic and the Roman Catholic faith is the biggest branch of the four in existence in that country.3 As a consequence, the size of this community is also reflected in the large number (68) of Polish Roman Catholic churches in London.4 Adam’s family attends one of these Polish ethnic Roman Catholic churches in south-east London and Adam attends faith lessons in this church every

44 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham Saturday. These lessons encourage the speaking of Polish and the preservation of religious and cultural values (Souza et al. 2012). The links between linguistic, religious and ethnic identities valued in the faith lessons are also valued at home by Adam’s family, as illustrated below by the data video-recorded by Adam’s father and the data in Adam’s scrapbook.

The Sharing of Hard-Boiled Easter Eggs, a Video-Recorded Event On Easter Sunday, Polish families gather for a festive meal, which begins with a symbolic sharing of a hard-boiled egg blessed in church the day before. Adam’s family recorded this faith activity, which was attended by another Polish couple and their two children. The event lasted one minute and fifty-one seconds and can be seen in full online.5 Four of these video stills are analysed here under Bezemer and Mavers’s (2011) social semiotic perspective. We acknowledge that these representational choices add analytical insights at the same time as they lose certain details—as are any video data which are turned into multimodal transcripts (Bezemer and Mavers’s 2011, 196). Nevertheless, a focus on how the data are framed, which data were selected and what aspects of the data are highlighted in the transvisuals is useful in structuring the video data analysis. Framing the Data The communicational aims of the original interaction in the video were to celebrate Easter with family members and friends. Both families (a couple and two children each) stood around the table to share the Easter hard-boiled egg, symbolic of Jesus’s resurrection, and consequently, His intention to show His love to humankind and bring them peace. Adam’s mother was on the left side of the camera, leading the ceremony. She held her baby girl on her arm. Adam was on her left and her husband, on her right. The other family mirrored this position on the right side of the camera/table. The four video stills mainly show Adam’s mother, his baby sister and himself. His father is the one making the recording, and thus is never in the video itself. The purpose of these stills is to show what Adam is learning through this interaction. Selecting the Data The video selected reflects the prominence of Easter celebrations within the Catholic calendar and its religious importance to the Polish community in general as well as to this family in particular. These data were also telling in relation to the amount of symbolic knowledge being negotiated, which could be considered both by the video-recording made by Adam’s father as well as by the information in the scrapbook made by Adam himself.

Easter Celebrations at Home 45 The whole video was watched by the team and the four video stills were considered to stand out in relation to the understanding of the ritual as well as in how the children were being socialised through the use of different modes into the symbolic knowledge involved in the interaction. The frames were selected not based on time intervals, but on specific key moments. We tried to show how speech approximately coincided with movement and gaze; therefore, we superimposed the writing onto the video stills selected.

Highlighting Data We highlight six modes6 in the transvisuals presented. They are (1) food, (2) clothes, (3) position, (4) language, (5) gaze and (6) movement. The first three modes apply to the four transvisuals under discussion. The first one, a plate of blessed hard-boiled eggs, is what the ceremony revolves around. The importance of this mode to the interaction is highlighted by Adam’s father, who chooses to close up on it. We interpret this as his way of communicating the importance of this food item in the religious ceremony in which his family engages. The second mode, the clothes, seems to symbolise the importance of the celebration to this Polish family. All the participants are well dressed. Both Adam and his cousin are wearing a shirt and tie. His mother, sister, aunt and female cousin are well dressed too. The formality of this occasion is also signalled by the third mode: the position. All the participants are standing around the table. It is only after the eggs have been shared and their wishes exchanged that the participants are allowed to sit down and have their Easter breakfast. The importance of position (mode 3) is reinforced in the other parts of the video by the guest family being positioned to mirror the way Adam’s family stands around the table (i.e., son, mother, father). This is only broken in relation to the daughters. Adam’s sister, still a baby, is being held by her mother instead of standing by her father, who is doing the recordings. The Polish language, the fourth mode, is an integral part of this home celebration and is used at all times. Nevertheless, due to space constraints, we only present the translations in English. We also highlight gaze (mode 5) with arrows on the video itself and comment on the times when movement (mode 6) played a role in the interaction. In other words, we adopt a multimodal perspective, and thus explore all the resources on which the participants draw in specific moments and places to shape communication and meaning (Jewitt 2009). In trying to address the complexity of simultaneously representing different modes, we adapt Baldry and Thibault’s (2006) use of matrices with stills and combine them with overlaid graphic features (arrows and circles) (Norris 2004) and overlaid transcript of spoken language (Norris 2006) (cf. Flewitt et al. 2009 for these three publications) to design the transvisual matrices below.

Transvisual

Comments Adam’s mother starts the ceremony and explains that she has got blessed eggs. They are on a plate, which she is holding with her right hand. Gaze: Both Adam and her mother direct their gaze to the plate of eggs to which the mother refers in her speech. Movement: Adam leans forward slightly to better view the plate, as his sister is on his mother’s left arm.

Figure 2.1 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 1

Transvisual

Comments Adam’s father chooses to close up on the eggs when the mother explains that the ceremony involves the sharing of the blessed eggs. It is also then that the symbolic meaning of the eggs is explained.

Figure 2.2 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 2

Transvisual

Comments Adam’s mother explains her actions as she performs them. This works as a demonstration of what to do to the other participants. Movement: Adam’s mother passes the plate of eggs to her left hand and uses her right hand to select a piece of the egg. Gaze: Both Adam and his mother direct their gaze to the action being performed by the mother.

Figure 2.3 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 3

Easter Celebrations at Home 47 Transvisual

Comments After putting one piece of the egg in her mouth, Adam’s mother involves Adam in the activity. Movement: Adam’s mother moves the plate towards Adam, who gets one piece of the egg. Language: Adam’s mother models what to say when the egg is offered and before it is eaten. Adam repeats the wishes. Gaze: Adam and his mother look at each other when exchanging the good wishes at the same time the action of taking the egg is performed.

Figure 2.4 Egg Sharing Ceremony: transvisual matrix 4

As highlighted by Ivarsson et al. (2009), there is an apparent contradiction in applying a multimodal analysis within a sociocultural framework. Sociocultural theory emphasises the centrality of language as a symbolic resource in communication, whereas multimodality brings to the surface the importance of other symbolic tools in social practices. However, ‘learning is embedded in visual and discursive practices, where the two modes build on, and presuppose, each other in a successive shaping of the abilities of the novice to single out what is relevant to attend to’ (Ivarsson and Säljö 2005 in Ivarsson et al. 2009, 203). In other words, there is interdependence between the modes, as also illustrated in Adam’s scrapbook in the next section.

Celebrating Easter, Pages from a Scrapbook Besides making home video recordings, the children also kept scrapbooks. Here, we analyse Adam’s scrapbook by adopting the same multimodal perspective used with the transvisuals. Adam has combined written language with photos, pictures and colours to convey meaning. That is, he has drawn on a multiplicity of modes to represent his faith experiences out of school. Framing the Data The aims of the scrapbook were to document the children’s language and literacy learning through their faith. Therefore, the children were asked to record faith activities practised at home and in church. Adam’s scrapbook, which can be seen online, has a total of 24 pages.7 The scrapbook has drawings made by Adam, images cut from religious books and magazines, pictures taken by his parents and texts written by

48 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham him. The activities recorded refer to events at home, in church and in holy places visited by the whole family. They include Adam’s First Communion and Christmas celebrations. Selecting the Data Pages 15 to 17 of Adam’s scrapbook were selected to be analysed along with the video recordings of the sharing of the hard-boiled egg, as they both relate to the celebrations of Easter. Highlighting Data The six modes highlighted in the video analysis are also relevant in the scrapbook. On page 15, Adam explains the importance of Easter to Christians making use of the Polish language (mode 4 in the transvisuals). Translation Easter—it is, for us Christians, the biggest and the most important festival celebrated to commemorate Jesus’s Resurrection. Easter follows the Easter Week, which starts with Palm Sunday when we get palm branches blessed in memory of Jesus’s entry to Jerusalem and his crucifixion. A palm symbolises peace and it protects from misfortune and illnesses. On Maundy Thursday we pray for priests and all clergy. The church bells fall silent and kołatki (rattle boxes) are used. On Easter Friday there is a special Mass because instead of an ordinary mass we reflect on Jesus’s suffering and we celebrate the Cross and we sing ‘Gorzkie Żale’ (Lenten Lamentations). Easter Saturday is a day of joyful awaiting the Resurrection. We have Easter egg baskets blessed on that day. Figure 2.5 Adam’s scrapbook, page 15

Polish is consistently used throughout the scrapbook. In the following two pages, however, written text is combined with photographs. At the top of page 16, there is a picture of Adam with his sister at the entrance of their Church. They are both dressed formally (clothes is mode 2). On

Easter Celebrations at Home 49 the bottom of page 16, there is a picture of the two children again well dressed but at home. In the two pictures, they are holding objects that have special meanings for Easter celebrations. The first one is the palm, which after being blessed, as explained by Adam, signifies Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. The second one is the Easter basket. Both are taken to church to be blessed in a religious service. These pictures are accompanied by short texts of about four lines each that explain their meanings in Polish.

Translation Top photo: On Palm Sunday we have palms blessed to signify Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Bottom photo: We are getting ready to take our Easter baskets to church to have Easter foods blessed.

Figure 2.6 Adam’s scrapbook, page 16

The table that was set for the Easter activity recorded on video is photographed and presented at the top of page 17. The formality of the table with a full dinner set and special dishes, including the blessed Easter basket, shows how special the occasion is. As with the close-up of the eggs in transvisual 2, a close-up picture of the dinner table emphasises the central role of food (mode 1) in this celebration. This home faith activity is contrasted by an activity in church shown on the bottom of page 17. In this second photograph, Adam is shown kneeling down in front of an altar, which represents Jesus’s grave. Position (mode 3) is highlighted here as symbolising respect.

50 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham Translation Top photo: On the Easter table there are traditional dishes and the Easter egg basket and also decorated eggs—‘pisanki’. Bottom photo: On Easter Sunday at Lord’s grave after Jesus has risen from the grave.

Figure 2.7 Adam’s scrapbook, page 17

Given the scrapbook format, gaze (mode 5) and movement (mode 6) cannot be perceived in the same ways as in the video. Nonetheless, the organisation of the pages, the texts and the photographs takes us on a journey where we are initially presented with a full description of events that take place over four days—we move from one day to another as we read the descriptions on page 15. Pages 16 and 17 direct our gaze to specific Easter symbols that are relevant to Adam and his family in the practising of their faith. In sum, an array of different elements come together to convey meaning. Images and colour, artwork and spatial arrangement on the page, facial and body expressions, visual object representations, gestures, and words both spoken and written become intertwined in a way that all form part of the message being conveyed. Content is constructed and transmitted through multimodal texts of which synaesthesia (the process of shifting between modes and re-representing the same thing from one mode to another) is an integral part (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). As such, Adam’s scrapbook calls attention to the fact that [c]reating a text is never just about writing words on paper. Instead, it is about creating culturally and historically bound meanings by using

Easter Celebrations at Home 51 existing and emerging multimodal resources available to the designer of the text. In other words, creating a text is a literacy practice. As such, it is embedded in a complex and shifting terrain of language ideologies, language norms, and individual experiences and attitudes. This makes literacy practices a vital part of social practices, appropriated or contested by the designer. (Pietikäinen and Pitkänen-Huhta 2013, 230)

Discussion and Conclusion In this chapter, we discuss the symbolic knowledge being developed by Adam through his participation in his family’s religious practices in their home in London. We focus particularly on their celebration of Easter with examples of a video-recorded event and of three pages of a scrapbook. According to Jewitt (2008) the mode and media chosen for knowledge representation are crucial and integral aspects of knowledge construction, shaping what is learned and how it is learned. Thus, the video extract and the scrapbook need to be considered together if we are to obtain a truer picture of the learning taking place. One aspect that is evident in both sources (video and scrapbook) is the wealth of symbolism that imbues the texts. From the physical stance, whereby the formal standing upright body positioning mirrors that at church, to the objects and foodstuffs present at the table and in the basket, the symbolic representation is a constant. In fact, by taking part in the egg sharing ceremony, which itself reproduces the ritual of the Eucharist, the participants are replicating what is already a symbolic ritual. Thus, by participating in these religious practices, children develop the ability to deal with highly abstract concepts that can be used in different contexts and situations. In this way, children’s literacy experiences in faith settings may help them to make sense of their learning in mainstream schools (Gregory et al. 2012). The narratives contained in the symbolic representations of the religious concepts and in the ritualistic ceremonies will, therefore, contribute to the children’s funds of knowledge that can be transferred to academic contexts. When we consider the ‘interaction’ or ‘mediation’ in a Vygotskian sense, the whole video becomes the interaction/mediation and, therefore, the ‘interpsychological’, while in the scrapbook we begin to see representations of the ‘intrapsychological’. In the video (see transvisuals), Ania (Adam’s mother) explicitly states and demonstrates the appropriate and expected behaviours to the baby (Olivia). She guides and demonstrates what Olivia is expected to do in order to become a participant member of the community, a status which Adam has now achieved, albeit still as a novice. Ania’s interaction with the baby reveals the steps that Adam has gone through. When he repeats the words ‘all the best’, accompanied by the action of eating the egg, Adam is simultaneously an ‘apprentice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991) and a ‘mediator’ (Rogoff 1995). He still needs his mother’s guidance and approval (see eye contact in video still 4) and he is not yet trusted to accept the plate

52 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham with the blessed egg (this is only handed on to Marta, the aunt, and the other adults). Yet, he demonstrates to his little sister (Olivia) the behaviour that is expected of her. Olivia’s role here is what Fernyhough (2008, 229) refers to as Vygotskian naïve participation. Following the others’ example, she is guided and takes part in the interaction, even though she does not understand the meaning of what is going on. Throughout the texts, the process of prolepsis (Cole 1996) can be identified in the formalised transmission of knowledge in the home rituals. Both the role adopted by the mother during the video and the cultural and linguistic content of the scrapbook show how Adam’s mother (Ania) adopts a stance of experienced member and teacher transmitting knowledge to her children. The scrapbook was Ania’s initiative and, by involving herself in his learning, she makes sure that he works to best of his ability. In writing the text and choosing the images that form the content of his scrapbook, Adam appropriates the symbolism that imbues the ritual of Easter celebrations and manipulates the metaphorical meaning of the texts. Importantly, Adam is learning the ‘how to’ of apprenticeship into a sociocultural group, through guided participation, modelling and (not always explicit) teaching. He is learning to read cues and signals as well as acquiring social and cultural notions of what represents valuable knowledge. In so doing, Adam is developing multiple layers of his identity as a member of the Polish community and as a member of a faith community. Although he can use traditional forms of literacy, he is becoming proficient in multimodal forms of meaning making, intertwining and interfacing written-linguistic modes of meaning with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial patterns of meaning (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). This multimodal meaning making matches our understanding that faith literacies are . . . practices which may include four different aspects: (1) the reading of written texts (scripts), (2) the use of oral texts (discussions about the faith, interaction with a deity or other members of the faith community), (3) the performance of faith through actions (silent or not), and (4) knowledge (including theological, geographical and historical information about the faith). (Souza forthcoming) This view of faith literacies, supported by the illustrations of Adam’s experiences at home, has significant implications for education. For example, questions should be posed as to how pupils’ funds of knowledge can be accessed and how their formal learning can build upon the concepts they bring into school. Through the type of activities here described, children become familiar not only with simple linguistic metaphors but also with the symbology and the higher abstract concepts metaphors can represent. They gain new and powerful thinking tools that should be valued in schools. The examples in this article also show that children’s out-of-school learning is surrounded by literacy practices that include written and oral texts, performance and

Easter Celebrations at Home 53 application of knowledge. This out-of-school experience calls for the incorporation of multimodal representations into classroom learning, that is, the creation of a pedagogy of multiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). Given the above, we hope that these discussions and the illustrations in this chapter recruit new converts to the practices of developing links between children’s learning experience at home and at school with a focus on the culture, language, religion and identity of children of migrant backgrounds.

Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (ESRC) for the project ‘Becoming literate in faith settings: Language and literacy learning in the lives of new Londoners’ (2009–2013) (RES-062–23–1613), from which this article draws some of its examples. Professor Eve Gregory (Goldsmiths, University of London) directed this project, which had a team of 10 members: John Jessel, Charmian Kenner, Vally Lytra, Mahera Ruby, Ana Souza, Olga Barradas, Halimun Chowdhuri, Amoafi Kwapong, Arani Ilkuberan and Malgorzata Woodham. The authors especially thank Adam and his family for kindly sharing their experiences with them.

Notes 1. http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/what-is-a-community-of-practice 2. See the Metaphor Analysis Project on http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/metaphoranalysis/project-introduction.cfm 3. http://en.poland.gov.pl/Churches,and,Religious,Life,in,Poland,397.html 4. http://www.catholiclinks.org/paroquiasinglaterra.htm 5. http://www.belifs.co.uk/families/easter_egg_sharing.html. 6. Mode is a socially shaped and culturally given resource for meaning making (Jewitt 2008). 7. http://www.belifs.co.uk/children/adam_scrapbook.html.

References Baldry, Anthony, Thibault, Paul J. 2006. Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis. London: Equinox. Berg, Edward E. 1970. L.S. Vygotsky’s Theory of the Social and Historical Origins of Consciousness. Ph.D. Diss., University of Wisconsin, 46. Bezemer, Jeff and Diane Mavers. 2011. “Multimodal transcription as academic practice: A social semiotic perspective.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14: 191–206. doi: 10.1080/13645579.2011.563616 Census Information Scheme. 2013. 2011 Census snapshot: Main language. London: GLA Intelligence. Cole, Mike. 1996. Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cole, Mike, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner and Ellen Souberman, (eds.). 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

54 Ana Souza, Olga Barradas and Malgorzata Woodham Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2009. “Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning.” Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4: 164–195. DCSF. 2009. Your child, your schools, our future: Building a 21st century schools system. London: HMSO. DfE. 2011. “Developing quality tuition: Effective practice in schools.” Accessed May 1, 2015. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/183945/developing_quality_tuition_-_english_as_an_additional_language. pdf DfES. 2002. The national languages strategy—languages for all: Languages for life, a strategy for England. London: HMSO. DfES. 2003. Aiming high: Raising the achievement of minority ethnic pupils. London: HMSO. DfES. 2006. Excellence and enjoyment: Learning and teaching for bilingual children in the primary years. London: HMSO. DfES. 2007. Curriculum review: Diversity and citizenship. London: HMSO. Fernyhough, Charles. 2008. “Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation, dialogue, and the development of social understanding.” Developmental Review, 28: 225–262. Flewitt, Rosie, Regine Hampel, Mirjam Hauck and Lesley Lancaster. 2009. “What are multimodal data and transcription?” In The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, edited by Carey Jewitt, 40–53. Abingdon: Routledge. González, Norma. 2005. “Beyond culture: The hybridity of funds of knowledge.” In Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities and classrooms, edited by Norma González, Luis Moll and Cathy Amanti, 29–45. London: Lawrence Elbaum. Gregory, Eve, Vally Lytra, Halimun Choudhury, Arani Ilankuberan, Amoafi Kwapong and Malgorzata Woodham. 2012. “Syncretism as a creative act of mind: The narratives of children from four faith communities in London.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. doi: 10.1177/1468798412453151 Gregory, Eve, Vally Lytra, Halimun Choudhury, Arani Ilankuberan, Amoafi Kwapong and Malgorzata Woodham. 2013. “Practise, performance and perfection: Learning sacred texts in four faith communities in London.” International Journal for the Sociology of Language, 220: 27–48. doi: 10.1515/ijsl-2013-0012 Ivarsson, Jonas, Jonas Linderoth and Rigmor Säljö. 2009. “Representations in practices—a socio-cultural approach to multimodality in reasoning.” In The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, edited by Carey Jewitt, 201–212. Abingdon: Routledge. Ivarsson, Jonas & Säljö, Roger. 2005. “Seeing through the screen: Human reasoning and the development of representational technologies.” Cognition, education and communication technology, edited by P. Gärdenfors & P. Johansson, 203–222. Jewitt, Carey. 2008. “Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms.” Review of Research in Education, 32: 241–267. Jewitt, Carey. 2009. “Introduction—handbook rationale, scope and structure.” In The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, edited by Carey Jewitt, 1–13. Abingdon: Routledge. John-Steiner, Vera and Holbrook Mahn. 1996. “Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework.” Educational Psychologist, 31: 191–206. Kozulin, Alex. 2002. “Sociocultural theory and the mediated learning experience.” School Psychology International, 23: 7–35. doi: 10.1177/0143034302023001729 Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lantolf, James. 2000. “Introducing sociocultural theory.” In Sociocultural theory and second language learning, edited by James Lantolf, 1–2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Easter Celebrations at Home 55 Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moll, Luis, Cathy Amanti, Debora Neff and Norma González. 1992. “Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms.” Theory Into Practice, 31: 132–141. Norris, Sigrid. 2004. Analysing Multimodal Interaction: A Methodological Framework. London: Routledge. Norris, Sigrid. 2006. “Multiparty interaction: a multimodal perspective on relevance.” Discourse Studies, 8(3): 401–421. doi: 10.1177/1461445606061878 Norton, Bonny. 2000. Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change. London: Longman. Norton, Bonny. 2011. “The practice of theory in the language classroom.” Issues in Applied Linguistics, 18: 1–10. Accessed September 29, 2013. http://faculty.educ. ubc.ca/norton/UCLA%202011.pdf Omoniyi, Tope. 2012. “Multilingualism and religion.” In The Routledge handbook of multilingualism, edited by Marylin Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese, 347–366. London: Routledge. Pietikäinen, Sari and Anne Pitkänen-Huhta. 2013. “Multimodal literacy practices in the indigenous Sámi classroom: Children navigating in a complex multilingual setting.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 12: 230–247. doi: 10.1080/ 15348458.2013.818471 Rogoff, Barbara. 1995. “Observing sociocultural activity on three planes.” In Sociocultural studies of mind, edited by James Wertsch, Pablo Del Rio and Amelia Alvarez, 139–164. New York: Cambridge University Press. Souza, Ana. Forthcoming. “Faith and language maintenance in transnational places of worship: Brazilian Christian settings in London.” In The role of religion in language maintenance, edited by Tope Omoniyi. Souza, Ana. 2008. “How linguistic and cultural identities are affected by migration.” Language Issues, 19: 36–42. Souza, Ana, Amoafi Kwapong and Malgorzata Woodham. 2012. “Pentecostal and Catholic churches in London—the role of ideologies in the language planning of faith lessons.” Current Issues in Language Planning, 13: 105–120. doi: 10.10 80/14664208.2012.678977 Trevena, Paulina. (2009) ‘New’ Polish migration to the UK: A synthesis of existing evidence. (Working Paper No.3). Southampton: University of Southampton, Centre for Population Change. Retrieved from http://www.cpc.ac.uk/publications/cpc_ working_papers/pdf/2009_WP3_New_Polish_Migration_to_the_UK_Trevena.pdf Vygotsky, Lev. 1978. “Interaction between learning and development.” In Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, edited by Mike Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner and Ellen Souberman, 79–81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, Lev. 1981. “The genesis of higher mental functions.” In The concept of activity in Soviet psychology, edited by James Wertsch, 144–188. New York: ME Sharpe. Wenger, Etienne. 2010. “Communities of practice and social learning systems: The career of a concept.” In Social learning systems and communities of practice, edited by Chris Blackmore, 179–198. London: Springer. Accessed November 16, 2014. http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/09–10–27-CoPsand-systems-v2.01.pdf Wertsch, James V. 1985. Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, James. 1998. Mind as action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3

Coming of Age Amish Heritage Literacy Practices of Rumspringa, Adult Baptism, and Shunning Suzanne Kesler Rumsey

In the summer of 2005, I conducted an autoethnographic study among four of the five living generations of my own family and the surrounding Amish community.1 My maternal family’s heritage is Amish, with the oldest generations being born, raised, and living Amish for much of their lives, but the younger generations are no longer Amish. My study looked at the ways we pass literacy and technology practices across multiple generations. From the study, I crafted the concept of “heritage literacy,” which is .  .  . the set of multimodal literacy practices used within any community or family across generations and over time. In learning to read and write, as with using any system or technology, people must adapt, adopt, or alienate themselves from particular ways of reading and writing to maintain cultural boundaries. Heritage literacy conceptualizes how people decide the extent to which they will draw upon intellectual inheritances they’ve been given from predecessors. (Rumsey 2009a, 70) It is inherently multimodal because it accounts for all sorts of sign systems, not just alphabetic, such as cuneiform, hieroglyph, beadwork, wampum, quilts, and cooking (Rumsey 2009b). I’ve discussed several types of heritage literacy practices in previous work, such as how the literacy pattern of work pertains to the writing of recipes and the practice of cooking in “Cooking, Recipes, and Work Ethic” (Rumsey 2009a), and how the literacy pattern of faith is expressed as a synchronization of belief, text or scripture, and action (Rumsey 2010, 137–143). This chapter, then, focuses on another theme within the coded data from the study: the heritage literacy pattern of coming of age, or the significant and timely events that occur in a community which enable group cohesion across generations and are marked by particular literacy artifacts. These coming of age moments center on becoming an adult and a full member of a community. To take part in these moments, one must be ready, to be literate in particular ways, for the responsibility that the actions imply. To illustrate the heritage literacy practice of coming of age I specifically look to how it manifests in certain faith practices within the oldest

Coming of Age 57 generations of my family and the Amish from around my home community. In particular I’ll be addressing the cooperation of faith communities to form the group’s identity such that a youth applicant might join a cohesive body. Further, I’ll address the ways that literacy is employed as active and tenacious practice to maintain cultural boundaries across generations. And finally, more than my previous work has done, this chapter delves into the concept of how one might alienate herself from a literacy practice. I center my discussion on the interrelated events of “running around” (called Rumspringa in Pennsylvania Dutch), adult baptism and being admitted into the community, and the ramifications of alienation or leaving the community such as shunning.2 These are significant parts of the process of becoming and remaining a member of an Amish community in particular, though the practices are mirrored in faith communities all over the world; these parts work together to maintain group cohesion and to pass on the literacy knowledge between generations of community members. Let me begin with a bit of context about my home community, the methodology I employed to collect this data, and details about my participants. The study took place in what I call “Smalltown,” a rural community in northern Indiana, where one can see the seasons change by the way fields of corn look as much as by temperature or precipitation. Amish and English homes neighbor one another along county roads, and towns like Smalltown are where people come for groceries, school, and, to a lesser extent, entertainment.3 Smalltown has a population of less than 7,000. I grew up in the same county as Smalltown, in a neighboring town of about 25,000. As of 2012 the county has a total of about 6,500 Amish (“Indiana’s Amish Population” 2012). My participant population consisted of two “sets” of participants, named so as to identify both their involvement in the research and their proximity to me. “Key participants” were four of the five then-living generations of my immediate family, including my great-grandmother Cora, grandmother Edna, mother Lucy, and siblings Merry and Andrew.4 “Community participants” were those people who were either currently living Amish or had been raised Amish and had since left the Amish church and are now English.5 The 13 community participants, with the exception of my great-grandmother’s sister Rebecca who had remained Amish her entire life, were not directly related to me. The oldest generations of my mother’s family were Amish; my greatgrandmother left the Amish church when my grandmother Edna was about 10 years old. So, my connection to the Amish way of life isn’t as direct as it may seem. How then was I, an English woman several generations removed from the community, to find Amish participants? Quite simply, I asked. Each day I drove in a different direction away from Smalltown in order to find and interview participants that represented the full community surrounding the town. I told my folks, with whom I was staying for the summer, that I “deliberately got myself lost.” Basically I meant that I let myself turn down

58 Suzanne Kesler Rumsey dirt roads, follow whims, and venture into areas away from the main roads. Occasionally I actually did get lost, which meant I had to stop and ask for directions, which proved to be a good way to start up conversations. I started out stopping at roadside produce stands and homes with products for sale or small businesses when I could find them. For example, I ended up at Ida and Solomon’s home because they had a sign by their drive advertising “Sorghum for Sale.” I had no idea what sorghum was, but I figured if they were open to people coming and buying it, they might not mind a visitor who wanted to talk. My hunch proved correct as they invited me into their home, openly talked about their lifestyle, faith values, and literacies, and then sent a container of soup home with me—complete with a plastic spoon to eat it! (Oh, and they told me that sorghum is used to make molasses.) From such interviews as these, and from more extensive interviews and participant observations with my key participants, my data set was formed. The data I collected and coded consisted of multiple interviews with key participants, less extensive interviews with community participants, participant observations with both key and community participants, and various literacy artifacts such as recipes, implements used in adult baptism, quilts, and biblical scriptures used in a variety of contexts. The data I collected were a result of my chosen methodology: autoethnography. Like traditional ethnography, autoethnography includes participant observation as well as “thick description” (Geertz 1973). Unlike traditional ethnography, however, autoethnography is as much about the deep interpretation of one’s own motives and subjectivity as it is about recording observations about an outside population. In essence it blurs the boundaries of the emic and etic perspectives in order to both situate and create personal experience within a cultural frame (Reed-Danahay 1997). Traditional ethnography carries with it an underlying assumption that the ethnographer must be distant and separate from her data in order to analyze it critically (Hanson 2004, 185), so employing autoethnography allowed me to both observe and participate in my participants’ culture. By involving key participants in every stage of the research and initial writing, the completed study is not as much about their literacy practices as it is about our literacy practices.

Literacy and Group Cohesion Literacy as a factor of group cohesion, and of the maintenance of cultural boundaries, is something that has been addressed by many sociocultural literacy ethnographers in some way. Shirley Brice Heath’s work describes the literacies of two North Carolina Piedmont communities (Heath 1983); Beverly Moss’s work looks at literacy events in African-American churches (Moss 2003), and Marcia Farr’s work describes the literacy practices among Chicano Mexicanos (Farr 2001, 467–487). I borrow from these examples the emphasis on how a group upholds its boundaries through literacy and identifies insiders via literacy. I build on the work of these researchers by

Coming of Age 59 suggesting that cultural and religious group cohesion is something that is passed within an individual family and is recursively taught and learned through generations of people. This passage of cultural group cohesion is evidenced in reading and writing events (Heath 1982) and in the literacy practices which articulate both literacy events and the social, political, and cultural underpinnings that surround the event (Street 1995). For the Amish in my study, as in many religious communities all over the world, spoken and written language serves as one of the key ways they identify as a cohesive whole. Their language preserves their Amish identity by providing a “direct link to their religious roots” (Kraybill 1989, 48) and their historical roots as they migrated from Europe to America. Their language also separates. Retaining the dialect has been a prudent way of keeping the world at bay. It controls interaction with outsiders and stifles intimate social relationships with non-Amish neighbors. It also shields the Amish from written mass media, whose vocabulary is often beyond their grasp. . . . The dialect . . . obstructs the discourse with modernity. (Kraybill 1989, 48–49) The Amish’s linguistic culture, then, is also more than a means of communication. It is an enactment of all that it means to be Amish. The same is true of their heritage literacies, those ways of reading and writing passed recursively across generations. One of my interview questions asked what each participant had been given or passed from her predecessors such as grandparents or parents. Many community participants responded that they’d been given the means and desire “to be Amish.” Deborah expressed what she hopes to pass to her children: “I hope they want to follow in our footsteps and stay Amish.” Similarly, Martha hopes that her children “remain Amish because that’s the way I was brought up.” These moments show a recursive pattern or longitudinal repetition of cultural tenacity across time: a child is born, starts school, graduates, joins the church, gets married, has children, raises children, and grows old and dependent upon those children who in turn start the process all over again with another generation. My Amish participants’ desire for their children to remain Amish also points to the boundaries of their faith community. To follow in the footsteps of predecessors means adopting without changing the various cultural systems and literacy practices at play. Amish across North America are alike in that they strive to live “in the world but not of the world” as Romans 12:2 commands (New International Version, hereafter NIV). However, adopting the Amish belief system and way of life does not mean they are a homogenous group of people. They are people, not preserved vegetables in mason jars on a shelf, and like all people there are variations and adaptations made within the wider group. There are great variations between communities,

60 Suzanne Kesler Rumsey in fact; patterns of dress fluctuate across communities and between states, choices of using public education versus parochial education methods vary, and even the types of technologies they are allowed to use change depending on who the bishop (leader) of their particular community is. For example, in my home community, enclosed buggies with windows are considered appropriate, but several counties over, the Amish community believes enclosed buggies to be frivolous or worldly so their buggies do not have tops or sides. Yet both communities are part of the Amish culture and faith. So what, then, are the specific identifying factors that make one “Amish”? From my data collections of literacy artifacts and interviews, my understanding is that the factors that make one Amish are first deciding and being admitted into the Amish community via the faith practice of baptism. Secondly, it is maintaining that identity by living in accordance with their community’s edicts (eschewing modern conveniences such as electricity and cars), dressing in the way appropriate to the community, and participating in the faith community and larger body. Based on Robert Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure (Merton 1957), these ways are conformity, ritualism, innovation, retreatism, and rejection. Hostetler outlines how the Amish use all but conformity to both assimilate into American culture and maintain the cultural boundaries that make them Amish (Hostetler 1993, 301).

Baptism as Heritage Literacy What follows is a description of the process of joining the Amish church and community through baptism. Fishman writes that the “community’s unique contribution to literacy comes through the church as baptism instruction” (Fishman 1988, 152), meaning that the specific teaching and learning that occur before, during, and after a baptism offer a glimpse of a particular literacy practice that is unique to those with Amish heritage. John Hostetler offers additional insight about the significance of baptism. He writes: Membership in the Amish church-community is attained by becoming an adult and voluntarily choosing instruction and baptism. Baptism signifies repentance, total commitment to the believing church-community, and admission to adulthood. This vow embodies the spiritual meaning of becoming an Amish person, an acceptance of absolute values, and a conscious belief in religious and ethical ends entirely for their own sake, quite independent of any external rewards. (Hostetler 1993, 77) The process of joining the Amish culture begins well before a person is actually baptized. Before an Amish adolescent decides whether to join the church, she “runs around” while also working outside of the home. This practice is called Rumspringa in Pennsylvania Dutch. Generally this period begins after a child has graduated from school, the eighth grade, at about

Coming of Age 61 age 15 or 16.6 For example, one participant, Naomi, recalled that she “ran around with the young folks” before she joined the church and got married. This running around can be innocent fun with other teens, or it can be a time of rebellion against parents and the Amish culture. Hostetler writes: The individual must establish a certain degree of independence from family and community. The family relaxes some of its control. The church has no direct control over the young person who has not voluntarily become a member. . . . The young people are thereby allowed some freedom to taste the outside world that they are expected to reject voluntarily when they become church members. (Hostetler 1993, 177) Though young people in the stage of running around may rebel against all that an Amish family holds as sacred, church custom dictates that young people be given the opportunity to experience what they will be missing if they choose to join the Amish church. My great-grandmother tells me that this stage exists so that an Amish youth will not “feel pressured” to join the church and can make her decision for herself without undue parental influence. I remember during college that I worked for a summer in a small grocery store in the heart of Amish country with my father. One of the employees was an Amish young man I’ll call Samuel. Samuel turned 16 during that summer. The day before his birthday, Samuel looked and acted like every other Amish youth that I knew: “bowl” haircut that is long around the ears, dark pants, suspenders, plain shirts without buttons, and dark shoes. The day after Samuel turned 16, he came in looking like a “typical” English youth with a short-cropped haircut, blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a hockey parka—and he sported an intense hangover. Not all youths will react to their new freedom as Samuel did. My greatgrandmother, Cora, described her experience running around as “going with the boys. I went to singings and parties. I didn’t dress English, but some of the boys did. Also some of the boys had cars. [I also went] with Mennonite boys because they had cars.” Great-Grandma’s running around period occurred more than 80 years ago, and certainly alterations to the practice have occurred over time, particularly with the pervasiveness of computer technologies and cell phones. But the principles of running around remain steadfast: by allowing young men and women freedom to have experiences beyond the Amish way of life, those youth can then make an informed, independent, mature decision whether to join the Amish faith, church, and lifestyle. The significance of this coming of age “moment” is its relationship with the literacy practice of baptism. Community members coordinate their effort and share responsibility for their group identity. Parents, the bishop and ministers, and community members all relax their structured rules as one

62 Suzanne Kesler Rumsey in order to “keep pure” the literacy practice of baptism; no one should be forced to be part of this community. One of the tenets of the Christian faith is that a person is free to make his or her own decision about salvation. The Amish likewise believe that an individual must decide for herself whether to join the Amish church, and she should not be unduly pressured by others one way or another. Essentially, in order to really be an adult, one must be able to properly “read” baptism in light of its consequences. I think it is also significant that as cooperative and focused parents and ministers are in raising their children to be Amish, they are equally coordinated in their efforts to ensure that a person is joining for the right reasons. Baptism, while a tool of this literacy practice, is only offered to those who truly want it. Peers and marriage partners are the strongest persuaders for the decision. Concerning peers, when interviewing Mary, her teenage daughter was present. Her daughter said that she plans on joining the church “because all my brothers and sisters have already joined the church, and I’m the only one who hasn’t. They are an example to me, and I just think that I want to be Amish.” Marriage partners are also a strong factor. When I asked why she chose to remain Amish, Marie said, “Not for the best reason at all, my boyfriend wanted to . . . but now I’ve joined and I think this is really what is right for me.” Similarly, my great-grandmother reflected that her husband made the choice to become Amish so they could get married. Participants also indicated that they chose to join the Amish because of a certain comfort level with what they’ve always known. Rachel stayed Amish because, she said, “I was raised that way and wouldn’t feel comfortable any other way.” Leah also said that “we were taught to stay with our upbringing. . . . I guess I didn’t have any desire to not be Amish. I felt comfortable doing this.” Ruth said, “Well, I never gave anything else a thought. It’s what we grew up in and I respected the church. It was the right thing to do. I think that a lot of people . . . it’s not that the church isn’t what they want, it’s the material things . . . You know, sometimes it sure would be nice, but I think that it still keeps us where we belong. I don’t think it is wrong for other people to drive a car, but it is wrong for me.” Similarly, I asked my great-grandmother why she joined the Amish church. She responded, “That’s all we knew. We thought we had to. It was what everyone did.” I asked if she felt that she was pressured into the decision and Great-Grandma replied, “Oh no, they didn’t pressure me. I wanted to join. That’s all we knew.” It is interesting that while Great-Grandma says she joined because that is all she knew and she thought she had to, she does not feel that the community pressured her into the decision. The influences of the community, then, are not always as explicit as a minister’s sermon from the pulpit. Literacy, to be used or accepted by a person, must make sense to them in light of all else that they know. Without knowing how to read, write, and behave in various cultural contexts, the decision whether to join the church would not make sense (as it may not for those outside the community). The decision to join is made in part because a young person knows exactly what

Coming of Age 63 it will mean to be Amish, what literacies will be required, what choices for technology use will be made. The decision to join “relates to literacy and its transmission because it produces the assumption that everyone is or will become literate, according to the community definition of that term” (Fishman 1988, 174). To join the Amish church, according to my great-grandmother, “you take lessons most of the summer . . . [where] you learn the rules of the Amish like how to dress and how to behave.” Hostetler writes that this class is known as “die Bemee nooch geh, or literally, ‘to follow the church’ ” (Hostetler 1993, 78). Within these lessons, great “emphasis is put upon the difficulty of walking the ‘straight and narrow way’ ” (Hostetler 1993, 78), which is a distinctly biblical principle meaning one must follow the “rules” of Christianity to perfection without straying. However, Great-Grandma said that in her lessons “there was some Bible . . . [but] there wasn’t that much.” These lessons, for my great-grandmother at least, were as much about the lifestyle and culture of being Amish as they were about the expression of one’s faith. The conclusion of these lessons is a baptismal service. On the baptismal Sunday, after several hours of sermons, those joining the church come forward and kneel. The deacon holds a bowl or bucket with water and a ladle. The bishop lays his hands on each young person’s head and says “Auf deinen Glauben den du bekennt hast vor Gott und viele Zeugen wirst du getauft in Namen des Vaters, des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes, Amen (‘Upon your faith, which you have confessed before God and these many witnesses, you are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen’)” (Hostetler 1993, 80). My great-grandmother said that the bishop cups his hands upward over the young person’s head. Then the deacon dips water out of the pail and pours it into the bishop’s cupped hands. The water drips down over the hair and face of the applicant. After the baptism is completed for each young person, the bishop helps them to their feet and greets each by saying “In Namen des Herrn und die Gemein wird dir die Hand geboten, so steh auf (‘In the name of the Lord and the Church, we extend to you the hand of fellowship, rise up’)” (Hostetler 1993, 81).7 Baptism is a multimodal heritage literacy tool which employs scriptural texts, artifacts such as a bowl and dipper, performance literacy and ceremony that alters the state of a person’s life—much like a minister pronouncing a couple as united after a wedding ceremony—and water as a tool for entrance into a body of Christian believers. Much like a pen and paper are tools for writing a letter, a dipper, bowl, and water are tools for baptism, admission into adulthood, and entrance into a particular church community. These tools are used in auditory, tactile, and performance modes of a baptismal service. Traditional “pen and paper” literacies are also evident in baptism. One participant, Rebecca, wrote me to more fully explain an Amish baptism, specifically how the biblical book of Acts, chapter 8 was used because it tells the story of several baptisms of believers in the early Christian church.

64 Suzanne Kesler Rumsey Simon, a practitioner of magic, heard the gospel, stopped using sorcery, and was baptized. Second, Acts 8 tells the story of the conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch. After conversing with the disciple Philip, the eunuch exclaimed, “ ‘Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And Philip said, “ ‘If you believe with all your heart, you may.’ ” And [the eunuch] answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God’ ” (Acts 8: 36–37 NIV). Another participant, Rachel, wrote to me about how Romans chapter 6 was used during her baptismal service. Romans chapter 6 questions how someone who has believed and been baptized as a Christian can continue to sin, for . . . all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death. . . . [O]ur old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. (Romans 6:2–7 NIV) These passages of biblical scripture, then, show the depth of commitment, faith, and tradition that are present when an applicant is baptized into the Christian church. The baptismal stories of Simon and the eunuch offer written examples of the performance literacy I mentioned above. They show how the act of saying one believes and then being baptized with water alters the state of a person’s life. Similarly, Romans 6 explains the transformation that occurs in the heart of a person who is baptized. Moreover, for my Amish participants, these verses illustrate the depth of their commitment to their faith and to their Amish way of life.

Alienating from Literacy The alternative to baptism and joining the Amish church is to either not join the Amish church at all or to join the church then later leave it. Either decision to move away from the Amish way of life is in some sense choosing to alienate one’s self from all that she knows, and in another sense adapting the tools into another church or social context. But unlike the implicit and tacit decisions that are often made about heritage literacies, in this instance it is an overt choice to accept particular literacy knowledge and adjust one’s life accordingly. Some young people know early on that they will not be joining, while others grapple with the decision even up to the point of baptism instruction. Hostetler notes, “The applicants are told that it is better not to make a vow than to make a vow and later break it” (Hostetler 1993, 78). Among my own participants, Rebecca spoke of what she told her children when they chose not to join the Amish church: I told them they could go with my blessing, if that is what they choose. It doesn’t hurt me so much now if you don’t want to be Amish like I

Coming of Age 65 am. . . . I would rather you go now than if I forced you to go to the Amish then after you were with the Amish you decide I can’t make it here and up and leave it. That would hurt me much more than if you go now. Similarly, Deborah explained of her sibling, who’s “married and they’re Christians too, they go to church and they just chose not to be Amish.” Deborah loves her siblings and is not hurt by their decision not to be Amish. Rather she focuses on the fact that they are Christian people who simply opted not to follow the Amish way of life. When a person joins the church, then chooses to leave it, many Amish districts practice shunning. Shunning, also called social avoidance (Meidung), is a type of excommunication; it is the act of restricting how community members associate with a person who has left the church after joining (or has been excommunicated for some other infraction) (Hostetler 1993, 85). Based on their interpretation of biblical scripture, Amish community members cannot eat or keep company with a shunned person. They are, essentially, to avoid that person (Hostetler 1993, 85). Some districts are extreme in their shunning practices. For example one of my participants, Miriam, had a sister who joined the Amish church then left it. The sister was shunned for 40 years because “she promised on bended knee to remain Amish” and to go against her word was unforgivable. Though she was allowed to attend family functions after a while, she was not allowed to serve her own food or participate in games and activities. The shunning was lifted only after the bishop who originally ordered it died as well as many of the older generations; only then was there any reconciliation in the family. Other districts are not as strict as this one. My great-grandmother left the Amish church, but her leaving was a series of decisions she made about technology use over time and depending on the needs of her family, such as having a telephone in her home and getting a car after their driving horse was hurt. The bishop of her district gave the family a series of warnings until it was clear that either she had to give up the technologies she’d adopted, or she had to leave the Amish church. She chose the latter and was shunned for a time, which was hurtful to her, but her shunning was not to the extent of Miriam’s sister. Shunning implies that a person has “gone too far” in the adaptations of the Amish church or that too many English conveniences, technologies, and literacies have been adopted. There is a play here between literacies and between what is permissible within the community in terms of their boundaries. Even when my great-grandmother left the Amish church, she carried with her some portions of her upbringing. She chose to alienate herself from the Amish way of life, but she adopted another way of life that was similar. She alienated at the same time she adopted and adapted. One cannot alienate without then adopting another practice. For instance, when a person leaves the church and perhaps chooses to not be a Christian at all, all other

66 Suzanne Kesler Rumsey things in her life are done in reaction or opposition to her heritage. She may adopt and adapt new practices based on what will take her as far from her origins as possible.

Conclusion The conscious decision to accept or reject a particular literacy shows that while heritage is something that is often bestowed upon new generations, not every person wants what is being offered to her. Heritage and faith are personal things, and many people would rather alienate themselves from their pasts and their ancestors to make their own way in the world. Still, the principles of heritage literacy, the passage of literacy knowledge longitudinally across generations and the adoption and adaptation of tools to embed them in their contexts, are present even when a person alienates themselves from his or her actual heritage. The Amish in my study could not have survived for so long when facing pressures to assimilate if they had not made a conscious effort to pass their systems of belief and lifestyle on to younger generations. The passing of literacy practices, including tools, technologies, and the value system of the community, does not always transfer easily to the next generation. Coming of age is reliant upon the cooperation of the community to allow entrance to an applicant. It is their shared responsibility for maintaining that cohesion, and when they do so the passage of literacy knowledge is much more likely to occur. Without the group upholding traditions, literacies, and tool usage that align with its perceptions of identity, there would be no group for the applicant to join. Similarly, only in agreeing what is and is not permissible within the community are participants able to articulate who is and is not a member. Because the Amish are first and foremost a religious group, only through the literacy event of baptism do young people gain entrance into the community. Hence it might be said that literacy practices have to be embedded within their culture and values, for it is culture and values that guide their cohesion. The implications of heritage literacy are certainly not confined to the Amish population. Heritage literacy is a process of passing on literacies and tools used in context. It’s having the cultural and embedded knowledge that enables one to make decisions about new tools and new processes, and knowing when, how, and whether to alter those tools or the context in order to maintain (or to break) cultural conformity and group identity. Such a process is evident in the lives and literacies of all peoples, and all faiths in fact. What heritage literacy offers us is a means of looking upon the sometimes shifting landscapes of faith practices with understanding, to appreciate our own faith practices as developing and maturing over time, and to show compassion on those youth who struggle between individual and group identity. Adoption, adaptation, and alienation are part of a negotiating process all people go through as they come of age and take their place in the wider community.

Coming of Age 67

Notes 1. The Amish are a conservative Christian ethnicity of Swiss-German, Anabaptist descent. They maintain living practices similar to those of the mid-nineteenth century. Generally they try to eschew most forms of technology and modernity, including electricity, automobiles, and telephones. With some variation, depending on location, they dress “plainly” in solid, dark-colored clothing without buttons or exterior adornment. Women’s heads are always covered. The largest populations of the Amish exist in the American states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Other large communities exist in Canada. 2. Pennsylvania Dutch is the German dialect spoken by the Amish and is often used as another term of identity. 3. The Amish in my community refer to anyone who isn’t Amish as “English.” 4. Key participants opted to have me use their real first names. The fifth generation of my family is made up of my siblings’ children, who were too young to participate at the time of the study. Also, my great-grandmother, Cora, passed away in the fall of 2011, a few months shy of her 98th birthday. 5. Community participants have been given pseudonyms. 6. The Amish won the right to limit compulsory education to the eighth grade in the 1972 Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder. The court ruled in favor of the Amish schooling their children as they saw fit, based upon the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. While this may seem appalling to mainstream readers, it must be understood that Amish people believe very strongly in their way of life, and this tenacity of belief is what make them Amish. To ask them to conform to more “liberated” pedagogies and ways of thinking would be to ask them to compromise their most fundamental beliefs. Conforming to mainstream standards would mean the destruction of the Amish. 7. Baptismal services in any Christian group are similar to this, although differences exist in the age of the applicant, the performance of the baptismal service, and how the water is administered: by pouring, sprinkling, or full immersion (the applicant is dipped fully under a body of water). While the words spoken by the applicant are similar to all other Christian services, the difference here is the unspoken or implied rules of the vow to live in accordance with the Amish way of life.

References Farr, Marcia. 2001. “En Los Dos Idiomas: Literacy Practices Among Chicago Mexicanos.” In Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, edited by Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll and Mike Rose, 467–487. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Fishman, Andrea. 1988. Amish Literacy: What and How It Means. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Hanson, Susan S. 2004. “Critical Auto/Ethnography: A Constructive Approach to Research in the Composition Classroom.” In Ethnography Unbound: From Theory Shock to Critical Praxis, edited by Stephen Gilbert Brown and Sidney I. Dobrin, 183–200. New York: State University of New York Press. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982. “Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-shifting Oral and Literate Traditions.” In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy, edited by Deborah Tannen, 91–118. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

68 Suzanne Kesler Rumsey Hostetler, John A. 1993. Amish Society. 4th ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. “Indiana’s Amish Population.” 2012. InContext 13.6. Accessed on July 9, 2014. http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2012/nov-dec/article2.asp#_ftn1Kraybill, Donald B. 1989. The Riddle of Amish Culture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Merton, Robert. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press. Moss, Beverly J. 2003. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press. Reed-Danahay, Deborah E. 1997. “Introduction.” In Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, edited by Deborah Reed-Danahay, 1–17. Oxford: Berg. Rumsey, Suzanne. 2009a. “Cooking, Recipes, and Work Ethic: Passage of a Heritage Literacy Practice.” Journal of Literacy and Technology 10.1: 69–95. Rumsey, Suzanne. 2009b. “Heritage Literacy: Adoption, Adaptation, and Alienation of Multimodal Literacy Tools.” College Composition and Communication 60.3: 573–586. Rumsey, Suzanne. 2010. “Faith in Action: Heritage Literacy as a Synchronisation of Belief, Word and Deed,” Literacy 44.3: 137–143. Street, Brian. 1995. Social Literacies: Critical Approaches to Literacy in Development, Ethnography and Education. New York: Longman.

Part II

Religious Education Classes and Places of Worship

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4

Socialization into Religious Sensation in Children’s Catholic Religious Instruction Patricia Baquedano-López

The Locus of Socialization “Do angels have bodies like us?” asked Peter in his first-grade Saturday catechism class at St. Paul’s Parish (a pseudonym), one of the many parishes that offer religious instruction to immigrant Latino children at the archdiocese of Los Angeles. “No, angels have wings!” responded his teacher cheerfully. The day’s lesson included a review of the Annunciation, the moment narrated in Holy Scripture when the angel Gabriel informed the Virgin Mary that she was to have a child who would become the long-awaited Messiah. The young students I was observing as part of my ethnographic research in Catholic parishes were more curious about Gabriel and the other angels (their bodies, their names, their wings, their clothing) than they were about the mystery of the incarnation (how the son of God became human in Mary’s womb), yet both count as Catholic evidence of how the immaterial is made sensorial and thus experiential. I enter the dialogue of this volume from the point of view of language socialization, a paradigm at the intersection of anthropology and human development that is concerned with both moment-to-moment and life span learning. This paradigm takes language as both the medium and the end of socialization; that is, it is organized around the principle that we are socialized through and to language. In the process of learning with and from others, we learn through language but we also acquire relevant language forms. This perspective draws from sociocultural theories of learning that focus on apprenticeship as an intersubjective process (Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff 1990) where experts and novices draw on, expand, improvise, and adapt linguistic form to support the acquisition of modes of thinking and meaning-making. Language socialization researchers examine the development of competency in language use and on the ways modes of thinking, including religious beliefs, are acquired and displayed in culturally appropriate ways (Garrett and Baquedano-López 2002; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986). This situatedness of the learning process exemplifies the saturated moments of “practical faith” (Bourdieu 1990, 68) that illustrate a process of becoming members

72 Patricia Baquedano-López of communities and societies. This body of work has attended as well to practices of religious socialization across Muslim education (Aminy 2004; Garcia-Sanchez 2014; Moore 2006), Jewish education (Avineri 2012; Avni 2012; Fader 2007, 2009; Kattan 2009), and Christian schools and churches (Baquedano-López 1997, 2004; Capps and Ochs 2002; Duranti, Ochs, and Ta’ase Elia 1995; Schieffelin 2002). Drawing on the vast body of work in the anthropology of religion, these language socialization researchers examine how believers engage in discursive and cultural practices that are both contextual and performative, practices that, as Keane argues in the case of Christianity, extend “across ontological divides” (Keane 1997, 48). Language becomes the medium through which the existence of other beings is presupposed, imagined, and experienced. This was the general orientation socialized in the Catholic worldviews to young children in the catechism classes that I observed. The language practices in these classes (talk, prayer, and song) created a space to engage the immaterial through sensorial and corporeal means. At the appropriate times, the immaterial was consecrated onto the body when signed or consumed in the host and wine during Communion (this refers to the belief that during Catholic ritual the host and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ). In this chapter I draw on ethnographic data in these religious instruction classes to illustrate one aspect of socialization to religious sensation realized through rehearsals of religious ritual.

Rehearsals in Anthropological Literature I use Schecter’s definition of rehearsals as the activities that engage “a way of selecting from the possible actions those to be performed, of simplifying these, making them as clear as possible in regard to both the matrix from which they have been taken and the audience with which they are meant to communicate” (Schecter 2004, 207). This process of selection and simplification offers an opportunity to understand the impact of rehearsals on children’s socialization. In religious education classes, teachers socialize students to carry out key actions of the ritual through rehearsal. As learning activities in their own right, rehearsals also socialize children to linguistic and interactional functions, and more importantly, to see their participation in rehearsals as a collaborative achievement where they must manage, as Beeman notes, the constraints of “timing, concentration, freshness and spontaneity,” while also managing the “tensions between under-preparation and over-preparation” (Beeman 1993, 90). In earlier work on reading as ritual practice (Baquedano-López 2008) I discussed the notion of “flow” (Czikshentmihalyi 1990) in a type of literacy socialization that supported total engagement of cognitive activity in ritual performance during the learning of the prayer the “Act of Contrition,” a prayer that must be learned in preparation for a special religious ritual for the confession of sin, also known as Reconciliation. In that case, I argued that students apprehended

Socialization into Religious Sensation 73 and comprehended text while they also learned the performance that satisfied the conditions of the ritual involving the confession of sins. In the case of rehearsals of ritual practice, I consider that flow is also socialized as a deliberate engagement with others to achieve the synchronization of bodies and language in space. Much has been written in anthropological work on rehearsals of ritual practice, including the features and depth of communicative intent, the conditions that must be met to perform and assess rehearsals, and who gets to be present as participants or observers (Tambiah 1990; Turner 1995). In children’s catechism instruction, rehearsals of ritual celebrations are great analytical sites for the observation and assessment of performance. In the children’s religious education classes that I studied, there were semifinal and final rehearsals for the rites of Reconciliation and First Communion. In this chapter I focus on First Communion rehearsals, which took place during the second year of the two-year program and constituted the principal exit competency. I hope to illustrate how the tension between the ritual nature of the rehearsal and the improvisations that emerged in the performance of the ritual created physical and spiritual conditions that teachers then used to socialize types of religious sensations relevant for the culminating ritual of First Communion.

Method and Approach The core methodological approach of language socialization is ethnographic, privileging the researchers’ presence in field sites to understand both synchronic and diachronic cultural practice. Language socialization research takes as the main unit of analysis the communicative means and contours of situated activity. In my work I have focused on religious socialization practices as a site for the socialization of religious literacy activities, including reading, writing, praying, and recitation, but also, as I illustrate in this chapter, on the ways young Catholic children were socialized through language to experience the immaterial as religious sensation. More particularly, I focus on how teachers organized lessons and activities that socialized a religious comportment that embodied the spiritual; in short, how teachers and students built on, in Merleau-Ponty’s sense, the resonance between idea and sensation (Merleau-Ponty 2010). Data Sources For a period of eight and a half years, from 1994 to 1998 and from 2001 to 2004, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at two Catholic parishes in California, examining the processes of language socialization in children’s catechism classes. The classes followed the Roman mandate to prepare students for two rites or sacraments—First Confession (Reconciliation or Penance) and First Communion (Eucharist). The curriculum for the two-year

74 Patricia Baquedano-López program included learning the ten commandments, the seven sacraments, the mystery of the trinity (God, Son, Holy Ghost in one entity), and to perform the sign of the cross (signum crucis). At the two parishes there were classes taught in English and classes taught in Spanish. The English-taught classes were racially diverse, including White, Filipino, Asian, and Latino students (mostly second-generation immigrants). The teachers were also from different racial or ethnic groups. The Spanish-taught classes (called “doctrina”) served the parish population of recent immigrant children from Latin America, but who were primarily from Mexico. These doctrina classes have been the main focus of my research. In earlier work I examined how the mostly Latino teachers in these classrooms told religious narratives of “Our Lady of Guadalupe,” a narrative version of the Virgin Mary’s apparition in Mexico, which encouraged ethno-religious affiliations with Mexico (Baquedano-López 2001). I have written as well on the ways in which young Mexican immigrant children were socialized to cultural expectations about reading sacred texts and religious interpretation of texts, and on how learning to read prayers engaged a ritualization process that produced “a ritual of the text” (Baquedano-López 2008, 587). To return to Peter’s question at the start of this chapter, “Do angels have bodies like us?”, the religious education curriculum in both program tracks also taught young children the particulars of angels and of other spirits as religious beings they had to interact with. I address this aspect of socialization in this chapter through an examination of literacy practices meant to inscribe the body and the physical space of the classroom with signs and symbols invoking multiple types of spiritual presence. The locus for this type of socialization activity was the in-between-ness state of the rehearsal in religious rites. Researcher Positionality There were several reasons that motivated my engagement with religious socialization. As a researcher invested in understanding the range of educational experiences of immigrant Latino students and aware that that these students’ linguistic and cultural competencies are often framed as deficits and not as advantages (Portes et al. 2014), I was interested in finding educational contexts, in communities that could provide a different view on the socialization where these students’ competencies were seen differently. And while all of the children’s programs of the Catholic Church socialized a set of particular ideological commitments (as do all curricula in public schools), the programs provided immigrant students in particular with opportunities to display different and valued forms of expertise. These were contexts where children were seen as valuable members of community. Several of the activities that I was analyzing in the Spanish-taught classes also resonated with my own background and experience as a Mexican immigrant. While I am no longer a practicing member of the Catholic Church, my early religious socialization experiences were similar to many of the

Socialization into Religious Sensation 75 interactions and lessons that I analyzed in the Spanish-taught classes. Spanish is also my first language and given that the majority of the interactions in the doctrina classes were conducted in Spanish, I had access to the range of linguistic practices I encountered at the sites. As a female I also had an advantage relating to the female staff and mothers in the religious education programs, the majority of the adult population in these religious instruction programs. I was thus privy to many interactions and conversations that were clearly designed for female audiences. This of course limited my interactions with male clergy members, although they did grant me interviews. Lastly, I identified (and was identified by members of the religious program) as a member of the larger immigrant communities in which the programs were located. I lived or worked near the parishes and I often met members of the program in the neighborhood and during community activities. Yet I always made it clear to teachers, to parents, and to children, when they asked me, that I was a researcher and not a practicing Catholic (this, however, did not deter them from the constant effort to re-socialize me into Catholicism). I mention the details of my researcher presence because it is important to consider how one’s presence impacts the experiences of others at our research sites and because ethnographic reflexivity engages a complexity across social intersections of gender, race, and class, all of which may ultimately influence the research itself.

The Rehearsal: Socialization to Religious Sensation Across the various children’s religious education classes, rehearsals served as pedagogical events. While grounded in convention, rehearsals were also context-dependent and thus susceptible to improvisation and adaptation; thus they illustrated the pedagogical space that was created between regularity on the one hand and improvisation, emergence, and unpredictability in concerted activity (Bauman 1977; Duranti 1994). During rehearsals of First Communion, teachers had to manage several contingencies in efficient and aesthetic ways. They had to manage the achievement of an orderly ceremonial lineup of students leading to the temple’s door or altar, a lineup organized with just the right timing and spacing. The improvisations that arose during rehearsals invariably included the reconfiguration of spatial and temporal orders and of roles as well. Teachers had to assess how student absences impacted line formation and how the presence of other adults could be enlisted. They had to also make sure that children had the appropriate ceremonial demeanor; in short they had to create the conditions for the experience of religious sensation. To illustrate the particular ways students were socialized to experience religious sensation in preparation of the ritual of First Communion, I will examine three transcribed1 data excerpts from videos of rehearsal activities in both English- and Spanish-taught classes. In the first example, an Englishtaught First Communion class had convened outside the temple to rehearse for their First Communion Mass scheduled for the following week. I focus

76 Patricia Baquedano-López on how the teacher and her students negotiated the contingencies arising from the moment given that several students were absent and the original lineup of the processional line had to be reorganized. The teacher arranged the group standing outside the temple according to height, from shortest to tallest, and from female to male. While the teacher was reorganizing the line formation, she invoked the presence of guardian angels. She asked the students to pretend that their guardian angels were part of the processional: Example 1: Immaterial Co-Participants 1 Teacher:

2 Teacher: 3 Jenny: 4 Student: 5 Students: 6 Teacher:

7 Students: 8 Teacher:

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Tom: Teacher: Students: Teacher: Jenny: Teacher: Jenny:

16 Teacher: 17 Suzie: 18 Jenny: 19 Jenny:

Now. ((Outstretching her hands toward the students)) (1.0) I want you to stay in a SINgle li::ne? ((remains standing with outstretched hands)) Yes, ma’am (H)m ((laughter)) ((talking amongst themselves, someone is heard saying “e::w, do you ever wash your hai::r?” to another student)) ↑Boys (xx-inaudible) ((walking to the middle of the line and lifts up her hands facing the male students on the line)) ((unintelligible/several talking at the same time)) Alright. (.05) I want you to (.05) I want you to (0.2) pre↓tend. Thuh-that the guardian angel is between you and [the next guy. [O(h)ka:y °yeah° So give your guardian angel roo::m. ((all take steps back, repositioning in line)) P(h)ut room enough for your guardian angel I have two guardian [angels= [beside you. =one here and one over here ((leans over and points to two spaces in front of her where a missing child and her guardian angel are supposed to be)) MAKE ROOM FOR YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL ((realigning in line she backs into Jenny)) ((stretches out her arm in front of her to keep distance between her and her peer)) Gimme a chance! I have somebody ↑there ((to space between her and the student in front of her))

In this bit of transcribed interaction the teacher addressed emerging contingencies (absent children, lack of proper spacing in line) through the use

Socialization into Religious Sensation 77 of particular linguistic devices to project action. Here the use of transpositions (Haviland 1996) are salient and include the use of counterfactuals and gestures to indicate such shifts. The teacher had asked her students to “pretend” that their guardian angels were standing in between them, in effect, projecting a temporal realm of action. This projected realm of action reframes present perspectives in relation to potential or imagined activity. These constructions are ubiquitous teaching tools in classrooms because they build on curricular expectations and discursively anticipate the realization of those expectations. In the practice of Catholic children’s religious education, angels are often referred to as protective spiritual sources who are invoked by children and teachers during lessons but also, and more particularly, by children at nighttime in efforts to ward off death. The Christian tradition regarding angels dates back to early writings in the Old Testament, to the book of Enoch, which contained descriptions of watchers or angels in detailed hierarchies, including archangels and angels. The relationship between children and angels is a strong one in Catholic tradition. It is often believed that a child who dies young has the pure soul of an angel, having committed no real sin.2 Christian iconicity about angels often depicts angels resembling little babies; however, this is not how angels were described in the biblical scripture. For example, in the Old Testament angels are depicted in a more terrifying image as indicated by various testimonials from witnesses in the books therein (The New American Bible 1987).3 It is thus interesting to see this transformation over time and how it has afforded the invocation of (good-natured) angels for pedagogical purposes in children’s Catholic doctrine. In the example of interaction that I have been discussing, the children responded to the teacher’s command that they pretend that their guardian angels were in front of them. They did so by carrying out a number of embodied practices to demonstrate, and as it were, keying in Goffman’s sense (Goffman 1959) their understanding of immaterial presence among them. Children took the indication from their teacher to pretend that their guardian angels were in front of them as a trigger to shift spatial and temporal parameters (Haviland 1996). They carried out a number of activities that changed their engagement with the activity of the processional. First, they repositioned their bodies (taking steps back in the line). Second, they pointed to spaces in front of them to signal angels’ presences. And third, they also proffered verbal expressions marked by exaggerated prosody to mark these immaterial beings in speech, as in the inflected “I have somebody there” (line 19). This excerpt also illustrates the socialization to various actions and states, including socialization and regulation of the body in the adoption of appropriate demeanor of ceremonial movement across ritual space. In addition to learning proper spacing and timing of the processional, students also accepted the co-presence of immaterial beings. The resulting expanded participation framework to include more than just a speaker and listener (Goffman 1974) became inclusive of angels as “overhearers,” who

78 Patricia Baquedano-López were spoken about in the third person (line 16), thus making angels omnipresent and also “principals” of the students’ actions. Of interest, there was a likeness between children and angels realized in the ways that the teacher and students gestured the shape and form of guardian angels at about the students’ height. In this way the invocation of angels served an important pedagogical strategy in the organization of this processional carried out by children. In a second example, from a First Communion rehearsal in the Spanishtaught program, the teacher had just found out that due to scheduling conflicts, her class could not practice at the temple as planned, so they had to improvise in the classroom instead. Similar to the teacher in the previous example, this teacher began by reconfiguring space to organize the processional line. Like the teacher in Example 1, she began the rehearsal with the counterfactual in Spanish “hagan de cuenta,” whose translation approximates the meaning of “pretend” or “imagine” in English. This phrasal construction in Spanish includes the imperative (do/make) and a prepositional phrase (by reckoning). Just like in the previous example, the phrase functions as a discursive shift that accounts not just for the here-now, but also other temporalities and spatialities (Bühler 2011; Haviland 1996). In the sample transcribed interaction depicted below, children were preparing to take offerings of bread and wine to the altar, an action that would take place just prior to receiving First Communion during the upcoming ritual mass. The teacher called on two students who had been selected previously to rehearse taking the offerings to the altar. On this day of instruction, the teacher had a parent helper who took the position of priest at the space redesignated as the altar. A crucial difference between the ceremonial (sacred) and the profane afforded by the rehearsal rests on the roles that participants can take during rehearsal but cannot enact in ritual—in this case, women acting as priests. This was always an interesting contradiction, as women consistently transgressed ritual expectations during rehearsals, but took on minimal roles during the ritual mass, supporting a strict and gendered hierarchy. Example 2: “Hagan de Cuenta” in the Socialization of Possible Action 1 Teacher: 2 3 4 5 6 7

A VER PONGAN ATENCION Let’s see pay attention. Hagan de cuenta que ya estan llevando las ofrenda:s, Imagine that you are taking the offerings, quién va llevar el vino y el pan? who will take the wine and the bread? José & Irma: ((raise their hands)) Teacher: Si pueden venir por favor los do::s If both of you could come [to the front of the line] José & Irma: ((walk to the front of the line)) Teacher: Hagan de cuenta que el altar está ahí

Socialization into Religious Sensation 79

8 Student: 9 Martha:

Imagine that the altar is there ((points to the west corner of the room where parent helper is standing in as priest)) ((turns to see where Teacher was pointing)) Hagan de cuenta que de aquí van-a van a salir con las ofrenda:s Imagine that from here you are going to start walking with the offerings

Just like in the first example, the rehearsal of the processional was also an exercise on the regulation of the body and the adoption of appropriate demeanor of ceremonial movement across ritual space in this teacher’s classroom. In addition to the multiple repetition of a counterfactual (“hagan de cuenta”—pretend or imagine), the construction of this interactional space was also based on the use of complement phrases that project multiple locations of the indexical origo, the “here and now” that is constructed discursively in interaction (Hanks 1996). For example, the utterances “that the altar is there,” “that from here you then start,” and “you are going to come over here behind them” created a map of indexical reference that reconfigured the classroom into a space of ritual practice where participants followed sequential activity and revised collective ritual performance, bringing order to disorder (Rappaport 1999). These revisions afforded (regulated) physical proximity and a witnessing of others in orchestrated activity, much as in the notion of the legitimate peripheral participant (Lave and Wenger 1991), fostering a “state of flow” or concerted action. Silverstein has noted that rehearsals embody “hyper organization” in the movement of signs in space, rhythm, meter, organized repetitions, and patterns as well as variations (Silverstein 2006). In Example 3 below, in the same doctrina class, after a series of repeated rehearsals of the procession bearing offerings, the teacher produced an emotive stance to the students’ rhythmic pacing to the altar, in effect socializing the senses in religious experience. As the students began to walk the procession, the teacher broadcasted, in a loud but slow tempo, the emotions students must experience while performing this ritual: Example 3: Socializing Affect and Emotion 1 Teacher: Ya está su primera comunió:n, It’s already your First Communion, 2 están llenos de gozo, you are full of joy, 3 sus corazo:::nes, your hearts 4 estan bien contento::s are very happy

80 Patricia Baquedano-López The affective markers in the teacher’s speech socialized particular emotions and intentions—to be joyous, to be happy—marked through prosody in the use of elongated sounds (“corazo:::nes,” “contento::s”), the parsing of these emotions in rhythmic stanzas, and through the use of intensifiers, as in “very happy” (“bien contentos”). Note also the way the teacher described those emotions in the frame of the counterfactual “imagine” (the realm of possibility) and by keying (Goffman 1974) the activity as serious and ceremonial although enjoyable. In this way the children were being taught to embody appropriate emotional stances during religious ritual as they also learned to control their bodies in time and space. These are the ways teachers mediated sensorial experience as they talked about future action and encouraged them to imagine themselves as deeply spiritual beings.

Discussion In this chapter I have utilized data on rehearsals of children’s First Communion to show the ways teachers and students detemporalized talk and recontextualized the space of ritual activity: a classroom ceases to be a classroom and becomes a temple, a line of students is susceptible to change and to include immaterial beings, a set of emotions is constructed as desirable for both present and future activity. The examples discussed in this chapter illustrate the ways children experience religious belief through the senses, through the body. I have been discussing rehearsals to also address the concern, and the honest critique, of the locus of competence in language socialization studies. When is one a competent member of community? When does one know? There is a bias in our understanding of learning as taking place along a trajectory of recognizable milestones. To be sure, there are points that mark a shift in status, but rather than shifts temporally conditioned along a developmental trajectory of learning, rehearsals illustrate a saturation of the experience of the moment. This is a liminality that taps into the irrealis, the transcendent, the non-human, facilitating forms of embodiment and talk that reaffirm a commitment to joint action (Hanks 2006) and a recognition and realization of one’s membership, exploring the boundaries of permissible action (women posing as priests, children genuflecting in the classroom). Rehearsal activity creates a liminal space of practice where children and their teachers display and enact negotiations of relevant and appropriate behavior. During rehearsals, students develop competencies and they also display learning. As I discussed at the outset of this chapter, rehearsals are examples of (saturated) moments of practical faith (Bourdieu 1990, 68) and they illustrate how subjects become culturally intelligible (Kulick and Schieffelin 2004) and, in this case, morally intelligible as well. Rehearsals, like all rituals, are integral part of the means and ends of religious socialization. I have utilized these data on rehearsals to motivate us to rethink definitions of competence, of moral ends and goals. Rehearsals also provide,

Socialization into Religious Sensation 81 importantly, temporal interventions that disrupt the linearity encoded in notions of competence. Their susceptibility to improvisation and change foster a recursivity of practice that distends rather than extends the path of competence. It is possible to imagine that in schools, a focus on process rather than product would have the potential to break away from the grip of rigid sequential temporalities in our assessments of learning. The development of competence is, above all, expansive. One could even argue that learning is itself a never-ending rehearsal of life’s acts and events.

Concluding Remarks In his discussion of collective ritualized activity, Bourdieu wrote of the ways that both body and language “function as depositories of deferred thoughts that can be triggered at a distance in space and time by the simple effect of re-placing the body in an overall posture which recalls the associated thoughts and feelings” (Bourdieu 1990, 69). In the examples presented in this chapter, decision-making was born out of contingencies arising from the unexpected and unplanned. Rehearsals also provide opportunities to examine shifts between the sacred and profane, as in the case of women posing as priests during the rehearsal. These instances of religious socialization illustrate the fact that while social institutions instill cultural, moral, and affective dispositions, participants of communities are not passive recipients of such dispositions; they actively examine the boundaries of their participation through the play of language, the pleasure of synchronous and aesthetic activity, and the anticipation and experience of the materiality of the spirit, as it were, in the enfleshment of the divine.

Acknowledgements An earlier version of this work was presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in 2012 at a panel entitled Making Space for Spirits: Ethnographic Method and Religious Sensation and benefitted especially from comments made by Michael Lambek. I would like to thank the members of the Linguistic Anthropology Laboratory of the University of California, San Diego, in particular John Haviland, Kathryn Woolard, and Haleema Welji, for generous feedback.

Notes 1. Transcription conventions modified from Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974: underlining represents sounds pronounced with emphasis; ? indicates rising intonation; upward arrow  indicates marked rising intonation; downward arrow indicates falling intonation; colons ::: indicate elongated sounds; numbers in parentheses (0.2) indicate pauses in tenths of seconds; double parentheses (( )) indicates nonverbal behavior; (xx-) indicates inaudible speech; >text< indicates talk produced faster than the surrounding talk; (.) indicates a micropause; [talk]

82 Patricia Baquedano-López indicates overlapping speech; = indicates latched speech; ° indicates talk produced more softly than the surrounding talk. 2. For example, All Saints Day on November 1 is celebrated in Mexico as the day to celebrate the passing of young children as “little angels.” The influence of Mexican Catholicism is palpable in California and it is possible that the emphasis on angels was highlighted at the parishes I investigated. 3. A description of Daniel upon being visited by an angel with prophetic intent reads: “As I looked up, I saw a man dressed in linen with a belt of fine gold around his waist. His body was like chrysolite, his face shone like lightning, his eyes were like fiery torches, his arms and feet looked like burnished bronze, and his voice sounded like a the roar of a multitude. I alone, Daniel, saw the vision; but great fear seized the men who were with me; they fled and hid themselves, although they did not see the vision. No strength remained in me; I turned the color of death and was powerless. When I heard the sound of his voice, I fell face forward in faint” (Daniel 10:5–10).

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5

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively Language, Literacy, and African American Student Learning in the Black Church Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady

Introduction The Black church is more than a religious context. Notably, the only institution organized, established, and maintained by African Americans for African Americans, the Black church has, by all accounts, represented a core of institutional life and identity formation for many African Americans in the United States. A number of scholars (Andrew Billingsley, W. E. B. Dubois, Edward C. Frazier, Eric C. Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, and Benjamin Mays and Joseph Nicholson, to name a few) have documented the significant contributions of the Black church to the African American community. Much of this work illuminates how the Black church has attended to the spiritual dimensions of religious life, nurtured the maintenance of racial, cultural, and ethnic identity, and supported the economic and political empowerment of African Americans (Barnes 2008). Contemporary studies of young people’s church involvement (many quantitative in nature) underscore the role of the Black church as a strong socializing agent for African American youth and demonstrate the assortment of ways that church participation advances African American student learning outcomes. For instance, research links the Black church to positive self-identity development and self-connectedness (Sink and Simpson 2013) and credits the Black church for fostering resilience (Haight 1998 and 2002), perseverance, and self-actualization among African American youth. Further, studies show that Black students who regularly participate in church activities tend to have high rates of school attendance (Barrett 2010), report higher grades in school, and have fewer disciplinary referrals and stronger parental involvement with their education (Toldson and Anderson 2010). The church also affords African American youth with access to opportunities and resources that might not otherwise be available to them (Madyun and Lee 2010). Beyond this, Barrett (2010, 449) aptly makes the point that “exposure to scripture, participation in rituals and fellowship activities, and interaction with church leaders and fellow congregants” not only encourages prosocial behavior and development among African American students, but also inspires a level of educational effort and persistence that, over time, become deeply rooted aspects of students’ attitudes and behaviors toward learning.

86 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady Taken together, this literature shows the Black church is a far-reaching resource for many African American youth today, influencing how they think about school, providing them with the necessary information and conditions to advance their education, and promoting their overall academic success. This support parallels the historic function of the Black church as an educative pillar in the African American community, not only ensuring the acquisition of literacy, but also widening the scope of language knowledge and skill made available to them. In fact, prior to systems of popular education, the Black church Sunday school was the first, and sometimes only, formal learning experience for African Americans (Anderson 1988). The church is where Black people gathered to tell stories, pray, sing, and learn to read and write. Several scholars who conduct classroom research highlight findings about African American students’ engagement in literacy activities that point to the Black church as a rich instructional resource for African American students (Dyson 2003; Foster and Peele 2001; Heath 1983; Michaels 1981). Closer to the focus of this chapter, given its attention to different and defining experiences that African American youth have in school and church contexts, is the case McMillon and Edwards (2000) make in their study of an African American child they call Joshua. They illustrate how incongruent literacy experiences caused Joshua to “love Sunday school” but “hate school.” Specifically, McMillon and Edwards note that in Sunday school, Joshua “always memorizes his Sunday School scriptures, Easter speeches, and songs to sing with the choir. He is quite articulate and not afraid to speak out in front of an audience” (112). This description of Joshua contrasts the authors’ assessment of his classroom experience, where “he was rarely called upon to answer a question or participate in a meaningful way” (115). To add, whereas Joshua’s classroom teacher described him as “too aggressive and disobedient” (114), his Sunday school teacher considered him a “superstar” (119). The classroom teacher’s assessment of Joshua presents what Dyson and Smitherman (2009) refer to as “communicative disconnects between teachers and children during literacy instruction” (973). In Joshua’s case, differing interactions with him as a learner in school squandered opportunities for learning and appreciation of his cultural knowledge and skill. McMillon and Edwards (2000) concluded, “African American students who attend church have rich literacy experiences that affect their literacy development, the way they think about literacy, and the way they respond to literacy experiences in their classrooms at school” (112). And yet, schools and teachers consistently miss the mark in acknowledging these literacy practices as academically legitimate and rich or recognizing them as relevant to in-school learning. In reverse order, when they do acknowledge students’ literacy learning outside of school, educators tend to overlook or fail to utilize this knowledge in the classroom. Thus, it follows that, as Moss (1994) observed, “how many African Americans define and negotiate major literacy events has much to do with the

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 87 way that language and literacy operate in contemporary African American churches” (195). However, we still have limited understanding of African American children’s language and literacy development in the church context and narrowed insight into processes that are directly relevant to school learning. Stemming from a larger ethnographic study of African American children’s socialization in a Black church Sunday school community, this chapter explores the kinds of access African American children have to language and literacy development in the Black church context, specifically the range of oral and printed texts to which African American students are routinely exposed, and how these relate to their learning and identity development.

Theoretical Overview In detailing the ways children engage with texts in the Black church context, I start with the notion of the Bible as a collection of complex texts and the conception of the Scriptures as “literature” and “literary” in both character and consequence (Wendland 2003). Specifically, Scriptural texts embody the characteristic form, content, and function found in all recognized literature. Drawing on Guralnik’s (1988) broad definition of literature as writings that have beauty, value, and effect, Wendland (2003) also suggests that Scriptural texts encompass nine principle artistic discourse features found in literature. They are unity, diversity, rhetoricity, structure, patterning, foregrounding, imagery, phonicity, and dramatics. Briefly, unity refers to the “recursion of form and content” within a text; diversity encompasses “features that mark any sort of a significant difference .  .  . a contrast, surprise, interruption, novelty, [or] shift in expectancy . . .” (16); rhetoricity considers the overall goal of the text, especially the “mode of persuasion” (19); structure refers to the organization of the text; patterning refers to “different types of positioned repetition—phonological, syntactic, lexical, and semantic (logical)” (31); foregrounding refers to various signals conveyed to the reader and/or listener (33); imagery “involves the author’s use of pictorial imaging techniques to stimulate both the cognitive and emotive capacity of [the] audience as well as their visual imagination” (37); phonicity refers to the “audible patterns” reflected in the text, such as alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, and wordplays (40); and dramatics refers to the reader’s or listener’s personal connection with the text. These qualities make Scriptural texts academically rich and compelling. In as much as they are “complex texts,” reading the Scriptures has the potential to provide African American learners with reliable access to academic texts in school settings and in turn help them “to discover how academic language works” (Fillmore and Fillmore 2012, 2). I understand African American children’s engagement with the Bible and other church-based texts (such as Sunday school materials, the morning worship sermon, and the church bulletin) to have this kind of vitality (Peele-Eady

88 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady 2015; Peele-Eady and Blum-Martinez 2013). A wide range of texts, in both oral and printed form and of varying levels of complexity, permeate the Black church and provide African American learners with exposure to a rich language and print environment. Building on the perspective that context informs literacy development and practice (Heath 1983; Michaels 1981), I found helpful Deborah Brandt’s (1998) notion of the “sponsorship network” as a way of thinking about the interrelationship of oral and printed texts in the church and how they are organized to sponsor literacy development. In particular, I regard the intertextual nature of oral and printed texts as a network that “underwrites occasions of literacy learning and use” (166). From this perspective, the Black church presents African American learners with multiple, interrelated, and consistent occasions to engage with very sophisticated and amplified language forms and practices. It also renders youth the freedom to be competent in acquiring the “language of literacy” unique to the church setting (Fillmore and Fillmore 2012, 2) and to the larger African American community as well. This learning has potential for influencing how African American learners might negotiate literacy practices in school and other instructional settings.

Methodology This chapter grows out of my ethnographic study of African American children’s language socialization in a Black church Sunday school community in Northern California (Peele-Eady 2005), for which the ethnography of communication (henceforth EoC) provided the methodological and conceptual framework (Hymes 1995; Saville-Troike 1989). I draw on EoC and the analytic lens of discourse analysis (Gee 2014; Schiffrin et al. 2003) to better understand the social and cultural functions of texts in engendering positive academic engagement of African American students in literacy-related tasks. For the analysis reported here, I coded and analyzed two activities that typify children’s engagement with oral and written texts in this church community: in this case, transcripts of a Sunday school lesson and an event the community referred to as “The Responsive Reading,” which I detail later. Because I am interested in the function of oral and printed text in language and literacy development, I paid particular attention to the structure, meaning, and intent of the text and how these connected to the norms, rules, and expectations governing the wider context. A closer look at these texts and their complexity adds insight into the range of information and domains of learning to which African American youth are routinely exposed in the Black church context; and in like manner, promises educators new understanding for how to build on this knowledge in the classroom setting. To this end, I consider the important potential of the Sunday school lesson and “The Responsive Reading,” for many African American learners, as their first exposure to compelling and academically rich texts (Fillmore and Fillmore 2012).

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 89

Context The setting for this study was Faith Missionary Baptist Church (hereon, FMBC).1 The primary participants in this analysis were children ages 9 through 12 and their Sunday school teachers, Sisters Larkins and Price, who shared the responsibilities of teaching the “Junior Group” Sunday school class, and the FMBC congregation. Activities at FMBC involved children in ways meant to develop their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward spiritual and religious concepts and shape their identities as members of the church community (Peele-Eady 2011). Several of these activities, such as “The Responsive Reading,” were public displays of learning, centering specifically on what children had to do and say in front of an audience or alongside adults as fully engaged members of the congregation. The language framing these activities generally included the use of emotive and expressive language, affective verbs, and inclusive pronouns and references like us, together, our, and we—all meant to encourage feeling and connectedness with the text, each other, and the broader community and situate youth as communicatively competent members. FMBC used the King James Version of the Bible (henceforth, KJV) as its central text. By all accounts, the KJV Bible is among the most widely read, translated, and referenced texts of our time. It is indeed an authentic and complex text.2

“The Responsive Reading” “The Responsive Reading” is a recurrent congregational event structured to engage adults as well as children in a verbal exchange involving printed KJV text. I use the term “The Responsive Reading” with quotations to clearly mark it by the name that FMBC members call this point in the service. Characteristic of many Black churches, “The Responsive Reading” is calland-response, essentially a turn-taking reading of Scriptural text by a lead speaker and the congregation as a whole, which I discuss in the next section. This event happens at a designated time during the morning worship service, every Sunday, of every week. The text of “The Responsive Reading” event is Scriptural text taken directly from the KJV Bible. The linguistic makeup of “The Responsive Reading” is a familiar example of the kinds of literary experiences African American youth characteristically have in the Black church context. Call-and-Response As a performance, “The Responsive Reading” is patterned and scripted, taking shape through a call-and-response mode of discourse (Foster 2001; Smitherman 1977). To understand “The Responsive Reading” event more deeply, some grounding in the call-and-response tradition is useful. Smitherman

90 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady (1977, 104) defines call-and-response as an “African-derived communication process” that involves “spontaneous verbal and nonverbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the speaker’s statements (“calls”) are punctuated by expressions (“responses”) from the listener.” Building on Smitherman’s (1977) description, Foster (2001) characterizes call-and-response as “an interaction between speaker and listener(s) in which the statements (‘calls’) are emphasized by expressions (‘responses’) from the listener(s), in which responses can be solicited or spontaneous, and in which either the calls or responses can be expressed linguistically, musically, verbally, non-verbally, or through dance” (286–287). Several scholars have examined call-and-response, in the form of song, rhyme, and dance, or “sung texts” as documented in Gregory et al. (2012, 340) and the function of repetition in language and literacy acquisition that Foster (2001) describes. These call-and-response practices showcase rhythmic language, repetition, and creative language performance. As call-and-response, “The Responsive Reading” at FMBC required both the speaker and the audience to play a key role in facilitating communication. Because it is comprised of Scriptural text and read and practiced formulaically, “The Responsive Reading” intentionally invites children’s participation as congregants alongside adults. To put it differently, “The Responsive Reading” afforded children the opportunity to read biblical text aloud and cooperatively with each other and adults in an organized and familial way; and thus, it functioned as a precise and anticipated time during the morning worship service when adults and children studied the same topic and were held to the same expectations for reading and understanding. Structure, Content, and Meaning in “The Responsive Reading” On most Sundays, children read “The Responsive Reading” text aloud, and in unison with other members of the congregation; the main speaker (leader) reads first, and then the congregation reads in response. The figure below is typical of texts for “The Responsive Reading” as they appear printed in the Sunday morning bulletins (Peele-Eady 2015). Several aspects of this text in printed form are worth noting. The passage featured in the below example comes from the book of Psalms, number 121, which according to biblical scholars has traditionally functioned as “a farewell liturgy” (Limburg 1985). A broad analysis of the Psalm is this: the phrase “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” refers to the holy hills and mountains surrounding Jerusalem and “the Temple mount in particular” (Morgenstern 1939, 313), which mark the metaphorical and physical place where God promised His blessings to His people. Hence, the “hills” to which the psalmist looks references the place from which s/he expects help from God to come (315). The use of “th” in cometh is meant to add emphasis and intensity and to illustrate past tense. That is to say, “my help” will come from where it has always come. So, the phrase “my help cometh from the Lord” serves to underscore the

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 91

Figure 5.1 A typical text for “The Responsive Reading”

underlying meaning of the text—the promise of an omnipotent and omnipresent source of safety and protection, especially during times of suffering.3 As used in this particular pericope or set of verses, “whence” in the construction “from whence” posits the question, “Whence is it that my help shall come?” or “From which or where will the help come?” The verses that follow further confirm the Lord’s promise to protect the traveler along their journey. Bible scholars have long argued particulars surrounding ideological interpretations and canonical aspects of the Psalm 121 text. But important to this discussion is that reading and performing texts composed with constructions like “cometh” and “from whence” is language African American children routinely encounter and engage in the Black church context. This language is the same genre of prose, intonation, cadence, and expression that youth will confront in school in the works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain (World Wide Words 1996), not to mention Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and other seminal texts.

92 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady On the particular Sunday when this Responsive Reading took place, a child (a nine-year-old) served as the “leader” and read the text accordingly. This kind of leadership role for children at FMBC was a regular, archetypical positioning for youth, especially on every fourth Sunday, when youth were centrally featured in all aspects of the Sunday service (PeeleEady 2011). Excerpt 1 illustrates how “The Responsive Reading” event unfolded: Excerpt 14 1 Child: 2 Congregation member: 3 Congregation: 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Child: Congregation member: Congregation member: Congregation member: Congregation member: Child: Congregation member: Congregation member: Congregation:

13 Congregation member: 14 Child: 15 Congregation member: 16 Congregation: 17 Child: 18 Congregation member: 19 Congregation member: 20 Congregation:

21 22 23 24 25 26

Congregation member: Congregation member: Congregation member: Pastor:

I will lift up my eyes, unto the hills~//from whence (1) comes my help. //yeah My help cometh from the Lord, which made the heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot//to be moved. //emm //yeah //Ooh, PRAISE THE LORD. //ooh, ooo YES. Jesus. ~he that// keep thee//will not //slumber. //DEFINITELY. //PRAISE THE LORD. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. =thank you. The Lord is thy keeper~the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. Y:::es. The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve,//thee from// all evil. He //shall preserve thy soul. //Ooh, oo, HALLELUJAH! //Oh yeah. The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even for evermore. //Ooh, thank you Lord. //HALLELUJAH! //THANK YA JESUS. Give the praise to our father! Ahh yeah. Hallelujah. ((Applause)) ((Congregation sings))

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 93 The event ends when the pastor speaks (line 24). Individual congregants then began to make their way to the altar for prayer, the piano played in the background, and the congregation repetitiously sang the words, “Thank you, Lord, I just want to thank you, Lord, been so good, been so good, been so good, I just want to thank you, Lord,” trailed by tearful cries, utterances, and screams. Climactic in nature, “The Responsive Reading” event is a demonstration of call-and-response and discourse strategies practiced and learned through participation in the Sunday school lesson, which I detail in the next section. In this way, “The Responsive Reading” functions as a culminating experience that showcases practices learned in the Sunday school. These strategies, as the reader will see, attend to the conventions of reading Scriptural text as well as to its structure, content, and meaning. A look at the text performed in “The Responsive Reading” reveals a range of literary elements. Most salient, though, are verses that feature sophisticated figurative language meant to evoke a certain kind of feeling among the congregants and convey a particular message and effect toward the text, including “he that keepeth Israel” (line 12), “The Lord is thy keeper” and “shade upon thy right hand” (line 14), “the sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night” (line 16), and “The Lord shall preserve thee” (line 17). The congregants’ feelings are marked by their use of emphatic utterances such as “definitely” (line 10), “thank you” (line 13), and “Ooh, oo, hallelujah” (line 18). In terms of message, although the sun and moon cannot literally “smite,” the text implies that God’s protection is supreme over everything—even the sun and moon. The child who performed “The Responsive Reading” did so without struggle and with the proper intonation and volume, pace, and intensity— an observation that illustrates his familiarity and comfort with the text. This example also shows how the congregation and individual members support the child in the performance with overlapping, extemporaneous responses to the various turns (e.g., lines 5 through 8, 10, 11, 18, and 19). Also of note are the intertextual and thematic connections that “The Responsive Reading” texts regularly feature. For instance, on this day, “The Responsive Reading,” titled “My Help” (from Psalm 121), appeared in the church bulletin alongside commemorative images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the “I Have a Dream” speech, fully printed. To the extent that American history widely recognizes Dr. King as a “messianic figure” among African Americans and the “embodiment” of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. (Alridge 2006, 664), the connection between “The Responsive Reading” text and the “I Have a Dream” speech in the biblical context suggests that like the traveler depicted in Psalm 121, God helped Dr. King through trials and tribulations as he worked to promote equality, democracy, social and racial justice, and freedom in America. Analogous to the psalm, the “I Have a Dream” speech acknowledges oppression and evokes visions of promise and hope.

94 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady Similarly, the Sunday school lesson focused on “Suffering for Christ”; and the sermon that day focused on “Christ as the Main Vine.” In the literal sense, the word “vine” refers to a spreading plant with long stems or branches. The Urban Dictionary defines the “vine” as “something you do it for.” Thus, thematically speaking, where Christ is the main and “true vine” (John 15:1), His followers or those who suffer “for His sake” are the branches that cling to Him for salvation. In this way, the pericope featured in “The Responsive Reading” (Psalm 121) sponsors the link between contemporary and historical knowledge as well as to a broader historical context within the African American experience. Namely, the history of Dr. King and, in view of his suffering and position as a leader in the African American community, an index of the Civil Rights Movement. Such linkages to wide-ranging discourses were commonplace. In this sense, texts in the Black church, and their use in FMBC in particular, are organized to embody “a deeply textured history” (Brandt 1998, 178) that frames not only the literacy experiences of individual youths, but also the shared collective experiences of African Americans in the U.S. and literacy practices of the wider church community that in turn frame membership identity (Peele-Eady 2011).

Reading Responsively in Sunday School At FMBC, children were routinely thrust into situations that required them to orally read and engage texts of this kind in front of an audience. While “The Responsive Reading” event is a core feature of the church itself, the Sunday school is where children learned to read Scriptural text. As such, the Sunday school lesson provided the foundational knowledge base for preparing children to participate in and lead “The Responsive Reading” event. As used here, reading responsively refers to the act of reading marked by interactive call-and-response, quick-paced talk turns, and supportive utterances from listeners. Through the Sunday school lesson, children acquired knowledge about the social and linguistic conventions attached to reading Scriptural and religious text. For example, Sunday school teachers expected students to read the printed text accurately, naming the book, chapter, and verse in said order; to adhere to expectations for appropriate turn taking; to connect texts to lived experiences; and, drawing on contextual clues and assumed biblical knowledge, determine the meaning of words and phrases relevant to the topic. With the support of the Sunday school teachers, children became familiar with and gained access to Scriptural texts prior to showcasing knowledge in front of the larger audience. In the next sections, I illustrate how the Sunday school lesson functioned to introduce and guide students through Scriptural texts, namely by locating, citing, and interpreting them, making thematic connections, explaining context and key concepts, and building

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 95 and decoding vocabulary. These strategies helped prepare youth for events like “The Responsive Reading,” and thus provided learners with literacy resources that can be of use in other instructional contexts. Locating Scriptural Text In the following example (Excerpt 2), Sister Price establishes the focus of the lesson titled “Suffering for Christ.” The lesson comes from the first epistle of Peter, chapters three and four, which Sister Price has written on the chalkboard: Excerpt 2 1 Sister Price: Okay, let’s read our Golden Text.5 2 Class: ((reading)) If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God. 3 Sister Price: And that’s found where? 4 Class: First Peter, fourth chapter, and the sixteenth verse. One strategy the Sunday school teachers used to guide students’ reading of the Scripture (line 2) was to have them frequently repeat the name of the book, chapter, and verse of study (line 4). In addition to repetition, the teachers used a cloze approach to asking questions. The cloze procedure requires the speaker to intentionally omit certain information, such as a missing word or phrase, and the responder answers accordingly. In this example, when Sister Price asks, “And that’s found where?” (line 3), the children responded chorally, filling in the missing words, which in this case were the book chapter and verse (line 4). Hence, children not only learn the conventions of locating Scriptural text, they also learn how to properly convey that information to others as a lead speaker and collectively with others in a co-constructed learning situation. Making Thematic Connections This next passage illustrates how Sister Price introduces the students to the concept of “suffering for Christ” (line 5) as the state of “going through things” (line 9): Excerpt 3 1 2 3 4 5

Sister Price: Student: Sister Price: Larry: Sister Price:

Okay, and the subject of our lesson is what? Um, suffering for Christ. Larry, are you with us this morning? Yes, yes, yes, yes, I am. Okay. Suffering for Christ. Um, when you suffer, wh-what’s going on with you?

96 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady 6 7 8 9

Student: You’re likeSister Price: You’re like what? You’re like going through it, right? Student: Yeah. Sister Price: O:::kay. So when we suffer, we’re like going through things. And this says ((referencing the Sunday school booklet)), suffering:::for Christ.

Later in the exchange she establishes that there are two kinds of suffering—suffering generally and suffering for Christ specifically. She adds, “There’s the suffering for Christ, and that means suffering for righteousness’ sake. Suffering for the things of Christ. And there’s also another kind of suffering where we suffer for the sins that we have committed.” She maintains that suffering for Christ means to suffer “for righteousness sake”; and thus, suffering in service to Christ. Or put another way, suffering for the “vine.” Establishing Context Besides emphasizing the conventions of Scriptural text and working from an emphasized main idea, Sunday school teachers also attend to context and the authorial perspective of the given pericope. Consider the following: Excerpt 4 1 Sister Price: Who has written these particular Scriptures this morning? 2 Larry: Peter. 3 Sister Price: Pe:::ter. And William, we said, the word Peter meant what? From last week, you remember? 4 William: Stone or rock. 5 Sister Price: Goo:::d. Very good. O:::kay. Uh, Jaliska, we said Peter had written how many letters? 6 Jaliska: Um, two. 7 Sister Price: Two. And we said another word for letters is what? 8 Class: *oh. ((whispering)) 9 Jaliska: I forgot the word. 10 Sister Larkins ((speaking to Jaliska)): Look on the board. 11 Sister Price ((speaking to Jaliska)): Is it on the board? 12 Jaliska: Yeah. 13 Sister Price: What is it? 14 Jaliska: *Epistles. 15 Sister Price: Epistles. Very good. Very good. In this episode, Sister Price not only directs students to identify the author of the text, Peter (line 1), she also engages them in a contextual discussion about him, the etymology of his name, “stone or rock” (line 4), and the genre

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 97 in which he wrote, “letters,” for which “epistles” is another word (lines 5, 7, and 14). She also connects the lesson to previous lessons, which provides youth with the space to build on and extend knowledge. Reading Scriptural Text as Interpretive Work In similar fashion, in another part of the lesson, Sister Price summarizes the main idea of the message and signals Peter’s authorial role. Excerpt 5 illustrates this point: Excerpt 5 1 Sister Price: 2 3 4 5 6

Class: Class: Sister Price: Class: Sister Price:

Peter told us that we should not be ashamed when we suffer for whose sake? Christ’s. //Jesus Righteousness sake, or? Jesus? Jesus. Or? Christ’s sake. You guys got it down. Good.

When she says, “Peter told us . . .” (line 1), Sister Price establishes a direct relationship between the Scripture and the students as readers of the text. In which case, Peter is one of us, talking directly to us through text and in the present day. Of note also is that the Sunday school booklet sometimes paraphrased the Scriptures or referenced a version of the Bible different from the KJV to highlight particular segments of the text. At line 2, for example, when the child reads, he reads the version of the Scripture as it appears in the “Golden Text” section of the Sunday school booklet. Important to this discussion is to recognize that although the text in the Sunday school booklet might differ slightly from the KJV, the basic structure and meaning of the text do not vary. Also, Sunday school teachers required the children to bring their Bibles with them to Sunday school class. Consequently, children read from the Sunday school booklet as well as directly from the Bible, providing them with the opportunity to integrate information on the same topic from multiple texts. Preparing for “The Responsive Reading” Another strategy that Sunday school teachers used to make Scriptural text accessible to students was to call on them to take turns reading the verses aloud. This kind of call-and-response turn taking mimics turns in “The Responsive Reading” event. The following passage illuminates this point: Excerpt 6 1 Sister Price: O:::kay. Let’s read what’s underneath the picture ((in the Sunday school booklet)).

98 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady 2 Class ((reading together)): Paul suffered . . . ((inaudible)) 3 Sister Price: Okay. We’re going to go ahead and read our Scripture text, and then we’ll get into the lesson. 4 Sister Price: Okay. Larry, would you read, thirteen, fourteen, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, please. 5 Larry: ((reading)) The eyes of the Lord are over the righteousness, and his ears are open unto their prayers. But the face of the Lord is a- against them that do evil. And who is he who harm you if ye be followers of which is good? But- but and if ye suffer for righteousness sake, ha- happy are ye and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. 6 Sister Price: Well, thank you ((affirmingly)). So if a person is suffering for righteousness’ sake that person is suffering for whom? 7 Class: ((inaudible)) 8 Student: Suffering for9 Sister Price: If a person is suffering for righteousness’ sake, they are suffering for whom? 10 Student: For Jesus! The lesson continues in this vein. As the children read aloud, Sister Price praises their efforts (line 6) and also checks for understanding of the main idea. In the above example, she does so by asking, “If a person is suffering for righteousness’ sake, they are suffering for whom?” (line 9). Sister Price’s praise is important to note here as well because adults at FMBC routinely celebrated children’s accomplishments in the form of exaggerated verbal praise and applause. This is further illustrated in the way adults engaged children in “The Responsive Reading.” Building and Decoding Vocabulary Sunday school teachers also assisted students with building and decoding vocabulary. Consider the following example: Excerpt 7 1 2 3 4 5

Sister Price: Jaliska: Sister Price: Jaliska: Sister Price:

6 Jaliska:

Stop. Okay. Jaliska, would you read please? Where? Fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. ((Jaliska is silent)) (12 seconds) ((interpreting her extended silence as not paying attention and also signaling to other students to focus)) Maybe we should do something else other than do the lesson this morning? Nobody is paying attention. I don’t know what that says.

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 99 7 Sister Price: Sanctify? 8 Jaliska: ((now reading 1 Peter 3:15)) But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Having a good* . . . ((inaudible)) 9 Sister Price: Conscience. 10 Jaliska: Conscience, conscience that where as they, speak evil uh, of you as of11 Sister Price: evildoers 12 Jaliska: evildoers, they may be13 Sister Price: ashamed 14 Jaliska: ashamed that fa15 Sister Price: falsely 16 Jaliska: falsely accuse your good con, ver, sa::: 17 Sister Price: conversation 18 Jaliska: conversation in Christ. For it is better if the, if the will of God be so, that yet suffer19 Sister Price: ye 20 Jaliska: so that ye suffer for well doing than for evil doing. 21 Sister Price: That’s beautiful. Uh, Tavaris would you read eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, please? In this example, Jaliska, who is a developing reader, struggles with the words sanctify (lines 7 and 8), conscience (line 9), ashamed (lines 13 and 14), and conversation (lines 17 and 18). And she reads “ye” as “yet” (lines 18 and 19). Sister Price supports Jaliska’s reading of the text by helping her decode the printed text. Specifically, as Sister Price says the first word of each portion of the text, Jaliska repeats after her. This practice helps to advance Jaliska’s word recognition and pronunciation, which in time will support her overall comprehension of the Scriptural meaning of the text. Incidentally, Sister Price gives this support without overcorrecting or discouraging Jaliska. In fact, once Jaliska finishes reading, Sister Price praises her effort, saying, “That’s beautiful” (line 21), and then moves on to the next student for the next turn. Important to consider too is that Jaliska is presented with both the opportunity and proper supports to read the verse in its entirety, even though some of the words were challenging for her. The Sunday school teachers frequently guided students through the reading of the text in this manner. Connecting Text to Text, Self, and World In another example, the Sunday school teachers help children understand the meaning of Scriptural text by asking them to relate the subject to their lived experiences. The next segment (Excerpt 8) illustrates this point as students give examples of “suffering in our world.”

100 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady Excerpt 8 1 Sister Price: William, give me one example of the suffering that’s going on in our world today. Just one example. 2 William: Cussin’. 3 Sister Price: Is that causing people to suffer? 4 William: No. ((sighing)) 5 Sister Price: Okay, Allison, can you think of something that’s happening in our world today? 6 Allison: Um, killing. 7 Sister Price: Killing people, okay. Larry, you had your hand up. 8 Larry: Stealing. 9 Sister Price: Stealing, okay. What about floods? Is that causing people to suffer? 10 Student: Tornadoes. 11 Sister Price: Tornadoes. What else? 12 Student: Hurricane. 13 Sister Price: Hurricane. What about starvation? You guys know what the word starvation means? 14 Student: =means starving. 15 Student: //means without food. 16 Student: or starving. 17 Sister Price: Without food. O:::kay. So it says ((referring to the Sunday school booklet)), natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods leave people without homes to live in. Diseases. What happens to diseases? Diseases bring what? If we have a disease, it brings what? 18 Student: Pain. 19 Sister Price: Pain. What else? 20 Student: You can also spread your disease. 21 Sister Price: You can also spread your disease. Okay. Does disease sometimes bring death? 22 Class: Ye:::s. 23 Student: //maybe sickness? 24 Sister Price: Okay. Okay. ((She continues to read)) Says Christians as well as non-Christians suffer in these ways, but there is a difference. In the above segment, all the students, except William (line 2) give appropriate examples of contemporary suffering in the world. To be exact, the students build on each other’s responses to name things that people control, such as killing (line 6) and stealing (line 8); and then, by way of Sister Price’s prompting (lines 9 and 13), students identify things that people cannot control, such as floods, tornadoes (line 11), hurricanes (line 13), starvation, and spread of disease (lines 15–19). Although she does it in one turn, when William answers, “Cussin’ ” (line 2), Sister Price uses a question to get

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 101 him to think about an example that shows suffering in a broader sense, as something “causing people to suffer” (line 3). While children learn and know they ought not curse as Christians, Sister Price differentiates between something that is bad or unbecoming of Christians compared to something that causes massive distress to the general public. She takes a similar approach (at line 21) when she qualifies the spread of disease as that which brings death. When one student asserts that disease can also bring long-term sickness (line 23), she acknowledges his response (line 24) and then makes the point that while everyone suffers, those who suffer for Christ do so for different reasons. To help students understand this concept on a grand scale, Sister Price addresses the nuances of what it means to be a Christian and suffer for Jesus’s sake. The following illustrates this point: Excerpt 9 1 Sister Price:

People who know Jesus have someone to turn to~is that true or false? 2 Class: Tru:::e! 3 Student: //Ooo-ooo 4 Sister Price: Our text tells us that the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and His ears are open to their prayers. Who are the righteous? 5 Student: The Christians. 6 Gina: *//believers. 7 Student: //Christians 8 Sister Larkins: Gina said it. 9 Sister Price: Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. 10 Gina: The believers. 11 Sister Price: The believers. O:::kay. Does the Lord listen only, uh, to believers or does He listen to everybody. 12 Class: Everybody. 13 Sister Price: He listens to everybody. O:::kay. Does the Lord listen to all our prayers or does he just listen to some of our prayers. 14 Class: All our prayers. 15 Sister Price: Does the Lord always answer our prayers? 16 Class: Yes. 17 Student: //some, sometimes. 18 Sister Price: Does the Lord always answer our prayers? 19 Student: No::: 20 William: Who said no? 21 Sister Price: Okay, he does answer our prayers always, but it’s sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes it’s what? 22 Class: Maybe!

102 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady 23 Sister Price: 24 William: 25 Sister Price:

Maybe, or wait a while, or later, okay? Or three thousand wishful minutes. O:::kay. It’s wonderful to know our God is always watching over us. Hearing our prayers. Hearing our prayers to Him . . .

Here, Sister Price compares and contrasts suffering for Christians and non-Christians (line 1). That is, having “someone to turn to.” She presents evidence from the text, saying, “Our text tells us that the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and His ears are open to their prayers” (line 4). She underscores the meaning of the phrase “the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous” by asking, “Who are the righteous?” to which the children answer, “Christians” and “believers” (lines 5 and 6). Also of note is Sister Price’s treatment of whether or not and how often the Lord answers prayers. In this instance, students enter a healthy debate, some answering “all our prayers” (line 14), others saying “sometimes” (line 17), and others saying “no” (line 19). Embedded in William’s point that God might answer in “three thousand wishful minutes” is both light in mood and a demonstration of the idea that declarations about what God does or when God does it are unfixed. Sister Price underscores that God “always” (line 21) answers prayer, but how prayers are answered is complex. Essentially, God gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want. Understanding suffering is equally complex. In the exchange that followed, Sister Price guides the students’ understanding of what it means to suffer for Christ’s sake and hones in on the concept of righteousness: Excerpt 10 1 Sister Price:

There’s a kind of suffering that only Christians experience. And what type of suffering is that?~That’s the suffering of being a what? 2 Class: Christian! 3 Class: //A Christian! 4 Sister Price: For being a Christian. Goo:::d. Peter called it suffering for whose sake? 5 Class: Je:::sus. 6 Sister Price: Or what’s another word we talked about, r? 7 Student: //Righteousness. 8 Sister Price: For righteousness’ sake. Okay, I’m gonna read this little story. ((reading)) Johnny was always getting into trouble. He had to stay after school because he talked back to his teacher. Some of you guys do that? The story Sister Price refers to in the above example comes from the Sunday school booklet. It is a story about a boy named Johnny who “was always getting into trouble” (line 7). He “talked back to his teacher” (line 7); and

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 103 “had to stay home from school for two days because he stole some money in the lunchroom” (Sister Price). Students offered several examples about times when they had faced dilemmas, like finding money and making the decision to keep it or turn it in to someone, seeing something wrong at school and telling the teacher, or sampling fruit at the grocery store without paying for it. After entertaining the students’ discussion about what counts as “stealing” and what steps to take if faced with that kind of decision in the future, Sister Price continued reading from the text: “A friend invited Johnny to Sunday school, where he heard about Jesus dying for the sins of the world. He learned that he could be forgiven if he would come to Jesus, confess his sins, and trust him as his savior.” Johnny suffered because he talked about Jesus so much. “They called him names and laughed at him for being a Christian,” read Sister Price. After sharing the story about Johnny’s experience, Sister Price directed students’ reading back to the Bible. Excerpt 11 demonstrates this point: Excerpt 11 1 Sister Price:

2 Student: 3 Sister Price:

4 Class:

5 6 7 8

Sister Price: Class: Sister Price: Sister Larkins:

9 10 11 12

Student: Sister Larkins: Student: Sister Larkins:

13 Student: 14 Sister Larkins:

Let’s read. Go to your books, and those of you that have Bibles, go to first Peter, four and ((coughing)) thirteen. ((inaudible)) first Peter three and fourteen? Okay, well let’s look at four and thirteen first. ((coughing)) Excuse me. Everybody? Okay, let’s read it together. ((reading along with Sister Price)) But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also, with exceeding joy. So, what does that say, how should we be? Rejoice. We should rejoice. Oka:::y. May I ask a question~what does it mean when it says his um, his glory is revealed? That means shy. Huh? I don’t know. Okay. No one knows? Where does God* ((inaudible)) Jesus is gonna be revealed? When he comes back down to earth. That’s it. That’s it.

In addition to reiterating the structure of the text (e.g., book, chapter, and verse, line 1–2), Sister Price asks the class to “read it together” (line 3). The act of reading together is a key characteristic of the Sunday school lesson. For one, choral reading mirrors the closing of “The Responsive Reading,” where “all” read the last verse of the pericope. At the same time, reading and

104 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady speaking together establishes feelings of connectedness with the text and underscores the expectation that literacy is a social task. Sister Price also directed students to locate text-based parallels within the Scriptures. For example, in the segment that follows, Sister Price had just explained how we should feel about suffering. She moralized, “So whenever you’re going through your little trials and your little tribulations, if you can keep your mind focused on what’s prepared for us in the future, then these little trials and these little tribulations, these little troubles that you’re going through here on earth cannot measure up to what God has prepared for us in the future.” When Larry indicates he has found “another one” (line 1)—at chapter three, verse fourteen—to stress how one should feel about “suffering for righteousness’ sake,” Sister Price welcomes what he has to say: Excerpt 12 1 Larry: Here’s another one. 2 Sister Price: Go’head, Larry. Read it. 3 Larry: ((reading 3:14)) But if, but if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. 4 Sister Price: Okay, was that saying the same thing that we just talked about? 5 Class: Ye:::s. 6 Sister Price: Okay. Very good. O:::kay. Sunday school teachers used a variety of strategies to help students grapple with text. In addition to exposing youth to Scripture on a regular basis and teaching them the basic conventions for reading Scriptural texts, the Sunday school teachers used repetition, a cloze technique to asking questions, and call-and-response to unpack concepts and meanings concealed in the texts. Together these practices create the necessary condition to “set the terms for access to literacy” (Brandt 1998, 167). Specifically, through the Sunday school lesson, adults expect children to read and glean meaning from Scriptural texts and develop appropriate attitudes and feelings toward Scriptural teachings. Similarly, “The Responsive Reading” presents learners with the chance to demonstrate learning publicly, in front of and in connection with an audience. And, as a pedagogical tool, the practice of reading responsively in the Sunday school lesson equips children with the tools they need to participate in “The Responsive Reading” during Sunday morning worship. This constellation of practice provided African American children at FMBC with the opportunity to engage with rich figurative, symbolic, and multi-referential language forms that subsequently afford them access to principle aspects of the literary world.

Discussion and Conclusions In this chapter, I have illustrated the robust text environment to which many African American youth are accustomed to encountering in the Black church

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 105 context. The oral and printed texts that African American children engage in the Black church warrant particular attention because youth are frequently exposed to them and they embody the same literary characteristics of in-school literacy events and texts that require higher-order thinking skills. As I have argued here, “The Responsive Reading” event and the practice of reading responsively in Sunday school provide African American youth with customary openings to hear and understand many of the same textual structures found in literature. Because the Black church is chiefly foregrounded in the literature as a primarily sociohistorical and sociopolitical institution, one might easily overlook the intertextual fullness and interplay of the oral and written communicative engagement that the church allows African American learners. To the extent that literacy skills transfer from public to private spheres (Brandt 1998), important to consider is how the interactions that African American children have with texts in the Black church context influence their engagement with texts in other instructional settings and facilitate access to other knowledge. Arguably, African American youth who regularly participate in events like the ones described in this chapter come to school ready to engage literary texts and their academically rich particularities—namely, metaphors, allegories, and other figurative language, as well as complex and sophisticated vocabulary. Further, as it shows up here, call-and-response functioned as a pedagogical tool that African American learners and their Sunday school teachers recognized as indicators of full participation, understanding, and competence. In this way, it is through their engagement with and the interplay among texts in the Black church that young people gain access to broader intertextual acts of reading and writing, “local or distant, concrete or abstract,” creating a network that supports literacy learning (Brandt and Clinton 2002, 349). Hence, the Black church context presents African American learners with frequent and rich occasions (i.e., sponsorship) to demonstrate high competence for oral performance, read authentic and complex texts, and grapple with recurrent themes specific to particular sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts. These details underscore the reality that as a result of their participation in the Black church context, African American children bring a rich repertoire of social, cultural, and linguistic experiences with them to the classroom. Consequently, a closer look at how texts function in the Black church context provides better insight into the trajectory of learning experiences that African American students have in educative contexts outside of school. For African American students attending U.S. state schools especially, teachers will need to understand and embrace more effusively the range of church-based experiences that inform African American students’ social, cultural, and linguistic ways of knowing and development as learners. Teachers must get to know their students’ lives outside of the classroom, perhaps visit some of these sites, and then talk to their students about them. Becoming familiar with the range of experiences that influence students’ literacy

106 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady development outside of school will illuminate the important potential of events like “The Responsive Reading” and comparable pedagogical practices. In addition, schools and teachers must recognize the competences these experiences build and appreciate the context “from whence” they come. As a sponsor of literacy, the Black church provides a network of necessary conditions and resources that both sustain and transmit knowledge central to African American culture, history, and community. As such, the comparison of texts from different genres of literature should be a centerpiece of language and literacy instruction. This would include allowing youth to bring in texts from their home and community settings and talk about them with their peers. Such inquiry requires children to reflect on how different texts function in their lives, how to make thematic connections among texts to self, to other texts, and to the world, and how to embrace and appreciate all the spaces where reading and writing happen. Accordingly, for teachers of African American learners, finding ways to build on the knowledge bases and resources that already exist in their repertoires of understanding (Dyson 2004) is of critical import. In doing so, we move toward teaching and learning practices that position African American learners as capable and competent and African American cultural knowledge as a rich source of potential rather than deficit. This requires the intentional creation of instructional spaces in the school setting that afford African American students with occasions to not only compare oral and written texts, but to explore varied examples and interpretations of them as well. Indeed, further work is necessary to fill the existing void in research on the importance and function of the Black church in the lives of African American students, and in particular, the potential of church-based experiences as resources that connect to teaching and learning. In many ways, “The Responsive Reading” event and practices outlined in the Sunday school lesson are not unlike the initiation, response, and evaluation (I-R-E) approach teachers typically apply in the school setting. What differentiates one context from the other, however, intimately connects to differing views of the African American child as a learner. Take Joshua for instance (McMillon and Edwards 2000). For him, Sunday school and school provided different academic and social supports for negotiating literacy acquisition and development, and each context had different implications for his literacy learning and learner identity development. There is no question that how African American youth engage in-school literacy experiences relates to histories, practices, and traditions that have supported them elsewhere. So teachers of African American children must recognize these experiences as useful and meaningful. To do this, however, educators must first resolve to believe in African American children’s “inherent intellectual capability, humanity, physical ability, and spiritual character” (Delpit 2012, 28) as learners and then choose to view their participation in the Black church as providing a valuable network of support for language and literacy development.

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 107

Acknowledgements I thank Anni Leming for her assistance with the search for literature for this manuscript. I also thank my colleagues Rebecca Blum-Martinez, Laura Haniford, Na’ilah Nasir, and Carolina Serna for reading and commenting on earlier drafts. Finally, I dedicate this chapter to the nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (United States), who were killed in a horrific, racist act of terrorism on Thursday, June 25, 2015, and members of the several other Black churches across the U.S. that were subsequent targets of arson and other acts of racially motivated vandalism shortly thereafter. We shall overcome, someday.

Notes 1. To preserve anonymity, pseudonyms replace the names of people and the church. 2. The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is considered the authorized translation of King James I of England. According to records, the translation began in 1604 and was finished in 1611. The KJV “became the standard for English-speaking Protestants. Its flowing language and prose rhythm has had a profound influence on the literature of the past 400 years . . . [and it] is public domain in the United States” (www.biblegateway.com/versions/King-James-Versions-KJV-Bible/). 3. Captain Tara Dixon (USAF Chaplin and scholar) in discussion with the author, February 2015. 4. Transcription notations: increased volume: BOLD CAPITALS; low volume (*); sudden cut-off (-); elongation (:::); emphasis: bold italics; falling contour (.); rising contour (?); excited speech (!); temporary rise or fall in intonation (,); rapid speech (~); timed pause (# of seconds); latching (=); overlap(//); truncated text (.  .  .); researcher comments (text). 5. The “Golden Text” comes from the Sunday school booklet and features the main verse in the lesson, I Peter 4:16, which reads: Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

References Alridge, Derrick P. 2006. “The Limits of Master Narratives in History Textbooks: An Analysis of Representations of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Teachers College Record 108, no. 4: 662–686. Anderson, James D. 1988. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Barnes, Sandra L. 2008. “Religion and Rap Music: An Analysis of Black Church Usage.” Review of Religious Research 49, no. 3: 319–338. Barrett, Brian. 2010. “Religion and Habitus: Exploring the Relationship Between Religious Involvement and Educational Outcomes and Orientations Among Urban African American Students.” Urban Education 45, no. 4: 448–479. doi: 10.1177/0042085910372349 Billingsley, Andrew. 1999. Mighty Like a River: The Black Church and Social Reform. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Brandt, Deborah. 1998. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 49, no. 2: 165–185.

108 Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady Brandt, Deborah and Katie Clinton. 2002. “Limits of the Local: Expanding Perspectives on Literacy as a Social Practice.” Journal of Literacy Research 34, no. 3: 337–356. Delpit, Lisa. 2012. “Multiplication Is for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children. New York, NY: The New Press. Du Bois, William E. B. 2008. The Souls of Black Folk. Rockville, MD: Arc Manor. Dyson, Anne Haas. 2003. The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Dyson, Anne Haas. 2004. “Diversity as a ‘Handful’: Toward Retheorizing the Basics.” Research in the Teaching of English 39, no. 2: 210–214. Dyson, Anne Haas and Geneva Smitherman. 2009. “The Right (Write) Start: African American Language and the Discourse of Sounding Right.” Teachers College Record 111, no. 4: 973–998. Fillmore, Lily Wong and Charles Fillmore. 2012. What Does Text Complexity Mean for English Learners and Language Minority Students? Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University. Foster, Michèle. 2001. “Pay Leon, Pay Leon, Paleontologist: Using Call-and-Response to Facilitate Language Mastery and Literacy Acquisition among African American Students.” In Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English, edited by Sonja J. Lanehart, 281–298. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Foster, Michèle and Tryphenia Peele. 2001. “Ring My Bell: Contextualizing Home and School in an African American Community.” In Classroom Diversity: Connecting Curriculum to Students’ Lives, edited by Ellen McIntyre, Ann Roseberry, and Norma González, 27–36. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Frazier, Edward F. 1963. The Negro Church in America. New York, NY: Schocken Books. Gee, James P. 2014. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, 4th ed. New York, NY: Routledge. Gregory, Eve, Vally Lytra, Halimun Choudhury, Arani IIankuberan, Amoafi Kwapong, and Malgorzata Woodham. 2012. “Syncretism as a Creative Act of Mind: The Narratives of Children From Four Faith Communities in London.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13, no. 3: 322–347. Guralnik, David B. (ed). 1988. Webster’s New World Dictionary [Third College Edition]. New York: Webster’s New World. Haight, Wendy L. 1998. “Gathering the Spirit at First Baptist Church: Spirituality as a Protective Factor in the Lives of African American Children.” Social Work 43, no. 3: 213–221. Haight, Wendy L. 2002. African- American Children at Church: A Sociocultural Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Shirley B. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Hymes, Dell H. 1995. “The Ethnography of Speaking: An Introduction.” In Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings, 2nd ed., edited by Ben G. Blount, 248–282. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. Limburg, James. 1985. “Psalm 121: A Psalm for Sojourners.” Word & World 5, no. 2: 180–187. Lincoln, Eric C. and Lawrence H. Mamiya. 1990. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Madyun, Na’im H. and Moo Sung Lee. 2010. “Effects of Religious Involvement on Parent—Child Communication Regarding Schooling: A Study of Black Youth in the United States.” The Journal of Negro Education 79, no. 3: 295–307. Mays, Benjamin and Joseph Nicholson. 1933. The Negro’s Church. New York, NY: Institute of Social and Religious Research.

“The Responsive Reading” and Reading Responsively 109 McMillon, Gwendolyn T. and Patricia A. Edwards. 2000. “Why does Joshua ‘Hate’ School . . . but Love Sunday School?” Language Arts 78, no. 2: 111–120. Michaels, Sarah. 1981. “ ‘Sharing Time,’ Children’s Narrative Styles and Differential Access to Literacy.” Language in Society 10, no. 3: 423–442. Morgenstern, Julian. 1939. “Psalm 121.” Journal of Biblical Literature 58, no. 4: 311–323. Moss, Beverly. 1994. “Creating a Community: Literacy Events in African-American Churches.” In Literacy across Communities, edited by Beverly Moss, 238–246. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia. 2005. “God Don’t Like Ugly: The Socialization of African American Children in Sunday School at a Missionary Baptist Church.” PhD diss., Claremont, CA: Graduate University. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia. 2011. “Constructing Membership Identity through Language and Social Interaction: The Case of African American Children at Faith Missionary Baptist Church.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 42, no. 1: 54–75. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia. 2015. “The Black Church Bulletin: Implications for the Language and Literacy Development of African American Learners.” Paper presented at the biennial meeting for the International Society for Language Studies, Albuquerque, NM. June 18–20. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia and Blum-Martinez, Rebecca. 2013. “Analyzing Sermons as Rich and Complex Texts: Implications for the Literacy Development of African American Youth.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Dallas, TX. March 16–19. Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1989. The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction, 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, eds. 2003. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Sink, Christopher A. and Leslie A. Simpson. 2013. “African-American Adolescent Spirituality: Implications for School Counseling.” Religion & Education 40, no. 2: 189–220. Smitherman, Geneva. 1977. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Toldson, Ivory A. and Kenneth A. Anderson. 2010. “The Role of Religion in Promoting Academic Success for Black Students.” The Journal of Negro Education 79, no. 3: 205–213. Urban Dictionary. 2014, “Vine.” Last modified August 6. http://www.urbandictionary. com/define.php?term=Vine Wendland, Ernst. 2003. “A Literary Approach to Biblical Text Analysis and Translation.” In Bible Translation: Frames of Reference, edited by Timothy Wilt, 179–226. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome. World Wide Words. 1996. “From Whence.” http:///www.worldwidewords.org/qa/ qa-fro2.htm

6

Heavenly Entextualisations The Acquisition and Performance of Classical Religious Texts Andrey Rosowsky

There is the pleasant ‘hum’ of recitation going on in the main prayer hall. Some really beautiful voices can be heard above this general ‘hum’. I am tempted to record what I can hear but I haven’t asked permission for this so refrain from doing so. I try to describe it in words. There are different sounds and timbres, varying volumes and pitches, of adolescent voices; some are high, some unbroken, some broken, punctuated now and then by the deeper baritone voice of the male teacher. Some boys recite very quietly (almost silently) whilst other voices dominate. Today I am really taken by the sound as it passes around the prayer hall. It has its ebbs and flows—or is like the wind. It eases then starts up again for no outward reason—no reminders from the teacher or anyone else. There is a sense of a pause, which is shared by all who then seem to sense how long it should last. One boy starts to recite again—the teacher is busy with a student at the front. But the other boys all start again for no obvious reason—a subconscious urge to continue takes over the group and the ‘hum’ of recitation resumes . . . (extract from field notes gathered in autumn 2014)

One of the most widespread types of supplementary schooling in the world today (Wagner 1994) are the evening and weekend classes associated with places of worship. In many Christian settings these are known as ‘Sunday schools’, in Jewish ones, ‘cheders’ and in Muslim ones ‘madrassahs’. The languages and literacies taught in these supplementary schools are often not those commonly associated with everyday communicative practices but are rather those by which young people are socialised into the religious practices and identities of their respective faiths. Muslim children will learn Qur’anic literacy, Jewish children, Torah literacy, Sikh children, Guru Granth Sahib literacy, and so on (Rosowsky 2013a). The language in each case is a particularised variety sometimes called a ‘religious classical’ (Fishman 1989), a ‘sacred language’ (Ferguson 1982) or a ‘sacerdotal language’ (Safran 2008). I have used the phrase ‘liturgical literacy’ when reporting on the acquisition of these languages by young people (Rosowsky 2008). The languages are instantiated mainly through a sacred text that is central to the faith in question; for example, the Classical Arabic

Heavenly Entextualisations 111 of the Qur’an or the biblical Hebrew of the Torah (Rosowsky 2013a). For young people to participate in many aspects of ritual and worship, a degree of familiarity with these texts is necessary. This may amount to the impressive ability to memorise and recite the whole of the sacred text (as with many Muslim huffaz1) or the more modest capability of reciting the minimal amount of text necessary for performing one’s prayers. One common characteristic of liturgical literacy is its linguistic distance from local languages used for communicative purposes. This is found in two main linguistic situations. One is where the language of the sacred text is distanced in time, and thus in form, from the modern varieties with which it is related. This is the case in the Arabic-speaking world, where the Arabic of the Qur’an is quite distinct from spoken varieties. This form of diglossia (Ferguson 1959) also prevails in the case with Church Slavonic which, though linguistically related to Russian and other Slavic languages, is an archaic variety often unintelligible to speakers of Slavic languages (Bennett 2011). The second sociolinguistic pattern, and the more common occurrence, is where liturgical literacies contrast with unrelated languages. Most Muslims are not Arabic speakers and, in the recent past, most Catholics were not speakers of Latin (Waquet 2001). A consequence of this disparity between the sacred language and communicative varieties is that the young people who attend faith-based supplementary schools are automatically adding to their linguistic repertoires (Gumperz 1964; Busch 2012). In particular, they experience different sounds, often different scripts and a language that most do not aspire to speak or even to understand. Despite its close attachment to a written text, much of the activity associated with liturgical literacies is oral. This primarily takes the form of learning how to sound out the text by internalising the writing system-sound correspondences and then developing the ability to read aloud with appropriate clarity, fluency and intonation. For the majority of children, and the majority of adults, this set of skills is the minimum required to partake in the religious practices of their faiths. This includes prayer and recitation. The meaning of the words recited needs to be translated and glossed into other languages for comprehension to occur. Many Arabic speakers need a gloss to understand much of the Qur’anic lexis. In respect of sociolinguistic theories related to language shift (Fishman 1991), it is not uncommon that in minority contexts such as migrant diasporas, where a community or individual’s first language often follows the classic three-generation pattern to shift to the majority language, the liturgical language and literacy are more securely maintained. Ferguson (1982) and others (Fishman 1989; Safran 2008) have noted the conservative nature of liturgical language practices, which tend to outlast the spoken, and often written, languages that migrant groups bring with them. In the field of New Literacy Studies (Heath 1983; Street 1984; Gee 1990; Barton & Hamilton 1998), with its links to linguistic anthropology (Gumperz & Hymes 1972), literacy is understood as a social and cultural practice and it is perhaps noteworthy that the foundational studies informing

112 Andrey Rosowsky this analytical paradigm have featured liturgical literacy practices in a major way. Scribner and Cole’s account of Vai literacy practices (1981) and Street’s own fieldwork in Iran (Street 1984) have all focused on the different ways Qur’anic literacy is mediated in different social and cultural contexts. This chapter will do three things. Firstly, it will draw on two sets of data illustrating liturgical literacy practices capturing two particular moments in the recent history of the Muslim madrassah in the UK. The datasets contrast not only in terms of time but also in respect of the communities the madrassahs serve. Secondly, these practices will be interpreted through a framework of performance. Choosing to understand liturgical literacy practice as a verbal art and as entextualisation, the work of Richard Bauman and others (Bauman 1974; Bauman & Briggs 1990; Bauman 2004; Silverstein & Urban 1996; Hoffman 2009) will be drawn upon to account for the verbal practices manifest in young people’s acquisition and practice of Qur’anic literacy. The chapter will end with an appeal to reappraise certain acts of performance that not only index young people’s identities but also allow for meaning to be interpreted within an aesthetic framework rather than an exclusively propositional or referential one (Kapferer & Hobart 2005).

What Is Liturgical Literacy? In an Islamic context, liturgical literacy is Qur’anic literacy. The sacred text that is central to all liturgical literacy in a Muslim setting is the Qur’an, a text dating from 1,400 years ago, arranged in chapters and verses in Classical Arabic (Denny 1989). Muslims who practise their faith need at least a modicum of Qur’anic literacy to carry out their daily or weekly prayers. For the majority of Muslim children living in minority settings, such as those in the large urban areas of the UK, this literacy is acquired by attending, usually on a regular basis in the evenings, a madrassah, where they are introduced to the Classical Arabic alphabet. The almost universal method involves working through a primer that adopts a simple synthetic phonics approach to the acquisition of letter-to-sound correspondences (Rosowsky 2005). Once completed to a teacher’s satisfaction, the child progresses to the Qur’an proper. Gradual improvement in decoding and recitation is achieved by careful monitoring from teachers who encourage the child to consolidate what was learnt in the primer within the context of the Qur’an itself. In addition, memorisation (hifz) usually accompanies this activity from the beginning. Children learn other strings of verses and prayers by heart through listening and repetition. A child may learn by heart the verses necessary to perform prayer before they are able to accurately decode them (Rosowsky 2008). In data collected at the turn of the century (Rosowsky 2008), these two activities, decoding and memorisation, were generally agreed by parents to be the central activities of madrassahs.

Heavenly Entextualisations 113 Mahmood: My sole priority is to learn the very basics of Islam. That’s my priority. Very simple, everyone should know their Al-Fatihah, reading the Qur’an. Ghulam: At least they should know the Qur’an. They should know the prayer. Hameed: Children need to learn the Qur’an . . . This is very important. (extracts from interview transcripts made in 2000–01) Yet there was already tension between views such as these and the views of those, often other parents, who wanted more, particularly in the way of understanding and knowledge, and a change in language practices. Wajib: The teachers need to teach the basic teachings of Islam. This is what we lack. Akhtar: My biggest gripe with them is that they won’t preach in English. Saleem: If children go to the mosque, they should read in Arabic and also in English. (extracts from interview transcripts made in 2000–01) The data at that time came from three average-size madrassahs serving a Muslim community in a small town in northern England. The members of the community were, by and large, from the largest UK Muslim and minority ethnic group at that time, the Pakistani-heritage community. And they were mostly from the largest subgroup within that larger group, the Mirpuri-speaking peoples from Azad Kashmir. Most of the children attending the madrassah were second or third generation with varying degrees of familiarity with the community spoken language of Mirpuri-Punjabi (sometimes known as Pothwari or Pahari) and less widespread knowledge of the prestigious literary and literacy variety, Urdu. Shift to English was taking place rapidly. These madrassahs can be characterised as ‘traditional’ inasmuch as the language and teaching practices drew heavily on models from ‘back home’. However, this pattern should not be overstated as even here there were anomalies, as first-generation parents often compared provision for Qur’anic literacy acquisition in the UK very favourably to what they themselves had experienced as children. Akhtar: Here is different. There [in Pakistan] in the village the imam was alright but here the imam is more a graduate. There the imams have no qualifications. Wajib: At that time, we weren’t bothered about it [learning the Qur’an]. Nobody in our family told us to go to the mosque. (extracts from interview transcripts made in 2000–01) Nevertheless, the fact that the imams and other teachers often spoke little English, had been recruited from Pakistan, and, more crucially, knew little

114 Andrey Rosowsky about the lives of their learners, led to serious communication problems between learners and teachers and to the existence of some tension between madrassah administrations and those parents who took an interest in what was happening. This is an instance of how literacy practice from one sociocultural context is recontextualised, or entextualised, in another (see below). Conclusions drawn at the time (Rosowsky 2008) were the following: •

• • •

the acquisition of Qur’anic literacy was generally well mediated, with the majority of children inducted into the literacy necessary for performance of prayer and ritual parents wanted more than just Qur’anic literacy acquisition and desired lessons on the basics of their faith they wanted the latter to take place in English more general liturgical literacy practices, such as the weekly sermon, should be in English as well

Fifteen years later, and in changed circumstances, many of these aspirations have been realised in madrassahs in similar socioeconomic settings. Before looking at these in more detail the chapter’s principal theoretical framework will be presented.

Liturgical Literacy—What Sort of Language Practice Is It? In a great deal of the literature focusing on children’s multilingual practices, sacred text practices are somewhat underrepresented in the data (Edwards 1994; Blackledge & Creese 2010). An exception is the recognition recently in the work of Gregory et al. (2013), which usefully reminds us that such practices are common and dynamic and have a linguistic vitality that suggests their presence in the lived lives of thousands of UK schoolchildren (and probably millions of others globally) is a feature with longevity. Moreover, they usefully adopt a performance lens for their work, which I believe has significant analytical power (Rosowsky 2013b). Rather than viewing liturgical literacy and the language practices that surround them as communicative practices in the normal sense, and therefore lacking by comparison with other communicative practices (a deficit model), it is more helpful to view them through the lens of performance. Performance within an educational context has had a number of quite distinct orientations. Performativity in the Lyotardian sense has been used to discursively critique regimes of target-setting and performance-management in colleges (O’Leary 2013). Poststructural approaches to identity have used performance as a metaphor for the navigation of subjectivities in postmodern environments such as teacher and pupil identities (Morgan 2004). However, another, but related,2 view of performance, arising originally within anthropology and folklore (Turner 1969; Goffman 1974), has considerable power when accounting for liturgical literacy practices. The work

Heavenly Entextualisations 115 of Bauman (1974) and others (Bauman & Briggs 1990; Rosowsky 2013b) has usefully employed performance as an interpretive lens through which to account for a number of ‘verbal arts’, including ritual ones. Bauman draws on Goffman’s (1974) explanatory potential of the ‘frame’ in order to define and delimit performance. In a nutshell, the performance frame requires (a) a communicative activity to present itself for evaluation by an audience—this is what Bauman denotes as ‘the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative competence’ (Bauman 1974, 293)—and (b), that an audience undergoes an ‘enhancement’, or heightening, of experience (Bauman 1974, 293) where appreciation of the act of expression itself is possible above and beyond any referential content. The relevance of this interpretive frame to a nuanced account of liturgical literacy practices is obvious. Recitation, either discretely or in the context of prayer, is a performance that the performer presents to an audience, which may be physically present or ontologically transcendent (Poveda et al.’s ‘supernatural interlocutor’ 2005, 102). Either way, the performance is offered up for evaluation and thus attention to accurate recitation exists for both performer and audience. This accuracy is accompanied by a need to be melodious and ‘sweet’ and together they constitute the ‘heightened’ experience of appreciation on the part of the audience. Although children move between different communicative ‘frames’, of acquisition, of rehearsal and of performance, much of the pedagogical activity in the madrassah is aimed ultimately at producing competent performers. Another helpful analytical tool is Bauman’s elaboration of the term ‘entextualisation’, the process by which texts, oral or written, from one context are reproduced in another. This has two, on the surface, contradictory, factors. On the one hand, it is arguably problematic to understand textual practices outside of any particular context. The situatedness of texts after all is what allows us to understand literacy and language as social practices. Isolating any text can encourage a reductive overemphasis on formal features. However, texts that are performed are a special kind of communicative act whereby a text has to be understood, in a sense, as independent of context—in order for it to have the ontological status that makes it mobile. This, quite naturally, is more transparent with texts as artefacts which are then performed than with oral texts per se. However, most sacred texts, and especially those that are central to many of the world’s major religions, are originally oral texts which have been ‘entextualised’ at a particular time and place. It can be argued that each new performance of a sacred text is a performance made afresh within or through its particular context, which itself is not a fixed and static space but a dynamic and fluid process—a ‘contextualisation’ rather than a ‘context’. All subsequent recontextualisations of sacred texts are thus iterative entextualisations of an extant entextualisation. Most of the activity in the madrassah is oral/aural in nature despite the centrality of the text as artefact. Reading is sounding out, recitation is reading out loud, often from memory, prayer is recited either silently (but still

116 Andrey Rosowsky internally articulated) or aloud. The performance of sacred texts therefore, in an iterative sense, reaches back in time to its original orality, a norm to which it strives to attain (presenting a performance for evaluation) in the present. The text as artefact then serves as an aide-memoire that facilitates each entextualisation. Obviously, the text as artefact is much more than this, but in respect of performance this is one of its main roles. Bauman posits a performance continuum along which entextualisations are realised with ‘completely novel and completely fixed’ texts (Bauman 1974, 303) at opposite poles. Correct memorisation and accurate enunciations of a sacred text accompanied by the rules and conventions established for recitation are features of performance at the latter end of the continuum. This emphasis on correctness—‘getting it right’—and fidelity to the written text is very much a characteristic of sacred text performance. It is also the central activity of the madrassah.

Recontextualisation of Sacred Text Practice The dominant UK pattern of mainly Pakistani-heritage mosques and madrassahs from the end of the last century has been transformed in many urban areas into a multinational array of places of worship throughout the UK. There are now Turkish and Kurdish mosques outside of London in a major way, Somali places of worship have increased, non-Yemeni-heritage Arab mosques and Shia mosques (of migrants from Iraq and Iran) are more common and the emergence of multinational madrassahs is also evident with children from a variety of language and national backgrounds. Despite this increased variety of new migrant groups, or perhaps because of it, English is now the common denominator in respect of language of instruction. Changed circumstances include exogenous factors such as greater sociopolitical attention on the Muslim community in the UK and elsewhere, the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, different patterns of migration from Muslim countries and the rise of Islamophobia. Important endogenous factors that have impacted on liturgical practices are the emergence of a generation of native-born teachers, the shift in community languages to English and the increasing availability of teaching materials in English or in bilingual editions. This is an instance of ‘superdiversity’, a word Vertovec (2007) uses to convey the complexity and rapidity characterising contemporary patterns of migration at the start of the twenty-first century. It is also clear that the recontextualisation of texts and practices looks very different to how it did before. At the start of the century I was able to identify (Rosowsky 2006) an instance of young part-time madrassah teachers using practices, such as group work and other interactive activities, emanating from their mainstream school experience. At the time, this was marked as an exceptional case within a context that remained doggedly traditional and influenced by practices ‘back home’. In the newer madrassahs, and in the transformation

Heavenly Entextualisations 117 of older madrassahs, syncretic practices such as these (Gregory et al. 2004) are much more in evidence, with many aspects of practice (pedagogical, organisational and use of resources, for example) in the madrassah reflecting mainstream school practices. There are two main reasons for this. The teachers and organisers, with some exceptions, are young, mostly in their twenties and thirties, and are all ‘products of the system’—of mainstream schooling, on the one hand, and of madrassah education, on the other. Secondly, they are all native or bilingual users of English and their preferred language of communication is English. This generational shift manifests itself in many ways but the most obvious one is the normalisation of English as the language of instruction in many of today’s madrassahs. Linked to this is the appearance of teaching materials in the English language. Translation is a regular form of entextualisation (Bauman & Briggs 1990, 76). The other major appeal from many at the start of the century was for the inclusion of an ‘Islamic Studies’ element to the madrassah programme that tended to be exclusively centred on decoding and memorisation. Perhaps due to the emergence of English in the madrassah, all madrassahs in this study now feature time devoted to the teaching and discussion of the basics of Islam. Textual practices being recontextualised into the madrassah from the mainstream are assemblies, awards and certificates, and the monitoring of progress, together with the appropriate paraphernalia of such activity (mark/monitoring sheets, parental signings of homework, targets for pupils and for teachers), the use of electronically gathered data to appraise teachers, uniforms, equipment rules such as a suitable bag for holding books, and extracurricular events such as sports and trips.

Figure 6.1 Examples of the use of English in primers

118 Andrey Rosowsky

Pedagogical—Rehearsal—Performance Framing The Qur’an is still central to the madrassah. Whereas in the past most young British Muslims would be inducted into Qur’anic literacy through Urdu or Punjabi, which they may or may not have had confidence in, now the language through which Qur’anic decoding and memorisation are mediated is English. Basic instructions, explanations, praise, admonishment, messages, and dialogue between teachers and pupils, between pupils, and between teachers are now almost always carried out in English. The method of teaching decoding and memorisation remains the same. For example, the first stage is always the learning of the alphabet (names of letters first followed by sounds and syllables). However, teaching materials now almost always include transliterated versions of the Arabic letters. Children are often told in English how to articulate unfamiliar sounds (such as /‫ﻕ‬/ and / ‫ﻉ‬/) by references to parts of the vocal apparatus (‘like a /k/ but from the back of the throat’ for /‫ﻕ‬/). In some of the primers a diagram is shown explaining the articulation points of the sounds of Arabic. In others, an attempt is made to explain in English the way a sound is produced. Sometimes the explanations can be quite complex and one wonders how many of the children bother to read them. However, it is evident that serious attempts are being made to convey what has always been a very systematic method of teaching the basics of Qur’anic literacy across time and clime through the ‘new’ language of Islam, English, fast becoming, incidentally, the major lingua franca of the global Muslim community (the ummah). This sociolinguistic phenomenon has been called learning Xish through Yish (Fishman 1991), where Xish is the minority language (in this case,

Figure 6.2 A typical example of how to articulate Arabic sounds explained in English

Heavenly Entextualisations 119 Qur’anic literacy) and Yish is the majority language, English. This of course is a change from the previous situation of children learning X1ish via X2ish (Urdu or Punjabi) with Yish left outside the madrassah doors. A performance frame is only one of many communicative frames (Bauman 1974, 292) operating in the madrassah. Part of the process of becoming a competent performer lies in rehearsal, which is a regular feature of madrassah pedagogical practices. Though linked to performance, rehearsal has its own set of markers that key in the communicative act. ‘Trying to remember’ is a highly visible characteristic of the potential performer: The body language of those memorising is fascinating. Some close their eyes. Others either raise or lower their heads. Some sort of distracting activity seems to help with memorisation—fidgeting, fiddling with something or another (hands or other parts of the body). Some stare into space or upwards. Having the hands over the ears also seems to help concentration for some boys (particularly the advanced ones). (extract from field notes gathered in autumn 2014)

Linguistic Resources and Repertoires These madrassahs now present a linguistic landscape whose features demand a different analysis than before. If we take as an example a very recent development, the increase in numbers of Somali and Arab madrassahs (particularly outside of London), we can observe a variety of sociolinguistic patterns in novel and original configurations. First of all, there is the question of ‘English’. These madrassahs, like many others, are located in urban areas of significant socioeconomic deprivation and thus the boys and girls live and attend schools where particular urban dialects prevail. Much of the English spoken in the madrassah is easily identifiable as Yorkshire English with its characteristic vowels and other dialectal features largely common to the east side of the city . . . historically . . . the working-class area .  .  . [A]ccent and dialect here reflect that richness now overlaid with the distinctive features of different ethnic dialects (ethnolects emerging from Somali-, Yemeni- and Punjabi-speaking speech communities). These boys are, unsurprisingly, products of their cultural environments in a wider sense and linguistically share more in common with local non-Muslim boys and girls than they would with Muslim children in Scottish or London madrassahs . . . On occasion, despite the controlled atmosphere of the madrassah, boys reveal more of those linguistic repertoires which tie them to their local mainstream schools and neighbourhoods. These moments are often overheard as boys arrive at that liminal moment of entering into the cultural difference of the madrassah from the street outside. (extract from field notes gathered in autumn 2014)

120 Andrey Rosowsky However, changing migration patterns also contribute to this complex picture. The main Somali community of the madrassah has its linguistic origins in the north of Somalia in what was once Somaliland and thus, for colonial reasons, English-influenced. Recent arrivals from the same region have a dialect associated with the southern part of Somalia, which historically had colonial ties to Italy. These two dialects (Maay and Maaha) are often mutually unintelligible. The linguistic picture then is one of ‘entanglement’ (Bock 2014) rather than one of ‘flow’. Some children will have some knowledge of one or other of these dialects, their English will be the local dialect plus the Standard English encountered in mainstream schools and elsewhere, their knowledge of Arabic will be a specialised one involving the cracking of the code of the Arabic alphabet and adding knowledge of the diacritics, which are a feature of the Arabic writing system in certain contexts, particularly religious ones. They will also become quite familiar with the phonological system of the Arabic language and learn the phonetic features that distinguish one phoneme from another. For example, they will come to know implicitly that in Arabic there are binary dental plosive pairs (/t/‫ ﺕ‬and /d/‫)ﺩ‬ that are distinguished by pharyngealisation (‫ ﻁ‬and ‫ )ﺽ‬and that there is no phonemic distinction between /p/ and /b/ (Watson 2002). They will become familiar with word collocations, particularly as the Qur’anic text has many poetic elements that result in constant epithets, repetition and regular rhyme (Nelson 1985). This is an extremely specialised domain of language usage but one which is, on the one hand, neither marginalised among other linguistic resources within the children’s repertoires nor, on the other, developed further. Only a very few graduates of madrassahs go on to become users of Arabic for communicative purposes and such knowledge would have to be attained outside of the madrassah setting. The process of entextualisation is therefore quite complex. The role of English now as a lingua franca and as a medium of instruction results in the text of the Qur’an being scaffolded through guidance and prompts in English. There is no space here to dwell on the implications of translation within liturgical literacy practices but one related example is perhaps illustrative. The use of transliteration (see Figure 1) can mean that at an early stage in acquisition in the madrassah entextualisation is materially different from previously observed practice in similar settings. Direct acquisition of the Arabic script is now regularly mediated through transliteration. In my earlier work, such innovation had a mixed response from teachers, some of whom felt it was both unhelpful in ‘cracking the code’ and verging on the sacrilegious. A degree of acceptance of such practice is now quite evident in teaching materials.

Entextualisation and the Re-Contextualisation of Orality In the Somali/Arab madrassah the sound of the Qur’an is what an outsider would notice first. Many British Arab and Somali mosques position

Heavenly Entextualisations 121 themselves doctrinally in the school of Islam commonly known as ‘Salafi’. This is a school of thought which claims to stress the original sources of the faith and their original interpreters and lays particular emphasis on the Qur’an. As a result, and also because of the connection with Arabic more generally, the recitation and memorisation of the Qur’an, in themselves, are extremely meritorious. This is not to say there is not a similar emphasis in other madrassahs, but it is here stressed above all else. The main teacher of the madrassah, who is not a young man but a middle-aged Somali man and also the imam, brings to his teaching an extremely well-crafted and melodious recitation.3 When leading prayers his recitations are extended. This is also a characteristic of many mosques of this type—a long recitation is generally preferred to a short one. One of the accompanying features of such dynamic entextualisation is the ever-present possibility of error. This gives individuals in the congregation the opportunity to correct the imam if they are familiar with the recitation. In instances such as this, ‘accountability to an audience’ can trigger participatory behaviour as the ‘corrector’ prompts the reciter with a missing or forgotten word or phrase. This rarely occurs in mosques where recitation is usually short and where the imam may often be the only authority on the Qur’an in the congregation. This aspect of the madrassah cannot be emphasised enough, for it provides a particular ethos that pervades much of the madrassah’s activities. The vignette at the head of this chapter tries to describe one aspect of this ethos—the almost hypnotic sound created by constant multiple recitations of young voices punctuated by modelling from a deeper-voiced expert. The Qur’an here becomes an audible facet of the environment. This is telling, particularly as in this type of mosque or madrassah there is often a distinct lack of wall hangings and decorations featuring calligraphic quotations from the Qur’an seen elsewhere (Rosowsky 2008, 154–155). Here is an entextualisation that sits squarely at the ‘fixed text’ pole of Bauman’s continuum with fidelity to the text and verbatim memorisation prized above all else.

Text as Artefact—Material Entextualisations In madrassahs I have previously researched, the holy book as sacred artefact was a common observation. A comment such as Hoffman’s “religious texts, can take on a fetish quality for those without the means to decipher them” (2009, 419) has a grain of truth about it. Copies of the Qur’an are often covered in cloth coverings to keep them clean, over-used copies are not discarded but kept safely in a special cupboard before they are disposed of ritually (buried or burnt), children are reminded about holding the book in the right hand. When sitting reciting, they are encouraged to sit upright (kneeling or cross-legged) in order to give respect to the book and to the act of reading. This is not in as much evidence in the Somali/Arab madrassah where such considerations, though still important, are not overly stressed. It is possible to see children with the book in their left hands, standing the

122 Andrey Rosowsky book up on its end on the desk, running across the mosque with it, not adopting a formal posture when reciting and so on. Yet, despite what might be seen as a less reverential attitude to the book, reverence is present in another guise. The emphasis on correct recitation and melodious sound is what is central. The madrassah itself is enlivened by the Qur’anic recitation. When this is the case it may be that other considerations can appear a little incidental. The oral nature of the text is strongly retained here—the accurate sounding out, the expert modelling, the lengthy prayer recitations, the men in the prayer room reading sotto voce or following verses via an iPod and earphones—all contribute to this foregrounded orality of the sacred text.

Concluding Remarks Connected to the performance analytic is the accompanying aspect of aesthetics. Performance is not only evaluated according to correctness but also for its aesthetic quality. I have mentioned earlier how reciters are encouraged to recite with a melodious or sweet tone. Although this is particularly important in respect of professional reciters of the Qur’an (the qaris), it remains a meritworthy aim for the young learners who are also encouraged to imitate the melodious tones of their teachers who provide regular models of how recitation should sound. The Classical Arabic heard in the madrassah and in the mosque is a particularly stylised form of reading aloud with elaborate conventions for pronunciation, phrasing, pausing, intonation, pitch and rhythm. When done well it can be quite mesmerising. When a learner is at an early stage of recitation it can appear very staccato, stuttering and disjointed. It is quite a task to get from the latter to the former but many do successfully and many of the boys . . . have very pleasant modes of recitation. (extract from field notes gathered in autumn 2014) The ubiquity of these practices, across a range of faiths and language varieties, indexes something everyday and ordinary rather than something marked and exceptional. As such, it is right to comment on their relevance and presence in accounts of multilingual practices more widely. There is a growing body of research that is beginning to focus on the dynamic manner in which young people navigate their cultural lives and negotiate their religious identities through performative practices such as the ones described in this chapter (Rosowsky 2008, 2013a; Moore 2013; Gregory et al. 2013). At the same time, it is important through the academic literature on literacies and languages, particularly in urban settings at the start of the twenty-first century, and through more public-facing channels such as government departments and their polices related to education and culture to re-appraise these acts of performance, which have often had a variable press (Rosowsky 2008, 3). This chapter has been written at a moment in British

Heavenly Entextualisations 123 history when faith-based institutions and their practices, and particularly those of the Islamic faith, are often misrepresented, misunderstood and regularly misreported by the media (Cherti et al. 2011). A recognition of the value of liturgical literacy practices to individuals and to their communities and an informed and improved understanding of their place in young people’s lives is well overdue. Though Qur’anic literacy, and other similar liturgical literacies, do not need such justification, central activities such as accurate decoding, melodious reciting, extensive and faithful memorisation and artful performing should be considered as valuable cultural and linguistic resources these young people acquire and then employ, to varying extents, in their lives. An additional consideration when accounting for such practices is the complex relationship between orality and literacy. Many of us live in an educational culture that emphasises the written code over the oral one. This can lead to the impression that the two codes are somehow overly separate and distinct—and in many senses this is obviously true—but many discursive practices, and particularly those described in this chapter, remain stubbornly oral even in contexts where, paradoxically, texts appear paramount and central. This ‘tenaciousness of orality’ (Ong 1982, 115) perhaps reminds us that so much of religious culture, even where there is a strong tradition of a sacred text, endures through its performative and oral modes—stressing the oral word over the written one, a natural order, which, after all, is and always has been more universal. What I have hoped to show in this chapter is how language and literacy practices evident in the madrassah can be further illumined by treating them as performances. There is now renewed interest in entextualised performances in many different religious settings. The work of Rhoads (2006) and others (Omoniyi 2010; Frishkopf 2011; Maxey & Wendland 2012) is beginning to view performance as a salient feature of religious practice. Although the breadth of the interests represented by these researchers goes beyond mere language there is no doubt that language, and the acquisition of that language, remains central to the field of performance.

Notes 1. Plural of hafiz, a memoriser of the Qur’an. 2. All three orientations owe a debt, for example, to the work of Austin (1962) and Searle (1979) and their notion of performative language. 3. Many Muslim adults will choose to pray in a particular mosque because they like the recitation of the imam.

References Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Clarendon. Barton, David, and Mary Hamilton. 1998. Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community. London: Routledge.

124 Andrey Rosowsky Bauman, Richard. 1974. “Verbal Art as Performance.” American Anthropologist 77: 290–311. Bauman, Richard. 2004. A World of Others’ Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality. Oxford: Blackwell. Bauman, Richard, and Charles Briggs. 1990. “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88. Bennett, Brian. 2011. Religion and Language in Post-Soviet Russia. New York: Routledge. Blackledge, Adrian, and Angela Creese. 2010. Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum. Bock, Zannie. 2014. “Entangled Identities: ‘I Want to Set Colour Aside and I Don’t Want that Type of Thing Anymore.’ ” Paper presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium SS20. Jyväskylä, June 15–19. Busch, Brigitta. 2012. “The Linguistic Repertoire Revisited.” Applied Linguistics 33, no. 5: 503–523. Cherti, Myriam, Alex Glennie, and Laura Bradley. 2011. ‘Madrassas’ in the British Media. Briefing, London: Institute for Public Policy Research. Denny, Frederick Mathewson. 1989. “Qur’an Recitation: A Tradition of Oral Performance and Transmission.” Oral Tradition 4, no. 1–2: 5–26. Edwards, John. 1994. Multilingualism. London: Routledge. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959. “Diglossia.” Word 15: 325–340. Ferguson, Charles A. 1982. “Religious Factors in Language Spread.” In Language Spread: Studies in Diffusion and Social Change, edited by Robert L. Cooper, 95–106. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fishman, Joshua A. 1989. Language and Identity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Frishkopf, Michael. 2011. Focus: The Sounds of Islam: Performance, Ritual, and Text. New York: Routledge. Gee, James Paul. 1990. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. London: Falmer Press. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Northeastern University Press. Gregory, Eve, Halimun Choudhury, Arani Ilankuberan, Malgorzata Woodham, and Amoafi Kwapong. 2013. “Practise, Performance and Perfection: Learning Sacred Texts in Four Faith Communities in London.” International Journal of Sociology of Language 2013, no. 220: 27–48. Gregory, Eve, Susi Long, and Dinah Volk. (eds.) 2004. Many Pathways to Literacy: Young Children Learning with Siblings, Grandparents, Peers and Communities. London: Routledge. Gumperz, John J. 1964. “Linguistic and Social Interaction in Two Communities.” American Anthropologist 66, no. 6: 137–153. Gumperz, John J., and Dell Hymes. 1972. Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. London: Cambridge University Press. Hoffman, Katherine E. 2009. “Culture as Text: Hazards and Possibilities of Geertz’s Literacy/Literacy Metaphor.” The Journal of North African Studies 14, no. 3–4: 417–430. Kapferer, Bruce, and Angela Hobart. 2005. “Aesthetics in Performance: The Aesthetics of Symbolic Constuction and Experience: Introduction.” In Aesthetics in Performance: The Aesthetics of Symbolic Constuction and Experience, edited by Bruce Kapferer and Angela Hobart, 1–26. New York: Berghahn.

Heavenly Entextualisations 125 Maxey, James A., and Ernst Wendland. 2012. Translating Scripture for Sound and Performance: New Directions in Biblical Studies. Eugene, OR: Cascade. Moore, Leslie C. 2013. “Qur’anic School Sermons as a Site for Sacred and Second Language Acquisition.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34, no. 5: 445–458. Morgan, Brian. 2004. “Teacher Identity as Pedagogy.” Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7, no. 2–3: 172–188. Nelson, Kristina. 1985. The Art of Reciting the Qur’an. Austin: University of Texas Press. O’Leary, Matt. 2013. “Surveillance, Performativity and Normalised Practice: The Use and Impact of Graded Lesson Observations in Further Education Colleges.” Journal of Further and Higher Education 37, no. 5: 694–714. Omoniyi, Tope. 2010. “Holy Hip-Hop, Language and Social Change.” In The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change Conflict and Accommodation, edited by Tope Omoniyi, 205–234. London: Palgrave. Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge. Poveda, David, Ana Cano, and Manuel Palomares-Valera. 2005. “Religious Genres, Entextualization and Literacy in Gitano Children.” Language in Society 34, no. 1: 87–115. Rhoads, David. 2006. “Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 36: 118–133. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2005. “Just When you Thought It Was Safe: Synthetic Phonics and Syncretic Literacy Practices.” English in Education 39, no. 3: 32–46. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2006. “ ‘I Used to Copy What the Teachers at School Would Do’. Cross-Cultural Fusion: The Role of Older Children in Community Literacy Practices.” Language and Education 20, no. 6: 529–542. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2008. Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2013a. “Faith, Phonics and Identity: Reading in Faith Complementary Schools.” Literacy 47, no. 2: 67–78. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2013b. “Religious Classical Practice: Entextualisation and Performance.” Language and Society 42, no. 3: 307–330. Safran, William. 2008. “Language, Ethnicity and Religion: A Complex and Persistent Linkage.” Nations and Nationalism 14, no. 1: 171–190. Scribner, Sylvia, and Michael Cole. 1981. The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Searle, John. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban. 1996. Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Street, Brian. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process. Chicago: Aldine. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Superdiversity and Its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30: 1024–1054. Wagner, Daniel. 1994. Literacy, Culture and Development: Becoming Literate in Morocco. New York: Cambridge University Press. Waquet, Francoise. 2001. Latin: Or the Empire of a Sign. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso. Watson, Janet C. 2002. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7

Moving across Languages, Literacies, and Schooling Traditions* Leslie C. Moore

Introduction In the summer of 2009 I led a one-week teachers’ workshop on Somali history, language, and culture (for more information on the course, see http:// somalistudies.ehe.osu.edu/). For our first meeting we read an article about the history and collapse of educational systems in Somalia (Abdi 1998). During class discussion I asked the 29 workshop participants (all non-Somali) if they knew about Qur’anic schooling, called dugsi by Somalis. Most did not, while some were aware that their Somali students attended religious classes in the weekend. One teacher had visited a dugsi, and she recalled being baffled by what she saw: “It looked like complete chaos. All these kids, all different ages, sitting on the floor, everybody yelling something different.” Qur’anic schooling is an important part of the educational experience of children all over the world, yet it is one of the least-studied and most poorly understood educational institutions in today’s world (Wagner 1999). Because Qur’anic schooling emphasizes memorization and transcription of Qur’anic texts without comprehension of their literal meaning, this schooling tradition is widely believed by non-participants to have a stultifying effect on children’s cognitive and linguistic development even though there is no empirical evidence to support such claims (Wagner 1993). Research on Qur’anic schooling has increased in recent years (e.g., Boyle 2004; Moore 2008; Rosowsky 2008), but misrepresentations of this tradition have dominated in Western media since the events of September 11, 2001 (McClure 2009), and much misunderstanding of Islamic education remains (Niyozov and Pluim 2009). Millions of children participate in both Qur’anic and public schooling, and for the majority this double schooling entails learning (in) two different non-native languages. Such is the case for many children of Muslim immigrants to the United States from Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia (Haddad, Senzai, and Smith 2009). Despite the extent of this kind of educational experience, we know little about Qur’anic schooling and

* Published previously in Moore, L. C. Research Directions: Moving across Languages, Literacies, and Schooling Traditions. Language Arts, v88(4) March 2011, 288–297. Copyright 2011 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission.

Moving across Languages, Literacies 127 double schooling, and how they shape Muslim children as learners and users of second languages and literacies. In my own research I have sought to document and understand the double schooling experiences of Muslim children for whom the language of literacy in both their schools is not their native language. At the turn of the last millennium, I conducted research in a Fulbe community in northern Cameroon, documenting the apprenticeship of seven Fulbe children into language and literacy practices in Fulfulde, Arabic, and French at home, Qur’anic school, and public school. I combined a video-based longitudinal multiple case study design with ethnographic study of the children’s schools and community, collecting locally available educational materials and conducting interviews and video playback sessions with family members, public and Qur’anic school teachers, Islamic scholars, and public education officials. This study built on my previous work in the region as a researcher (1996 and 1999) and as a Peace Corps volunteer (1992–1994), as well as research conducted by other scholars in the region. Currently I am in the early stages of similar research in the Somali immigrant and refugee community in Columbus, Ohio. An important part of my new work has been working with public school educators, both Somali and non-Somali, who want to improve the educational experience of children of the Somali Diaspora. In preparing the teachers’ workshop mentioned above, I examined books and other materials that had been written for non-Somali educators who work with Somali children and families (e.g., Fahin and McMahan 2004; Kahin 1997; Lynch 2008; Putman and Noor 1999; Van Lehman and Eno 2002). All the materials made reference to the fact that almost all Somalis are Muslim, and many of these works provided basic information about Islam. However, Qur’anic schooling was mentioned in only a few texts and only in passing. All the materials emphasized that a Somali child was likely to come to public school with limited experience with schooling or literacy, or as Kahin (1997) writes, “non-literate or semi-literate with previous little formal schooling, due to the war” (p. 50). Kahin was writing in the mid 1990s, in the early years of the Somali Diaspora, when civil war and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Somalis led to the breakdown of Qur’anic and public schooling in Somalia. In the years since, Islamic education has been revived in Somalia, and efforts have been made in refugee camps to provide both Qur’anic and public schooling, but access to education has been and continues to be a concern (Hassan and Robleh 2004). Once in the U.S., however, Somali families take advantage of the educational opportunities available, sending their children to Qur’anic and public schools. Knowing one’s students is key to working effectively with them. It is particularly important for teachers who work with English language learners to know about the educational and literacy backgrounds of students and their family members (Diaz-Rico 2007; Freeman and Freeman 2004). My goal in writing this article is to provide insights into the schooling and literacy experiences Somali children and other Muslim immigrants may bring to public

128 Leslie C. Moore school from their other school. I first discuss Qur’anic schooling in the Maroua Fulbe community, describing the organization and the significance of this schooling tradition for participants. I discuss recent developments in this community, including the rise of double schooling and changes in Islamic educational practice. I then shift my focus to the Somali immigrant and refugee community in Columbus, Ohio, discussing changes in Somali Qur’anic schooling that have arisen in this diasporic context. I conclude with a discussion of how Qur’anic school experiences may affect Muslim language-minority children’s second language and literacy learning in public school, followed by reflections on the possible implications for public elementary school educators of knowledge of Qur’anic schooling and Qur’anic school-based literacies.

Qur’anic Schooling in Maroua Fulbe children in Maroua, Cameroon attended Qur’anic school to learn to recite, read, and write the Qur’an, the core religious text of Islam that is believed to be the word of God, revealed in Arabic to the Prophet Mohammad. The primary goal in the first years of schooling was the faithful— verbatim, fluent, and reverent—rendering of Qur’anic texts by the child. Fulbe children learned the Qur’an “by rote.” That is, children learned through extensive imitation, repetition, and memorization and without explanation of the literal meaning of the text. This kind of teaching and learning of sacred texts is characteristic of the traditional pedagogies associated with other religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Judaism (Wagner 1983). Secular schooling around the world was built on these foundations, though rote learning has fallen out of favor in many countries (Wagner 1983). Today, in many religious communities, the study of sacred texts with or without comprehension continues to be valued as an act of piety, discipline, cultural preservation, and personal transformation. Instruction in Maroua Fulbe Qur’anic schools was in Fulfulde, the children’s native language, but the text was in Arabic, a language the children, and often their teachers, did not understand. Accurate reproduction of Qur’anic texts in recitation and in writing was the goal. A reciter must pronounce the sounds accurately and in correct sequence with correct intonation, pausing only where it was required or permissible. Otherwise, he might be saying something completely different than what was revealed (in Arabic) to the Prophet by God. Minimally, a child was expected to learn to recite part of the Qur’an from memory (essential to the five daily prayers), handle the Qur’an respectfully, and listen to Qur’anic recitation and citation (frequent in this community) with the proper speech, demeanor, and affect. Correct response to and rendering of the sounds of the Qur’an constituted the essential first layer of understanding of the sacred text. Subsequent layers of understanding were reserved for the learner who had “finished her Qur’an,” that is, recited and written the entire Qur’an without error.

Moving across Languages, Literacies 129 Qur’anic schools were located in the households of the teachers, and most children attended a school in their neighborhood. Instruction was individualized, with each child progressing through the curriculum at his own pace. The child was under little pressure to keep up with other children, and the teacher, or mallum, could accommodate each individual by adjusting his instruction to her level and rate of learning. By working with children oneon-one, a mallum was said to be able to gauge accurately each child’s intellectual capacity and current level of understanding. He could then teach her only what she would be able to understand, guarding her from discouragement and incomplete or incorrect understanding of the sacred text. The Qur’anic school curriculum had distinct stages. In the first stage, the child attended irregularly, sometimes studying her own assigned text, sometimes just observing. In the second stage, the child memorized chapters 1 and 114–104 of Qur’an, sometimes more, studying the Qur’an in reverse order once she had mastered the opening chapter. The third stage entailed learning to name the consonants as they appeared in chapters 1 and 114– 104. Finally, in the fourth stage, the child wrote and recited the remaining chapters (103–2). Once a child completed this stage, she had “finished her Qur’an,” an achievement that was highly valued and celebrated with gifts for teacher and student and a feast for the family and the school. At every stage, the child’s assigned text was transcribed from a printed loose-leaf Qur’an onto her alluha (a wooden tablet) for her to study. During the first few stages, a more expert person (the teacher, an advanced student, or a member of the child’s family) transcribed the text for the child. Writing instruction typically began only after the child had learned to decode Arabic writing. Initially, the teacher would scratch the text into the clay coating on the alluha, and the child wrote with pen and ink over the teacher’s marks. As the child became more a competent writer and was deemed mature enough to handle the Qur’an respectfully, she was allowed to transcribe the text onto her alluha following only lines scratched by the teacher to help the child write in straight lines. Eventually, the child would transcribe independently. The teaching and learning of each Qur’anic text was accomplished through what I call guided repetition, a practice for teaching and learning that involves modeling by an expert and imitation of the model by a novice, with memorization through rehearsal and performance by the novice (Moore 2006; Rogoff et al. 2007). The first phase was a formal and focused one-to-one interaction in which the teacher modeled the recitation of the text for the child, who then attempted to imitate the teacher’s recitation. The second phase began once the teacher judged the child to have sufficient command of the text to practice it independently. The child was sent to sit among the other students and recite her text over and over at very loud volume until his recitation was fluent. Many children would be in this phase at the same time, each child practicing his or her own assigned text in a loud voice. In the final phase the child displayed her mastery of the text by reciting it for the teacher in a focused, one-to-one interaction. Teachers usually

130 Leslie C. Moore had assistants, advanced students who were authorized to supervise children while the teacher provided one-on-one instruction. Fulbe families sent their children to janngirde (place of recitation, reading, study) to study the Qur’an to develop not only competence in reciting, reading, and writing the sacred text, but also self-discipline, good moral character, and respect for and submission to God’s Word (Santerre 1973; Tourneux and Iyébi-Mandjek 1994). Such practice is not unique to the Maroua Fulbe or Islam. Memorization of the Qur’an is an important part of elementary religious education in most Muslim communities today and is viewed as a means of instilling respect, self-control, and proper religious feeling (Bray 1986; Musa Ahmed 1996). Seen by community members as a progressively transformative process, the acquisition of Qur’anic textual knowledge was believed by Maroua Fulbe to be fundamental to becoming Muslim (Moore 2008).

Change in Maroua Above I describe what was widely regarded by Fulbe in Maroua as the traditional model of Qur’anic schooling. I have used the ethnographic past because schooling traditions, like any other tradition, are not static, but constantly changing in their forms and meanings. At the time of my research (1996, 1999, 2000–2001) there was a growing movement to “modernize” Islamic education in the region. Change was underway, and these changes in educational practice were connected to the movement of people across schooling traditions and geographic space. Fulbe participation in public schooling was low until the mid-1980s, when Fulbe authorities began to encourage rather than discourage attendance (Tourneux and Iyébi-Mandjek 1994). This shift occurred after Cameroon’s Fulbe president was succeeded by a Christian southerner, who ended preferential treatment of Fulbe within the state power structure (Iyébi-Mandjek 2000). During the 1990s there was a rapid expansion in the rates of participation in Qur’anic schooling and in the number of Qur’anic schools in Maroua and northern Cameroon as a whole (Iyébi-Mandjek 2000). Girls’ rates of participation rose, and more children of both genders pursued their Qur’anic studies further than had been typical in the past (Seignobos and Nassourou 2000). Unlike previous generations of Qur’anic school teachers, many of the new teachers had participated in both Qur’anic and public schooling. They introduced several public school–like practices into janngirde, such as the singing of songs and collective instruction sessions (that often included the use of a chalkboard) on prayer, the basic tenets of Islam, and proper conduct for Muslims. Several of these “new” Qur’anic teachers explained that such practices made Qur’anic schooling more appealing and motivating for the growing number of children who participated in public schooling.

Moving across Languages, Literacies 131 More dramatic changes were advocated by Fulbe and Muslims of other ethnicities who had pursued advanced studies in Arab states (most often Saudi Arabia). These men had returned home with new ideas of how Islamic education should be done based on what they had seen in the Middle East. New Islamic elementary schools were established in the 1990s, where both religious and non-religious subjects were taught collectively and Arabic was taught from the early grades as a second language for daily communication. This latter innovation was promoted as a means for students to gain access to the meaning of the Qur’an and to the ummah, the worldwide community of believers. In interviews, many Fulbe expressed ambivalence about or even opposition to these innovations. One common objection was that collective instruction could not assure the mastery of each text by every child before the next text was introduced, thus putting some children at risk of reciting with error. Another widespread concern was that treating Arabic “just like any other language” and teaching it to young children who had not yet memorized the Qur’an effectively desacralized the language of the Qur’an and undermined the development of respect for the Word of God and the social order in theocratic Fulbe society. Many Fulbe considered the introduction of practices borrowed from public schooling highly suspect. This schooling tradition had first been imported and imposed by the French colonial administration in the early 1900s, and after independence the system remained in many respects the same (Capelle 1990). In the postcolonial period public schooling was still widely referred to by Fulbe as janngirde nasaara (school of the white man) and believed to undermine Fulbe culture and religion through indoctrination of children into French culture and Christianity (Regis 2003; Tourneux and Iyébi-Mandjek 1994). Founders of the new Islamic schools argued that the educational model they had imported from Muslim nations in the Middle East was Islamic. However, as some opponents to these innovations pointed out, these Muslim nations had, in fact, adopted their models of education from the Christian West decades earlier (cf. Daun and Walford 2004). In my study I focused on children who participated in both Qur’anic and public schooling. Rates of double schooling had risen significantly due to the mid-1980s increase in public schooling (Tourneux and Iyébi-Mandjek 1994) and the expansion of Qur’anic schooling in the 1990s (Seignobos and Nassourou 2000). Fulbe children who attended public school also continued to attend Qur’anic schooling, albeit on an altered schedule that accommodated the hours and calendar of public schooling. Instead of spending most of their day at Qur’anic school, children who double-schooled attended public school during the morning and early afternoon, then spent two to three hours in late afternoons and/or evenings at Qur’anic school, plus another four to six hours on the weekend. The long public school vacation was a time to “catch up” through more intensive Qur’anic study.

132 Leslie C. Moore Double schooling was considered problematic by many. Non-Muslim public educators argued that Qur’anic schooling took time away from public school studies and interfered with students’ social, cognitive, and linguistic development by teaching children a passive, non-analytic learning style and an ethnocentric and superstitious worldview (Tourneux and Iyébi-Mandjek 1994). Some Fulbe claimed that public schooling interfered with children’s social, moral, and spiritual development. Even parents who sent their children to public school expressed concern that children learned things at school that were counter to the norms of Islam and Fulbe culture. However, many Fulbe with whom I spoke viewed double schooling in a positive light. Some argued that study skills and literacy skills developed in one school setting transferred to the other. That is, a child who could read and write Qur’anic Arabic would have an easier time learning to read and write French, and vice versa. Many maintained that Qur’anic schooling made Muslim children better public school students by fostering self-discipline and respect for and dedication to learning. Several parents and young adults explained to me that children who liked attending public school were motivated to do well in Qur’anic school because good progress in their religious studies made the continuation of their secular education acceptable to family and community members who might otherwise oppose it.

Qur’anic Schooling in Columbus There is variation across time and space in how Qur’anic schooling is organized, but there is also a remarkable constancy across contexts in how religious knowledge is conceived of and conveyed (Bray 1986; Eickelman 2002). I have found many similarities between the traditional model I observed in Maroua and how Qur’anic schooling in pre-war Somalia has been described in interviews with Somalis in Columbus and in published works (e.g., Abdi 1998; Lewis 1961; Sheikh Hassan and Robleh 2004). Somalis with whom I have spoken often describe dugsi as somewhat less formal than the Fulbe system, but the organization of curriculum and instruction is quite similar, as are the socialization goals. One salient difference is that in the Somali system a student finished the Qur’an only once he or she had memorized it in its entirety, as is the case in many Muslim communities (cf. Brenner 2001; Eickelman 1985; Gade 2004). A Somali who has achieved this level of sacred knowledge is referred to as haafidh, or guardian of the Qur’an. In pre-war Somali and in the Diaspora, completion of the Qur’an is the exception rather than the rule, and the haafidh is held in very high regard. Somali refugees began resettling in central Ohio after civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991, and the community has grown rapidly since, becoming the second largest in the United States (after Minneapolis), estimated to be more than 45,000 (Roble and Rutledge 2008). The upheaval of civil war and the resulting Diaspora meant that the Qur’anic schooling of many Somalis was disrupted (likewise for public schooling). Nonetheless, Somalis have

Moving across Languages, Literacies 133 sustained their Qur’anic schooling tradition and have brought it with them to the United States. Among Somali children in Columbus, double schooling is the norm. Families first send their children to Qur’anic schooling, or dugsi, around the age of five. Some children have been attending dugsi for several months before entering kindergarten, while others begin both kinds of schooling at about the same time. Most children are taught by a Somali ma’alim and attend dugsi on Saturday and Sunday for about four hours each time, while a few also attend for a couple of hours on weekday afternoons after public school gets out. As was the case for the Fulbe, public school holidays are occasions for more intensive participation in Qur’anic schooling. Somali Qur’anic schooling in the Diaspora differs in some respects from schooling in pre-war Somalia. Paper notebooks have replaced the loox, a wooden tablet like the alluha of the Fulbe. A significant change in the curriculum is that, instead of focusing exclusively on oral recitation and memorization in the early stages, many teachers begin reading and writing instruction very soon after a child begins schooling. Some Somalis in Columbus argued that early instruction in reading and writing facilitated children’s learning of the Qur’an. Others expressed concern that it interfered with the timely development of Qur’anic recitation skills, which are integral to the five daily prayers that children begin performing by the age of seven. The reason for this shift in the curriculum is unclear, but it may be related to change in the sequencing of Somali children’s introduction to the two types of schooling. In pre-war Somalia children attended Qur’anic school for three or four years before beginning public school, whereas Somali children of the Diaspora begin Qur’anic and public school about the same time. This simultaneity of schooling may be causing a shift in community beliefs about when it is appropriate and effective to begin literacy instruction. The curricular shift in Columbus may also be linked to the emergence in post-war Somalia of “hybrid” Qur’anic schools that provide instruction in numeracy and Somali and Arabic literacy in addition to traditional Qur’anic instruction (Khamis 2011). Many Somalis in Columbus with whom I have spoken were aware of this trend (which UNICEF has recently begun supporting through its Integrated Qur’anic Schools Project). The Qur’anic schooling tradition is being transformed by Somalis not only in the Diaspora, but also in Somalia, and it seems likely that the flow of innovation is bidirectional. As in the pre-war system, Qur’anic schooling in Columbus focuses on the teaching and learning of the Qur’an without explanation of the literal meaning of the text. As in Maroua, some teachers supplement the traditional curriculum with instruction in basic Islamic principles and practices. These lessons are teacher-fronted, and teachers vary with respect to how much they allow or encourage questions and discussion. The introduction of such lessons may be related to the rise in religiosity among Somalis since the start of the civil war that several researchers have observed (e.g., Abdi 2007; Berns McGown 1999; DeVoe 2002; Sheikh Hassan and Robleh 2004). It seems

134 Leslie C. Moore likely that an increased concern with religious practice and belief underlies other changes in Qur’anic school practice, such as separation of boys and girls and more restricted contact between male Qur’anic teachers and post-pubescent female students. While there is a trend toward greater separation of the sexes, many Somalis pointed out to me that girls’ participation in Qur’anic schooling has expanded dramatically in the Diaspora. An important consequence of the Diaspora is that many Somalis have contact with Muslims who are not Somali. Before coming to Columbus, some Somalis sojourned in the Middle East and/or in European countries with large Muslim minority communities. While most Somali children living in Columbus attend a Somali-run dugsi, some children and/or their family members have had non-Somali teachers. In addition to attending dugsi, some children listen to and recite along with audio recordings of Qur’anic recitations by renowned reciters, many of them non-Somali. Exposure to other Qur’anic schooling traditions has led some Somalis to reflect critically on the practices of their own community. For example, several people have told me that one development in the Diaspora is greater emphasis on the study of tajwid, the discipline of proper recitation of the Qur’an. Qur’anic schooling has changed in the Somali Diaspora not just in its form, but also in its meaning for participants. In Somalia, there was no question that children would grow up to be Somali and Muslim. But this outcome seems far less certain to Somalis in Columbus and other North American cities and towns, where their children’s moral, spiritual, social, linguistic, and intellectual development may be influenced by many unfamiliar forces. In the diasporic context, Qur’anic schooling has become a key context for the development and maintenance of Somali-ness, or Soomaalinimo, of which Islamic practice and belief are key components. As one young Somali woman wrote in a reflective research report to me, “The intent behind sending children to Qur’anic schools has changed in the diaspora. The dugsi is now seen as a means of shaping children to be good Muslims, who do not lose their identity in their adopted nation.”

Movement across Languages, Literacies, and Schools Before moving to Columbus, I was aware of the large Somali population there, and I understood that most children of Somali refugees and immigrants in the United States spoke Somali at home, studied Arabic texts at Qur’anic school, and learned (in) English at public school. I came to The Ohio State University excited to continue my research on the double schooling experiences of Muslim children for whom the language of literacy in both schools is not their native language, this time in the context of the Somali Diaspora. In my research in Maroua I had set out to re-examine and expand on the concept of home-school discontinuity by documenting and comparing language and literacy socialization practices at home and in two different kinds of schooling (Moore 2006, 2010). My goal in Columbus has been

Moving across Languages, Literacies 135 to understand how Qur’anic schooling and double schooling shape young Somali children as learners and users of second languages and literacies. My new research builds not only on my previous work in Cameroon, but also on research by other scholars in Muslim immigrant communities in Europe and North America. Linguistic ethnographers working in Great Britain have conducted studies with Muslim immigrant children who attended both public schools and community schools that provided instruction in the Qur’an and the heritage language (e.g., Creese and Martin 2004; Gregory, Long, and Volk 2004). These studies show the children to be strategic and syncretic in their use of multiple languages and literacies to negotiate and construct their social identities across secular and religious educational contexts. This research also suggests that participation in community religious schooling may confer certain advantages for literacy learning in public school, including increased metalinguistic awareness; knowledge of how reading and writing are done, taught, and learned; and the ability to blend approaches from different languages and literacies. In the course of her work with adolescent Somali immigrants and refugees in Minnesota who had limited formal schooling, applied linguist Martha Bigelow became familiar with Qur’anic schooling in that community. In her book, Bigelow (2010) reflects on the potential points of transfer between dugsi and public school. She raises the possibility that Qur’anic schooling, with its emphasis on memorization and recitation without comprehension, might not have an entirely positive effect on literacy learning in public school. However, Bigelow goes on to point out that in dugsi Somali children learn the Arabic alphabet and text conventions such as text directionality (right to left and top to bottom) and the marking of word boundaries (space between the last letter of one word and the first letter of the next word). And while children are not taught the meaning of the texts, “they do learn that text corresponds to sounds that make up words which carry meaning—in this case sacred meaning” (p. 39). Qur’anic schooling entails and rewards close and sustained attention to and accurate and fluent reproduction of oral and written second language forms. Through participation in this schooling tradition, Fulbe and Somali children learn to perceive and produce non-native speech sounds and words and to recognize and reproduce the symbols that represent them in writing. Accuracy, automaticity, and fluency in reading and writing are developed through extensive practice of Qur’anic texts. If we translate these practices into the language of many reading researchers and practitioners, we get a list of what are widely held to be essential elements of early reading instruction and predictors of later reading success: knowledge of the alphabet, letter-sound correlation, concepts of print, decoding skills, and reading fluency . . . all of which have been shown to transfer from one language to another (August and Shanahan 2006; Gersten et al. 2007). Cultural psychologists working in Africa have produced compelling findings regarding the consequences of Qur’anic school-based literacy. The Vai

136 Leslie C. Moore Project (Scribner and Cole 1981) compared the cognitive effects of three kinds of literacy practices among the Vai of Liberia and found that adult Qur’anic Arabic literates performed better than Vai literates and English literates in memory-related tasks that resembled everyday practices of memorizing and reciting Qur’anic texts. The Morocco Literacy Project (Wagner 1993) investigated the consequences of Qur’anic preschool experience for learning and subsequent public school achievement. Like Scribner and Cole, Wagner found a specific and significant positive effect on children’s serial memory skills. Moreover, for children whose native language was Berber (not used in public school), Qur’anic preschool experience correlated with higher reading achievement in Arabic the first five years of public school and contributed a significant portion of variance to French literacy skills in the fifth year of elementary school. Wagner argues that rote learning of Arabic in Qur’anic school helped many language-minority children by providing a foundation on which to build a second literacy even though the two literacies (Arabic and French) differed significantly and even though the first literacy was in a second language. Both of these projects showed that participation in Qur’anic schooling was associated with the development of particular skills that were highly practiced and valued in school activities. However, neither project involved in-depth, ethnographic analysis of those activities and the skills they entail. Moreover, neither project was informed by second language acquisition research even though second language use was central to the schooling traditions whose effects were being studied. To understand how individuals are transformed as learners of language and literacy through their participation in Qur’anic schooling, we need to know more about how teaching and learning are accomplished in this activity setting; what kinds of second language acquisition processes are in play; and what the educational and linguistic practices, processes, and outcomes mean to participants. Somalis I have spoken with express the belief that Qur’anic school participation has a positive effect on public school participation. Some people argue for the kinds of literacy-specific connections made above, but most identify broader benefits such as the development of self-discipline, commitment to education, and respect for learning and those who impart it. One of Bigelow’s research participants articulated a line of reasoning that I have heard often in Columbus: dugsi helps Somalis in their public schooling because “[d]ugsi helps them be better people and thus more dedicated and serious students” (2010, 40). For non-Muslim educators, some understanding of Qur’anic schooling can help them better know and better support the learning of Muslim children whose families are recently arrived in the United States. The more a teacher knows about the schooling and literacy experiences a child brings to public school, the better able s/he is to make connections with and build upon those experiences in the classroom. Such knowledge is also helpful

Moving across Languages, Literacies 137 in developing relationships with parents and other family members. In my work in Maroua and Columbus, I have found that my knowledge of and respect for Qur’anic schooling goes a long way toward establishing good rapport. It remains unclear how Qur’anic school participation affects Muslim language-minority children’s development of second language and literacy in public school. However, teachers and their students will benefit from awareness that many of the language and literacy skills developed in Qur’anic schooling are relevant and transferrable to the English-language classroom. To date, no research supports the view that children who participate in Qur’anic schooling are more likely to develop and transfer to public school literacy activities an orientation to text that emphasizes decoding over comprehension. Nonetheless, teachers need to be aware that Muslim children who are English language learners may demonstrate high levels of decoding ability and oral reading fluency while still struggling with reading comprehension. For these children, as for all children, literacy instruction must make clear that reading is about making meaning of and with text, and instruction must provide ample opportunities for doing just that. In both the communities in which I have worked, the Qur’anic schooling tradition has been sustained and transformed by members as they have participated in other schooling traditions and have carried their own to other countries. Through my research I hope to increase our understanding of Qur’anic schooling, how it is done and what it means for participants as they move across continents, languages, literacies, and schooling traditions. Such understandings of the other school in Somali children’s lives will help us improve public education for Muslim children learning in a second language and help us answer the theoretical question of how participation in one schooling tradition shapes participation and development as a communicatively competent participant in another.

Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who have participated in the research discussed in this article. I am also grateful for the financial support of Fulbright, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Ohio Humanities Council/ National Endowment for the Humanities. Finally, my thanks to the Language Arts team for their feedback as I developed this article.

References Abdi, Ali A. 1998. “Education in Somalia: History, destruction, and calls for reconstruction.” Comparative Education 34 (3):327–340. Abdi, Cawo. 2007. “Convergence of civil war and the religious right.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33 (1):183–207.

138 Leslie C. Moore August, Diane, and Timothy Shanahan, eds. 2006. Developing literacy in secondlanguage learners: Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berns McGown, Riza. 1999. Muslims in the diaspora: The Somali communities of London and Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bigelow, Martha H. 2010. Mogadishu on the Mississippi: Language, racialized identity, and education in a new land. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Boyle, Helen. 2004. Quranic schools: Agents of preservation and change. New York and London: Routledge Falmer. Bray, Mark. 1986. “Islamic education: Continuity and change.” In Education and society in Africa, edited by Mark Bray, David Stephens and Peter B. Clarke, 79–100. London: Edward Arnold. Brenner, Louis. 2001. Controlling knowledge: Religion, power, and schooling in a West African Muslim society. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press. Capelle, Jean. 1990. L’éducation en Afrique noire à la veille des Indépendances (1946–1958). Paris: Editions Karthala and ACCT. Creese, Angela, and Peter Martin, eds. 2004. Multilingual classroom ecologies: Interrelationships, interactions, and ideologies. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Daun, Holger, and Geoffrey Walford, eds. 2004. Educational strategies among Muslims in the context of globalization: Some national case studies. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. DeVoe, Pamela A. 2002. “Symbolic action: Religion’s role in the changing environment of young Somali women.” Journal of Refugee Studies 15 (2):234–246. Diaz-Rico, Lynne T. 2007. Strategies for teaching English learners. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn & Bacon. Eickelman, Dale F. 1985. Knowledge and power in Morocco: The education of a twentieth-century notable. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Eickelman, Dale F. 2002. The middle east and central asia: An anthropological approach. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fahin, Mohamed, and Don McMahan. 2004. Accommodating and educating Somali students in Minnesota schools. Saint Paul, MN: Hamline University. Freeman, David E., and Yvonne S. Freeman. 2004. Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gade, Anna M. 2004. Perfection makes practice: Learning, emotion, and the recited Quran in Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Gersten, Russell, Scott K. Baker, Timothy Shanahan, Sylvia Linan-Thompson, Penny Collins, and Robin Scarcella. 2007. Effective literacy and English language instruction for English learners in the elementary grades: A practice guide. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Gregory, Eve, Susi Long, and Dinah Volk, eds. 2004. Many pathways to literacy: Young children learning with siblings, grandparents, peers, and communities. London: Routledge. Haddad, Yvonne Y., Farid Senzai, and Jane I. Smith, eds. 2009. Educating the Muslims of America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hassan, Mohamed-Rashid Sheikh, and Salada Robleh. 2004. “Islamic revival and education in Somalia.” In Educational strategies among Muslims in the context of globalization: Some national case studies, edited by Holger Daun and Geoffrey Walford. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Iyébi-Mandjek, Olivier. 2000. “Enseignement.” In Atlas de la province ExtrêmeNord, Cameroun, edited by Christian Seignobos and Olivier Iyébi-Mandjek. Paris: Editions de l’Institut de Recherche pour le Développement/Ministère de la

Moving across Languages, Literacies 139 Recherche Scientifique et Technique, Institut National de Cartographie, Republique du Cameroun. Kahin, Mohamed H. 1997. Educating Somali children in Britain. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham Books. Khamis, Anil. 2011. “An evaluation report on the integrated Qur’anic schools pilot project: The strategic partnership for recovery and development of education in Somalia.” Submitted to United Nations Children Funds/UNICEF Somalia Support Center. Nairobi, Kenya. Lewis, I.M. 1961. A pastoral democracy: A study of pastoralism and politics among the northern Somali of the horn of Africa. London: Oxford University Press. Lynch, Patricia. 2008. Beloved strangers: A collaborative exploration of language and culture. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag. McClure, Kevin R. 2009. “Madrasas and Pakistan’s education agenda: Western media misrepresentation and policy recommendations.” International Journal of Educational Development 29 (4):334–341. Moore, Leslie C. 2006. “Learning by heart in Qu’ranic and public schools in northern Cameroon.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 50, thematic issue on The Cultural Politics of Education and Religion (3):109–126. Moore, Leslie C. 2008. “Body, text, and talk in Maroua Fulbe Qur’anic schooling.” Text & Talk, special issue the spirit of reading: Practices of reading sacred texts 28 (5):643–665. Moore, Leslie C. 2010. “Learning in schools.” The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood, edited by David F. Lancy, John Bock, & Suzanne Gaskins, 207–232. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Musa Ahmed. 1996. Sociology of Islamic education. Kano, Nigeria: Triumph Publishing Company. Niyozov, Sarfaroz, and Gary Pluim. 2009. “Teachers’ perspectives on the education of Muslim students: A missing voice in Muslim education research.” Curriculum Inquiry 39 (5):637–677. Putman, Diana Briton, and Mohamood Cabdi Noor. 1999. The Somalis: Their history and culture. Washington, DC: Cultural Orientation Resource Center. Regis, Helen A. 2003. Fulbe voices: Marriage, Islam, and medicine in Northern Cameroon, Westview case studies in anthropology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Roble, Abdi, and Doug Rutledge. 2008. The Somali diaspora: A journey away. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rogoff, Barbara, Leslie C. Moore, Behnosh Najafi, Amy Dexter, Maricela CorreaChávez, and Jocelyn Solís. 2007. “Children’s development of cultural repertoires through participation in everyday routines and practices.” In Handbook of Socialization, edited by Joan Grusec and Paul Hastings, 490–515. New York: Guilford Press. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2008. Heavenly readings: Liturgical literacy in a multilingual context. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Santerre, Renaud. 1973. Pédagogie musulmane d’Afrique noire: l’école coranique peule du Cameroun. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Scribner, Sylvia, and Michael Cole. 1981. The psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Seignobos, Christian, and Abdourhaman Nassourou. 2000. “Réligions.” In Atlas de la province Extrême-Nord, Cameroun, edited by Christian Seignobos and Olivier Iyébi-Mandjek. Paris: Editions de l’Institut de Recherche pour le Développement / Ministère de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique, Institut National de Cartographie, Republique du Cameroun. Tourneux, Henry, and Olivier Iyébi-Mandjek. 1994. L’école dans une petite ville africaine (Maroua, Cameroun). Paris: Karthala.

140 Leslie C. Moore Van Lehman, Dan, and Omar Eno. 2002. The Somali Bantu: Their history and culture. Washington, DC: Cultural Orientation Resource Center. Wagner, Daniel A. 1983. “Learning to read by ‘rote’.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1983(42):111–121. Wagner, Daniel A. 1993. Literacy, culture and development: Becoming literate in Morocco. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wagner, Daniel A. 1999. “Indigenous education and literacy learning.” In Literacy: An international handbook, edited by Daniel A. Wagner, Richard L. Venezky and Brian V. Street. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

8

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk in a Tamil Hindu/Saiva Faith Community in London Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan

Introduction It’s 8:05 on a bright and crisp Tuesday morning. When I enter the Temple I am immediately struck by how busy it is even though the Temple has just opened its doors. Families are coming into the Temple. Some children are dressed in their school uniforms and it looks like they are visiting the Temple on their way to school. I see a mother with her little girl—around two years old. The little one wants to run ahead but her mum is holding her tight by the hand. They walk up to the shrine of Ganesh. They circle the shrine a number of times. I also see a father with a school-age boy in school uniform. They are standing slightly to the side of one of the smaller shrines on the left of the entrance to the Temple. The father touches his son’s head and dabs red ash on his forehead. The boy quietly follows his father as he stops to pray at each shrine. The movements of the father and son are almost in unison as though they have performed these routines together time and again. (Vally Lytra field narrative 6/10/2009)

The short excerpt from the field narrative of one of the authors’ early visits to the London Sri Murugan Temple illustrates the centrality of the Temple in the lives of many Tamil Hindu/Saiva1 children and their families living in Newham, one of the most linguistically and culturally rich boroughs in East London. The area has experienced the influx of many new immigrant communities, particularly from South Asia, who settled there from the 1950s onwards. A significant part of the new migration consists of Sri Lankan Tamils, many of whom were forced to flee their country with the outbreak of the civil war, particularly from the early 1980s up until the 1990s, and seek asylum in the United Kingdom. Since the new millennium, there has been a decrease in asylum migration and an increase in secondary migration in the form of family regroupings and relocations, mainly from other European Union countries (David 2006). As the local Tamil community grew in numbers and established itself in the area, the shared experience of migration, war and persecution spearheaded the establishment of numerous cultural associations, Tamil complementary (community) schools, and Temples. One such Temple is the London Sri Murugan

142 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan Temple described in this chapter. Founded in 1975 in central London, the Temple moved to its present location in Newham in 1984. In 2005, the current building of the Temple was erected in keeping with the monumental architectural style of Hindu Temples in India and Sri Lanka. The unveiling of the magnificent structure of the new London Sri Murugan Temple was considered a remarkable achievement for the London Sri Lankan Tamil community, and has aptly been described as a “magnet for thousands of devotees” (London Sri Murugan Temple Maha Kumbhabishekam 2005, 8). Although Temple worship is not mandatory in Hinduism, from a very early age, Tamil Hindu/Saiva children growing up in Newham as well as other parts of London go to the London Sri Murugan Temple with their parents, older siblings, grandparents and other family members to pray. They become socialised into Temple worship during these recurring visits as well as on auspicious festivals taking place at the Temple grounds and occasionally spilling into the adjoining streets, as the latter tends to attract large crowds of Hindu devotees across London as well as non-Hindu local residents. By observing and imitating other, more competent faith community members, children cultivate age-appropriate routines, practices, embodied dispositions and emotional responses as they strive to become expert members of the Hindu/Saiva faith community. Given the importance of the Temple in children’s religious socialisation in London, we ask the following questions: how do children represent the Temple in their texts and talk about text? What wealth of linguistic, cultural, aesthetic and historical knowledge and resources, rituals, symbols and ties of memory associated with Temple worship across continents and generations inform their text and talk? How is the children’s developing membership in the Hindu/Saiva faith community inscribed in their multimodal text-making and talk about text? To investigate these questions, we present and discuss examples from the scrapbook2 two siblings created as part of our three-year team ethnography to document their religious practices and experiences over a year as well as from their interviews with one of the authors (Arani Ilankuberan) after the scrapbook was completed. Inspired by the multimodal and syncretic nature of children’s learning and religious socialisation in faith settings, we illustrate how through their text-making about the Temple the two children internalise, express and perform their developing understanding of prayer rituals, symbols and beliefs associated with Hinduism/Saivaism in general and Temple worship in particular, creating threads of continuity across generations, continents, settings, experiences and discourse genres. We argue that their scrapbooks and talk about the scrapbooks can create discursive and identity spaces where the children can explore and represent meanings, values and beliefs that are meaningful to them and mediate their religious subjectivities in the context of their faith community (Lytra et al. forthcoming, Reyes 2009). In the following sections, we briefly consider the syncretic and multimodal nature of children’s faith literacy learning and religious socialisation,

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 143 combining insights from syncretic literacies, multimodality and artefactual literacies. Then, we outline our collaborative team ethnography and the role of the children’s scrapbooks in our research methodology. We proceed with the data analysis starting from a sensory description of the Temple and then moving on to the children’s representations of the Temple through text and talk. We conclude with implications for research and practice.

The Multimodal and Syncretic Nature of Children Learning in Faith Settings Faith as a mediator of children’s learning and socialisation is often neglected in educational research. Yet, Heath’s (1983) seminal study “Ways with Words”, set in three communities during the 1980s in the Appalachians in the southern United States, alerted us to the fact that faith permeates the lives, everyday talk and experiences of children and their families, fostering a unique community where literacy learning and a strong feeling of belonging are nurtured across generations. For instance, she illustrates how children from Trackton (a Black working-class community) and Roadville (a White working-class community) fused elements of vocabulary, narratives, songs, interaction patterns and discourse genres they heard every week in Church with their everyday talk and action. Using the theoretical lens of syncretism and syncretic literacies (Gregory et al. 2013a, 2013b), our team ethnography of four faith communities in London (Bangladeshi Muslim, Tamil Hindu/Saiva, Ghanaian Pentecostal and Polish Catholic) has emphasised the fluidity and fusing of languages, skills, interaction patterns and artefacts in children’s learning across settings. For example, in Gregory et al. (2013b), we show how children combine repetition, recitation, echoing and memorisation with song, dance, gesture and chant in order to practice individually or in unison and perform highly symbolic and metaphoric texts. We argue that performing these texts before others and before God and striving for perfection are crucial for children to become accepted as members of their respective faith communities (Gregory 2013b, 45). The multimodal nature of children’s learning has further been explored in Gregory et al. (2015), which traces how a pair of siblings from the Tamil Hindu/Saiva faith community begins to internalise learning through faith-inspired play. We illustrate how the children co-construct a Temple with plastic building blocks by reproducing some of its key architectural features (e.g., the tower-like structure, the split doors, the gate, the steps leading to the Temple) and improvising on others (e.g., the statues of deities). Then, both children pretend to be the priest and reenact a poosai (religious service) deploying gestures, chanting and everyday objects they have imbued with symbolic meaning in their back garden. In this chapter, we build upon this line of inquiry by exploring the children’s text-making and talk about text. Concurring with Pahl and Rowsell (2006), we understand the children’s texts as material objects that incorporate

144 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan words and images and are tied to cultural and aesthetic practices and preferences, personal and collective identities, family and community histories of migration (8). We argue that examining the interplay between language and other communicative modalities in children’s text and talk allows us to capture the wealth and complexity of the different languages, scripts, discourse genres, communicative resources and experiences inscribed in their text-making and show how these texts are embedded in the children’s everyday experiences situated in places and communities. Our work resonates with that of Pahl and Rowsell (2011) on artefactual critical literacy, “an approach that combines a focus on objects, and the stories attached to them, with an understanding of how different stories have different purchase in particular locations” (129). We see the Temple as a significant cultural artefact associated with faith that is linked to the family’s biographical trajectory and evokes powerful emotive and embodied stances. Its representations inscribed in the children’s images, explanations and stories are laden with meanings and symbols and can become a point of entry to investigate the children’s developing membership in the faith community.

A Collaborative Team Ethnography of Language and Literacy Learning in Faith Settings The data presented in this chapter come from a larger study entitled “Becoming Literate in Faith Settings: Language and Literacy Learning in the Lives of New Londoners” (or BeLiFS). This was a three-year collaborative team ethnography whose aim was to investigate how sixteen children aged between four and twelve from Bangladeshi Muslim, Ghanaian Pentecostal, Polish Catholic and Tamil Hindu/Saiva communities develop their language and literacy learning through faith activities in London (Gregory et al. 2009). From 2009 to 2013 we formed a team of eleven researchers sharing different linguistic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, age, gender, professional and educational circumstances, and religious and no religious beliefs, and worked with four families from each of the faith communities, their faith leaders and faith teachers, as well as older members of the communities. We adopted a case study approach, working in four research pairs where a new researcher who was a member of the ethno-linguistic community (and in three out of the four case studies, of the faith community) was paired with a more senior research partner who was not (in three out of the four case studies). We sought to develop collaborative relations with the children and the families we worked with through the use of more child-friendly methodologies and specifically through the use of visual methods of representation. Literat (2013), Pietikäinen (2012) and Tay-Lim and Lim (2013), among others, have shown the advantages of using photography and drawing as research methods, as they allow children to draw on larger and more complex sets of semiotic resources to represent their languages, literacies and

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 145 life experiences. In our study, we used scrapbooks created by the key participant children and where possible by their older or younger sibling(s). The scrapbooks were part of a multi-method approach to data collection, which included the collection of field narratives (Gregory and Lytra 2012); interviews with the faith leaders, faith teachers, parents, key participant children and grandparents or older members of the faith community; and digital audio and video recordings and photographs of daily faith literacy practices and special celebrations at home and in the faith setting, as well as in the religious education classes (for a detailed account of our methodology, see Lytra et al. forthcoming). At the beginning of the second year of the ethnography, we gave each participating child a scrapbook with multicolored pages and asked children to write, draw and stick what they considered important about their faith and they wanted to share with the researchers with limited researcher guidance or other adult intervention. During home visits, researchers leafed through the scrapbooks, discussed their content and shared their reactions with the children and other family members who were present. After completion, the researchers went through the scrapbooks page by page together with the children and any of their siblings who had co-authored them. The researchers encouraged the children to talk about why they had chosen to include a particular faith story or design and what a particular symbol, ritual or practice meant to them and how it may be connected with other aspects of their everyday lives, such as their mainstream school. In the Tamil Hindu/ Saiva case study, the conversations between the children and one of the authors, Arani Ilankuberan, who herself grew up in Newham and is a member of the Tamil Hindu/Saiva faith community, were also video-recorded.

Attending Temple: A Sensorial and Embodied Experience Attending Temple from an early age is a sensorial and embodied experience, which exposes Hindu/Saiva children to a wealth of cultural, linguistic, aesthetic and religious signs, symbols, beliefs and dispositions. Children come to recognise that the Hindu Temple is constructed in a way that symbolises the body of man lying down facing the heavens. As the Temple itself represents the human body, the religious rituals that take place inside it reflect the duties children must take upon themselves; for example, the Gods are awakened in the mornings, they are given a bath by the priest, their clothes are changed and they are adorned with fresh flowers, then they are offered food and at the end of the day they are put to sleep. The interior of a Temple is a feast for children’s senses; there is a buzz of activity, with many people simultaneously praying individually or communally all moving within the space of the Temple, gathering and pausing around certain shrines as they continue to circulate round in a clockwise manner. There are flowers and incense to smell, fruit to eat, religious chanting and devotional songs to hear, holy ashes and statues of deities to touch and the ornate carved decorations

146 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan all around the Temple and religious services to see. Everything in the Temple down to the devotees in their saris and traditional clothes add to the colourful atmosphere. The children are able to explore the multitude of sights, sounds and smells that are rich in symbolism and meaning. The children in our study come from devout Hindu/Saiva families. The children’s parents migrated to the United Kingdom from Sri Lanka or via

Figure 8.1 The Sri Murugan Temple

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 147 other European Union countries and most of the children were born in London or came to London when they were very young. All of the children go to local state-funded schools and attend Tamil complementary (community) school on Sunday mornings, where they are taught the heritage language, culture and history. After the two-hour Tamil literacy lessons, they all join the optional religious education classes for an hour. All the families we worked with reported visiting the London Sri Murugan Temple regularly, some as often as twice a week, others mainly on auspicious holidays. In the Temple, children use and are exposed to a range of languages and scripts: modern Tamil vernacular, English and old literate Tamil as well as Sanskrit. We observed that modern Tamil functioned as the community language—for instance, for communication between priests and devotees— whilst we heard both English and Tamil flexibly juxtaposed between parents and children. Old literate Tamil and Sanskrit were reserved mainly for prayers, such as the singing of Thevarams (Tamil devotional hymns) and Sanskrit mantras. The linguistic landscape of the London Sri Murugan Temple features the names of the deities inscribed on small gold-plated plaques in English and Tamil at the base of each shrine, notices with information about donating to the Temple with a diagram of the fundraising efforts of the faith community in English, a prominent LCD screen with the timetable of the day’s religious ceremonies, also in English, and a whiteboard on the side with amendments and other notices in Tamil. Arani Ilankuberan recalls that when she was a child the old Murugan Temple had large statues depicting the tales of Lord Murugan and above the statues the storyline in Tamil. Traditionally, other Temples in London have large panels with hymns embossed in old literate Tamil while Temples in India and Sri Lanka have inscriptions carved onto their stone walls in Sanskrit, old literate Tamil or other Indian languages, depending on their geographical location. The new London Sri Murugan Temple does not have any religious inscriptions on its solid, granite walls, possibly reflecting a more modern aesthetic.

Representations of the Temple in Children’s Text and Talk One of the recurring themes in the children’s scrapbooks were representations of the Temple, including the architecture, symbols, practices and rituals they observed and participated in as well as expressions of emotions during their regular visits to the Temple and on auspicious holidays. In the ensuing section, we present and discuss two examples from the children’s scrapbook along with the conversations they elicited between the children and Arani Ilankuberan after its completion. Thiani and her brother, Tianan,3 were eight and eleven years old respectively when the conversations with Arani were recorded. They had immigrated to the United Kingdom with their parents and maternal and paternal grandmothers from Norway six years earlier. At home, the children pray

148 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan individually in the mornings and together in the evenings, and as a family on Fridays and Saturdays in front of the family shrine adorned with images and statues of Hindu Gods. The main act of praying is the singing of Thevarams: devotional hymns composed in an archaic form of Tamil. The children also listen to devotional music in the mornings, as family members get ready for school and work. At the Temple, the children participate in individual and collective prayers and learn the culturally appropriate modes of praying by observing and modelling after their parents as well as other more expert faith members. In addition, on family visits to Sri Lanka the children have been to famous places of Hindu/Saiva pilgrimage, as well as have regularly visited smaller, local Temples in the neighbourhood. Commenting on the ubiquitous presence of Temples in Sri Lanka, the children’s mother declared: “We’ve seen lots of Temples, I mean, surrounding our house [in Sri Lanka] are all Temples! Whichever way you turn every five minutes there will be a Temple, so we went everywhere”. The Peacock Feather Found in the Thirukoneswaram Temple in Sri Lanka During their visit to the famous Thirukoneswaram Temple in Sri Lanka, a major site of Hindu/Saiva pilgrimage, the children found a peacock feather, which they kept and brought back with them to the United Kingdom. This feather they then carefully pasted on the cover page of their scrapbook (see Figure 8.2). In Hindu iconography, Gods are associated with specific animals. For instance, Goddess Saraswathi, the Goddess of education, knowledge and the arts, is often depicted mounted on a beautiful swan while Lord Murugan, the God of war, is mounted on a peacock. His peacock mount symbolises the destruction of the ego. Upon Arani’s request, Thiani and Tianan explain the origins of the feather on the cover page of their scrapbook. Excerpt 1: The Peacock Feather 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Arani: Thiani: Tianan: Thiani:

Arani: Thiani: Arani: Thiani: Mother:4

what’s that? (pointing to their scrapbook cover) it’s a mayil’s (peacock’s) feather (softly) peacock feather that means it’s a peacock’s feather that we found in Sri Lanka but it was actually my brother who found it why, why did you stick it on there? because it’s Murugan’s vahanam (vehicle/mount) and it’s a real feather! it’s a real feather you found in Sri Lanka? in a Temple Koneswaram (Temple)

Figure 8.2 The peacock feather adorning the cover of the scrapbook

150 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Thiani: Arani: Arani:

Thiani: Arani: Thiani:

(repeats name of Temple) Konechwar (repeats the full name of Temple) Thirukoneswaram is it good to stick feathers in books? what does it mean? is it good luck? it’s kind of religious as well why? it’s Murugan’s vahanam (vehicle/mount) and (referring to the scrapbook) it’s a religious book that we do

Thiani explains that this is not an ordinary feather but a peacock’s feather in Tamil (line 2) and that it is associated with Lord Murugan (lines 8–9). Moreover, the fact that her brother, Tianan, found the feather at the Thirukoneswaram Temple, which is an important Hindu/Saiva site of worship, amplifies the sacred connection between the peacock feather and the God (lines 11–14). When asked why she stuck the feather on the cover of the scrapbook, Thiani comments on the religious significance of her brother’s finding and on its appropriateness for the scrapbook cover because, as she explains, the scrapbook they are making is “a religious book” (lines 18–21). In her explanation, Thiani brings together and syncretises a wealth of linguistic, religious and symbolic resources and knowledge to transform the peacock feather and by extension the scrapbook from everyday, mundane objects to religious ones. In this process of sanctification, she combines two sets of linguistic resources: English, the language she is most articulate in to provide her explanation, and Tamil, the language she strategically deploys for key concepts associated with her faith. Through the flexible juxtaposition of both languages, Thiani expresses her developing understanding of her faith and membership in the Hindu/Saiva community. She also draws on her religious knowledge of the special place Lord Murugan, often referred to as Tamil Kadavul (Tamil God), has in Tamil mythology. It is believed that when He wishes to make Himself known, he may appear to devotees in the form of a colourful peacock feather or in a vision of a peacock with its tail raised. Thiani uses the possessive pronoun twice (“it’s Murugan’s vahanam (vehicle/ mount)”, lines 8 and 20) to index the sacred connection between the peacock feather and the God. Similar to Zulmy’s scrapbook drawings and their spiritual meanings, in Reyes (2009), the peacock feather becomes a symbolic representation of the children’s religious and ethnic identities where Saivaism is intricately linked to Tamil ethnicity. Moreover, the peacock feather on the cover of the scrapbook triggers ties of memory that unite the children’s religious pilgrimages and visits to neighbourhood Temples in Sri Lanka with their religious experiences of Temple worship in London, crafting threads of continuity across different geographic spaces and interactional moments. Our focus on the peacock feather, or Pahl and Rowsell’s (2011) focus on Ruksana’s family suitcase, allow us to trace and foreground connections between objects and their stories, which may, otherwise, remain less visible.

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 151 By uniting the material with the situated, for Thiani and Tianan, the story of the peacock feather invokes tales of migration and visits to the country of origin, religious and ethnic belonging with personal and collective resonances. Drawing of the Sri Murugan Temple in Glitter In one of the scrapbook entries, with the help of her mother, Thiani has drawn the Temple her family worships in and has decorated it with red, gold and silver glitter. First, her mother drew the basic outline of the Temple, and then Thiani added certain architectural features inspired by the monumental structure of the London Sri Murugan Temple, such as the vertical and horizontal carvings on the gopuram (tower-like structure) and the steps on either side of the entrance to the Temple. Hindu Temples are characterised by their symmetry-driven structure, which her mother has faithfully reproduced in the basic outline of the Temple and Thiani has also employed in the architectural features she has added as well as in her application of glitter in blocks of colours, the latter alluding to the grandeur and opulence of the interior of the Temple. Scaffolded by her mother, Thiani draws on and creatively combines an array of artistic, cultural and symbolic knowledge informed by her experiences of the monumental architectural style of Hindu Temples in Sri Lanka and in London to create her visual representation of the Sri Murugan Temple. Underneath her artwork, she has written: “I go to the Temple singing”, underlying the main act of collective praying she engages in, the singing of Thevarams, and her emotional stance, as attending Temple is represented as both a spiritual and an enjoyable activity. As we have showed in our previous work using the theoretical lens of syncretism, Thiani’s text-making shows how “children pick and choose from a whole variety of resources to create personal sense and meaning in their lives” (Gregory et al. 2013b, 342). Upon Arani’s request, Thiani starts describing her drawing of the Temple. Excerpt 2: The Temple 1 Thiani: 2 3 4 5

this is the picture that I drew my mum helped me my mum just drew the outline and then I remembered, I remembered in our Kovil (Temple) we have some kind of sharp bits at the top (pointing to her drawing) 6 and there are some lines that go (pointing to her drawing horizontally) 7 Tianan: It’s called a gopuram (tower) 8 Thiani: here there is a big door 9 at the side there is some court 10 and then if you go around the Temple 11 there is an eating area

Figure 8.3 Drawing of the Sri Murugan Temple in glitter

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 153 12 13 Arani: 14 15 Thiani: 16 Tianan: 17 18 19

and then there is a car park area as well so the Temple is quite modern isn’t it? Yeah, how does it look inside? it looks massive there are some (her brother overlaps) there are decorations there are decorations of flowers there is rangoli patterns on the floor I see people worshipping the koveram (he means to say gopuram [tower] as he said earlier) 20 while they are outside 21 Arani: how do they do that? 22 Thiani: they go on the floor 23 Tianan: (demonstrating the gesture) they put their hands above their heads 24 they put their hands together 25 or they sometimes pray on the floor, 26 they lie on the floor and pray 27 Arani: do you see that symbol on the floor (pointing to the opposite page which has a drawing of the swastika5) 28 the rangoli patterns 29 the swastika? 30 Thiani: yeah you know when you go up the steps 31 there is some kind of circle something when you walk 32 Tianan: That’s a rangoli pattern 33 Thiani: the stone 34 Arani: the stone circle on the step 35 What do you do? Do you touch it and pray to it? 36 Thiani: the boys like (demonstrating how boys prostrate) 37 and the girls do something else Thiani and her brother Tianan verbally co-construct and elaborate on the description of the Temple by overlapping and latching onto each other’s utterances while pointing to and making references to specific architectural features in Thiani’s artwork. They describe its monumental structure, which combines features from Hindu Temple architecture with modern conveniences, such as a purpose-built dining area on the side for devotees to share a meal after their prayers and a car park at the back (lines 1–12) and its interior with the rangoli patterns, the decorative designs of simple geometric shapes and flowers on the Temple floor (lines 16–18). Prompted by Arani, the siblings demonstrate through bodily postures and gestures some of the different forms of prayer they have observed, such as devotees prostrating on the floor or joining the palms of their hands over their heads (lines 21–26). Prayer is fundamental in Hinduism because it is believed to lead to spiritual enlightenment. As Baquedano-López (2001) remarks: “Prayers are

154 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan inherently transcendent in that they are always directed to a superior being with whom humans seek to align” (193). On the one hand, prayer in Hinduism can be tightly scripted and gender-specific, with some prayer routines reserved for specific deities: for instance, touching one’s earlobes and slightly pulling them downwards to pray to Lord Ganesh; and on the other hand, it can be highly individualised. Men and women, boys and girls mingle freely and worship together. Moreover, prayer is mediated through sacred objects, such as the stone circle on the top step of the Temple steps Thiani and Tianan touch with their hands and pray to before they enter the Temple (lines 30–37). The stone circle represents the threshold entrance of the Temple and is thus treated with reverence. From a young age Hindu/Saiva children are introduced to holy objects, some of which they see, some they touch with their hands and then place their hands on their closed eyes, and others they use, like holy ash, flowers, fruit and food. These objects are central to prayer performed by priests in the Temple as well as by family members at home in specially constructed prayer altars. Through their religious socialisation children learn how to visually read the importance and use of religious objects and learn also the symbolism connected to the objects. We observed that for the children in our study, the Temple is primarily associated with prayer, a place where children observe, practice and perform acts of devotion. In addition to “leaning how to pray”, as Thiani elaborates in her interview with Arani Ilankuberan, children learn “what not to do and what to do”, including “not running around”. Thiani further explains that “we used to run around me and my brother but now we don’t because my [faith] teacher told me”. In religious education classes and at home, children are being taught to cultivate age-appropriate embodied and emotional stances during Temple worship in order to become expert members of the faith community. The development of these stances resonates with the idea of cultivating a “prayful attitude” to children which “enables one to communicate with God and be in a position to receive Grace” (Capps and Ochs 2002, 40). As Capps and Ochs (2002) illustrate in their study of children’s socialisation into prayer in Euro-American Christian families, “attitude is a frame of heart and mind, which itself requires work to achieve” (Capps and Ochs 2002). It requires “a state of readiness” for collective prayer expressed through “being seated, heads bowed, eyes closed, hands either clasped or extended to others around the table, sign of the cross” (41). While Thiani and Tianan’s younger selves were allowed to “run around”, as they progress along their religious socialisation trajectory, children are expected to show respect and restraint and come to recognise that the Temple is a holy place. The children’s internalisation of the Temple as a sacred place, which is linked to the cultivation of appropriate dispositions and attitudes towards oneself and others, is reiterated across their scrapbook entries. For instance, Thiani records: “In the temple I’m feeling calm and peaceful. In the temple first I pray [to] Pillaiyar [Lord Ganesh] then I pray [to the] rest of god”. In

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 155 his entry on his religion, Tianan pens: “We worship in temple which is a holy place for Hindus. We never make fun of other religions and won’t hurt other people[’s] feelings”. Both fragments from the children’s scrapbook entries illustrate the children’s emotional investment and the positioning of the self within in a religious framework, the feelings of calmness and peacefulness they experience when worshipping at the Temple and the respect they learn to foster for others’ religious beliefs and feelings.

Concluding Discussion The children’s recurring representations of the Temple in their scrapbooks and the stories and explanations they elicited after their completion are evidence of its centrality in their everyday lives. The scrapbook entries attested to the role of the Temple as a powerful symbol for what it means to belong to the Hindu/Saiva faith community. Through iterative visits to the Temple, children participated in culturally valued practices and routines mediated by symbols and sacred objects and rooted in enduring cross-generational relationships with expert members of the faith community, their parents, grandparents, faith teachers and priests. Combining theoretical insights from syncretic literacies, multimodality and artefactual literacies, we illustrated, how, for instance, Thiani and Tianan learned to read the peacock feather found in the Temple court as a manifestation of Lord Murugan, which had the power to transform an everyday object into a religious one. We also demonstrated how the children come to associate the Temple with a holy place, a place for worship, where they are taught to cultivate age-appropriate embodied and emotional stances. Through the children’s text-making, we traced how the children came to develop what Peele-Eady has referred to as “a membership identity”, that is, “an identity of knowing how to be a member and how to do memberlike things” (2011: 57): for example, gender-specific ways of praying and interacting with sacred objects at the Temple. Moreover, we showed how their membership in the Hindu/ Saiva faith community was intertwined with their Tamil linguistic, cultural and ethnic heritage, creating ties of memory across continents and generations and providing threads of continuity in the children’s religious socialisation across the home, the religious education classes and the Temple, while simultaneously being grounded in the local London context. In terms of language use, this was manifested through the children’s flexible juxtaposition of English, the language they were most comfortable with to talk about their religious experiences, and Tamil, the language they used strategically for key concepts associated with their faith, such as when they were referring to the symbolic relationship between the peacock feather and Lord Murugan or when they were describing particular architectural features of the Temple. In our work, we have advocated the importance of developing more childfriendly methodologies that privilege the children’s voices and experiences. We found that our use of scrapbooks and the subsequent conversations they

156 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan elicited contributed to our building of collaborative relations with the children and their families and making their voices visible and audible with the purpose of “working with [emphasis in the original] rather than in parallel to our participants” (Gregory and Ruby 2011: 171). A crucial question that arises from our investigation of the children’s representations of the Temple in their text-making is to what extent and in what ways this wealth of religious knowledge of symbols, rituals, practices, beliefs and dispositions, as well this rich treasure trove of linguistic, cultural, aesthetic and historical resources, travel into mainstream classrooms and might contribute to students’ academic success. Recent work by Damico and Hall (2014), for instance, has shown how guided by their African-American teacher, Darrin and Dwayne, two African-American fifth-graders in a language arts classroom, used their religious knowledge and experience as a lens to make sense of the legacy of systemic racism in American society and interpret current injustices perpetrated against young Black males by White male police officers. The authors cogently argue for teachers to recognise the learning potential of pupils’ religious knowledge and experiences so as to “capitalize on teachable moments in the curriculum when religious knowledge or experience might be crucial to more deeply engaging academic content. This includes not only helping students understand and value the ways that their religious frames are important and powerful; it must also involve helping them understand the potential constraints and limitations of these frames” (196). Concurring with Damico and Hall (2014, 189), we regard the opening of such instructional spaces as “culturally response teaching”, where pupils can draw from myriad forms of linguistic, cultural, aesthetic and historical resources, as well as family and community knowledge, for thinking and learning and to enrich their academic performance (see Gay 2010 for further discussion).

Acknowledgements We thank all the children and their families, especially Thiani and Tianan and their family, as well as the faith leaders and faith teachers for their warm welcome in the four faith settings. We also thank the other members of the BeLiFS team: Olga Barradas, Halimun Choudhury, John Jessel, Amoafi Kwapong, Charmian Kenner, Mahera Ruby, Ana Souza and Malgorzata Woodham. This chapter emerges from a larger study on “Becoming literate through faith: Language and literacy learning in the lives of new Londoners”, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (ESRC, RES-062–23–1613). This support is duly acknowledged.

Notes 1. Saivaism is a branch of Hinduism. Saivaites believe that Lord Siva is the ultimate deity and all other deities are avatars; that is, an incarnation or manifestation of Him.

Children’s Representations of the Temple in Text and Talk 157 2. Scrapbooks are personal notebooks where children record their own thoughts, narratives and feelings about their faith as well as enter their photographs and artwork associated with their faith (see www.belifs.co.uk for examples of all the children’s scrapbooks). 3. The children chose these names as pseudonyms. 4. The children’s mother was in and out of the room during the discussion. She volunteered information when the children were unsure or had forgotten something. For instance, in line 12, she procures the name of the Temple in Sri Lanka where the peacock feather was found. 5. In Hinduism, the swastika is an auspicious symbol commonly used in art, architecture and decoration.

References Baquedano-López, Patricia. 2001. “Prayer.” In Key Terms in Language and Culture edited by Alessandro Duranti, 193–196. Malden, Mass: Blackwell. David, Ann. 2006. “Questions of Politics or Faith? Dance and Ritual Practice as a Signifying Factor in Sri Lankan Tamil Political and Religious Identity.” Paper presented at the CRONEM Conference, Roehampton University. Damico, James S. and Ted Hall. 2014. “The Cross and the Lynching Tree: Exploring Religion and Race in the Elementary Classroom.” Language Arts 92(3): 187–198. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Gay, Geneva. 2010. Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Gregory, Eve, Dinah Volk and Susi Long. 2013a. “Introduction: Syncretism and Syncretic Literacies.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13(3): 309–321. Gregory, Eve, John Jessel, Charmian Kenner, Vally Lytra and Mahera Ruby. 2009. Becoming Literate through Faith: Language and Literacy Learning in the Lives of New Londoners (ESRC, RES-062–23–1613). Gregory, Eve and Mahera Ruby. 2011. “The ‘Insider/Outsider’ Dilemma of Ethnography. Working with Young Children and Their Families.” Journal of Early Childhood Research 9(2): 162–174. Gregory, Eve, Vally Lytra and Arani Ilankuberan. 2015. “Divine Games and Rituals: How Tamil Saiva/Hindu Siblings Internalise Their Faith Through Play.” International Journal of Play 4(1): 69–83. Gregory, Eve, Vally Lytra, Arani Ilankuberan, Halimun Choudhury and Malgorzata Woodham. 2012. “Translating Faith: Field Narratives as a Means of Dialogue in Collaborative Ethnographic Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 11(3): 196–213. Gregory, Eve, Vally Lytra, Halimun Choudhury, Arani Ilankuberan, Amoafi Kwapong and Malgorzata Woodham. 2013b. “Syncretism as a Creative Act of Mind: The Narratives of Children from Four Faith Communities in London.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13(3): 322–347. London Sri Murugan Temple Maha Kumbhabishekam [Temple Commemorative Book]. 2005. South India: Golden. Literat, Ioana. 2013. “A Pencil for Your Thoughts: Participatory Drawing as a Visual Research Method with Children and Youth.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 12: 84–98. Lytra, Vally, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan. Forthcoming 2015. “Researching Children’s Literacy Practices and Identities in Faith Settings: Multimodal Text-Making and Talk about Text as Resources for Knowledge Building.” In

158 Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Arani Ilankuberan Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Approaches edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones and Deirdre Martin. Oxon: Routledge. Ochs, Elinor and Lisa Capps. 2002. “Cultivating Prayer.” In The Language of Turn and Sequence edited by Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox and Sandra Thompson, 35–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pahl, Kate and Jenifer Rowsell, eds. 2006. Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pahl, Kate and Jenifer Rowsell. 2011. “Artifactual Critical Literacy: A New Perspective for Literacy Education.” Berkeley Review of Education 2(2): 129–151. Reyes, Cynthia. 2009. “El Libro de Recuerdos (Book of Memories): A Latina Student’s Exploration of the Self and Religion in Public School.” Research in the Teaching of English 43(3): 263–285. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia. 2011. “Constructing Membership Identity through Language and Social Interaction: The Case of African American Children at Faith Missionary Baptist Church.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 42(1): 54–75. Pietikäinen, Sari. 2012. “Experiences and Expressions of Multilingualism: Visual Ethnography and Discourse Analysis in Research with Sámi Children.” In Multilingualism, Discourse, and Ethnography edited by Sheena Gardner and Marilyn Martin-Jones, 163–178. Oxon: Routledge. Tay-Lim, Joanna and Sirene Lim. 2013. “Privileging Younger Children’s Roices in Research: Use of Drawings and a Co-construction Process.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 12: 65–83.

Part III

Bridging Home, School and Community

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9

Joseph . . . Yousouf Changing Names, Navigating Spaces, Articulating Identities Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally

It is 6:15 am. The four of us are sitting at the kitchen table, having breakfast, shortly after having said Fajr prayers.1 Speaking in French, Halimah asks her sister where she has kept her madrassah textbook, Qisasul Ambiya: Le Livre des prophetes (The Book of the Prophets). As soon as Halimah finishes eating her cereal, she rummages through her sister’s madrassah bag, finds the book and sits back at table with us. She scans the table of contents and quickly turns to the chapter on Hazratt Yousouf. She silently peruses the story of the life of Hazratt Yousouf, a text written in unstandardised Kreol. After reading it, she asks her father, in French, whether he knew that “Joseph”, the central character of her school play, is in fact “Hazratt Yousouf”. Responding to her in Kreol, her father tells her that he was not aware of this and prompts her to talk about the story she has just read. She then narrates, in French, the story of the Judeo-Christian prophet, Joseph—Hazratt Yousouf. (Field notes, 14 March 2013)

This chapter is about Halimah (pseudonym), a citizen of multicultural and multi-faith2 Mauritius, where the Constitution respects and protects ethno-religious diversity and where people of different ethno-religious communities have co-existed in relative peace and harmony since independence (1968). Since birth Halimah has been exposed to national (political) discourses of acceptance, tolerance and celebration of diversity, as reflected in popular local catchphrases such as “unity in diversity” and “rainbow nation”, used to describe the Mauritian nation. Indeed, Ng Tseung-Wong (2013) suggests that it is almost normative for Mauritians to socially perform this acceptance of tolerance of diversity in public spaces (workplaces, schools), although this may not always be the case in private spaces (homes) or in semi-private spaces (in-group social functions). Destined to live “everyday multiculturalism” (Lallmahomed-Aumeerally, 2014: 121) in a plural and insular society, Halimah (as are all Mauritian citizens) has been socialised into performing socially appropriate behaviours in public spaces. Halimah is my nine-year-old second-born daughter. She comes from a middle-class, French-Kreol bilingual Muslim family, consisting of her father, myself and her thirteen-year-old sister. At the age of four, Halimah started accompanying her elder sister to the madrassah. As part of the madrassah

162 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally community of practice, Halimah is exposed to certain social, language and literacy behaviours and practices. At the madrassah, she is expected to wear a head-dress and sit separately from the boys in class; there, she learns how to read and recite Quranic Arabic and receives religious instruction about important Islamic events and figures from her Kreol-speaking teachers and the Kreol madrassah textbooks. At the age of six, she joined the Roman Catholic fee-paying primary school her sister was at. As part of the school community of practice, she is exposed to a secular curriculum—she is taught English (as a subject and as the written medium of instruction) and French (as a subject), but is immersed in a Roman Catholic Discourse—as revealed by Roman Catholic symbols (the crucifix in all classrooms, statues of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, children and teachers crossing themselves at the morning assembly) and Roman Catholic events (Catechism classes; school mass; Lent, Easter and Christmas celebrations). Halimah’s language and literacy experiences are thus rich and diverse, with some languages associated with specific domains (such as Classical Arabic for the Quran and English as official written medium of instruction) and others cutting across domains (such as Kreol as the home and madrassah language). As part of the school tradition, fifth-year children participate in a mid-year school play. Halimah’s elder sister participated in The Lion King in 2010. In Halimah’s fifth year, her school decided to stage a musical play, Joseph, short for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.3 Between March and June 2013, Halimah prepared for, rehearsed and participated in this play, about the Judeo-Christian prophet, Joseph, who also features in Halimah’s madrassah textbook as Hazratt Yousouf. If the play provided a bridge between Halimah’s Roman Catholic school world and her Islamic madrassah world, with the home lying as an in-between space, Halimah’s journey through the play provided empirical data for a mixed faith situation. Omoniyi (2006: 138) uses the term “mixed faith practices” and provides the example of Muslims attending a Christian school as a situation that can engender “mixed faith” practices. I will here use the term “mixed faith situation” to refer to a micro-context where a Muslim child attends a Roman Catholic school, hence being exposed to various and different religious practices and discourses. In the present study of a “mixed faith” situation, I focus particularly on “focal events” (Agar, 1996), events where Halimah chooses, engages with and uses meaning-making resources to develop her understandings of her self in the different spaces she inhabits and to act thereon. The research questions addressed are: what are the meaning-making resources that Halimah chooses, refers to and uses (or rejects)? How? Why? How do these choices and behaviours reflect her evolving identities within a context which values “unity in diversity”? This study helps throw some light on how a child negotiates and articulates her social identities, and arguably develops her budding sense of self—an individual who is called upon to become a Mauritian Muslim in multi-faith Mauritius.

Joseph . . . Yousouf 163

Theoretical Considerations Informed by early observations of Halimah as she drew upon various meaning-making resources, of which languages and literacies had an important but not an exclusive place, I adopt a multimodal perspective by situating this study at the interstices between a social view of multilingualism, New Literacy Studies and multimodality (Blackledge and Creese, 2010; Flewitt, 2011; Heller, 2007; Lytra, 2012; Pahl and Rowsell, 2006; Street, Pahl and Rowsell, 2009), and a post-structuralist view of identity (Gee, 2000).

A Multimodal Perspective The present study adopts a multimodal perspective, an interdisciplinary perspective that extends the focus of representation and communication from language only to include a multiplicity of meaning-making resources. These resources encapsulate all possible and potential verbal and non-verbal meaning-making and communicational resources, including images, sounds, gestures and postures as well as language in its oral and written modes. Each of these meaning-making resources has its own meaning potential based on its past uses. Hence, these resources are value-laden tools, carriers of culture(s), suffused with locally situated ideologies, beliefs, values and attitudes (Lytra, 2012); they have locally situated social indexes. Jewitt (2009) distinguishes between the denotative and the connotative levels of these resources, using the example of an image of a house (denotation) that symbolises wealth (connotation) in some contexts. Each of these resources also has its own affordances, based on its potential to express and represent meaning in a particular way. As users of meaning-making resources, individuals reveal various levels of intent and agency as they draw from, choose, use, reject and transform these differentially socially valued resources (highly or lowly socially valued), in different domains (home, school, madrassah) or different contexts (regional, national, global), for various purposes (religious or educational tools, identity markers). Such choices can reflect the extent to which individuals are governed by social and cultural norms/values and practices (Flewitt, 2011: 295). In sum, multimodality assumes that all meaning-making resources are socially, culturally, historically and politically shaped and embedded (Jewitt, 2009), and that they contribute to shape the context in which they are used and the identities of those found in these contexts. Using the above conceptual framework to describe and analyse Halimah’s experiences, I am empowered to observe the various meaning-making resources that she is exposed to, that she relates to, draws from, chooses or uses, as she navigates the school, the home and the madrassah. These choices and behaviours can be seen as windows into her emerging and evolving social identities, albeit as possible realisations of a child’s early “acts of identity” (LePage and Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

164 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally Performance: A Window into Social Identities In this study, I draw mainly from Gee’s work, which connects “identities” in its plurality to discourses. Gee (2000: 99) states that “all people have multiple identities connected . . . to their performance in society”. Gee’s conceptualisation of “identities” foregrounds the view that identities are multiple, multifaceted and multidimensional, as well as fluctuating and in constant process of (re)construction and (re)negotiation. Gee also highlights the fact that identities are observable through individuals’ social performances— their social behaviours and their social practices; Roberts (2011: 86) uses the term “performed social identity” to capture this idea. These social performances partly reflect human beings’ agency, their ability to make choices and to resist, negotiate, change and transform themselves and others (Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004). These social performances also partly reflect, and are partly shaped by, the discourses available to them at a particular time and place. Gee (1989: 6) defines Discourse, with a capital “D”, as people’s “ways of being in the world [. . .] forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes”, which are socially recognised and recognisable and, at times, acknowledged through the way people talk about them. Gee suggests that Discourse is socio-culturally situated and shaped and that Discourse is the background against which individuals act, actions which make them socially recognised as a certain kind of person (their social identity). This perspective offers a nuanced and context-sensitive approach to the study of identities as they are expressed, experienced and negotiated through social performance.

Research Design and Methodology: Observing a Muslim Child in a Multi-Faith Context This present chapter reports on a case study of one child’s choice and use of meaning-making resources available to her, during a specific time span—March to June 2013, time during which she prepared for, rehearsed and participated in the school play. This case study can be described as an intrinsic case study (Stake, 2005: 443), which is paradoxically banal and unique. It is banal in its focus on Halimah’s quotidian experiences as she rehearses for the school play. It is, however, unique in its focus on a Muslim child, who is in a mixed faith situation, navigating the micro-contexts of her Roman Catholic school, her madrassah and her home, all of which are firmly situated in a macro-context that tolerates and celebrates diversity. The aim of the case study is, thus, to address the question, “What can be learned from this single intrinsic case?”, rather than an attempt to generalise beyond it. I see this study as a “telling case” (Mitchell, 1984), a case which can “serve to make previously obscure theoretical relationships suddenly apparent” (239).

Joseph . . . Yousouf 165 This intrinsic case study uses an autoethnographic approach, an approach where the researcher is part of the socio-cultural unit she studies, and hence, she is particularly sensitive to the connections between the personal and the cultural (Ellis, Adams and Bochner, 2011). Adopting such an approach, some researchers, such as Bloch (1997), Kennedy and Romo (2013) and Szecsi and Szilagyi (2012), have described and analysed their own children’s language and literacy development. Drawing from this “historically, culturally and personally situated” approach (Gergen and Gergen, 2000: 1028, my emphasis), I engaged in this study as a participant observer, having inseparable roles as mother and researcher. As an insider who had access to the data, I had numerous opportunities for observations of and informal conversations with Halimah. The thirty-minute drive home from school in the afternoon, which always starts with me asking “How was your day at school?”, has been the privileged moment and the discursive space within which Halimah shares the key moments and events of her school day with me. Guided by my research questions, I collected field notes in the form of a log book containing Halimah’s personal narratives and my conversations with her as a mother-researcher, as well as my own participant observations of her private moments at home. I also wrote analytic notes in the margin, as a means to collect my impressions on Halimah’s lived quotidian experiences during the period of observation. Data sieving started a few weeks into data collection, with a particular focus on Halimah’s choices and uses of languages and literacies: the “how” and the “why” of these. However, Halimah’s conversation with me about the significance of “singing and dancing” for her as a Muslim at the time of the first rehearsals (field notes, 25 April 2013) led me to enlarge my conceptual lens to include languages and literacies as parts of multimodal meaning-making resources. Data analysis was cyclical and recursive in nature. As a first step to data analysis, I focused on the theme of “setting”—the physical settings of the school, the madrassah and the home—given the recurrence of this theme in the analytic memo. As I became increasingly aware that each setting in which Halimah evolved shaped her social, linguistic and literacy choices and practices, I narrowed down the analysis, as a second step in the data analysis cycle, by using the concept of “space”. This concept foregrounds the view that different settings have their own rules, resources, communicative and discursive modes, and practices (Jessel et al., 2011: 37). As a final step in data analysis, I referred back to the field notes to identify the “focal events” (Agar, 1996). These “focal events” were conceptualised as events where Halimah chose or used meaning-making resources, with a special interest in events where “a gap, a distance between two worlds” (the school and the madrassah) could be glimpsed (Agar, 1996: 31). During data analysis, an attempt was made to give voice to Halimah, as she reflected on her sense of identity in relation to these salient events. However, given the young age of the informant, I also used an interpretive

166 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally approach (Hatch, 2002), using the reviewed literature and focusing on Halimah’s behaviours as entry points into the analysis.

Data Analysis I start my analysis with focusing on the spaces that inform and constrain Halimah’s choices and uses of meaning-making resources and contribute to shaping her behaviours and identities. I then describe and analyse the “focal events” that illustrate how Halimah refers to, seeks, uses and engages with a range of multimodal resources and performs a range of social identities as she navigates the Roman Catholic school she attends, the madrassah she goes to and her home. This approach to describing the findings—from the macro to the micro—highlights how micro-moments are influenced by the Discourses mediated by the macro-context. Spaces That Create and Constrain Possibilities: The School, the Madrassah, the Home In line with its national aim to maintain diversity, the Mauritian state supports and promotes multilingualism in all local educational institutions, be they formal and mainstream (government or private schools) or semi-formal and peripheral (madrassahs). For Halimah, the school and the madrassah are the two regulated public spaces where she is exposed to a range of meaning-making resources, which include language and literacy practices. While the school’s practices are framed by the national curriculum and a Roman Catholic school ethos, the madrassah’s practices are framed by the madrassah curriculum and the madrassah ethos. As student in a Roman Catholic private primary school recognised by the Mauritian state, Halimah is taught two European languages that are compulsory in the national curriculum: English (as subject and medium of instruction) and French (as subject). However, this school does not provide for the teaching of any of the optional ancestral languages (such as Hindi, Urdu, Modern Arabic, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Mandarin and, since 2012, Kreol Morisien), which are perceived as “markers of religious and ethnic identity” (Rajah-Carrim, 2005). Despite its widespread use as one of the home languages by the population (80% in 2000 and 87.4% in 2011), Kreol—a French-based creole born as a result of language contact on the plantation island of Mauritius—has long been excluded from the mainstream education system as subject or medium of instruction, largely because of its historical association with descendants of the enslaved (most of whom have African phenotypes and were converted to Roman Catholicism by the French-speaking plantocracy). In 2012, the school subject Kreol Morisien was introduced in the national curriculum, after a state-sanctioned orthography was assigned to it in 2004. However, the status of Kreol Morisien as an optional language, timetabled at the same time as the other ancestral

Joseph . . . Yousouf 167 languages, has foregrounded its ethnic identity, rather than its national identity. By being sent to this particular school, Halimah has de facto foregone the learning of any of the optional ancestral languages, limiting her language and literacy repertoires and contributing to creating certain language and literacy ideologies and hierarchies. As a student in a Roman Catholic education institution, which is open to children of all faiths, Halimah is immersed in a Roman Catholic Discourse at school. Furthermore, in terms of oral language practices, Halimah is exposed to French as the dominant language of communication in teacher-teacher, teacher-student and student-student interactions. Although Kreol is the common language of oral support and communication in most primary schools in Mauritius (Rajah-Carrim, 2007), Kreol is rarely used in Halimah’s school, although it is tolerated on the playground where children will sometimes use their home language during playtime. This dominance of French, as part of the school ethos, is a remnant of a historical past: French has been the language of the Roman Catholic Church since French colonial times (the second half of the nineteenth century) and the language of the white Franco-Mauritians who attended the few private schools, under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church, until education was democratised and made free in the 1970s (Baggioni and de Robillard, 1990: 31). Within multilingual Mauritius, this Roman Catholic school maintains and reinforces the existing diglossic relationship between French and Kreol, shaping Halimah’s language and literacy ideologies, values and beliefs. As a student in a peripheral religious education institution, Halimah is exposed to the madrassah curriculum. Having a clear Islamic agenda, the madrassah curriculum places special emphasis on Quranic Arabic instruction and religious instruction, although it also offers Modern Arabic and Urdu as optional subjects. Quranic Arabic instruction includes the reading, memorisation and recitation of the Quran, using the proper pronunciation. Religious instruction about important prophets, as well as religious events, traditions and practices, is provided through locally produced textbooks written in unstandardised Kreol (cf. Auleear Owodally, 2011). These madrassah textbooks, written in unstandardised Kreol with switches to Urdu/Modern Arabic words (spelt in the Roman alphabet) and interspersed with Quranic texts (Quranic Arabic texts followed by transliterations and translations), were produced and widely circulated in the madrassah since the mid-1990s, predating by a decade the official standardisation of Kreol. Unlike the school Halimah attends, the madrassah that she goes to makes optimal use of Kreol as the main language of teaching, learning and interaction (oral and written forms). As a peripheral semi-formal education institutional space, the madrassah has opened up other language and literacy possibilities, ideologies and Discourses for Halimah, different from those she is immersed in at the Roman Catholic school she attends. At the confluence between the school and the madrassah is the home, which provides a third space for Halimah to choose from, explore and use a

168 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally range of meaning-making resources, as well as experiment and engage with them. In Halimah’s home, French-Kreol bilingualism and French-English biliteracy dominate, Kreol literacy is mediated only through the madrassah textbooks, Quranic literacy is valued and respected through the recitation of the Quran and the performance of salaat (the ritual prayer of Muslims, performed five times daily in a set form), while digital literacies are submitted to some degree of surveillance. Although the home offers a safe and free third space, it still has its own internal structure and internal dynamics, with its own possibilities and limitations. The school, the madrassah and the home are the three spaces that Halimah navigates and which frame her socialisation process and identity development, sometimes giving rise to moments of tension. Sustained by its own implicit or explicit norms, inherited from past (colonial) practices or construed in a more recent past, each space is imbued with its own stock of knowledge, assumptions, beliefs, ideologies, values and Discourses, which open up or constrain opportunities for Halimah’s identity construction. “Focal Events”: Shifting Behaviours, Actors and Discourses The “focal events” in Halimah’s journey through the school play illustrate her choices and uses of, as well as her engagement with, various meaningmaking resources available to her, as she navigates the different spaces she inhabits. When her schoolteachers decided to stage Joseph, they first projected a French film adaptation of the story to familiarise the children with the storyline. Halimah reports that, on first viewing the film, she immediately connected the film narrative with a story she had read, earlier in the year, in a madrassah textbook belonging to her sister (field notes, 13 March 2013). She had then silently read the whole textbook out of personal interest; she had also read aloud some passages to her father at the breakfast table or to her imaginary students in her pretend playtime as a madrassah teacher. On noticing the similarity between the film viewed at school and a passage in her sister’s madrassah textbook read earlier that same year, Halimah reports that she talked about it in all confidence to one of her school friends, also a Muslim. Her friend acquiesced that Joseph is, indeed, Hazratt Yousouf. As a parenthesis, when I asked Halimah how she greets this friend at school, she says they greet each other with a “Hi!” or a nod; however, when they phone each other from home, they use the Islamic “salaam” as greeting. As shown in the opening vignette of this chapter, the next morning, after breakfast, Halimah looked for the madrassah textbook in her sister’s madrassah bag and she reread the story, glad to confirm that Joseph and Hazratt Yousouf are the same persona (field notes, 14 March 2013). This religious connection relieved Halimah of her initial anxiety to participate in the play, an anxiety apparently linked to the madrassah, which constructs singing, dancing and television watching as mundane, unimportant, un-Islamic activities. This

Joseph . . . Yousouf 169 relief she expressed especially towards her father, whom she describes as “un petit peu religieux” (a bit of a religious figure). In many of her subsequent references to the character of Joseph, she used the Islamic name Yousouf, a naming practice which may reveal Halimah’s foregrounding of her Muslim identity within the home space. Although the Joseph-Yousouf connection provided a bridge between the school and the madrassah worlds, Halimah acknowledged this connection only to her family members and her Muslim school friend. Once Halimah’s singing teacher asked her whether Joseph is also present in Islamic texts. Halimah reports that she simply said yes, without volunteering further information and without considering taking her madrassah textbook to school. This latter possibility, Halimah clearly explained, was never an option for her for several reasons (field notes, 24 April 2013). First, the front cover of the madrassah textbook has an Urdu inscription and the textbook is written exclusively in Kreol, a language that is only tolerated as an oral mode of communication among the school children on the school playground. Second, in the madrassah textbook, the prophets’ names are always followed by the term of respect: “Alai-assalam”. Third, the madrassah textbook concludes the story of each of the Prophet’s life stories with a didactic phrase, “Sa li enn bon l’example pou bane musulmans” (this is a good example for Muslims)—identifying this book as directed to a Muslim audience. Finding the madrassah textbook to be inappropriate for her school world, she excluded it from the school space. Sensitive to the school (language and literacy) norms and practices, Halimah did not entertain the prospect of making the Joseph-Yousouf connection known at school. Conversely, if at school, Halimah talked about Yousouf to no other than her Muslim school friend, at the madrassah, she never mentioned her participation in the school musical play. When asked about this, she said that talking about the play at the madrassah would make her “avoir honte” (make her feel shy and embarrassed); she added that she did not feel she had to do so. On the two days of the show (10–11 June 2013), Halimah missed madrassah; however, when asked about her absences by her madrassah teacher, she apologised, saying that she had gone out, but she did not say a word about the play (field notes, 12 June 2013). It appears that for her, the school world and the madrassah world were quite separate and that she navigated these two spaces without feeling the need to make them connect, even when the opportunity arose. As preliminary preparations for the play were under way, Halimah started learning the songs, which had been translated from the original English version into French by her music teachers. At the time of the auditions for choral singers and the lead roles, Halimah talked about her anxiety in case of selection, given that these roles include singing and dancing in public. In one conversation, Halimah recalls an episode when she was seven years old (field notes, 27 March 2013). The teacher had asked her to dance in class and she had refused on account that “ma religion ne me permet pas de danser” (my religion does not allow me to dance). The anti-dancing Islamic

170 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally Discourse, which she has been socialised into at home and at the madrassah, has influenced her personal beliefs about the implications of dancing as a meaning-making resource (Jewitt, 2009). To her relief, the school assigned her a minor role as a child in the play, a role where what she calls “proper” dancing was not involved. On the days of the show (10–11 June 2013), I observed her small, timid and discreet dance steps as she performed on stage. Halimah was also relieved that her part did not involve any costumes that would show her body. When the teacher took the children to the costume room to select their costumes, Halimah first opted for an Indian-style top and long skirt, since she likes this style, she is used to it and it is a style where she feels that she is properly covered. However, the costume had to be given to another friend, so she opted for bell trousers and a long top (field notes, 14 May 2013). For Halimah, dance steps and costumes are multimodal resources, with meaning potential and connotational layers; her choice of taking timid dance steps or her choice of costume might reveal her attempt to put across meaning about her self and to articulate her ethno-religious identity within a public space. As new French-medium songs were being taught for the play, Halimah developed a liking for one of them, “Any Dream Will Do”. One afternoon (field notes, 23 May 2013), as I walked into the open space of her father’s study to check on her as she was using the laptop, I found Halimah watching a video clip on YouTube. The clip she was viewing was the original English version of “Any Dream Will Do”, with the lyrics scrolling on screen in synchronicity with the song being sung. Halimah explained that when she had typed the song title in the search bar of YouTube, a number of clips had appeared and she had selected that particular one because it included the lyrics typed in English. This multimodal digital literacy resource helped her better understand the meaning of the song, given her status as a learner of English as a foreign language; it also responded to her desire to verify whether the French version she was learning at school was faithful in meaning to the original English version. For Halimah, YouTube was one of the various literacy resources available in the home context—an unofficial resource, which arrived from “other places” (Brandt and Clinton, 2002: 343) and yet which connected her to her school world and which she used to satisfy her curious mind. Conversely, Halimah did not attempt to use the internet to look up translations of Surah Yousouf, which her sister had told her was the same as the character in the school play and which Halimah herself recalled having read in its Quranic Arabic version at the madrassah (field notes, 27 May 2013). In a conversation with me, Halimah stated that it would be too difficult for her to understand the meaning of the Quran in translation. It can be argued that the madrassah Discourse, which values the Quran in its original form, might have shaped Halimah’s acceptance of the “reading” of the Quran without attempting to understand the content, despite her familiarity with the narrative through the school play and the madrassah textbook.

Joseph . . . Yousouf 171

Discussion The foregoing description and analysis of Halimah’s behaviours (choices and uses of meaning-making resources) reveal the nuanced ways in which she articulates and negotiates her social identities in various micro-contexts. In the coming section, I argue that Halimah’s behaviours show how she uses compartmentalisation as a strategy to manage multiple identity options, with moments of tension that she negotiates. I also argue that the meaning-making resources she is exposed to and uses carry meaning potential that influence her behaviours and impact her identity negotiation. Brought up and socialised in a multicultural, multi-faith and multilingual context where meaning-making resources are often associated with specific spaces and have particular social indexes, Halimah seems to have compartmentalised her behaviours. She has a set of particular and differential behaviours for each of the two public spaces she inhabits. Halimah refers to and uses whatever languages and literacies she recognises as the school/ madrassah norm within these spaces, oftentimes exhibiting conscious efforts to keep these two worlds, and the practices associated with them, separate. Her categorical refusal to take her Kreol-written madrassah textbook to school, or her refusal to talk about her participation in the Joseph school play at the madrassah, reveals her sense of discomfort and embarrassment at the thought of leaking behaviours or practices from one world into the other. It seems that she has consciously selected her social and language/ literacy practices with respect to what she believes counts as appropriate behaviours and dispositions in the school and the madrassah. This compartmentalisation strategy, where she attempts to de-emphasise her Muslim-ness at school and to de-emphasise her connection with a Roman Catholic world at the madrassah, might reflect or result from her attempt at managing multiple identity options in her own context. Jaspal and Cinnirella (2010), who study British South Asian gay Muslims, also refer to compartmentalisation as a coping strategy to manage multiple identities, which can be conflicting identities. By compartmentalising her behaviours, and by extension her social identities, Halimah projects a particular social image of herself at the school and madrassah, an image that makes her socially accepted in each of these spaces. By speaking only French at school and by investing herself fully in the school play, she asserts herself as a member of the school community of practices and is recognised and accepted as such by the school community. In parallel, by speaking only Kreol at the madrassah and by avoiding any mention of Joseph (the prophet or the play) to her madrassah teachers or friends, she asserts herself as a member of the madrassah community of practices and is recognised and accepted as such by the madrassah community. Interestingly, as a member of these two communities of practices simultaneously, Halimah maintains a sense of belonging and cultivates a feeling of inclusion to each of these two communities and she flows in and out of

172 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally these communities, depending on the physical context and on the social actors present. Halimah’s performance of her identities, through her choices and behaviours at school and at the madrsssah, reveals a degree of flexibility as she moves across these spaces, and her ability to live in “simultaneous worlds” (cf. Kenner, 2004). Compartmentalising does not, however, exclude moments of tension that Halimah negotiates. One such moment is the scene in the school play where she is expected to take a few dance steps. Torn between the connotations of the dancing step as a Western, non-Muslim practice, and the importance of these same steps for the performance of the scene she is part of, Halimah finds an in-between solution: she attempts slow and timid pseudo-dance movements and steps. Similarly, when Halimah has to select a costume for the school play, she chooses one which covers her body. In both instances, where Halimah negotiates her social behaviours, her choices can be seen as “acts of identity” as a Muslim; they are focal events where she articulates her Muslim identity, despite being in the non-Muslim school context. More fluid and porous than the school and madrassah, the home can be seen a third space that offers Halimah opportunities to explore and experiment with a larger variety of meaning-making resources, such as the laptop. Compared to the school and the madrassah, this “third space” provides her with relatively more privacy and freedom (cf. Jessel et al., 2011). In the Kreol-French bilingual home setting, Halimah feels comfortable and confident with exploring the Kreol madrassah textbook and engaging with it at the breakfast table with family members, talking about the school play and its songs, asking questions about the lives of prophets or surfing YouTube for the lyrics of her favourite song. At home, Halimah seems to feel less constrained in her behaviours or less attentive to the need to compartmentalise. However, this does not mean that the home is de facto a totally unconstrained space. Halimah’s personal relationship with her father, whom she perceives as a religious person, shapes the way in which she describes herself and her participation in the school play. While the fact of playing in a Judeo-Christian play made her participation, as a Muslim daughter vis-à-vis her father, more acceptable to her, her having to perform by singing and dancing was still at odds with the religious discourse she had been exposed to in the home space. Hence, the social actors found in the home space do act, to a certain extent, as restrictive agents. Irrespective of the spaces in which Halimah chose to engage with the various meaning-making resources available to her, these resources have their own meaning potential, their temporal and material qualities, which also contributed to and constrained Halimah’s developing choice and use of them. The madrassah textbook as an artefact—a traditional print text, with a non-secular-looking front cover, written in unstandardised Kreol and printed locally—has physical and linguistic particularities, which confined its use to Halimah’s home and the madrassah. Conversely, the dancing steps—a meaning-making resource with secular or Western connotative

Joseph . . . Yousouf 173 undertones—taught to Halimah at school was also confined to the school, since dancing as a meaning-making and aesthetic resource was not part of the madrassah or home set-up. As for YouTube, a digital resource that Halimah has access to at home, it also has built-in meaning-making potential that influenced Halimah. As a modern multimodal digital literacy resource, a repository of international popular culture foregrounding songs, colours and music, YouTube was highly appealing to Halimah. This explains why she regularly watched her favourite video clip online. This multimodal tool, which reflects a contemporary world of secular entertainment and fun, inevitably carries with it Western value-laden Discourses, often in opposition to the more conservative home and madrassah Discourses. This might explain Halimah’s discretion when surfing on YouTube. Halimah’s choice of meaning-making resources, as well as the social performance of her identities at school, in the madrassah and at home, were shaped by the physical and human resources in those spaces, the broader social and cultural influences (Flewitt, 2011: 308) and the meaning potential of these resources.

Conclusion This intrinsic case study has revealed the ways in which Halimah draws upon the multimodal resources available to her within the various spaces she inhabits to make sense of, to articulate and to navigate herself in a mixed faith context. This study has also shown how Halimah compartmentalises her social, language and literacy behaviours and practices, learning to navigate multiple social identities in order to be socially accepted as a Mauritian Muslim destined to live in a multi-faith society and in a mixed faith context. It might be important for educational institutions, through intercultural and interfaith workshops for staff members, to develop their staff’s awareness of children’s complex social identity and their expressions of it through their use of and engagement with multimodal resources. Such an awareness might help children develop a sense of self in symbiosis with a sense of belonging to the various spaces they inhabit and navigate, in multi-faith, multicultural and multilingual contexts. The present chapter has contributed to our emerging understandings of the complex subjective experiences of children living in multi-faith and mixed faith milieus. Further qualitative research studies might reveal other strategies used by young children living everyday multi-faithism in contexts characterised by cultural and religious diversity.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my father, Afjul Auleear, and my friends, Naseem Lallmahomed-Aumeerally, Caroline Ng Tseung-Wong and Sanju Unjore, for their insightful comments.

174 Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally

Notes 1. Also known as the “dawn prayer”, the Fajr prayer is the first of the five daily prayers offered by practising Muslims before sunrise. 2. Given that the concept of multifaith has been described “opaque and contentious” (Modood et al., 2010), I will use the term multi-faith (with a hyphen) to refer to the presence of multiple faiths/religions in society. 3. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat is the musical interpretation of the biblical story of Joseph, whose father gives him a multicoloured coat, symbol of his preference for Joseph. Jealous of their father’s love for Joseph, his eleven brothers sell Joseph as a slave. As an Egyptian slave, Joseph raises in his master’s esteem for his skill at interpreting dreams, and reaches the Pharaoh’s court. By interpreting the Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph saves Egypt from famine.

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Joseph . . . Yousouf 175 Kennedy, Kimberley D., and Harriett D. Romo. 2013. “All Colors and Hues: An Autoethnography of a Multiethnic Family’s Strategies for Bilingualism and Multiculturalism.” Family Relations 62 (1): 109–124. Kenner, Charmian. 2004. “Living in Simultaneous Worlds: Difference and Integration in Bilingual Script-Learning.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7 (1): 43–61. Lallmahomed-Aumeerally, Naseem. 2014. “The Problematics of Ethnic Categories: A Reading of Naming Practices Pertaining to Young Mauritian Creoles.” In Complex Migration of Global Citizens, edited by Lillian Mwanri, and Jacob Waldenmaier, 121–136. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Le Page, Robert B., and Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lytra, Vally. 2012. “Multilingualism and Multimodality.” In The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism, edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge, and Angela Creese, 521–537. Oxon: Routledge. Mitchell, Clyde J. 1984. “Typicality and the Case Study.” In Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct, edited by Roy F. Ellen, 238–241. London: Academic Press. Modood, Tariq, Pragna Patel, Julia Bard, Tope Omoniyi, Joshua A. Fishman, and Stacey Gutkowski. 2010. “From Multiculturalism to Multifaithism? A Panel Debate.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10 (2): 315–318. Ng Tseung-Wong Tak Wan, C. 2013. “Adolescents Living Multiculturalism: Intergroup relations in multicultural Mauritius.” PhD Thesis, Utrecht University: GVO drukkers & vormgevers B.V. Ponsen & Looijen. Omoniyi, Tope. 2006. “Societal Multilingualism and Multifaithism: A Sociology of Language and Religion Perspective.” In Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, edited by Tope Omoniyi, and Joshua A. Fishman, 121–140. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pahl, Kate, and Jennifer Rowsell. eds. 2006. Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pavlenko, Aneta, and Adrian Blackledge. eds. 2004. Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rajah-Carrim, Aaliya. 2005. “Language use and attitudes in Mauritius on the basis of the 2000 population census.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 26 (4): 317–332. DOI: 10.1080/01434630508669085 Rajah-Carrim, Aaliya. 2007. “Mauritian Creole and Language Attitudes in the Education System of Multiethnic and Multilingual Mauritius.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 28 (1): 51–71. Roberts, Celia. 2011. “Institutional Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, edited by James Simpson, 81–95. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Stake, R. E. 2005. “Qualitative Case Studies.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin, and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 443–466. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Street, Brian, Kate Pahl, and Jennifer Rowsell. 2009. “Multimodality and New Literacy Studies.” In The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, edited by Carey Jewitt, 191–200. Oxon: Routledge. Szecsi, Tunde, and Janka Szilagyi. 2012. “Immigrant Hungarian Families’ Perceptions of New Media Technologies in the Transmission of Heritage Language and Culture.” Language, Culture and Curriculum 25 (3): 265–281.

10 The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies in Hasidic Homes and Schools in Brooklyn Ayala Fader

Introduction Studies of everyday literacy socialization in nonliberal religious communities can provide broader insight into the formation of multiple modernities. Ethnographic approaches to literacy from the 1980s onward have challenged the implicit evolutionary framework of dichotomies informing previous research, such as modernity/tradition, literacy/orality and history/ myth (Collins and Blot 2003). The secular/religious dichotomy similarly has underlying connections to a Western narrative of secular modernity (Asad 1993, 2003); however, this dichotomy has rarely been problematized in studies of secular or religious literacies. In this chapter I develop an approach to literacy which moves beyond assumptions that the secular and the religious are necessarily discrete categories. Instead, through an analysis of multilingual literacy socialization practices among nonliberal Hasidic Jews, an inflection of Jewish Orthodoxy, I attend to the ways that cultural/religious beliefs about signs, what Keane (2007) calls “semiotic ideologies”, are taught to the next generation of believers. This approach can tell us not only about the dynamics of religious and secular literacies, but also how children’s socialization into particular relationships with signs is integral to the formation of gendered persons and communities. Hasidic Jews offer a particularly relevant case study because their critique of secular modernity includes efforts to dismantle distinctions between the secular and the religious, thus creating an alternative religious modernity (Fader 2009). This becomes particularly evident in an exploration of multilingual (Hebrew/Aramaic, Yiddish and English) literacy socialization practices between women and girls across a range of contexts and genres. There is a small but growing body of scholarship on religious literacies both with sacred languages and religious genres, such as prayer and ritual (e.g., J. Boyarin 1993a; Keane 1997, 2002, 2004; Rosowsky 2012, 2013). Some suggest that a defining feature of sacred language is that the sign is not arbitrarily related to its referent, but rather is divinely designated by God (Elster 2003; Haeri 2003). Indeed, loshn koydesh, “holy language” (a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic), the language of the Torah, its commentaries

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 177 and prayer, is believed by Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox Jews to be a supernatural language from which the world was created (Glinert and Shilhav 1991, 70–71). This belief about religious language and signs has important implications for Jewish literacies. For example, in his discussion of religious Jewish reading practices, J. Boyarin (1993b) notes that every linguistic feature in the Torah is believed to be divinely intended and needing human interpretation. This shapes how Jewish texts are translated or not, interpreted, read and studied (see also Handelman 1982; Spolsky 1985). Further, D. Boyarin (1993) has discussed the distinctiveness of Jewish religious study for complicating the categories of orality and literacy. Noting that reading in biblical Hebrew was historically a form of speech act, he suggests that even today in a “traditional context one could fairly say that reading in the European sense (that is, privatized and individualized) just does not exist” (: 17). This important body of work does not address how age or gender shape access to religious language, text and literacy in certain Jewish orthodox communities. Among the Hasidic Jews with whom I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Boro Park, Brooklyn, it was primarily men and boys who study sacred texts written in loshn koydesh. Hasidic women and girls’ religious obligation is to mediate the secular world in order to protect Torah-studying men from potential distraction. The multiple languages read, written and spoken within the community are gendered as well. Loshn koydesh is the language of prayer for all community members. Men and boys predominantly speak a Hasidic variety of Yiddish, which I call Hasidic Yiddish, with minimal English use. Even during the study of Torah, boys’ discussion of the loshn koydesh text is conducted in Hasidic Yiddish. In contrast, women and girls use a Hasidic variety of English, what I call Hasidic English, as their vernacular and use Hasidic Yiddish as a register, appropriate for contexts of religious study or education and for speaking to young children and males.1 Gendered divisions of languages and labor have implications for the gendered socialization of literacies. Because girls have limited access to loshn koydesh texts, their education includes, by default, more exposure to secular subjects, English books and morally didactic Yiddish stories than boys have. Girls acquire literacy in all three languages; however, they do so in different ways and for different purposes than boys. My aim here is to explore the relationships among these different literacies in different languages. Girls are socialized in the context of religious loshn koydesh literacy to understand signs as God-given and non-arbitrary. How, then, do they interact with texts that are not specifically religious and are in the vernaculars of Hasidic Yiddish, Hasidic English or a more standard English, such as Yiddish primers or English young adult fiction? More broadly, what can Hasidic girls’ literacy socialization tell us about the secular and the religious, orality and literacy, modernity and tradition? To address these questions I integrate Keane’s (2002, 2007) discussion of semiotic ideologies and representational economies with a language

178 Ayala Fader socialization approach to literacy (e.g., Heath 1986; Ochs and Schieffelin 1984; Schieffelin and Gilmore 1986; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986). Studies of the socialization of religious literacy have focused on the ways that children or novices are socialized across a range of contexts into moral values through language and socialized to use and interpret texts and language in culturally specific ways (e.g., Baquedano-López 2004; García-Sánchez 2014; Kulick and Stroud 1993; Reder and Reed Wikelund 1993; Schieffelin 1996, 2000; Zinsser 1986). Two studies, among Roma children in Spain (Poveda, Cano, and Palomares-Valera 2005) and Yemeni American girls in Michigan (Sarroub 2002), suggest some of the ways that literacies mediate boundaries of the secular and the religious in school contexts. Further, studies in multilingual contexts have shown how literacies can be functionally differentiated according to language (e.g., Martin-Jones and Jones 2001; Scribner and Cole 1981), while dependent on historical and cultural context for meaning (e.g., Duranti, Ochs, and Ta’ase 1995). I build on this scholarship, but frame literacy as a “representational economy”: that is, interconnecting modes of signification in a particular historical and social formation (Keane 2003, 410). This approach takes us beyond assumptions about what constitutes secular or religious contexts, and most importantly, it can account for dynamics among multiple languages and genres, oral, written and read. Key to my approach is Keane’s definition of semiotic ideologies as “basic assumptions about what signs are and how they function in the world” (: 419). I discuss three distinct activities of Hasidic girls’ literacy socialization in loshn koydesh, Hasidic Yiddish and Hasidic English, and the semiotic ideologies that interpret each. Across contexts, languages and genres of Hasidic literacy socialization, distinct semiotic ideologies share an interpretive project: to teach girls to decode signs as non-arbitrary, that is, as divinely intended, and to turn what seem to be arbitrary or Gentile/secular signs into Jewish ones, signs which defy categorization as either secular or religious.

Background Founded in eighteenth-century Europe as a radically democratizing, mystical and ecstatic variant of Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic Jews organized themselves into sects, followers of a charismatic leader or rebbe. Today, they lay claim to immutability through their contemporary interpretation of a body of sacred texts, though research has shown that the authority given to texts today is actually a recent innovation, one aspect of an unexpected increasing religious stringency (Heilman 2006; Rosman 2013; Soloveitchik 1994). Recent scholarship has made important contributions toward our understanding of the contemporary life of Hasidic Jews in North America (e.g., Belcove-Shalin 1995; Goldschmidt 2006; Heilman and Friedman 2012; Levine 2003). There has, however, been less attention to Hasidic language and literacy practices, particularly those of children and women (except see El-Or 1994, 2002; Isaacs 1999).

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 179 Boro Park, Brooklyn, the site of my research, is a diverse New York neighborhood with many different Hasidic sects as well as unaffiliated Hasidic Jews. There are also Italians and Latinos, and smaller populations of Jews with different levels of religious stringency. Much of the scholarship on multilingual and minority literacies has emphasized success or failure in public schools. Hasidic Jews, in contrast, support their own private, gender-segregated schools where orientations to knowledge and truth are echoed across contexts by parents, teachers and religious authority figures (Fader 2006). 2 The research for this chapter was part of a larger ethnographic study of language, gender and the body among Hasidic Jews, which I conducted from 1995–1997 and from current research (2010–present). Using participantobservation methodologies, key research sites included a number of classrooms in a Hasidic Bobover girls’ elementary school I call Bnos Yisroel, where I spent two years. I spent a year in two kindergarten classes and then followed the cohort to first grade. In addition, I attended a wide range of communal events, such as inspirational lectures for women, family celebrations and community board meetings, and worked longitudinally with three families who had young children. Interactions in schools and homes were audio-taped and transcribed, and where possible, transcriptions were reviewed with a community member. I collected material culture produced communally for children, particularly games, children’s literature and school worksheets in both Yiddish and English. Gaining access to a small social network of Hasidic women and children in this closed community was a challenge. I initially met a middle-aged Hasidic woman, from the Bobover sect, through a friend and then built up social networks from a variety of contacts. As I have written about elsewhere (e.g., Fader 2009), my own identity as an unobservant Jewish woman, someone who was going through similar life cycle events at the time (i.e., marriage and children), shaped the research. As a woman, I was primarily able to speak with women and very young children (both boys and girls). I had limited access to male and female teenagers, boys over eight years old and men. My own unobservant Jewish status was an important part of the fieldwork. Though I was open about my goals for research and writing, community members consistently told me that the “real” reason I had chosen my topic was to get closer to God and Orthodoxy. We were, then, consistently at odds about why I had come to the community and what the goals of my presence were. These kinds of tensions are part of the challenge of fieldwork with nonliberal religious communities more generally (Fader 2009; Harding 2000).

Loshn Koydesh Literacy: Decoding God’s Signs and Cultivating Piety For young girls, the different signifying modes of reading loshn koydesh text and the oral recitation of loshn koydesh prayers have related yet distinct

180 Ayala Fader semiotic ideologies. From the time they are infants, Hasidic children are instructed through oral repetition and prompting by parents, siblings and relatives to recite a set body of loshn koydesh prayers intended to sanctify the material world. By the time boys and girls are thirteen and twelve respectively they will be responsible for reciting the prayers, for example, upon waking up, after going to the bathroom, before eating, at bedtime, etc. independently. When girls enter preschool at age three, they can recite many if not most of these prayers by heart, even if they sometimes make mistakes, which adults good-naturedly correct. The school curriculum includes times for group loshn koydesh prayer and girls chant these prayers together out loud, initially led by a teacher, as well as recite prayers aloud individually when religiously required. I did not observe any attempt to translate or interpret the meaning of the prayers. Oral recitation of loshn koydesh prayers focus on accuracy, fluency and the performance of earnest intention most often manifested through recitation that is hoyekh un klor, “loud and clear”. Loudness and clear articulation of the prayers are tools, along with God’s language, which help develop internal religious desires. Teachers consistently reminded their students whenever they were distracted or inattentive during prayers, “Me davent nisht far a mora. Me davent far de aybeshter, in er iz iberal” (You don’t pray to a teacher. You pray to God, and he is everywhere).3 Indeed, one of the categories for the schoolwide monthly award ceremony is davent mit kavune (prays with sincere intention). Participation in loshn koydesh oral prayer is part of a broader Hasidic semiotic ideology where practices of ritual cultivate the interior self. Teachers told me that even if girls do not have the right “feelings” during prayer, these are bound to develop over time through repetitive ritual practice. Acquiring loshn koydesh literacy is different. Beginning in preschool, girls are formally introduced to the Hebrew alphabet in order to read loshn koydesh. Different Hasidic sects have different beliefs about teaching sacred text, if any, to girls in school. In the relatively moderate Bobover Hasidic school I worked in, girls were allowed to read from the Hebrew Bible and pray from the prayer book (siddur). In preschool, teachers present the Hebrew alphabet, one letter a week, including the diacritic vowels, which girls practice reproducing on worksheets and orally. Girls’ early reading in loshn koydesh is carefully monitored by teachers and requires no display of individualized affect in contrast to oral recitation of loshn koydesh prayer. Early on, the first-grade teacher, Mrs. Silver, placed emphasis on having each girl individually name a letter, a vowel, and then produce the sound accurately. Little attention was paid to how girls enunciated, in contrast to oral prayer, as long as their reading was audible to the teacher. Mrs. Silver placed a great deal of importance on “knowing the platz”, “place”, when it was one’s turn to read aloud, often rewarding girls with a gumdrop when they were able to follow along with other girls’ reading. The acquisition of literacy in loshn koydesh focused on the ability of each girl to decode the written text and orally produce the correct sounds.

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 181 Part of the girls’ task was to attend to the reading of peers, making this a group activity, although they did not correct their peers. The teacher was an ever-watchful presence, making sure that girls correctly produced the sounds and eventually words. Even when the girls were able to haltingly read in loshn koydesh by the end of the year from the prayer book, the emphasis was on accurate pronunciation aloud, rather than affective performance or interpretation of the meaning of the text, which some teachers told me did occur in higher grades. Emphasis on accurate verbal production of written text may be similar to studies of Muslim children’s literacy acquisition of the classical Arabic in the Qur’an (Moore 2006; Rosowsky 2012, 2013; Wagner 1993). When the written language is believed to be the actual words of God, being able to decode and produce accurately is critical. However, as Keane (2007) notes, semiotic ideologies mediate interconnected signifying practices. Thus, it is girls’ reading of loshn koydesh texts for accuracy which prepares them to increasingly pray out loud with the appropriate external displays of affect. Both of these loshn koydesh practices prepare girls to participate performatively and internally, in terms of desire, as pious Jewish women.

Hasidic Yiddish Literacy: Interpretation and Comprehension In contrast to loshn koydesh literacy, Hasidic Yiddish literacy cannot be characterized as secular or religious. Its multiple uses, its linguistic relationship to loshn koydesh, and its historical association with Jewish women’s morality literature make it a suitable medium for girls’ (Jewish) academic progress, as well as their moral development. The semiotic ideology of Hasidic Yiddish literacy emphasizes an authoritative interpretation of text and the importance of individual comprehension. This directly contrasts to the semiotic ideologies around individual decoding and affective performance of loshn koydesh literacy and loshn koydesh oral prayer. The semiotic ideology of authoritative interpretation was evident in weekly loshn koydesh biblical portion, which was always translated by a school administrator into Hasidic Yiddish and narrated by Mrs. Silver. In contrast to the rote recitation and reading of loshn koydesh prayer, the translated narratives addressed contemporary Hasidic gendered concerns. The story of the Jewish holiday of Purim, for example, included a fairy tale–like rendition of how a Persian king chose the Jewish Esther to be his new queen. In these oral Yiddish narratives of sacred text, there is one authoritative interpretation that girls are encouraged to understand as a model for their own lives, although girls certainly do not always follow this model (see Fader 2007). Hasidic Yiddish literacy was formally taught in Bnos Yisroel during the morning classes beginning in first grade. Using a phonics approach, teachers built on girls’ knowledge of loshn koydesh script, which is the same as Yiddish script excluding the diacritic vowels. Once girls can recognize the distinct Yiddish vowel system, their familiarity with loshn koydesh and

182 Ayala Fader their fluency in Yiddish from home enables them to read quite easily from a series of Yiddish primers published by the school (Bnos Tsiyon, Bobover School 1990). Each chapter of the primer opens with a Yiddish phonics lesson and then uses the target words in short, morally didactic stories that socialize girls into ideals of Hasidic femininity. For example, one day the lesson focused on the Yiddish vowel ‫( יי‬/aI/) using the assonances fayn, klayd, vays, maydl (fine, dress, white, girl). The story was about a good little girl named Khanele who always listened to her mother and helped her get ready for the Sabbath. Another story had a little girl who did not wash enough and had no friends. Hasidic Yiddish literacy here not only had girls practicing certain vowels, it is also presented a model for the social consequences for little girls who were not neat and clean, as well as the loving rewards for girls who helped their mothers. This moral component to Hasidic Yiddish reading is explicitly gendered as it has been historically (Shandler 2005). In the acquisition of Hasidic Yiddish literacy, gendered character building and academic instruction are mutually constitutive, all overseen by an authorized adult, Mrs. Silver, who makes sure that girls understand and interpret narratives and educational texts in the only “right” way.

English Literacies: Resignifying the Secular In contrast to first-grade girls’ morning literacy activities taught in Yiddish, the afternoons are English medium. Subjects are state mandated and include science, social studies, math and language arts. Rather than the communally produced Yiddish readers and religious texts used in the mornings, in the afternoons, girls use standardized English textbooks produced by the New York State Board of Education. Nevertheless, underlying Hasidic semiotic ideologies about language, texts, gender and Jewish-Gentile difference created a continuity of purpose between the Jewish morning and secular/ English afternoon sessions. The English teacher, Mrs. Nathan, presented English language literacy without the explicit moral content that Hasidic Yiddish literacy included or the religious authority inherent in loshn koydesh literacy. Like Hasidic Yiddish literacy instruction, the emphasis in English literacy instruction was on phonics, repetition and comprehension. By first grade, girls were already familiar with the mechanics of English literacy and were able to read and write simple sentences. After Mrs. Nathan presented a brief language lesson of the day, students would practice the target letter or blended sound, both through group recitation and through individualized work in workbooks. When girls read aloud from an English reader, they each took a turn, just as they read aloud in loshn koydesh or Hasidic Yiddish. In contrast to Hasidic Yiddish literacy lessons, there was little discussion between teacher and students about the content of the stories as meaningful to the girls’ lives. Indeed, many of the lessons seemed quite remote from the girls’ experiences. In science lessons about the natural world, for example,

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 183 Mrs. Nathan expressed little concern that girls did not know that a “colt” meant a baby horse or the difference between a hawk and a chicken. A subtle message may have been that English secular subjects are a necessary part of Jewish communal survival in the U.S., but are not especially relevant to girls’ lives. Sometimes, however, the very different topics and images in textbooks created the opportunity for teaching girls to read a different set of signs from those printed on the page; girls could also “read” signs of Jewish difference from Gentiles, the unmarked, normative figures in these texts. For example, one afternoon, a lesson in science simultaneously became a lesson in how to recognize embodied and material signs of Gentile difference in a secular text. Mrs. Nathan was presenting the concept that all living beings need food to live. As a group they looked at a picture in their textbooks, which showed a family eating dinner together. Mrs. Nathan asked questions printed in the teacher’s manual, guiding students through the lesson. Mrs. Nathan: Ss: Mrs. Nathan: Ss: Mrs. Nathan: S1: Mrs. Nathan:

OK, girls, what’s going on here (in the picture). They’re eating supper. Why do they have to eat? (Silence) Why do they have to eat? So they could be, so they should be able to live. OK, so they should be able to live, grow.

Then, deviating from the teacher’s manual, Mrs. Nathan asked girls to look more closely at the picture. It was then that she realized that she had to point out that the family was not Jewish. Mrs. Nathan: S2: Mrs. Nathan: S3: Mrs. Nathan: S4: Mrs. Nathan:

What do they look like they’re eating over there? Chicken. Chicken. Broccoli. Good, that green thing is broccoli. What are they drinking? Milk. (long pause). Well, obviously they’re not Jewish. Right? We don’t eat chicken and milk together. S4: (Incredulously) They’re drinking and eating milk with their . . . Mrs. Nathan: I know, but they’re not Jewish, right? Are they wearing yarmulkes (skullcaps) and tsistis (ritual fringed undergarment)? Ss: No. Mrs. Nathan was confronted with a family who mixed milk and meat, which violates the Jewish dietary laws (the laws of kashrus4—prohibitions against mixing certain food). Her response was to quickly point out to the

184 Ayala Fader students that these were not Jews, and so not obligated by Jewish law. The fact that they could be unobservant or less observant Jews was not discussed, as this is considered a complicated and problematic topic. Then, Mrs. Nathan noted the other embodied signs that revealed that the family in the picture was Gentile—that is, they were not dressed the way that Orthodox Jews dress. Implicit to this science lesson is that Jews can be recognized in secular texts by embodied and material signs that index moral Jewish persons. Those without these signs are by default Gentiles. Writing in English, in contrast to reading, emphasized what I have described as values of Hasidic femininity: neatness, following directions and conforming the body. These issues, like being clean and unmaterialistic, will ultimately be important valued personal qualities once girls reach the age of seventeen or eighteen. At that age, girls will begin to be matched with appropriate boys by a matchmaker in the process of Hasidic arranged marriages. For girls, the qualities of being clean, organized and unmaterialistic are valued for the type of housekeeper a girl will become (Fader 2009). These gendered qualities are socialized in Hasidic girls from a very young age. Thus, for example, during the research period the English principal in charge of secular subjects decided that penmanship (which involves neatness, following the rules and precision) among the girls was suffering. She instituted a weekly handwriting contest for the elementary school, with the winner’s work being displayed in the hallway for all to see. A winning paper perfectly copied the stenciled example, which had a sentence and some numbers. Letters had to be formed the same way as the stencil, hit all the same lines on the ruled paper, and contain no erasures. The semiotic ideology that informs the socialization into English-language penmanship includes a rote, embodied aspect that shares some features of acquiring literacy in loshn koydesh. Both focus on producing the correct form rather than comprehension; however, there is also a difference. In loshn koydesh reading, comprehension of the text is less important than accuracy of the sacred words of God, preparing girls to more affectively participate in their oral recitation of loshn koydesh prayers. Comprehension of secular subjects in Mrs. Nathan’s class takes a backseat to developing qualities that are valued for Hasidic girls, including neatness and the ability to follow directions. Girls’ literacy socialization included strategies for taking Jewish “truth” from Gentile texts through interpretation of signs.

Children’s Literature: Censoring and Transforming the Secular In the context of leisure literacy practices, the majority of which are in English, adults must check texts for potentially dangerous signs. Censorship practices by adults of mainstream English books make explicit what and whom Hasidic women fear their girls might encounter. Further, to address concerns over inappropriate reading, a transformation process is currently underway where the North American genre of children and young adult

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 185 literature is made Jewish; Orthodox publishers increasingly put out morally edifying narratives that use Jewish material and linguistic signs. Although Hasidic girls go to private Hasidic schools and are forbidden from watching television, going to the movies or using the Internet, they are hardly living in hermetically sealed communities in the middle of Brooklyn. Mainstream English language books, magazines and some electronics (iPods) are within easy reach, and girls, in contrast to boys, whose school schedules are more intense, have some time for reading as an individualized activity. Parents and teachers told me that English goyishe mayses, “Gentile stories”, in contrast to Jewish ekhte mayses, the “true” stories told to girls from the Torah and its commentaries, have the potential to contaminate and pollute the pure souls of Jewish girls in much the same way that the ingestion of non-kosher food will physically degrade a Jewish person’s body and mind. Indeed, books are described by teachers, mothers and even girls as “kosher” or “not kosher”, as are other cultural forms such as music or clothing. In the school library, censorship practices are mandated from the administration. For example, texts with inappropriate displays of the body, even bathing suits, are simply blacked out or entire series of books are forbidden. The school is especially vigilant over mainstream English books that portray any kind of romance between men and women. When, for example, a student brought in a story of Cinderella (based on the animated Disney movie) for her kindergarten teacher to read, the teacher first went to consult the principal. She came back and told the girls that there was not enough time to read the book. When I asked her about the decision after school, imagining that the plunging neckline of Cinderella’s ballgown had been the problem, she told me that the issue was that Cinderella dances with the prince and kisses him in public. This, she told me, will not be these girls’ lives, so why should they be exposed? The school also attempts to monitor the leisure reading practices of its students outside of the school by, for example, forbidding students from going to the public library even if supervised. This is an example of increasing levels of religious stringency, as most of the girls’ mothers actually had grown up going to the library. When the school administration heard that some families were still going to the public library, they ordered spot checks of girls’ school bags, confiscated any library cards and ripped them up. Children whose families allow the library always have a chaperone, an adult or an older child, who checks each book and makes sure it is kosher. Topics such as divorce, for example, common in North American children’s literature, are not considered kosher. In addition to censoring English leisure reading for girls, Jewish presses in New York and in Israel have been publishing alternative English fiction for girls. A clerk from the popular Eichler’s Books in Boro Park reported that the market for Jewish fiction aimed particularly at girls has expanded rapidly. These books, like the Yiddish primers I discussed above, draw on shared

186 Ayala Fader belief about the purpose of girls’ literacy: regardless of language, reading should be morally didactic. Most of these books are not for boys who, their mothers told me, get their moral education from immersion in Torah study. A notable innovation for girls’ books is the explicit claim made by publishers that the books are simultaneously “fun and entertaining”. As the English-language Judaica Press (located in Flatbush, a Litvish Brooklyn neighborhood) put up on its website in the fall of 2007: Our books (for children) find that delicate balance between teaching important lessons and still being fun and enjoyable (site modified). Often called Yiddishe (Jewish) books, the new English-language genre strives to both entertain and transmit a specifically Orthodox Jewish message for girls, one which avoids reference to anything which would be unkosher and which promotes the values of Orthodox Jewish femininity. Yiddishe books in English are marked not only by morally didactic narratives; they include Jewish signs, linguistic, embodied and material. For example, the majority of the books are written in a variety of English, similar to Hasidic Yiddish but more standard, which has influence from Yiddish and loshn koydesh lexicon. In a book aimed at boys and girls ages five through eight, The Shabbos Queen & Other Shabbos Stories (Fuchs 2000), the Yiddish or loshn koydesh words, such as shabbos, “Sabbath”, or mitsve, “commandments”, are transliterated but not translated or explained. Many are not marked by italics but are simply integrated into the English text. The homes have Jewish ritual objects throughout. All the males in the story wear large yarmulkes and ritual prayer fringes, and have long side curls. Men have long, uncut beards. The mother figure has her hair covered completely with a kerchief (tikhl) and is wearing modest clothing. Personal names are also marked as Yiddish/loshn koydesh names, such as Mashie, Malkie, Moyshie or Dovid. Yiddishe books in English appropriate and transform the form and function of secular North American fiction for children and young adults. Based on cultural and religious beliefs about signs as non-arbitrary and God-given, Hasidic adults mine the entertainment value of mainstream children’s genres while redeeming their “true” Jewish meaning through Jewish signs and stories.

Conclusion Conceptualizing literacy as a series of interconnected signifying practices and signs interpreted by semiotic ideologies problematizes easy assumptions of what constitutes religious or secular literacy, orality or literacy, and ultimately, even modernity and tradition. Attention to socialization of literacy shows how nonliberal girls were taught to understand texts, interpretation, rote repetition, ritual performance, affect, entertainment, comprehension and the “true”, Jewish meanings waiting to be redeemed from secular and Gentile texts and cultural forms.

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 187 The range of semiotic ideologies I have discussed in different languages, genres and contexts share a broader, overarching semiotic ideology, one where signs are not arbitrary and there is one “truth” given by God. Across a diverse group of literacy-signifying practices and material forms, Hasidic women teach girls that every sign must be read in the right, Jewish way, something which is taught by communal hierarchies of authority from God, to the rebbe, to a teacher or a “mommy”. It is this belief about signs that creates connections among literacy activities that may be framed as secular or religious, but which are shown to fall neatly into neither of these social scientific categories by claims to “the truth”. Jewish beliefs about signs, further, defuse the potential of secular literature to influence girls once they are older. Thus, by the time girls are in high school, when they are exposed to the literature curriculum mandated by the state, they know how to read non-Jewish stories for practical purposes, such as passing a regents exam. They also know how to use English for expressing the timeless “truth” of Hasidic Judaism. As a father explained to me recently, though girls read Shakespeare in Bobover Hasidic schools, they are not encouraged to be emotionally moved by the content or the language, although of course that is always a possibility. Instead, they read Shakespeare simply to “pass the test”. Similarly, a Hasidic high school girl, Chaya, could express her faith in God in a poem written in her “secular” language arts journal; she was engaging with secular literacy’s form, but using that form to individually express the timeless “truth” of Judaism. Hasidic literacy socialization practices, I suggest further, are part of a broader nonliberal project of denying that modern civilization should be secular, that religion is a discrete set of private practices, or that all religions and cultures are equally valid. The autonomous model of literacy (e.g., Goody 1977) was based on the belief that literacy was a transformative practice, which could create the conditions for a modern, industrialized society. Hasidic women and girls also believe that literacy is transformative. However, despite their active participation in the modern urban industrialized world and its bodies of knowledge, Hasidic women and girls hope that their reading and writing (in addition to other practices) will build up the Jewish community, and ultimately, bring the final redemption. More recently, researchers of literacy and multilingualism must account for online digital writing and reading practices as well as print. In Hasidic communities this has meant reading and writing online in Yiddish and English in a variety of media: on iPads, iPods, computers, and smartphones. Based on current research I am conducting, as with so many other technologies which enter the communities, the digital has been appropriated for Jewish purposes. For example, many Hasidic children watch Yiddish plays on their parents’ iPads or listen to DVDs of Hasidic Yiddish stories and music. Some are allowed to use the computer for their secular studies (mainly girls) if they are supervised by a parent. Many, however, are not. In this context, secular textual reading gets remediated (Gershon 2010) to become much less

188 Ayala Fader threatening than digital reading. Indeed, a number of people told me that since computers entered the communities, magazine and novels, in English for women with Jewish Orthodox content, have flourished and are increasingly available (Fader 2013). However, there are other forms of literacy practices online that are challenging to the reproduction of communities. Teens and their parents are increasingly using smartphones and computers to write in Yiddish (texting), something that was much less common in the nineties. There are many Hasidic men and women now who are using Yiddish on messaging software, like Whatsapp, where issues of orthography, vocabulary and cultural understandings of language itself may be changing (Fader 2014). As communal leaders and rabbinic authorities began to appreciate the threat of exposure to new ideas (e.g., science) and forms of sociality (e.g., Facebook interactions between men and women), the Internet, particularly on smartphones, has been increasingly filtered or banned outright. This historical moment, when Yiddish is going from a spoken vernacular to an online written form of interaction, raises questions about changing literacies in nonliberal communities. These include: how do ideologies of spoken Yiddish differ or remain similar to those of written online Yiddish in chat rooms? If, as it seems, many leaders are banning smartphones, especially for women, will there be a gendered written form of Yiddish that women will not have access to? How are parents exposing their children to these new ideas? What are the relationships between literacy in classrooms and literacy online? The Hasidic case study highlights the necessity of ethnographically investigating literacies at the level of signifying practices across contexts, languages and genres. This kind of research will not only shed light on literacies in nonliberal religious communities; it can also simultaneously clarify secular (and to some extent Protestant) ideologies of reading in North American educational contexts as well (see Elster 2003, 663). Consider, for example, the semiotic ideologies that undergird the emphasis on privatized reading or an analytic literacy task, such as imagining what an author intended or extending an author’s argument. These literacy practices, so common in schools, are built on particular notions of the person with attendant theories of mind. In the North American educational context, students learn that they can and should imagine what an author might say or think in another context based on the text. Similarly, and in contrast to the Hasidic example, secular ideologies of reading in North America classrooms reinforce individual interpretations of texts, as well as the notion that there are indeed many interpretations rather than just one truth. As such, an approach that can analyze literacies as part of a representational economy may help expose the invisible semiotic ideologies shaping North American educational contexts. This, in turn, can hopefully open educational contexts to the possibility of acknowledging a range of diverse ideologies of reading, texts and persons.

The Semiotic Ideologies of Yiddish and English Literacies 189

Acknowledgements A longer, different version of this chapter was originally published as “Reading Jewish Signs” in the journal Text and Talk (http://www.degruyter.com/ view/j/text). The research on which this chapter was based was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Jewish Memorial Foundation, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Lucius Littauer Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Spencer Foundation. The writing of the chapter was supported by a Fordham Faculty Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. I am very grateful to all. Finally, many thanks to Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory and Dinah Volk for editing such a timely and important volume.

Notes 1. Hasidic English and Hasidic Yiddish are syncretic varieties of English and Yiddish respectively, which I describe in Fader 2009. Briefly, each linguistic variety incorporates lexical, phonological, orthographic and grammatical items from the other language and also from loshn koydesh. Hasidic women call their Yiddish most often hasidishe Yiddish, “Hasidic Yiddish”, or haymishe Yiddish, “Homey Yiddish”, and they call their variety of English either Yinglish or simply English. It is also important to note that Yiddish and loshn koydesh share an orthography, and many loshn koydesh words integrated into Yiddish, along with Germanic and Slavic elements. 2. For more on Hasidic history and sociology see Rosman (2013) or Hundert (1991). The Bobover Hasidic court originated in Bobowa, Galicia, currently Poland. The third rebbe, R. Shlomo Halberstam, survived the Holocaust, though his father did not. Indeed, most of Bobov was destroyed. After WWII, R. Halberstam immigrated to the United States, ultimately ending up in Boro Park, Brooklyn. His charismatic leadership led many European Jewish refugees to join his court (even those who were not Hasidic in Europe) and enroll their children in his yeshivas. Bobov are often described as “moderate” Hasidic Jews known for their “warmth” (Fader 2009). 3. All translations are from Yiddish. I transcribe Yiddish from its Hebrew script using a modified version of the YIVO system (see Weinreich 1990). This was done to best represent the dialect of Yiddish spoken by Boro Park Hasidim. 4. The laws of kashrus are found in Leviticus. The laws prohibit consumption of certain categories of meat and shellfish, as well prohibit the mixing of certain food groups.

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11 Engendering ‘Dispositions’ through Communicative and Semiotic Practices Insights from the Nishkam Nursery Project Gopinder Kaur Sagoo Nursery dad: Now, he just goes ‘Dada!—Masi!’ [he gestures how his son waves goodbye to him in the mornings in the nursery hallway, then turns to greet his nursery carer] Nursery mum: Which is good! Nursery dad: ‘Masi ji . . . Mama, Mama, Mama, Masi!’ He says that. Nursery mum: So, that’s really relaxing for us to know . . . Sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, he didn’t cry!’ and I get upset. ‘He doesn’t need me!’ But, it’s a nice feeling to know that he is comfortable.” —Extract from interview with nursery parents, July 2010

This chapter draws on an ethnographically informed case study of a project, led by a locally based transnational network of Sikhs, to found a new form of nursery provision in Birmingham, Central England. The Nishkam nursery opened in September 2009 and was located opposite two local landmarks: a Sikh gurudwara1 (place of worship) and the Nishkam Centre for local and global civic engagement associated with it. Both served as bases for early project phases to develop educational perspectives and partnerships and to pilot approaches. The inner-city neighbourhood of Handsworth, in which the nursery project unfolded, had a significant presence of first, second- and third-generation British Punjabis, many of whom associated with the Sikh faith heritage. These family backgrounds were reflected in the early cohorts of children at the nursery. Significantly, the new institution had not been conceived as a specialised centre for ‘complementary’, ‘bilingual’, ‘religious’ or ‘alternative’ education, operating aside from the mainstream. Rather, these various elements were incorporated into its statutory childcare service as part of a holistic and aspirational vision for lifelong learning. This led to the creation of the Nishkam School Trust and its network of ‘Sikh ethos multifaith schools’ involving more diverse school populations. The interview extract that opens this chapter offers a glimpse into parental impressions of their child’s experience of daily nursery life. A mother and father illustrate the ease with which their son seemed to have settled during his first week. The father uses the Punjabi terms of address Masi (meaning ‘one’s mother’s sister’) and Mama (meaning ‘one’s mother’s brother’) to refer

194 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo to his child’s female and male nursery carers. The use of these Punjabi kinship terms in the day-to-day cycles of nursery life contributed to the creation of a surrogate world of maternal aunts and uncles. The use of these fictive kinship terms dovetailed with the use of professional terms to designate staff roles, such as ‘nursery officer’, ‘key worker’ or ‘manager’—e.g., in staff interactions with parents or external visitors concerning the professional running of the institution. The extract also illustrates the use of ji, a linguistic marker of care and respect that is used in different South Asian languages. The use of this marker in the nursery, echoing its prominent usage at the gurudwara across the road, constituted a significant feature of translingual communicative practice in the way children and staff addressed each other. Two facets of nursery life are reflected in the extract. They provide a dual focus for this chapter. Firstly, it hints at how the nursery world was being configured, through language and semiosis, to evoke a sense of home, community and school for the very young. Secondly, it indexes the importance given to the kind of values, attitudes and socio-emotional environment being fostered. This was based on ideas expressed by the nursery founders about creating an ‘atmosphere’ or ‘ambiance’ to enable the very young to feel ‘warmth’, ‘comfort’ and ‘peace of mind’ and to grow in ‘confidence’. These were described as the ‘intangible’ aspects of provision for the formative years of early childhood, which were seen as a vital ‘foundation for life’. The wider research on which this chapter is based (Sagoo forthcoming) examined the conceptual and social processes involved in the development of the nursery project and day-to-day practice as it took shape in the new institution. The research was guided by the following key questions: 1) what blend of ideas and values were guiding the process of creating the nursery? 2) How was the world of the nursery being configured and reconfigured in and through the day-to-day communicative and semiotic practices of those participating? 3) Why did parents participate and what factors were guiding their ongoing commitment? On commencing my research in the nursery, I began by asking the ethnographic question, ‘what is going on here?’ (Wolcott 2008: 73–4), and by providing a detailed description of the practices observed. At a second stage of the research, I then sought to unpack ‘why practice takes shape in the way that it does’ (Stritikus and Wiese 2006: 21). A view of ‘policy as practice’ (Levinson and Sutton 2001: 1), together with the concept of ‘figured worlds’ (Holland et al. 1998: 49–65) offered useful theoretical framings to analyse the social and discursive processes at work in the configuration of the new nursery world. I will begin this chapter with a brief introduction to Sikh religious heritage. I will then elaborate on the orienting theories for my study and outline my research approach. This will be followed by a discussion of the particular blend of ideas, cultural values and dispositions guiding this British Sikhled nursery project. In the fourth section of the chapter, I will present and analyse one vignette from the start of a nursery day. I will then move on to a detailed discussion of the ways in which the day-to-day communicative

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 195 and semiotic practices of the nursery practitioners were contributing to the configuring of the hybridised relational and material world of the nursery, along with its daily routines and rituals and blended curriculum. In the conclusion, I will summarise how the interactional configurations of day-to-day practice that I observed indicated early endeavours to realise a vision to foster family-like and dispositions-rich spaces for children’s early learning and socialisation. I will also argue that, as forms of nursery provision continue to diversify, detailed ethnographically oriented research will have a key role to play in providing an account of how evolving ideas for early childhood provision are translated into day-to-day practice.

Sikh Religious Heritage The Sikh tradition originated in the Punjab region, divided today between India and Pakistan. It is ranked as the fifth-largest ‘world religion’, although its labelling as a ‘religion’ has been brought into question in contemporary Sikh scholarship (Mandair 2011). It is a non-proselytising tradition and, hence, most of the world’s estimated 25 million Sikhs tend to have inherited their faith, along with a shared linguistic and cultural identity, through birth. Elements of Sikh practice thus both converge with and diverge from Punjabi cultural norms (Nesbitt 2005: 12). The faith was founded under the leadership of 10 successive Gurus between 1469 and 1708, as India experienced Mughal rule. Then, after almost a century of social upheaval and turmoil, a religiously plural Punjab saw secular (i.e., non-theocratic) Sikh rule in the early 1800s, until it became annexed to the British Indian Empire and later split in two during the 1947 partition. Transreligious dialogue is a key feature of Sikh teachings, which are recorded in the Gurmukhi script, now used for modern Punjabi. These recognise a sacred ‘oneness’ (‘Ik Oankar’), understood to be the source of innate dispositions ‘already inscribed with the self’ (Shackle and Mandair 2005: xxviii). Human purpose involves the nurture of this spiritual self to guide one’s active participation in the world and to curtail the abuse of power. This idea is reflected in the threefold Sikh ethic to live ‘meditatively, industriously, and generously’ (Nesbitt 2005: 28) and in other concepts and emblems which are part of the tradition. Ahluwalia (2011) contrasts Sikh diasporic identities that have been—and are being—forged in an ‘age of colonization’ and ‘age of globalization’. He suggests that Sikhs have found ways to remain ‘at home in motion’ because of an evolving Sikh ‘culture’ on the one hand and ‘dharam’ (a term more suggestive of a principled ethos for living) on the other. Two key institutions reflect Sikh endeavours to balance a valuing of openness and maintaining of distinctiveness. The first is the Sikh place of worship or the gurudwara (‘gateway to the Guru’). Here the scripture (revered by Sikhs as ‘eternal Guru’) is enthroned and its teachings are recited and sung. Every gurudwara also has a langar, which is sometimes explained as the ‘Guru’s free kitchen’.

196 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo Here vegetarian food is prepared and served to all visitors irrespective of background. The second institution is the Khalsa order of initiated Sikhs. This marks a bond of devotion to the specific legacy of the 10 Sikh Gurus and commitment to a disciplined way of life. The percentage of initiated Sikhs is small and facets of Khalsa practice are taken up to varying degrees in the wider Sikh world. One commitment involves, for example, the keeping of uncut hair or kes (which men and boys tie into a topknot) and the wearing of the turban, by men and sometimes by women. An alignment to the Khalsa identity was apparent in the interactional data from day-to-day nursery life, which I present below. The short couplet that forms the Khalsa greeting was regularly used (see discussion of the extract presented below). This identifies the Khalsa and all success (fateh) as belonging to Vaheguru (the ‘wondrous Guru’, one of the terms Sikhs use for God). In addition, as the extract also shows, Sikh children were at times addressed using Singh (for boys) and Kaur (for girls) after their first names. During my fieldwork I noted that conventional explanations of Singh as ‘lion’ and Kaur as ‘princess’ were often used. It was also pointed out to me that this could detract from the historical usage of these terms in India to denote someone who inherits a regal or sovereign status. From this perspective, the use of ‘Kaur’ and ‘Singh’ was seen to communicate ideas that every person has inherent ‘dignity’ and is capable of living ‘wisely and responsibly’.

Orienting Theories The classroom practice in this new nursery grew out of a response to official educational policy frameworks and aims grounded in legislation. At the same time it involved ‘infusing’ these frameworks and aims (to use a term used in the project) with ideas, values and approaches stemming from shared affiliations with Sikh and South Asian heritage. Research in the ethnography of language policy has clearly demonstrated that interpretation and enactment of policy involves multiple ‘agents, levels and processes’ (Ricento and Hornberger 1996) and diverse ‘layers of context’ (Johnson 2009). My case study focused on the particular social actors who were involved in the nursery project and who were part of a local community of practice (associated with the gurudwara and the Nishkam Centre). It thus foregrounded the agentive ways in which they went about configuring a new nursery world. To closely examine the processes of configuration involved, I drew on Holland et al.’s (1998: 49–65) concept of ‘figured worlds’. In their overview of this concept, these scholars represent them as collectively realised ‘as if’ realms, where practices gain significance because of the values and meanings attributed to them. A figured world can be seen as a ‘figurative’ one, as well as being configured, or arranged in particular kinds of ways. It thus exists as ‘a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognised, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others’. In this way,

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 197 figured worlds form contexts of meaning for the activities, roles and artefacts within them. Figured worlds also ‘happen, as social process and in historical time’ (Holland et al. 1998: 55). The primacy given to the notion of ‘activity’ in this line of theory-building facilitates links with the notions of ‘situated learning’ and ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998). Self-development and identity formation take place through participation in such worlds, which thus provide contexts for participants in them to ‘figure’ who they are and how to relate to one another (Urrieta 2007: 107; 109). For the purpose of this present chapter, this research perspective offers an entry point into considering the children’s expanding horizons of experience and the ways in which, in the day-to-day routines of life in the nursery, children were responding to the different, practitioner-mediated worlds of home, community and school. In the close study of the processes involved in the configuring of local worlds, attention inevitably turns to communication and to language-in-interaction. So another key set of conceptual resources for my research in the nursery came from the interactionist tradition within the social sciences and, in particular, the strand of interactionist work that has been developed in research on classroom discourse in linguistically diverse settings (see Martin-Jones 2015, for a recent review of this research tradition). My focus was on the ways in which the practitioners and the children in the nursery were co-constructing meanings, within the ebb and flow of classroom life. Two key concepts were especially relevant to the analysis of the interactions recorded in the nursery. Firstly is the notion of ‘contextualisation cue’ introduced by Gumperz (1982). This term refers to the verbal or non-verbal, meaning-making resources used by participants in multilingual conversations to negotiate their way through an interaction, in making inferences about ‘what is going on’, in conveying to their co-conversationalists how their contributions are to be understood and in making sense of the contributions made by others. Secondly, Goffman’s (1981) use of a theatrical metaphor in his analysis of talk-in-interaction, and especially his notion of ‘footing’, enabled me to capture discursive shifts in the nature of teacher-student exchanges—e.g., a shift from ‘doing the lesson’ to ‘informal chatting’. In contemporary classroom research, attention has also been drawn to the complex, multi-modal nature of communication and to the use of other semiotic resources, such as music and images, in the co-construction of meanings. So this too has been a key dimension of theory-building that has guided my research in the nursery (see recent review of this research by Lytra 2012).

Research Approach As I show in this chapter, the day-to-day world at the Nishkam nursery was a newly hybridised figured world, where identities, artefacts and communicative and semiotic practices from the different worlds of home, school

198 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo and community overlapped. They rose or receded in significance, at given moments and spaces, in the nursery. Importantly, the ethnographically oriented nature of my case study, and my focus on values and practices, enabled me to capture the overlapping of these worlds, along with the blending and foregrounding of particular ideas. Gaining access to the emic perspectives of founders, practitioners and parents, through interviews and informal conversations, was a key means to interpret some of the intentions and understandings guiding the day-to-day practices in the nursery. This access was enabled by my own positioning as a Sikh associated with the gurudwara. Having recently become a first-time mother, I was invited to some early nursery project meetings. Prior to this I had been appointed as a Sikh representative to the body2 responsible for revising Birmingham’s syllabus for Religious Education (RE). This role had led me to consult with those overseeing education projects at Nishkam and to build an early picture of their visions and ideas. The audio-recorded interviews with the nursery founders were analysed in detail in Sagoo (2009). I also gathered field notes and documentary data over the course of the early development of the nursery project. Once the nursery was established, I enrolled my daughter there and registered as an official parent-helper. In this way I also became a nursery ‘Masi’ and was able to do extended participant observation of day-to-day classroom routines and practices. I kept field notes and took photographs of different aspects of the nursery’s semiotic landscape. I also audio- and video-recorded interactions between the nursery practitioners and the children as they engaged in different activities, in different spaces in the nursery. In addition, I interviewed the nursery manager and members of his early staff team, as well as a sample of the parents who were the first to enroll their children.

Creating a Local British Sikh-Led Nursery Project The nursery project was initiated by an intergenerational group of British Sikhs who brought together contrasting experiences of being raised and schooled in India, East Africa and the UK. It included a ‘cooperative’ of British-born Sikh women embarking on raising families and anticipating their children’s multifaceted futures. The project work was facilitated by existing infrastructure and a culture of nishkam sewa or ‘altruistic service to others’ generated by a locally based transnational Sikh faith organisation, Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha (GNNSJ). Community volunteering, pro bono professional participation and the building of civic and interfaith partnerships in local, national and international contexts were guided by the organisation’s overall spiritual leader, known by the title of Bhai Sahib. The nursery’s creation had been coordinated by a small planning group and had involved extensive hands-on volunteering to renovate the derelict building for the nursery. This had to be carefully conserved due to its status as a listed building. In addition it had been purchased with community-generated funds and represented a significant community investment.

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 199 Two early bases for conceiving and developing the nursery project had been the nearby gurudwara and the Nishkam Centre for civic engagement. This dual institutional involvement contributed to an intertwining of knowledge from a Sikh heritage with a commitment to engagement with the wider social world. Those leading the creation of the nursery project were guided by their understanding that the word ‘Sikh’ meant ‘lifelong learner’ (a term that was linked to the Punjabi verb sikhna, ‘to learn’). There was a preference in the project for the use of the Punjabi word ‘dharam’ instead of ‘religion’ or ‘faith’ because of the way it evoked an everyday outlook and sensibility that encouraged ‘value-led’ living. One female elder used the Punjabi word bhavana to describe this when she talked about cultivating ‘sewa bhavana’, a mindset to serve others. ‘Dharam’ was also seen by Bhai Sahib to ‘fuse’ together notions of ‘spiritual and secular citizenship’ (which are further examined in Sagoo 2013) and to offer a resource that could ‘assist humans to navigate the journey through life’. Ideas about raising and educating children were also gleaned from a wider range of sources. The nursery creators drew on concepts and terms from discourses circulating more widely, reflecting the emergence of what Mandair (2011: 243) describes as ‘a hybrid conceptuality, where European and Asian terms mutually affect and transform each other’. The terminology of ‘dispositions’ was drawn from the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (Birmingham City Council 2007) and its framework of 24 ‘spiritual and moral dispositions’3 which the nursery incorporated into its blended curriculum. The approach sought to emphasise what pupils can ‘learn from’ their encounter with religious life as well as ‘learn about’ it. Also underlined in this syllabus was ‘conative’ development associated with intrinsic motivation, agency, self-direction and self-motivation. In these ways, the syllabus was primarily guided by the nationally legislated educational aim of fostering ‘spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’ (HMSO 1992), which the nursery founders had also taken as one starting point in the development of their ideas. Because of this holistic focus, the nursery founders and staff saw this local Religious Education (RE) syllabus as relevant to the work of supporting young children’s formative development. As the nursery manager underlined in my interview with him, the term ‘dispositions’ was also a feature of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework (Department for Children, Schools and Families 2008) required for all forms of institutional and home-based childcare provision. Its four themes were ‘enabling environments’, ‘positive relationships’, ‘the unique child’ and ‘learning and development’. A guiding principle in the nursery was that adults should provide examples of positive dispositions in the relationships and environments they fostered in their care of the young, rather than explicitly ‘teaching’ dispositions as such. The nursery was also envisaged as a first stepping stone from the family home, where the provision of ‘love and good nourishment’ were considered as central. One rationale for creating it was that, given contemporary

200 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo pressures in family and working life, it was vital to reconfigure ways to ensure that children did not miss out on the everyday provision of these essential ingredients. Note was also taken of international and national reports such as An overview of child well-being in rich countries (UNICEF 2007) and A Good Childhood (Layard and Dunn 2009), which identified social failures towards children in the UK. Two related project aspirations thus came to reveal themselves in the wider research project that I undertook (Sagoo 2009). The first was to imagine and build new futures based on weighing up the ‘losses and gains’ experienced by Sikhs through historical processes of social upheaval and migration. The second was to serve the Sikh principle of sarbat da bhalla (the wider welfare of all) by being part of a shared societal conversation and to encourage the taking of ‘shared responsibility’ for children’s well-being and success.

Language and Semiosis in the Configuration of the World of the Nursery In this section of the chapter, I turn to the specific ways in which the world of the nursery was configured, in and through the discursive and semiotic practices of the practitioners and through their interactions with the children. I focus, in turn, on the configuring of a home-like environment and a sense of family; the engendering of dispositions of care and respect within that environment; and the interweaving of different strands of life and learning in the British Sikh/Punjabi character of the nursery. Although these themes are addressed in different sections, they also complement each other and overlap in significant ways. Configuring a Home-Like Environment and a Sense of Family The importance of a home-like environment and family-like warmth to nurture children in their early years had been emphasised from the outset by the founders of the nursery. The nursery premises lent itself well to this aim because it had been originally designed as a detached private residence. Its conservation as a listed building meant that features such as fireplaces in each of the four rooms (for babies, toddlers, preschoolers and a small reception class) were retained and choices made in the interior decoration (e.g., curtains on sash windows), the use of space (e.g., non-excessive display and selective framing of children’s work) and the regulation of the environment (e.g., maximising use of natural daylight) evoked a sense of home more so than a school institution. The sense of home was also underscored by the centrality given to the kitchen in nursery life. Vegetarian meals were freshly cooked each day. Staff and children showed affectionate regard for the female staff member who led the catering operation, supported by colleagues. In her planning of the week’s meals, she was striking various balances, as she explained to me,

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 201 between official early years nutritional guidance, her own heritage-based food knowledge and her taste for culturally varied dishes (e.g., ‘Indian, English, Italian, Chinese’). She told me that a basic principle was to prepare everything ‘from scratch’ and resist the purchase of ready-made, frozen products. Her comment ‘I cook as if I was going to feed my own grandchildren’ provided a revealing insight into the way she saw her role, in preparing, serving and sharing the food. She built a relationship with the children by visiting them at mealtimes and arranged cooking activities for them. The offer of a vegetable patch to the nursery by a neighbouring grammar school enabled the children to bring ‘home-grown’ produce to the kitchen. As we saw in the vignette at the beginning of this chapter, children felt ‘comfortable’ in this setting. The practitioners also talked to me about creating a sense of ‘warmth’ and ‘comfort’. As one practitioner put it: ‘This is like a home . . . a second home’. Thus, over the months of participant observation and through the close study of interactional routines in different space in the nursery, I endeavoured to capture some of the ways in which these routines and the communicative and semiotic practices of the practitioners contributed to a sense of homeliness and of being part of a wider family. Language emerged as a significant resource for evoking this sense of home and family. It did so in three main ways: firstly, the practitioners made ample use of fictive kinship terms in addressing or referring to the children, or in referring to each other. These included the terms ‘Masi’ and ‘Mama’, which are used to address maternal aunts and uncles respectively. These were the terms that were mentioned by the parents in the opening vignette. We also see them being used in the extract of classroom interaction included in the following section of this chapter. Children were also encouraged to address their peers as ‘bhaji’ (brother) and ‘bhenji’ (sister), a practice that is commonplace in some Punjabi-speaking networks. As some practitioners pointed out, these kinship terms, and the relationships that they indexed, reflected a Sikh convention of regarding elders as parental figures, peers as siblings and youngsters as one’s own children. In the naturally occurring interactional routines of the nursery, however, the actual use of terms of address was often varied and complex, echoing wider trends in British Punjabi life. Thus, the use of first names only, Punjabi diminutives or English-sounding nicknames was also evident in the nursery, particularly in interactions between staff, depending on the formality or informality of the context. The second way in which language use evoked a sense of home and family was through the frequent use of terms of endearment—in Punjabi and in English—particularly with younger children. I recorded the use of terms such as ‘darling’ in English and ‘put’ in Punjabi (a short form of ‘puttar’, meaning, affectionately, ‘my child’.) Terms such as these were sometimes combined with directives, to mitigate the force of the directives: for example, ‘nehi put’ (no, my child). In the baby room, terms of endearment in Punjabi predominated. Practitioners were often heard gently repeating ‘sonjo kaka’ (go to sleep, my little one) when patting, rocking or singing babies to sleep.

202 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo The third way in which language use created a sense of home and togetherness was through the attention to the needs of individual children with different communicative repertoires. There was some variation in the sociolinguistic backgrounds of the children, with some families having Punjabi as the main home language, others having English as the main language and yet others having Hindi or other languages. The fluid translingual style of communicating that predominated in the nursery made it possible to accommodate the needs of children with different backgrounds and to create an inclusive environment. For example, the practitioners often engaged in informal asides with children for whom Punjabi was the dominant home language, to calm and console them, to offer one-to-one support or to mediate the world of the Early Years curriculum. At the same time, the practitioners used games, songs and oral exercises to teach Punjabi vocabulary, which provided additional Punjabi language support for children from English-dominant homes. The motivation for these flexible, translingual, child-centred practices was expressed as follows by one of the practitioners who saw it as part of overall staff aims to see children ‘who are feeling secure, feeling confident’, who can then ‘let down their guards or barriers and learn as much as they can’. Engendering Dispositions of Care and Respect Close attention to language and to meaning-making in and through interaction also gave me a window on the ways in which the nursery’s dispositionsbased educational aims were being addressed, and on the ways in which children’s social learning was being fostered. Occasional use of Punjabi was key here, particularly in orienting the children to dispositions such as care and respect for others. In this section, I will touch on two ways in which Punjabi was used to engender relationships based on care and respect, illustrating them with reference to an extract of multilingual classroom interaction. I will also draw attention to the significance of culturally specific aspects of non-verbal styles of communication. The extract is first shown below along with brief contextual notes. This episode took place at the start of the day in the reception classroom, during the first spring term. Seven children were seated on the floor in front of the practitioner—or Masi—G. Kaur, who had worked previously in private day care. She sat on a chair with a whiteboard beside her. At the beginning of the extract, we see that she had just finished guiding the children in choosing monitor duties for the day. Turn by turn, they had come up to the board to place their names4 onto a card illustrating their chosen duty. The children were sitting near the classroom door with its clear glass pane, offering a view into the corridor where the children’s coat pegs were located. One last task, that of being the lead monitor, was about to be assigned but, at this moment, the sound of a toy trumpet was heard. It was being played out in the corridor.

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 203 Extract 1: Morning Greetings and ‘Show and Tell’ in the Reception Class5 1 Masi: 2

OK, Keerat Kaur, there is only one job left! Would you like to be at the front of the line today? [Keerat nods and is invited to the whiteboard to place her name on the lead monitor card] 3 Haan ji. OK, baihttho ji. (Yes. OK. Please sit down.) [One boy in the group notices, through the glass pane of the door, a boy who is just about to step into class, with his mother behind him] 4 Mandeep: Amarjot’s here! [Mandeep starts getting up, pointing at the door] 5 Masi: OK ji, baihttho. (OK, please sit.) 6 Wait till Amarjot bhaji comes in. [Amarjot comes in, blowing a toy trumpet in a slow rhythm. He wears a T-shirt with a picture of the film animation character The Incredible Hulk on it. His mums steps in behind him. Masi welcomes him to class with the traditional Khalsa greeting.] 7 Masi: Vaheguru ji ka khalsa, vaheguru ji ki fateh! 8 [looking at the trumpet] Wow! 9 Mum: We’ve got Incredible Hulk playing the trumpet! [brief inaudible exchange between Amarjot’s Mum and Masi ji] 10 Masi: Amarjot . . . [inaudible—she asks him to greet the class] 11 Amarjot: Vaheguru ji ka khalsa, vaheguru ji ki fateh, [slowly and melodically] every-bo-dy! 12 Masi: Well done. Can everybody say fateh? 13 All: Vaheguru ji ka khalsa, vaheguru ji ki fateh! 14 Masi: Well done! [Amarjot continues to play his trumpet] 15 Mum: He got it on Saturday. 16 Masi: Oh, that’s nice. [inaudible short exchange between Masi and Amarjot’s mum] 17 Mandeep: Amarjot, where did you buy that?! [inaudible class conversation as the trumpeting gets louder and louder. Mum chats briefly to Masi then leaves.] 18 Mum: Bye. [The trumpet goes quiet, then begins again quietly. A girl arrives through the door.] 19 Masi: OK, Amarjot can you say fateh (i.e., the Khalsa greeting) to Sehaj Kaur first? [Trumpet stops. All children join Amarjot in greeting the girl.]

204 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo 20 All:

Vaheguru ji ka khalsa, vaheguru ji ki fateh, Sehaj Kaur bhen-ji. 21 Masi: Who said bhaji?! I’m sure it is bhenji! 22 Sehaj Kaur ji, come and say fateh. 23 Sehaj: Vaheguru ji ka khalsa, vaheguru ji ki fateh, every-bo-dy! 24 Masi: Well done ji . . . 25 Masi: [with fascination] H-o-w does this work?! 26 This is quite interesting. 27 Amarjot: You press these buttons. 28 Masi: Oh! I see! OK. 29 And you blow from where, here or here? [Amarjot points to the correct place on the trumpet] 30 There, oh wow. 31 Sehaj: Masi Ji! 32 Masi: Haan ji. (Yes.) 33 Sehaj: I can even blow a balloon up! 34 Masi: Can you? 35 Sehaj: I can . . . 36 Mandeep: A real one? 37 Sehaj: Yeah. 38 Masi: Oh, wow. 39 OK, ji. Can we . . .? [her tone of voice implies that there should be an end to the general conversation] 40 OK. [children have quietened down] 41 And then when we get our instruments out, then you can play. 42 OK. And you can be a lovely little band. 43 Mandeep: I wanted to blow that. [Masi takes trumpet and puts it down beside her] 44 Achha ji (OK), we’ll put this here just now. 45 Ethey saaray baittho ji. (Everyone come and sit here please.) 46 Thank you. [Children now sit attentively] As we see in this extract, the first way in which Punjabi was used to engender relationships based on care and respect was through the naming practices. If the children were Sikh, they were often addressed by their name plus Kaur (for a girl) or Singh (for a boy). As well as signifying Sikh identity they are also associated, as I introduced above, with ideas of having dignity, self-respect and respect for others. This practice can be observed in lines 1, 19, 20 and 22 of this extract. Secondly, in the ebb and flow of classroom conversations in the nursery, ample use was made of ‘ji’—the Punjabi marker of respect. This was also a salient feature of the interaction in this episode. It was sometimes combined with Kaur or Singh, as in ‘Kaur ji’ in line 22 of the extract. It was also added to terms of address or reference, such as Masi or Mama, as in line 31 or in

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 205 the vignette at the beginning of the chapter. In addition, the practitioners used ‘ji’ to mitigate the force of a directive, as in ‘baittho ji’ (‘please sit’), in lines 3 and 45. With regard to this particular directive, it is also worth noting the use of the second-person plural form of the verb, which also constitutes a way of conveying respect for the addressee. ‘Ji’ was often combined into directives to soften their abruptness (as were terms of endearment as earlier outlined), through phrases such as ‘nehi ji’ (a respectful ‘no’). In her interview with me, one practitioner glossed this utterance in English as ‘no, thank you’. Sometimes ‘ji’ was combined with a Punjabi utterance, as in ‘Haan ji’ (Yes) (lines 3 and 32 of the extract) or in ‘Achha ji’ (OK) (line 44). At other times, it was combined, translingually, with English, as in ‘OK ji’ (line 5) or ‘Well done ji’ (line 24). As I observed this and other episodes of classroom interaction in the nursery, I found myself jotting down frequent reference to non-verbal forms of communication adopted by the staff. These non-verbal resources included culturally distinctive gestures such as greetings involving the pressing of palms together, sometimes with the closing of eyes or slight bow of the head. Non-verbal politeness practices such as these, together with the uses of Punjabi and instances of translingual communication discussed in this section, contributed in a significant way to the day-to-day engendering of dispositions of care and respect for others. They accompanied patient listenership practices, on the part of practitioners, of the kind exemplified in the extract above. The level of awareness among the practitioners of the key role of language in the creation of a classroom ethos is demonstrated in the following words of one practitioner. Talking about the children in her class, she stressed the importance of ‘the way you approach them, the way you talk to them, the way you give them that attention’. She then went on to make the following remark: ‘You don’t need to shout at them, the children can understand you through your eyes, through your expressions’. The Interwoven Strands of Life and Learning in This British Sikh/Punjabi Nursery In this final section on the configuration of the distinct world of the Nishkam nursery, I will focus—in turn—on two broad dimensions of life and learning in the nursery: (1) the interlacing of different styles of practitioner-child interaction and of different classroom practices, along with the ways in which these interlacings were bound up with the enactment of overlapping identities; and, equally significant, (2) the imbrication of semiotic practices, resources and artefacts in the creation of the distinctive British Sikh/Punjabi character of the nursery. The Interlacing of Different Practitioner Styles, Practices and Identities In the sections above, on the configuring of a home-like environment and sense of family, I highlighted the translingual ways of speaking that helped to

206 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo make the children feel ‘at home’ and welcomed as part of a wider ‘family’. At the same time, as professional nursery practitioners, the Nishkam staff were also involved in supporting the children with the transition from home to school, and in introducing them to new ways of taking turns in conversation and of relating to their peers and to adults. Taking a close look at particular episodes of classroom interaction gave me insights into the ways in which the practitioners were managing these overlapping identities (e.g., as Masi or as professional nursery practitioner), by employing different communicative resources (styles, languages, tone of voice and gestures) as contextualisation cues as they interacted with the children and as they engaged in situated meaning-making with them. In the episode (Extract 1 above) that unfolded around the appearance of Amarjot and his trumpet, we saw the practitioner or Masi (G. Kaur) engaging in different styles of classroom interaction. The episode began with the ritual assignment of monitor duties—a common ritual of schooling. At this point, G. Kaur was orchestrating the action and taking on a teacherly voice. Amarjot’s arrival in class and his continued blowing of the trumpet disrupted the initial interactional routine. However, G. Kaur did not ask him to stop right away. Instead, she redirected his attention, and that of the class, to the daily greeting ritual adopted by the nursery. This involved use of the Khalsa greeting—Vaheguru ji ka khalsa, vaheguru ji ki fateh (seen in lines 7, 11, 13, 20 and 23). Amarjot was asked to greet the class, and then he was asked to greet another child, Sehaj Kaur—who also arrived late. Once the ritual greetings had been exchanged, G. Kaur allowed the children some space to converse. She initiated this conversation by asking Amarjot about the way the trumpet worked (see Figure 11.1 below). Finally, in line 39, we see that there was a change in G. Kaur’s tone of voice as she reasserted her authority as the nursery practitioner. She took the trumpet, put it down near her and, switching into Punjabi, she asked the children to ‘come and sit beside her’. At this point in the episode, we see G. Kaur taking on the discourse role of an Early Years teacher and we see how the cooperation of the children with the classroom agenda was achieved. This change in footing was also signalled by the repetition of ‘OK’ (three times) and by the non-verbal act of taking charge of the trumpet and setting it aside. During the course of the months of participant observation in the nursery, I observed many other episodes like this one, in which the practitioners moved between identities, in fluid and translingual ways, guiding children’s home-school transition experience. In addition, as the nursery manager put it, practices such as these, along with the focus on fostering dispositions, were seen being seen as ‘interlinked’ and ‘woven into’ core aspects of the EYFS framework to do with personal, social and emotional development. This, for him, enabled key elements of the statutory framework to be ‘better highlighted’ and to ‘come through’, i.e. become more tangible or apparent.

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Figure 11.1 Morning greetings and ‘show and tell’ in the Reception class

The Imbrication of Semiotic Practices and Resources: A Nursery with a British Sikh/Punjabi Character Still today, as one steps into the nursery, many aspects of the furnishing and resourcing reflect its identity as a British Early Years educational institution, as well as its identity as part of the city’s British architectural and cultural

208 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo

Figure 11.2 Sikh faith-inspired original artwork mounted in the nursery’s entrance hallway

heritage. However, a longer stay there gives people an opportunity to identify the specific ways in which Sikh/Punjabi signs imbricate with the wider semiotic landscape. My extended engagement with the nursery staff and children, as a researcher, allowed me to identify many of these features of this landscape and also to capture the ways in which some semiotic practices have changed over time. My focus here will be on four different ways in which the Sikh/Punjabi character of the nursery was indexed in the semiotic practices of the nursery during the time when I was conducting this research. Firstly, a few features of the visual environment of the nursery, and a few of the teaching/learning resources within it, reflected its Sikh/Punjabi ethos. These included bilingual signage and a piece of artwork mounted in the nursery hallway (see Figure 11.2 below). This was co-produced by a nursery parent and practitioner as a reflection on the ‘deeper vision’ for the nursery. There were also some bilingual books (Punjabi and English) in the reading corner, alongside other titles that reflected the value assigned to multifaith education. In addition, on the wooden coat peg stands, children’s names were written in English and in Punjabi, alongside their photographs. Secondly, in the early phase of the nursery, a key sign of its Sikh/Punjabi character was the staff uniform: the female members of staff wore a white kurta-pajama (Punjabi long tunic and trousers) and red cardigans, echoing

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 209 the organisational colour branding of GNNSJ. The two male staff wore white dastars (turbans). Female staff generally kept their heads covered with a red or white long chuni (scarf), whilst some, following their personal practice, wore a permanent keski (cloth covering) wrapped over a bun. These aspects of the staff uniform also indexed a close association with the gurudwara, which had been instrumental to the nursery’s creation. Over time, a Western-style staff uniform was introduced as an alternative to the Punjabi-style one. This consisted of jeans, a shirt and red fleece, and it also provided flexibility for non-Asian staff who later joined the team. Initially, there was no uniform for children, but then a white, Punjabi-style uniform was decided upon for preschool children upwards. This was later replaced by a conventional Western-style school uniform in line with that of the new Nishkam primary school that opened next to the nursery in 2011. These shifts over time in uniform choice, and in semiotic practices around dress style, clearly reflected the nursery’s evolving position at the intersection between home, community and school life and its role in supporting the children’s transition across contrasting worlds. A third sign of the Sikh/Punjabi nature of the nursery environment was the use of music. This was usually played from a compact disc (CD). In addition to indexing a Sikh/Punjabi heritage, the music was used for various practical purposes. Some of these purposes were mentioned by the practitioners in my interviews and conversations with them, and some were recorded in my field notes. Music accompanied a range of different types of activities, from arts and crafts to free play, quiet time, tidy up time and sleep time. This included traditional English nursery rhymes and songs as well as kirtan (renditions of Sikh sacred verse) sung to Eastern—and sometimes Western—musical styles. For example, staff often played a kirtan CD to ‘soothe’ babies (as they put it) and ease them into naptime. Staff and children would also gather to sing kirtan to the accompaniment of the harmonium and tabla drums in nursery assemblies. Along with this, musicians specialising in the keyboard, harp and guitar were also invited on occasion to perform for the children or run music activities. A fourth sign of the Sikh/Punjabi nature of the environment was the set of practices around nursery meals. While the actual meals were culturally varied and drew on different culinary traditions, the practices of preparing, serving and sharing food resonated with those involved in preparing langar (i.e., the meals served in the ‘Guru’s free kitchen’) at the gurudwara. Mealtime rituals in the nursery rooms involved the collective recitation of a Sikh prayer of thanks. Older children were encouraged to help distribute food, echoing sewa (‘selfless service’) practices in the langar hall of the gurudwara. The nursery served families with different religious and cultural leanings as part of their broad identification with Sikh/Punjabi heritage. In time, a few staff and families from non-Sikh and non–South Asian backgrounds became part of its community. Whilst the institution clearly had a distinctive Sikh character, as the data analysis presented here has shown, comments

210 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo made by parents that I interviewed in the wider study (Sagoo forthcoming) suggested that the nursery was perceived by them as a hospitable space— similar in some respects to the gurudwara (or what was sometimes referred to as Guru ghar, the ‘Guru’s home’) across the road.

Concluding Comments As the nursery was being founded, its patron, Bhai Sahib, made the observation that approaches to the care and education of young children, rooted in different contexts—in the home, in different cultural and religious communities and in public institutions such as schools—have the potential to find ‘resonance’ and to ‘fuse’ with each other. In the case of the Nishkam nursery, it involved a community of practice reflecting on what they described as their shared religious and cultural ‘mooring’ in the world, so as to develop and contribute ideas and approaches. This chapter has provided some insights into how this vision was starting to be realised in the daily rounds of nursery life. In configuring the distinctive character of Birmingham’s Nishkam nursery, staff were, in subtle and nuanced ways, drawing on their knowledge as British Early Years practitioners and, at the same time, acting as familiar, family-like figures for the children and as inheritors of streams of learning from their cultural and religious heritage. They were actively weaving cultural practices, dispositions of care and respect and signs of Sikh/Punjabi affiliation into their interpretation and appropriation of the national framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. A religious dimension could be seen to permeate day-to-day practice as part of a broad underlying aim. This had been to foster a keen sense of place, an environment that could be enabling for children to strengthen core dispositions—as one practitioner had put it in Punjabi—‘apay’ or, in agentive ways, ‘of their own accord’. The study presented in this chapter forms part of a wider trend in the field of early childhood education towards detailed, ethnographically informed research at the intersection between contrasting cultural worlds (e.g., Gupta 2006; Tobin 2005; Tobin et al. 2009;). As forms of nursery provision continue to diversify, research of this kind, guided by the concept of ‘figured worlds’, has a significant role to play. It foregrounds human agency and it can shed light on the situated cultural practices that unfold as new forms of provision are envisaged, and then gradually put in place, in response to larger-scale changes in educational policy. In this regard, such research enables explorations of how local ‘interpretations, implementations, negotiations’ of policy can ‘pry open implementational and ideological spaces’ (Hornberger and Johnson 2007: 511) in the broad landscape of care and education for the very young.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Marilyn Martin-Jones for her valuable comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Engendering ‘Dispositions’ 211

Notes 1. ‘Gurudwara’ was the locally preferred spelling for this institution; the spelling ‘gurdwara’ tends to be more widely used. 2. This body is known as the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE). Although Religious Education is a statutory subject in all schools in England and Wales, its curriculum to date is decided locally by SACRE councils, rather than nationally. 3. The dispositions listed in this RE syllabus framework included, for example, caring for others; cultivating inclusion, identity and belonging; being hopeful and visionary; being accountable and living with integrity. 4. All the names used in this extract are fictitious names, so as to preserve confidentiality. 5. Since it was established as a 0–5 Early Years unit, the nursery accommodated a small reception class for children aged 4–5 in its first year.

References Ahluwalia, Pal. 2011. “At Home in Motion.” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 7(2): 95–109. Birmingham City Council. 2007. The Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education. Birmingham: Birmingham City Council. Department for Children, Schools and Families. 2008. Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office (HMSO). Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gupta, Amita. 2006. Early Childhood Education, Postcolonial Theory, and Teaching Practices in India: Balancing Vygotsky and the Veda. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office (HMSO). 1992. Education (Schools) Act 1992. London: HMSO. Holland, Dorothy, Lachiocotte, William, Skinner, Debra and Carole Cain. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hornberger, Nancy H. and David C. Johnson. 2007. “Slicing the Onion Ethnographically: Layers and Spaces in Multilingual Language Policy and Practice.” TESOL Quarterly 41: 509–532. Johnson, David C. 2009. “Ethnography of Language Policy.” Language Policy 8: 139–159. Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Layard, Richard and Judy Dunn. 2009. A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age. London: Penguin Books. Levinson, Bradley A. U. and Margaret Sutton. 2001. “Introduction: Policy as/in Practice—A Sociocultural Approach to the Study of Educational Policy.” In Policy as Practice: Towards a Comparative, Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy, edited by Margaret Sutton and Bradley A. U. Levinson, 1–22. Westport, CT: Ablex. Lytra, Vally. 2012. “Multilingualism and Multimodality.” In Handbook of Multilingualism, edited by Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese, 521–537. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Mandair, Arvind-Pal S. 2011. “Valences of the Dialectic: Un-inheriting the Religionsecular Binary in Sikh Studies and Beyond.” Religions of South Asia 4(2): 233–252. Martin-Jones, Marilyn. 2015. “Multilingual Classroom Discourse as a Window on Wider Social, Political and Ideological Processes: Critical Ethnographic Approaches.”

212 Gopinder Kaur Sagoo In The Handbook of Classroom Discourse and Interaction, edited by Numa Markee, 446–460. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Nesbitt, Eleanor. 2005. Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricento, Thomas and Nancy Hornberger. 1996. “Unpeeling the Onion: Language Planning and Policy and the ELT Professional.” TESOL Quarterly 30(3): 401–427. Sagoo, Gopinder K. 2009. A Sikh-inspired Vision for Learning: The Discursive Production of an Ethos by Members of the GNNET Education Trust. MRes. dissertation, University of Birmingham. Sagoo, Gopinder K. 2013. “Citizenship as Social, Spiritual and Multilingual Practice: Fostering Visions and Practices in the Nishkam Nursery Project.” In Language, Policies and (Dis)citizenship: Rights, Access, Pedagogies edited by Vaidehi Ramanathan, 145–166. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sagoo, Gopinder K. forthcoming. Making and Shaping the First Nishkam Nursery. PhD thesis, University of Birmingham. Shackle, Christopher and Arvind-Pal S. Mandair. 2005. Teachings of the Sikh Gurus, Selections from the Sikh Scriptures. London: Routledge. Stritikus, Tom T. and Ann-Marie Wiese. 2006. “Reassessing the Role of Ethnographic Methods in Education Policy Research.” Teachers College Record 108(6): 1106–1131. Tobin, Joseph. 2005. “Quality in Early Childhood Education: An Anthropologist’s Perspective.” Early Education & Development 16(4): 421–434. Tobin, Joseph, Hseuh, Yeh and Mayumi Karasawa. 2009. Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan and the United States. Chicago: Chicago University Press. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). 2007. Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries. Florence: Innocenti Research Centre. Urrieta Jr., Luis. 2007. “Figured Worlds and Education: An Introduction.” The Urban Review 39(2): 107–116. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolcott, Harry F. 2008. Ethnography: A way of seeing (2nd edition). Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.

12 Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith Ghanaian Pentecostal and Bangladeshi Muslim Communities in London Charmian Kenner, Amoafi Kwapong, Halimun Choudhury and Mahera Ruby Many communities that are marginalised in the education system or the wider society have alternative ways of providing knowledge, love and care for their children. Faith groups often play a significant role in achieving this. Families who have migrated to London, for example, are attracted to faith settings where they can meet others from their linguistic and cultural background. In these settings, children are offered support with language and literacy learning, and with developing confident multicultural identities. Such support may not be available in the mainstream system, where children may encounter racism and low expectations about their educational achievement. This chapter arises from a three-year ethnographic research project comparing children’s language and literacy learning in four faith communities in London: Ghanaian Pentecostal, Bangladeshi Muslim, Tamil Hindu and Polish Catholic. Here we focus on the first two communities, discussing their efforts to foster children’s self-confidence and help them build successful learner identities that transfer to the mainstream setting. We consider how a Sunday school teacher at the Pentecostal church uses the David and Goliath biblical story to encourage children to construct a positive self-image in the faith context and find alternative ways of responding to difficulties in school. Children are also given a leadership role in the Pentecostal congregation when performing memorised verses on Children’s Day. In the collective blessing at the end of this service, the pastor brings children together and tells them that the Church will protect them. This offers the children a sense of security and can strengthen their self-belief as young people of Ghanaian origin growing up in London. We then discuss the networks of support provided for nine-year-old Nuha, who is from a Bangladeshi Muslim family, as shown by the mind map she produced concerning her experiences as a learner at home and in the community. Finally, we analyse data from a ‘family meeting’ held weekly in Nuha’s home, in which parents and children discuss progress at mosque classes and mainstream school. The meeting begins and ends with phrases from Qur’anic Arabic, framing the purpose and nature of the discussion in Islamic terms, so that being a learner takes on wider moral and spiritual dimensions.

214 Charmian Kenner et al. In both the Pentecostal and Islamic faith settings, a holistic approach is taken to children as learners, contextualising their identities in ways that go beyond individualistic and materialistic concerns. For children who are particularly vulnerable, this support can create resilience and foster links between home, community and mainstream school. Based on these findings, we argue that mainstream schools need to recognise how faith settings are contributing to children’s learning. Transformational practice would involve mainstream teachers collaborating with faith teachers to share experiences and support children according to their individual needs.

Learner Identities in Multicultural Contexts In recent educational research across a variety of fields, learner identity has emerged as a key factor underpinning students’ achievement. For example, Kramsch (2000) and Hirano (2009) emphasise that successful second language learning is facilitated by a positive learner identity, whilst Crichton and Kinsel (2003: 213), researching in adult education, argue that ‘the development of a complex, multi-faceted sense of self can increase student achievement and self-confidence’. From a poststructuralist perspective (Hall, 1996; Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2003), identities are discursively constructed and affected by power relationships, and thus interactions between teachers and students play a highly significant role. Reeves (2009) recommends that teachers invest in learner identity by positioning their students in positive ways, and Hirano (2009) suggests that if students perceive themselves as having difficulty in learning due to previous experiences, teachers can act to transform this perception. However, students from ethnic minority backgrounds do not always receive such positive affirmation. Black students in UK schools may be identified as ‘undesirable, or even intolerable, learners’, according to Youdell (2003: 3), and Rubin (2007: 218) found similar attitudes in a U.S. high school with a low-income ethnic minority intake, where ‘the categorization of students as urban and deficient’ led to ‘devastating consequences for school persistence and engagement’. Student experiences may be very different in complementary schools, which offer after-school and weekend classes where students learn about heritage languages and cultures, and often receive additional support with mainstream curriculum subjects. Research in the UK (Mirza and Reay, 2000; Issa and Williams, 2009) shows how teachers in these contexts construct positive relationships with their students through close links with families and shared cultural understanding. Students thus have the opportunity to perform successful learner identities, as well as explore their heritage identities and the multicultural identities constructed as they grow up in a diverse society (Creese et al., 2006). These multiple identities not only co-exist but also feed into each other. Whereas the mainstream curriculum tends to devalue and exclude students’

Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith 215 cultural and linguistic knowledge (Nieto and Bode, 2008), complementary schools tend to value and include it. Learner identity is strengthened because students are no longer forced to separate themselves from their home and community experience; instead, they can make the most of living in ‘simultaneous worlds’ (Kenner, 2004; Kenner and Ruby, 2012). In this chapter, we therefore put forward a definition of learner identity as ‘a positive sense of self that enables students to fully participate in the learning process, drawing on all their cultural and linguistic resources’. In what ways might students’ experiences in faith settings affect the development of such identities?

Learning in Faith Settings Whereas learning within complementary schools has been studied in depth in recent years (Conteh et al., 2007; Lytra and Martin, 2010), there has been less of a focus on faith settings, and the contribution of a faith dimension to learner identity is particularly under-researched. However, studies in the UK and U.S. indicate that learning taking place in faith contexts has the potential to support students’ success in mainstream schools. Rosowsky (2008) observed Qur’anic classes in a Mirpuri-Panjabi community in Northern England and identified knowledge of liturgical literacy as a key aspect of children’s self-esteem. He comments that ‘self-esteem is well documented as an essential element in the educational success of young people’ (Rosowsky, 2008: 168). Meanwhile, Moore (2011) discovered that members of a Somali community in Ohio considered children’s Qur’anic schooling to have benefits that could transfer to mainstream education, including respect for learning and those who impart it, self-discipline and commitment to studying. Such attitudes may be fostered by participating alongside adults as part of a learning community, as demonstrated in the research of Peele-Eady (2011) concerning African American children at a Baptist Sunday school in California. Most of the above factors could characterise other community learning contexts not necessarily based on faith. Is there an additional moral and spiritual dimension to faith settings that can inform learner identities? Whilst secular schooling also promotes moral values, learning in the church or mosque is entirely focused on such aspects. The explicit discussion of faith texts and their relationship to students’ lives could therefore play an important role in personal development as well as literacy learning. PeeleEady (2011) argues that ‘scholarship’ in Baptist Sunday school includes not only literacy comprehension but also the understanding of biblical texts and how they relate to children’s own lives. An example is a question and answer session on ‘showing love for others’. Haight and Carter-Black (2004), also studying a U.S. African American church setting, observed that children were encouraged to engage in biblically based storytelling that they could apply to their own circumstances; this contributed to feelings of self-worth and was a protective factor against the risks encountered in their lives, building resilience in the face of adversity.

216 Charmian Kenner et al.

Ghanaian Pentecostal and Bangladeshi Muslim Communities in London We now turn to the context of our ethnographic study on children learning language and literacy in faith settings in London. We will describe the two places of worship on which we focus, and highlight societal issues affecting learning for students of Black African and of Bangladeshi Muslim origin. The Church of Pentecost was established in Ghana in 1931 and has grown in London since the 1980s. Our research site is a Pentecostal church in Goodmayes, East London, where the Ghanaian community has adapted an Edwardian building that was previously a cinema and a bingo hall. Some services at Goodmayes take place in Twi, whilst others are in English for the international Pentecostal community. Meanwhile, our research with Bangladeshi Muslim families took place in the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre, located in the heart of the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets. A mosque was originally established for Muslim sailors on a temporary site in the 1930s, and when the community increased from the 1950s onwards, a permanent site was urgently needed. The new complex was finished in 2004 and is one of the largest and most vibrant Islamic centres in Western Europe. The children and young people in both communities are at risk of racial discrimination in school and the wider society. Research shows persistent under-achievement by some ethnic minority groups in UK schools, including Black African students, which has been partly attributed to low teacher expectations (Gillborn, 2005). Whilst Bangladeshi students in Tower Hamlets are now achieving above national norms (Woods et al., 2013), they are liable to be affected by the increasing incidence of Islamophobia in the UK. The UK telephone counselling service Childline reported a 69% increase in calls from children on racist bullying, particularly Islamophobic, from 2012 to 2013 (NSPCC, 2013). In addition, the children in our study are growing up in economically deprived environments, and are therefore vulnerable to gang culture leading to violence and exclusion from school (van Gemert and Decker, 2008). In these circumstances, it is particularly important for children and young people to construct identities that give them confidence and self-respect, facilitating their progress as learners in mainstream school.

The Study and Selected Data Our research set out to examine teaching and learning approaches in faith literacy activities, and explore how such participation contributed to the construction of individual and collective identities. We chose collaborative ethnography as our methodological approach, to collect data providing a rich description of the social interactions through which children’s learning developed. The team included researchers connected with each faith setting and fluent in the languages concerned. The researchers observed worship

Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith 217 and special ceremonies in their own and each other’s settings, writing and exchanging extended narratives raising questions about the events taking place. They also visited faith classes, making field notes and videorecordings. The faith lesson and Children’s Day celebration on which we focus in this chapter, in the Ghanaian Pentecostal church, were observed at this stage in the research process. We then embarked upon case studies with four families from each setting. Sixteen children aged between four and twelve were involved. The researchers first gave each child a large sheet of paper and coloured pens and asked them to draw or write about their family and their faith. Some children developed this representation into a mind map showing other significant people in their lives who helped them learn about their faith, the languages they used and the activities they did. In this chapter, we refer to the mind map drawn by nine-year-old Nuha, from one of the Bangladeshi Muslim families. As part of the collaborative ethnographic approach, families were involved as co-researchers in documenting their own choice of faith-related events taking place at home, using digital recorders and Flip cameras lent by the project to make audiorecordings and videorecordings of a great variety of events, from prayers and celebrations to games and story reading with younger siblings. Nuha’s family audiorecorded one of their weekly ‘family meetings’, which we analyse below.

Lessons for Life: David and Goliath Story in the Pentecostal Class One of the Sunday school teachers in the Ghanaian Pentecostal church introduced this lesson to a class of six- to eight-year-olds by singing a song with them, ‘David Was a Shepherd Boy’, based on the story of David slaying the giant Goliath. This song and the Bible study that followed were in English, the shared language of all the children and teachers, though songs in Twi were also used in Sunday school. The children sang ‘David Was a Shepherd Boy’ loudly and heartily, evidently enjoying the traditional African call-and-response style refrain of ‘Oh yes!’. Through the song, the children were already familiar with the story. The teacher asked her pupils to find the relevant chapter in their Children’s Bibles, and invited one child to read it aloud. Then the teacher addressed the overall message of the story, asking the children how little shepherd boy David could have won the battle against huge Goliath. Through discussion, she elicited the idea that although David had no sword, he did have the help of God. Next the teacher offered a leading role to a child, by asking for a volunteer to tell the story. Samuel waved his hand and stood up. He told a long, detailed version of the story, to which his classmates listened attentively. Samuel’s participation was noteworthy since he was a rather boisterous, active boy who could have

218 Charmian Kenner et al. been constructed as a ‘difficult’ pupil, yet here he was fully engaged and demonstrated his knowledge of the storyline. In this context he was a keen learner for whom the story had meaning, and he was being taken seriously as a valued contributor to the lesson. After engaging in more depth with the Bible chapter’s content and moral, the teacher began to relate the David and Goliath story to the children’s own lives. She addressed an issue that she evidently knew faced many of them, saying that some children at school wanted to behave like ‘gangstas’ and be ‘cool’. Samuel responded immediately, saying ‘like me’. His willingness to reveal this aspect of his behaviour was striking, and might have had consequences in mainstream school, where it could have led to censure. However, the teacher laughed and asked him, ‘Why do you choose to behave in this way?’ Samuel answered, ‘I used to be good at one time, but now . . .’ Again the teacher asked him why. She suggested, ‘You want people to look at you, be afraid of you’, and Samuel agreed. The teacher compared his feelings to those of Goliath in the Bible story, who also wanted people to be afraid of him. Here we see that the teacher directly named a difficult issue and encouraged children to reveal their own experiences. Samuel’s ready admission suggests he was keen to talk about this area. The teacher gave him an opportunity to explain his situation, asking the question ‘why’, which assumed there were reasons behind it. Samuel’s statement ‘I used to be good’ showed he recognised problems in his current behaviour, and he began to reflect on its causes with his teacher’s help. The teacher built on these reflections by asking Samuel to stand up, together with the small girl next to him, Afua. She explained to the class, ‘We are taking them as an example’, and that ‘Afua would be afraid of Samuel’. In other words, this was a hypothetical situation to help children’s understanding, rather than labelling Samuel as badly behaved. The teacher made it clear that the problem was a collective one, not an individual one, by saying that ‘sometimes we all act like this—the boss’, and making ‘gangsta’-style body movements as she spoke. She inhabited the cultural world of her pupils and included herself within it, and Samuel nodded in agreement. The teacher then acknowledged that power can have positive aspects too, by asking Samuel, ‘If there’s a problem, do your friends rely on you?’ He nodded again, this time looking proud of himself. ‘Are you the leader?’ the teacher asked, and he nodded once more. The teacher made a further connection with the Bible story, indicating that power was not necessarily dependent on physical strength, because Afua could rely on God if she was fighting against someone attacking her: ‘Sometimes you can see little ones that are strong’. This approach produced positive emotions and a sense of confidence in Samuel, and switched the emphasis to children defending themselves from bullying rather than attacking others. Samuel looked thoughtful throughout this discussion, and later in the class he brought up a problem he had had with other children at mainstream

Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith 219 school, which had caused him to get into trouble. The teacher thanked Samuel for telling her, and said, ‘But we want you to change’. Samuel admitted his fears to her: ‘But if I change they’ll do something to me’. The teacher offered her personal support and that of the church community, advising him as follows: ‘No Samuel, you say to them, I am a Sunday school child, my Sunday school teacher told me not to fight’. She then called on the whole class to support Samuel and each other: ‘We can all help Samuel to change . . . and I believe it’s not only Samuel’. Another child added ‘everybody!’, underlining the collaborative effort to be made. Finally, the teacher invited her pupils to continue the discussion in future sessions, saying, ‘Next time we come we’ll be able to share’, and commended Samuel for his behaviour in class: ‘Especially Samuel, he is being so friendly and open and sharing what is in his heart—this is what God likes’. As Samuel wanted to contribute more stories of his difficulties, the teacher emphasised he needed to be good at school. He mentioned the star chart for children in his class, and the teacher encouraged him to work towards receiving such rewards. This episode demonstrates how the Sunday school teacher fostered a relationship of trust with the children, and a class environment where they could reflect upon problems without fear of condemnation. She was familiar with her pupils’ cultural background and had a strong stake in their emotional and spiritual development. Through faith literacy, she sought to establish a positive learner identity for the children, rooted in the Sunday school community and reaching into the mainstream context. For the whole class, and Samuel in particular, a personal link had been made with the story of David and Goliath, leading to meaningful implications for their own lives.

Belonging as Learners: Children’s Day in the Pentecostal Church As well as developing their understandings about faith in Sunday school, children could gain support for their lives and learning through membership of the Pentecostal congregation. Children and young people regularly participated in church services, actively involved alongside their elders in prayer, making music, singing and dancing. They took a special leadership role on Children’s Day, when they performed action songs and delivered verses memorised from the Bible. Even very young children took their place on the stage, beautifully dressed. They stood at the microphone to speak their verse, confidently handling the complex language. Older children had committed a lengthy reading to memory and demonstrated great poise. The congregation showed their appreciation through cheers and spoken responses, and a drum roll was played to acknowledge particularly long declamations. Even if they faltered, each child was applauded and encouraged, and prompted to help them recall the wording. All the children were constructed as successful learners in the practice of communal worship.

220 Charmian Kenner et al. At the end of this service, the pastor called all children, accompanied by parents carrying babies, to come to the front of the congregation. He spoke about the storm they would have to weather in life, and the confidence they would need for hard times ahead, specifically mentioning the bullying and intimidation they might face. He called on God to protect the children and take away their pain. Several church elders stood in front of the group and placed their hands on the children to bless them. A Pentecostal teacher interviewed for our study explained that children attending the church were at risk of being bullied into joining gangs at primary school, and in recent years a number of Ghanaian youths had lost their lives in criminal circumstances in London. In this context, the collective blessing united families within the church community, providing children with a sense of belonging and supporting them to overcome difficulties in the wider world.

A Child’s World of Faith Learning: Nuha’s Mind Map We now turn to the Bangladeshi Muslim community worshipping at the East London Mosque, focusing on the case study of nine-year-old Nuha and her family. Nuha’s parents migrated from Bangladesh to East London, where Nuha and her younger brothers, eight-year-old Tahmid and six-month-old Yusuf, and sister, three-year-old Madiha, were born and raised. Nuha and Tahmid attended two-hour evening classes at the mosque for four days a week, learning Arabic language and Tajweed (correct pronunciation of Qur’anic reading) so that they could memorise and recite the verses in the Qur’an. They also attended Saturday Islamic School, where as well as studying Arabic, the Qur’an and Tajweed, they had classes on Islamic studies, and Islamic manners and etiquette. In her first interview with the researcher, Nuha spent almost an hour producing a mind map, representing the faith-related learning activities in her life and her relationships with the people involved. Nuha’s map (see Figures 12.1 and 12.2) shows how her learner identity is based in social and educational experiences important to her as an individual, ranging from her Tajweed classes to home literacy events such as translating between Arabic and English with her dad and telling ‘spooky Islamic stories’ with her mum. Her faith permeates her cultural life; she mentions performing a ‘nasheed’ show (singing Islamic songs) with a neighbour, and engaging in a Ramadan quiz competition for charity. Nuha records her feelings about her different languages, which include Arabic, English and Bengali, and her enthusiasm for Arabic shines out. She says ‘I love it’, and characterises it as ‘exciting’ and ‘different from English’. She is positive about English too, stating that she likes reading in English, enjoys literacy and feels confident in the language. However, Arabic is linked with her faith identity, which is evidently strong, as demonstrated by the large print in which she has written her main message, ‘I love Allah then my mum!’

Figure 12.1 Nuha’s mind map (front)

Figure 12.2 Nuha’s mind map (back)

222 Charmian Kenner et al. Learning Arabic and engaging with Qur’anic literacy is seen as a positive challenge by Nuha: ‘I like it when it’s hard’. She is aware of her progress, documented by reference to the ‘Box 1’ and ‘Box 2’ Arabic books she is studying in her classes, and she mentions that, when practising Arabic conversation, ‘I like it because I can see how much I learnt’. She experiences varied learning approaches; with her dad she reads the Qur’an and tells stories about Islam, whilst another activity is to ‘read or memorise’ what her Qur’anic teacher gave her to do. Nuha depicts herself as a keen and confident learner, charting her pathway towards a deeper understanding of Arabic and of her faith.

Learning in an Islamic Framework: Nuha’s Family Meeting Nuha’s father held a weekly meeting with his children to discuss their learning in primary school and SIS (Saturday Islamic School). By bringing together the children’s experiences across these different sites, their father encouraged them to take a comprehensive view of their education and construct a holistic identity as learners. This learner identity was grounded in faith, as shown by the Islamic language and practices that permeated the event. Although the meeting took place mainly in English, in which the children were more confident than the family’s heritage language of Bengali, Arabic was used at key moments throughout. Nuha’s father opened the meeting by saying ‘Bismillah, Salatul Assalamualaika ya Rasulullah, Alhamdulillah’ (In the name of Allah, sending peace and blessings to the Prophet of Allah, all praise be to Allah). The first part of the agenda consisted of a Qirat (recitation) by eight-year-old Tahmid, which he introduced with the words ‘Aoothu billa himinash shaithanir rajiim Bismilla hir rah’maanir rahiim’ (opening in the name of Allah). He then competently recited the verses of Surah Fatiha, the first Surah (chapter) of the Qur’an, which is known as the declaration of faith in Islam. His father thanked him by saying, ‘Jazak Allah khair’ (thank you, Allah will reward you for your goodness), the Islamic formulation that gave additional recognition for the learning that Tahmid had offered to Allah. Later, Nuha prefaced her first words at the meeting with ‘Alhamdulillah’ (all praise be to Allah) and her father responded to her contribution in the same way, even though both were referring to experiences in the English primary school. The meeting closed with Nuha’s father repeating ‘Jazak Allah khair’ to thank the participants, and adding ‘Assalamualaikum’ (peace be with you). The whole event was thus constructed within an Islamic context, in which the act of learning gives praise to Allah. Nuha’s father made the importance of an Islamic approach explicit after Tahmid’s recitation by stating, ‘It’s always very good to start anything with the name of Allah Subhanawatalah (Glory and praise be to Allah). You can get baraka (praise and blessings from Allah)’. In this way, he designated learning as being for non-materialistic reasons, beyond the desires of the self.

Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith 223 Involvement in learning is seen in Islam to begin early in life, so when mapping out the agenda at the start of the meeting, Nuha’s father included all the children by name: Nuha, Tahmid and their three-year-old sister Madiha. Since life is seen as a pathway in which obstacles are tackled through faith, one agenda item was ‘to discuss any difficulties and how to overcome it’. Rewards for hard work were tangible as well as spiritual; a subsequent agenda item was ‘treats and deciding where we are going to eat out this week’. Overall, the agenda showed the children how to reflect on the learning taking place in their different educational environments, evaluating successes and dealing with problems. This process of reflection was encouraged by Nuha’s father as the meeting progressed. He first asked the children how they were getting on in English school. Nuha was positive: ‘I’ve gone into a higher standard and I really like my new year’. Her father focused on a specific area, recognising its importance: ‘What about the teachers?’ Nuha again responded positively: ‘They teach really well’. Tahmid evaluated his experience as follows: ‘I am finding it kind of easy, it’s fifty-fifty because I get to learn a lot of stuff in school and the teachers are really kind to us’. However, the agenda item on potential difficulties facilitated further discussion. When her father probed a little more, asking, ‘Find it difficult with any subjects? Any particular thing? Any help you need?’, Nuha answered, ‘I think in my science I might need a little bit of help’. Tahmid then admitted, ‘In maths . . . it’s a bit tricky for me’. As well as enabling children to identify problems, Nuha’s father offered them help. He promised Nuha, ‘When we have our next Science session you can bring that up and we will go over it’, and told Tahmid, ‘We will go over it Sunday, we have a Maths class’. He ran these sessions regularly, giving additional support for learning. In her mind map, Nuha included ‘numeracy’ and recorded, ‘My dad teaches very nicely and I enjoy it’. The topic then turned to Islamic School (SIS), and Nuha provided a self-critical evaluation of her own work, showing how she took responsibility for her learning: ‘I am finding SIS easy but the homework on Qur’an, I think I might need to improve on my mark, the teacher didn’t come last week but I still gave myself homework’. Her father recognised her efforts by saying, ‘With any subject if you work hard it becomes easy’ and offered advice on strategies for learning: If you leave everything to the last moment you will panic and you will find it difficult, so always plan ahead, be ahead of the class, try and find out what they are going to study next week and revise and try to do some research for next [class] so you know what the teacher is talking about. The value that Nuha’s father placed on learning was underlined by his practice of checking Islamic school homework. When Tahmid indicated that he had finished his homework, his father stated, ‘Alright, I’m going to check it

224 Charmian Kenner et al. and sign it’, and Nuha reminded him that he had already signed her homework and given her a sticker. Alongside the focus on academic work, the children’s welfare was also considered important. Indeed, the first problem specified by Nuha with regard to English school was ‘I had a bump on my nose and it started to bleed and it hasn’t stopped’. Her father took this seriously and responded, ‘We will check why with the doctor’. When three-year-old Madiha took her turn to talk about her school, she said: ‘Erm I think it was nice, but I didn’t cry at school’. Her father acknowledged her concerns by saying, ‘Didn’t you?’ before asking what she had done that day, eliciting the response ‘I drawed’, to which he responded empathetically, ‘You drawed? Ahhh’. Finally, the agenda item of ‘any other business’ gave the children the chance to raise issues of their own. On this occasion, there were none, so Nuha’s father proceeded to the topic of food, the practical reward for learning. Suggestions showed the children’s multicultural background: Tahmid chose ‘chicken and chips’, whilst Nuha preferred ‘the usual stuff that Mum makes’. The children also suggested a picnic in the park, but given that it was autumn, their father managed to negotiate a visit to a restaurant instead. The family meeting brought the children’s learner identities from home, school and community into one space. Doing well at school was seen as not only a matter for oneself but ultimately for Allah, and the family was constructed as a source of support where both successes and difficulties could be shared.

Conclusion Our findings show that both the Pentecostal Sunday school teacher and Nuha’s father built bridges to children’s experiences in mainstream school, making links between positive learning approaches in all educational settings within an overall framework that stemmed from faith. The question arises as to whether mainstream teachers would be similarly aware of children’s home and community learning experiences, and in particular whether they would recognise the work being done in faith contexts to affirm children’s sense of self. Mainstream educators could develop such understandings by talking with children and families about the faith settings they attend, and visiting some of these with an open mind. They would be likely to find a rich variety of events taking place in an interactive learning environment. They would also see for themselves how involvement in faith activities helps children develop self-confidence and expertise as learners. Two-way conversations with community teachers could provide a springboard for future partnerships in which children’s faith experiences become a resource for learning across the curriculum. Such ways forward are suggested by an action research study with teachers in East London (Kenner and Ruby, 2012) on bringing children’s linguistic and cultural knowledge into mainstream school.

Supporting Children’s Learner Identities through Faith 225 Our study demonstrates that in the Pentecostal and Islamic settings, children’s voices were heard. Educators from all backgrounds need to work together with sensitivity and understanding to strengthen those voices, so that children can develop their identities not only as individual learners but as valued contributors to their school and faith communities.

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226 Charmian Kenner et al. Peele-Eady, Tryphenia. 2011. “Constructing Membership Identity Through Language and Social Interaction: The Case of African American children at Faith Missionary Baptist Church.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 42 (1), 54–75. Reeves, Jenelle. 2009. “Teacher Investment in Learner Identity.” Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (1), 35–41. Rosowsky, Andrey. 2008. Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rubin, Beth. 2007. “Learner Identity Amid Figured Worlds: Constructing (In)Competence at an Urban High School.” The Urban Review 39 (2), 217–49. van Gemert, Frank, and Scott Decker. 2008. “Migrant Groups and Gang Activity: A Contrast Between Europe and the USA.” In Street Gangs, Migration and Ethnicity, edited by Frank van Gemert, Dana Peterson, and Inger-Lise Lien, 15–30. London: Routledge. Woods, David, Husbands, Chris, and Chris Brown. 2013. Transforming Education for All: The Tower Hamlets Story. London: Tower Hamlets Council. Youdell, Deborah. 2003. “Identity Traps or How Black Students Fail: The Interactions Between Biographical, Sub-Cultural, and Learner Identities.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 24 (1), 3–20.

Conclusion Susi Long

A Sense of Urgency I grew up with a repertoire of cultural practices that were neither understood nor visible in representations of mainstream . . . families. Although my Salvadoran grandparents publically identified as Catholic, my family’s practice of Latin American espiritismo and my grandmother’s position as an espiritista influenced my worldview as a young person. Discussions of my family’s religious identity, however, were taboo outside of our home, especially in the secular space of my public school. I felt isolated. . . . I did not see families like mine in any school curriculum, let alone children’s books. Moreover, I never met a teacher who would understand my reality, as some schools and literacy educators are not accommodating of the religious lives and literacies of diverse groups of students. (Davila 2015, 61)

Davila’s (2015) words ring with a sense of urgency that speaks powerfully to insights offered throughout this book. Along with the chapter authors and the book’s editors, Davila pushes us to acknowledge that schooling and the wider society can isolate, ignore, and create taboos that keep us from recognizing the rich learning, teaching, heritage, histories, literacies, and sense of community and belonging that define many faith contexts. Challenging that silence, stories told in these chapters illustrate ways that religious contexts play pivotal roles in the lives of children and adolescents and yet are often unknown or unacknowledged beyond those contexts. Specifically, chapter authors suggest that there is much to be learned about (and from) ways that, through their religious communities, children and adolescents are socialized to become knowledgeable about cultural heritage and political past; learn a wide range of skills, including languages and literacies; work to meet high standards for achievement; and develop a sense of agency and positive learner identities. Given historical and contemporary movements of people within and across borders, the overall message is that, as researchers and practitioners work toward a more pluralistic approach to global and local societies, their work can be critically informed by understanding the role of

228 Susi Long religious contexts in the development of young people who can use learned proficiencies across cultural and linguistic contexts. This closing chapter pulls together insights across studies presented in this book to demonstrate the wealth of knowledge taught and learned in many faith-based settings while raising questions underlying implications for further work. Prior to discussing insights and implications, the chapter briefly discusses the importance of taking a critical stance toward history when considering why researchers and practitioners may fail to appreciate diverse religious contexts as rich sites for teaching and learning. This discussion is followed by a look at the breadth of contexts explored in this book that, as a collective, provide a strong rationale for eliminating binaries between learning in religious settings and learning in other contexts, recognizing the wealth of insights that can be gained as essential to the growth of a pluralistic society.

A Call for Critical Dialogue In the introduction to this book, editors Lytra, Gregory, and Volk express concern that there is “limited scholarly attention” to “religion as a force for learning, socialization and personal and collective identification” and that “the role of religious practices in children and adolescents’ development and educational achievement” is often ignored and/or disparaged. If we are to use findings from these chapters to counter these realities, it seems important to enter into dialogue that critically examines why religious contexts are largely absent from research and practice that focus on children and adolescents’ learning by asking: what histories (and contemporary issues) led (lead) to the disparagement or ignoring of the role of diverse faith contexts in the development of children’s and adolescents’ identities, knowledge, and abilities? While answers to this question are multilayered and complex, and vary across time and place, dialogue about the absence of religious contexts in discussions of children’s learning must include events that lead to the silencing or minoritizing of particular faith groups within larger communities/ societies. Certainly, conquests, colonization, and missionary efforts have played a strong role in the construction and perpetuation of religious hierarchies as well as biases about the ethnic, racial, and linguistic groups represented within them. For example, European colonization in North America, South America, Africa, and Asia, along with missionary efforts to “reform” and “save” Indigenous populations, were anchored in the degradation and/ or eradication of many Indigenous belief systems in the quest for power and control. Accomplished through literal but also cultural genocide, colonizers, conquerors, and missionaries—“arbiter(s) of what was culturally correct” (Rodney 2011, 253)—typically portrayed people and their beliefs, languages, and cultural traditions as inferior, less worthy, and barbaric (Smith 2012). These images and impressions of racial and ethnic groups, belief

Conclusion 229 systems, languages, and cultural traditions became embedded and reified as collective “truths” that, in many ways, continue to pervade current thinking, re-inscribed through schooling, media, and other aspects of contemporary societies. This reality is supported by the field of anti-colonialism, which asserts that we are not, in fact, a post-colonial global society but that we continue to suffer the impact of deeply internalized hierarchies, as a “created past is given the authority of truth” (Smith 2012, 70). Although the dominance of particular religions vary around the world, as do associated histories and contemporary issues, the example of European conquest and its impact on biases held by generations to follow provides a glimpse into one of many reasons why dominant cultural, religious, and secular groups may acknowledge little about nuanced practices that exist across the range of diverse faith settings. Thus, a first step in being able to use the messages communicated in this book to challenge binaries that separate one learning context from another is engaging in critical dialogue to examine complex histories that led to absence of knowledge about the breadth and scope of learning and teaching that occur across religious contexts.

Diversely and Critically Compelling The insights offered in these chapters are rich in and of themselves, but the messages they communicate are exponentially more compelling because they are situated alongside and intersect with each other. In the U.S., UK, Cameroon, and Mauritius across Pentecostal, Catholic, Amish, Baptist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh faith settings, we see children and adolescents expertly using Tamil, Sanskrit, English, Pennsylvania Dutch, Spanish, French, Arabic, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Kreol as they negotiate their religious, linguistic, and cultural worlds. We see adults skillfully mediating the expertise of children by using pedagogical strategies that hold insights for educators, but also for anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, cultural psychologists, and religious scholars. Significantly, most chapters are written by cultural and religious insiders and even when they are not, the researcher/authors acknowledge that they lay no claim to “giving voice” or “speaking for” participants in their studies. It is therefore critical that readers interpret each chapter as filtered through researchers’ own “perceived academically tainted notions of [participants’] hopes, dreams and angustias” (Saavedra 2011, 292). In addition, building on the discussion of criticality and colonized thought in the previous section of this chapter, it is important to acknowledge that, whether they are cultural and religious insiders or outsiders, chapter authors can only approach the work through their own colonized lenses (Saavedra 2011; Smith 2012). Representing generations of colonizers or colonized, their perspectives are influenced by internalized lessons that impact methodological decisions, perceptions, and representations as they describe religious contexts as sites of resource and support.

230 Susi Long

What Was Learned? Messages from these chapters hold tremendous potential for helping readers appreciate the largely unrecognized and untapped practices and knowledge necessary for successful membership in particular faith settings, which can support proficiency in many other contexts. In these settings, youths are apprenticed to and come of age as full members of cohesive communities, learning and growing in the supportive company of experienced community members. The impact of these contexts becomes very clear as we consider that, in these spaces, children and adolescents learn: •

•

• • • • •

That they matter—to elders, to peers, to the institution itself as they build feelings of self-worth and self-confidence, affirmed by members of the community; A sense of belonging and connectedness, membership identity, knowing they are a part of a “sponsorship network” (Brandt 1998) that will support them; That there is a space where they can feel safety, calm, and peace; How to interact as members of a community: rules for participation and engagement; Identities as successful learners and a sense of agency; Religious and cultural heritage and histories; Dispositions and abilities that support their ability to interact within and beyond the faith setting, such as: • • • • • •

• • • •

• • • •

•

Taking responsibility, Learning to listen, Being respectful, Being a leader, Understanding spatial relationships, and Appropriate emotional reactions;

Procedural knowledge and practices (how to pray; baptisms, First Communions, liturgical practices of the madrassah, sacred text practices); Religious and historical content knowledge; Mixed-faith practices; How to navigate multicultural, multilingual spaces (communicative competence and metalinguistic awareness); how to blend approaches from different languages and literacies; How to manage multiple identity options; Appreciation for the beauty of language and expression; Highly abstract concepts such as symbolic representations; How to use multimodal literacies: print texts, oral texts, images, colour, artwork, spatial arrangements, facial and body expressions, cooking, cuneiform, beadwork, quilts, patterns of faith; Intergenerational literacies/knowledge and a responsibility to pass them on;

Conclusion 231 •

Specific literacy skills, such as: •

• •

Reading fluency, intonation, volume, pace, intensity, sequence, turn taking, extending vocabulary, using contextual cues, decoding, text directionality, word boundaries, text-sound correspondence; Figurative and literary speech, enunciation, accurate pronunciation, evoking emotion through auditory expression; How to access, transact with, and make sophisticated connections across complex and difficult texts.

While this impressive breadth and depth of learning holds implications for a wide range of contexts, it seems clear that educators in particular would benefit from insights regarding the teaching practices that led to such learning. Ironically, some of the very students described as proficient and successful in these chapters are often those who are misunderstood, degraded, and sometimes made invisible in mainstream schools because they fall outside narrow social, cultural, religious, and linguistic norms established in many educational institutions. When the same students are not successful in schools, educators often blame their lack of academic success on students’ cultural contexts. However, if educators truly believe what they profess— that an equitable education is the right of all students—then they must seriously examine the teaching and learning strategies used in the out-of-school contexts most meaningful in students’ lives, religious spaces being some of the most significant. The same issue is critical when considering how other disciplines might benefit from this work: while examining what is learned, we must also consider how it is taught.

How Was the Learning Supported? Collectively, these chapters communicate a wide range of strategies and teaching practices used by adults to support learning in faith settings. To construct supportive learning/teaching spaces, adults: • • • • • • • •

Created spaces of comfort; Demonstrated love and positive expectation; Assessed children’s knowledge in authentic ways; Directly taught through classes and lessons; Provided opportunities for guided participation; Used multilingual resources to model code-meshing and code-switching as useful communicative strategies; Provided contextualized demonstrations and explanations, and real-life examples; Engaged children and adolescents in: • • •

Storytelling Singing and making music Dramatizations, role playing, and story enactment

232 Susi Long • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Creating (religious) texts Dialogue Responsive readings in front of supportive, mutually knowledgeable audiences Call and response, with both audience and speaker playing roles Reading aloud and recitations in cooperation with more experienced readers Purposeful and guided repetition Memorization and imitation Rehearsals of roles and rituals

Created opportunities for children and adolescents to apprentice to elders’ roles and positions as wise experts; Negotiated learning with students; Got to know each child/adolescent well; Paced instruction for each child/adolescent and provided one-to-one instruction; Used supportive texts: religious texts, sermons, church bulletins, Sunday School materials; Connected texts to lived experiences and children’s feelings, fears, concerns, and experiences; Monitored their teaching; guarded children and adolescents from incomplete or incorrect understanding; Provided praise as well as admonishment; Positioned children and adolescents as leaders and experts.

Where Do We Go Next? Throughout these chapters, religious settings are described in which children and adolescents’ views, heritage, histories, beliefs, language(s), and expertise were supported, not censured. In these settings, they were validated as capable learners and allowed to work through new understandings safely with teachers and other adults who were familiar with their cultural backgrounds, families, and communities. Foundational to every teaching strategy and skill learned is the fact that learners developed a sense of belonging by working alongside elders who were seen as experts. Cross-generational relationships were honored. Children and adolescents were also seen as experts. Believing deeply in children’s abilities and potential, adults gave them leadership roles—trusting and expecting them to succeed. Also clear in chapter after chapter is the positive pedagogical impact of ritual, rehearsal, and performance, as instructional strategies were used in meaningful and historicallyand community-driven contexts. In addition, learners were supported in using multilingual resources, drawing from multiple worlds to syncretically create new spaces for learning and teaching. This was all accomplished with the support of a community that guided, expected, supported, and validated the potential, skill, and ability of each learner.

Conclusion 233 With these insights in mind, chapter authors call for further research. With even greater urgency, however, they appeal for policies and practices to challenge norms that ignore or trivialize the range of cultural and linguistic knowledge that children and adolescents bring from faith settings to every other context in their lives. They know that if practitioners and researchers continue to have little knowledge of students’ religious worlds, they will only perpetuate the dominance of “certain . . . ideologies and hierarchies” (Owodally, this volume). As a result, the norm will remain narrow and those who fall outside of it will continue to learn that their communities, beliefs, histories, heritage, languages, and methods of teaching are irrelevant in the eyes of mainstream schooling. At the same time, dominant groups will continue to learn that their ways of being are superior, missing opportunities to expand their appreciation for learning and teaching contexts beyond their own. In sum, the chapter authors and editors lead us to ask: What can we take away from these stories to support a re-creation of policies and practices so that, outside their faith settings, children and adolescents experience the sense of respect, history, validation, belonging, competence, and focused teaching that many of them experience within their religious contexts? How can we access insights about how expertise is developed in religious settings to inform teaching and learning in other contexts? How can these studies compel us to engage in further work to break down binaries that often define and create divides between religious education, mainstream education, and the wider community? If we believe in the possibilities of pluralism, then our responses to these questions are critical. The importance of paying attention to this work cannot be underestimated when considering the impact it can have on the future of local and global societies, as well as the alternative—missing opportunities to broaden narrow normalizations of what counts and risking the perpetuation of societies that position “underrepresented groups as exotic outsiders and [lead] people to unconsciously embrace false information that perpetuates the sociopolitical contest of superiority between ‘us’ and ‘them’ ” (Davila 2015, 77).

References Davila, Denise. 2015. “#WhoNeedsDiverseBooks?: Preservice Teachers and Religious Neutrality with Children’s Literature.” Research in the Teaching of English 50(1): 60–83. King, Joyce E. and Ellen E. Swartz. 2014. ‘Re-membering’ History in Student and Teacher Learning: An Afrocentric Culturally Informed Praxis. New York: Routledge. Rodney, Walter. 2011. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press. Saavedra, Cinthya M. 2011. “De-academizing Early Childhood Research: Wanderings of a Chicana/Latina Feminist Researcher.” Journal of Latinos and Education 10(4): 286–298. Smith, Linda T. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.

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Contributors

Patricia Baquedano-López is Associate Professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program and in the Social and Cultural Studies program at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research. She is a language socialization scholar whose work focuses on the educational experiences of Mexican immigrant students to the United States. She has investigated children’s engagement with education in her ethnographic studies across educational settings including schools, churches, day care centers and after-school programs. Her research seeks to inform pedagogical practice and educational policy to create inclusive educational environments that expand opportunities for immigrant students to succeed academically. Olga Barradas completed her MA in Child Development at the Institute of Education, London, UK before conducting her PhD research on Bilingualism and Education at Goldsmiths, University of London. She currently works in London for Camões Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua (Portugal) and is a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has a long experience of working with the Portuguese-speaking community as a teacher and as a researcher. Her investigative work among Portuguese complementary schools in London has looked at the identity and linguistic development of bilingual children outside mainstream education. Halimun Choudhury words as an Impact Evaluation Officer at Goldsmiths University of London. She is also doing a PhD on the “Language shift of third generation of Bangladeshi Muslim children and the effect on religious and cultural identity” in the Department of Education. Prior to her current role she was involved in the “Becoming Literate in Faith Settings: Language and Literacy Learning in the Lives of New Londoners” (BeLiFs) project as a Research officer working specifically with the Bangladeshi Muslim community. She has contributed to articles for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, International Journal of Qualitative Methods and the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. She

236 Contributors presented at the Linguistic Landscape conference in Strasbourg (France) in May 2010 and the Complementary Schooling conference in London in December 2010. Halimun has helped, supported and advised supplementary schools across England as part of her role at the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRCSE). Halimun was employed as a Research and Network Assistant for the “Our Languages” project in 2008, where she developed a thorough understanding and passion for bilingualism. Ayala Fader received her PhD from New York University and is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Fordham University. She is the author of the award-winning book Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (Princeton 2009) and has published numerous articles on Yiddish-English bilingualism and socialization, New Age Jewish spirituality, Occupy Judaism, sex abuse and changing notions of media and faith. Her articles have appeared in American Anthropologist, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Contemporary Jewry, The Immanent Frame, The Revealer and Anthropological Quarterly, among others. Ayala has received many fellowships in support of her work, most recently from the National Science Foundation (2014–2016) for her current book project: Double Lifers: Faith, Doubt and the Internet among Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Eve Gregory is Professor Emerita of Language and Culture in Education, Goldsmiths, University of London. She has directed or co-directed a number of projects supported by the Economic and Social Research Council on children’s language and literacy learning in homes, in communities, with siblings and grandparents and most recently in faith contexts. This work is based in multilingual communities and most of it takes place in London’s East End. Her books include Making Sense of a New World: Learning to Read in a Second Language (Sage, 1996), One Child, Many Worlds: Early Learning in Multicultural Communities (Teachers’ College Press, 1997), City Literacies: Learning to Read across Generations and Cultures (joint author, Ann Williams) (Routledge, 2000), On Writing Educational Ethnographies: The Art Of Collusion (Trentham, 2005) (joint authors J. Conteh, C. Kearney and A. Mor-Sommerfeld) and Learning to Read in a New Language (Sage, 2008). She also co-edited Many Pathways to Literacy: Young Children Learning with Siblings, Grandparents, Peers and Communities (Routledge, 2004) with Susi Long and Dinah Volk. Arani Ilankuberan is a PhD student (from 2010) at the Department of Educational Studies in Goldsmiths, University of London. Her thesis explores the impact of Tamil Hindu religious film on the identity of second-generation British Tamil Hindu teenagers in London. She has also achieved her MA in Education: Culture, Language and Identity (2009) and BA English and

Contributors 237 American Literature (2007) at Goldsmiths, University of London. From 2009–2013 Arani was part of the BeLiFS project, working with Dr. Vally Lytra alongside families from the Tamil Hindu community in London. Arani is currently the Curator for the South Indian Language Collections at the British Library. Charmian Kenner is Reader (retired) in Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on children’s bilingual development in home and community contexts, and how bilingual learning can be encouraged in schools. She has directed research projects on early biliteracy, intergenerational learning between young children and grandparents and bilingual learning through partnerships between primary teachers and community language teachers. Her books include Home Pages: Literacy Links for Bilingual Children (Trentham, 2000), Becoming Biliterate: Young Children Learning Different Writing Systems (Trentham, 2004) and Interconnecting Worlds: Teacher Partnerships for Bilingual Learning (IOE Press/Trentham, 2012). She led an international seminar series resulting in the book Multilingual Europe: Diversity and Learning (Trentham, 2008). Publications and teaching resources developed by Charmian and colleagues at Goldsmiths can be found at: www. gold.ac.uk/clcl/multilingual-learning/ Amoafi Kwapong is an independent consultant on language, culture and identity, working with adults who work with young children across the UK, in Europe and in her native Ghana. Her PhD research focused on how the Twi language could be used to mediate learning in primary schools in Ghana. Amoafi is also an Associate Lecturer at the Open University in London, teaching a module on developing practice in the early years. As a researcher, Amoafi participated in a three-year ESRC-funded project at Goldsmiths, University of London, on “Becoming Literate in Faith Settings: Language and Literacy Learning in the Lives of New Londoners.” Amoafi is joint author of several journal articles arising from this study and has presented papers at conferences in Cape Town and London, as well as the keynote address at the BAAL Language in Africa Special Interest Group meeting on “Language as Communicative Practice in African and African Diasporic Contexts” in 2013. She has also contributed to published anthologies of African stories and music. Susi Long is Professor of Early Childhood and Language and Literacy Education at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on equity methodologies in early childhood literacy. Her articles and books, written in collaboration with teachers and university colleagues, focus on children and families’ expertise, histories and heritages as essential to broadening normalized views of teaching and learning, and on supporting teachers in developing and using that knowledge to challenge and change unjust pedagogies that privilege the dominant few. She is

238 Contributors co-author of several books and a range of articles with that focus, including Many Pathways to Literacy with Eve Gregory and Dinah Volk and Courageous Leadership with Mariana Souto-Manning and Vivian Maria Vasquez. Dr. Long teaches doctoral seminars in sociocultural and critical theories and undergraduate courses in literacy methods, culturally relevant pedagogies, and linguistic pluralism. She has served in leadership roles with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), including co-director of the Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching project, Chair of NCTE’s Research Foundation, and member of NCTE’s Executive Council. In 2013, she was recipient of NCTE’s Early Childhood Assembly Early Literacy Educator of the Year Award. Vally Lytra is Lecturer in Languages in Education in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She studies multilingualism, language use, language ideologies and social identities in schools, homes and communities in cross-cultural urban contexts. She is the author of Play Frames and Social Identities: Contact Encounters in a Greek Primary School (John Benjamins, 2007). She has edited Multilingualism and Identities across Contexts: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Turkish-speaking Youth in Europe (with Jens Normann Jørgensen, Copenhagen Studies in Bilingualism, 2008), Sites of Multilingualism Complementary Schools in Britain Today (with Peter Martin, Trentham, 2010) and When Greeks and Turks Meet: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Relationship since 1923 (Ashgate, 2014). Leslie C. Moore is an applied linguist and a linguistic anthropologist. Her research examines the social and cultural patterning of learning and language development in communities whose members use multiple languages and participate in multiple learning traditions. She specializes in language socialization research, an ethnographic and interactional discourse analytic approach to the study of human development and learning. For more than a decade and on two continents, Dr. Moore has studied the double schooling—religious and secular education—experiences of Muslim children for whom the language of literacy in both of their schools is not their native language. She has conducted research in the Somali immigrant-refugee community in Central Ohio and in ethno-linguistically diverse communities in northern Cameroon. Her newest research focuses on the informal science learning experiences of young children who are learning English as an additional language. Dr. Moore’s work has appeared in anthropological, linguistic and educational research, and in interdisciplinary journals and reference works. Her research, outreach and engagement have been funded by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the Ford Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Ambarin Mooznah Auleear Owodally is an Associate Professor in English at the University of Mauritius. Her studies in the UK made her conscious of the

Contributors 239 wealth of her own language and literacy experiences, and she became interested in the challenges Mauritian children face as they join school. This interest came home with the arrival of her daughters. She thus started a PhD with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, investigating the emergent literacy practices of preschool children in multilingual Mauritius. Many of her publications relate to the issue of early literacy in EFL contexts. After her PhD, and as her children started going to the local madrassah, she developed a keen interest in madrassah language and literacy practices in multi-religious, multilingual Mauritius. Recently, her publications have also included research work on Mauritian madrassah languages and literacies. Tryphenia Peele-Eady is Associate Professor in the Department of Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico, where she specializes in African-American education and qualitative and ethnographic research. Her research explores the role of language, culture and community in African-American student learning, and in the Black Church context in particular. Andrey Rosowsky is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield where he leads the full-time MA in Education. Previous to this, he was the Director of Initial Teacher Education. Much of his early career was spent teaching English and languages in secondary schools in the UK and overseas. Over the past 10 years his research has concentrated on exploring the rich literacy and language practices found in faith-based supplementary schools. He has a particular interest in Qur’anic literacy and its relationship to notions of performance and entextualisation, as well as the way in which poetry and song, composed in heritage languages and in English, are instrumental in reviving both religious and linguistic practices. At the time of writing he is about to lead an AHRC international interdisciplinary research project on performance and religious practice entitled “Heavenly Acts—Aspects of Performance through an Interdisciplinary Lens.” He is the author of Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context (Multilingual Matters, 2008). Mahera Ruby is a Certified Parenting Practitioner and an experienced community organizer. She completed her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London in the Department of Education, focusing on intergenerational learning taking place in three generations of families whose origins are in Bangladesh. Mahera is also a Research Fellow at the same university, where she co-directed the ESRC-funded research project “Becoming literate through faith: language and literacy learning in the lives of new Londoners.” She has worked on the Paul Hamlyn Foundation project “Developing bilingual pedagogies through partnership between supplementary and mainstream schools.” Mahera has also worked on two ESRC projects: ‘Intergenerational learning between children and grandparents”

240 Contributors and “Developing bilingual learning in mainstream and community contexts.” She has co-authored many publications, including the book Interconnecting Worlds: Teacher partnerships for bilingual learning (IOE Press/Trentham, 2012). Suzanne Kesler Rumsey is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Linguistics at Indiana University—Purdue University Fort Wayne, where she teaches technical writing, professional writing, multimedia, family history and service learning courses. Her research interests include cultural rhetorics, literacy studies, service learning, family history writing, literacy practices of older adults, and archival research. Her work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Journal of Literacy and Technology, Community Literacy Journal, Literacy and Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. Gopinder Kaur Sagoo is in the final stages of doctoral research at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK. Her study on the making and shaping of a Sikh-inspired British nursery reflects her interdisciplinary research interests, which encompass ethnography in education; British education policy for the “Early Years,” “Religious Education” and “spiritual, moral, social and cultural development”; education history; participatory citizenship in the context of new local/global dynamics; and Sikh Studies. These interests are reflected in her wider academic background, which includes a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (French and Russian) from the University of Cambridge and an MA in South Asian Area Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Gopinder continues to involve herself in collective Sikh life through the work of the Nishkam group of organizations, of which the nursery that forms the focus of her research is a part. Her case study of its creation is introduced in a chapter entitled “Citizenship as spiritual, social and multilingual practice” which appears in Ramanathan, V. (ed.) Language policy and (dis) citizenship (Multilingual Matters, 2013). Ana Souza graduated in Language Teaching and Translation (Portuguese/ English) in Brazil, where she taught EFL. She taught ESOL and Portuguese in the UK, where she continued her postgraduate studies. Ana did her MA in English Language Teaching at Thames Valley University (present West London University) and conducted her doctoral research on language and identity issues at the University of Southampton. She completed her PGCE in Teaching and Management in Higher Education at Goldsmiths, University of London and became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Ana’s research interests include bilingualism, language choices, language planning in migrant churches, language and identity, complementary schooling, Brazilian migration, the teaching of Portuguese as a Heritage Language and the training of language teachers. She has published in journals such as the Curriculum Journal, Current Issues in Language Planning, Language Issues, Portuguese Studies,

Contributors 241 International Journal of Multilingualism, the Women’s Studies International Forum and the Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies. Ana is presently a Senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England. Dinah Volk is Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education, College of Education, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio. During the fall 2013 semester, she was a Visiting Professor, Early Childhood Program, Teachers College, Columbia University. A former teacher at the preschool and primary levels in the U.S. and Latin America, her research focuses on the languages and literacies of young bilinguals, family engagement and culturally relevant teaching. Dr. Volk’s work has been published in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Young Children, Anthropology & Education, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Education, Multicultural Education and Research in the Teaching of English. With Gregory and Long she is co-editor of Many Pathways to Literacy: Young Children Learning with Siblings, Grandparents, Peers, and Communities and of a special issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy on syncretism. She was awarded CSU’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching in 2011 and is currently Chair of the Early Childhood Education Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English and a member of the NCTE-funded Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching project. Malgorzata Woodham holds an MA in Education from the Educational Studies Department, Goldsmiths, and her dissertation explored achievement of Chinese Vietnamese children in a primary school in Thamesmead, London. Malgorzata taught English for academic purposes at the University of Warsaw, and she has more than 20 years of experience as a teacher of English as an additional language in multilingual London primary schools. She is interested in the teaching and learning of bilingual children in mainstream classrooms.

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Index

accuracy 22, 115, 135, 180, 181, 184 Afghanistan 116 African American 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 104, 105; Baptists 2; child/ children 7, 86, 87, 89, 91, 94, 104, 105, 106, 215; Church 5, 11, 58, 215; community 85, 86, 88, 94; cultural knowledge 106; learners 87, 88, 105, 106; student learning 85, 87, 89, 104; youth 85, 86, 88, 89, 104, 105, 106; students 86, 87, 88, 105, 156 Agar, Michael H. 162, 165 agency 1, 5, 10, 13, 21, 22, 33, 163, 164, 199, 210, 227, 230 alienation 57, 66; see also shunning alphabet: Arabic 112, 118, 120, 135; Hebrew 180; Roman 167 Amish 2, 11, 56–66, 67n1, 229 Anderson, Gary L. 23 anthropology 2, 22, 34, 71, 72, 114 apprentice 51; apprenticeship 41, 52, 71, 127; see also sociocultural approaches Arabic 12, 13, 110, 111, 112, 113, 118, 120–1, 122, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 162, 166, 167, 170, 171, 213, 220, 222, 229 Arzubiaga, Angela 21, 22 Atkinson, Paul 9 audience 72, 75, 86, 87, 89, 90, 94, 104, 115, 121, 169, 232; see also performance autoethnographic 56, 165; see also ethnographic autoethnography 9, 10, 11, 12, 58; see also ethnography authority 7, 10, 33, 121, 178, 179, 182, 187, 206, 229 automaticity 135 Azad Kashmir 113

Bangladeshi Muslim 13, 213, 216–17, 220 baptism 11, 57–67 Baquedano-López, Patricia 3, 4, 8, 11, 71, 72–3, 74, 153–4, 178 Barradas, Olga 10 Barton, David 2, 22, 111 Bauman, Richard 4, 75, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121 beauty 6, 87, 230 belonging 1, 3, 6, 7, 143, 151, 168, 171, 173, 211n3, 219–20, 227, 230, 233 Bible 23, 24, 26, 87, 89, 97, 103, 105, 219; King James Version 89, 97; reading 10, 28, 31; story 31, 218; study 24, 217 bilingual 10, 21, 24, 25, 35, 39, 116, 117, 116, 117, 161, 172, 193, 208; bilingualism 10, 21, 33, 34, 168; flexible bilingual pedagogy 35 biliteracy 10, 21, 33, 34, 168, 237 Black church 4, 7, 11, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 104, 105, 106 Blackledge, Adrian 3, 7, 35, 114 Brandt, Deborah 88, 94, 104, 105, 170, 230 Bezemer, Jeff 9, 43–4 Bourdieu 4, 71, 80, 81 Burnett, Cathy 9, 22, 33 call-and-response 4, 5, 6, 89–90, 93, 94, 97, 104, 105, 217; see also Responsive reading Cameroon 2, 12, 127, 128, 130, 135, 229 Catholic 2, 10, 11, 23, 42, 43–4, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 111, 162, 164, 166–7, 171, 227, 229 cheders 110 child-friendly methodologies 144

244 Index Choudhury, Halimun 8, 13 Christian 35, 43, 62, 64, 65, 77, 95, 100–3, 110, 130, 154; Christianity 23, 63, 72, 128, 131; Judeo-Christian 161–2, 172; citizenship 3, 39, 199 civic engagement 193, 199 Cole, Michael 5, 6, 40, 41, 52, 112, 136, 178 colonialism 3, 131; anti-colonialism 229; colonization 195, 228; colonized lenses 229; postcolonialism 1 communicative practices/resources 73, 105, 110, 111, 114, 115, 119, 120, 144, 165, 194, 197, 201, 202, 206; see also communicative disconnect; semiotic practices/resources community of practice 41, 53n1, 162, 171, 196–7, 210 complementary (schools) 141, 147, 193, 214–5; see also supplementary schools comprehension 31, 34, 91, 126, 128, 135, 137, 181, 182, 184, 186, 215 contextualisation 115; re-contextualisation 115, 116, 120; see also entextualisation contrastive analysis 35 Creese, Angela 3, 9, 35, 114, 135, 163, 214 critical dialogue 228–9 cultural insiders 22–3 culturally responsive curricula 34 Damico, James 156 decoding 22, 30, 31, 34, 95, 98, 112, 117, 118, 123, 135, 137, 179, 181, 231 deficit perspective 22, 33 Deyhle, Donna 21 dharam 195, 199 dialect 59, 119, 120 diglossia 111 discipline 128, 136; self-discipline 130, 132, 134, 215 discourse 8, 21, 59, 87, 89, 93, 142, 143, 144, 162, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172, 209; discourse analysis 88; discourses 3, 7, 42, 94, 161, 162, 164, 173, 199; classroom discourse 197 dispositions 194–5, 199, 200, 202, 205, 206, 210, 211n3

diversity 34, 35, 161, 162, 164, 166, 173; superdiversity 116 double schooling 12, 126, 127, 128, 131–2, 133, 134, 135 Duranti, Alessandro 4, 12, 33, 72, 75, 178 Dyson, Anne Haas 1, 33, 34, 86, 106 Edwards, Patricia A. 22, 35, 86, 106 England 13, 39, 113, 193 English (language) 8, 10, 13, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30–1, 34, 45, 57, 74, 78, 113–14, 116–20, 134, 147, 150, 155, 162, 166, 170, 176, 179, 182–4, 185–6, 187–8; as a Second Language (ESL) 24, 30, 35; English language learners 23, 127, 137; learners of English as an Additional Language 39 Espinosa, Gastón 33 ethnographic 8–9, 22, 42, 71, 72, 73, 75, 87, 88, 127, 135, 136, 176, 177, 179, 194, 213, 216, 217; see also autoethnographic ethnography 12, 58, 216; multi-sited ethnography 9, 21, 33–4; of language policy 196; team ethnography 10, 13, 142, 143, 144–5; see also autoethnography ethnography of communication 9, 12, 88 entextualisation 112, 115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 125; see also contextualisation ethnicity 7, 42 Fader, Ayala 4, 13, 72, 176, 179, 181, 184, 188 family meeting 213, 217, 222, 224 field narrative(s) 9, 141, 145 figured worlds 5, 6, 194, 196–7, 210 Fillmore, Charles 87, 88 Fillmore, Lily W. 87, 88 Fishman, Joshua A. 3, 110, 111, 118 Flewitt, Rosie 45, 163, 173 Flores, Barbara 21 fluency 29, 111, 135, 137, 180, 182, 231 Foster, Michèle 86, 89, 90 Fulbe 12, 127, 128–133, 35 funds of knowledge 5, 22, 40, 51–2; see also sociocultural approaches Gallimore, Ronald 22 García, Erminda H. 21, 22 García, Eugene E. 21, 22

Index 245 García, Ofelia 34 Gay, Geneva 156 Gee, James P. 88, 111, 163, 164 Geertz, Clifford 9, 58 gender/gendered 154, 155, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 188 Genishi, Celia 1, 34 Goffman, Ervin 77, 80, 114, 115, 197 González, Norma 22, 40 Gregory, Eve 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 12, 22, 23, 43, 51, 90, 114, 117, 122, 135, 143, 144, 145, 151, 156, 128 guided participation 41, 52, 231; see also sociocultural approaches gurudwara 193–5, 209–10, 211n1; see also langar Guru Granth Sahib 110 Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha 198 Hammersley, Martin 9 Hasidism (background to) 178–9; Hasidic children’s literature 184–6; Hasidic English 177–8; Hasidic Yiddish literacy 181–2, 189; Hasidic and digital technology 187–8 Heath, Shirley Brice 2, 4, 58, 59, 86, 88, 111, 143, 178 Hebrew 176, 180, 229; biblical Hebrew 111, 177 heritage 56, 66, 155, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 207–8, 210, 227, 239; identity 214; knowledge 6, 201; language 135, 147, 214, 222; literacy 11, 56–66 Hindu/Hindu-Saiva 12, 13, 141, 142, 145, 146, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 213; Hinduism 128, 142, 153, 154, 157n5; Saivaism 156n1 Holland, Dorothy 5, 194, 196–7 home-school discontinuity 33, 134 Ilankuberan, Arani 1, 8, 12, 142, 145, 147, 154 imitation 128, 129, 168, 232 instruction 7, 24, 25, 60, 64, 71–3, 75, 78, 86, 106, 116, 117, 118, 120, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 137, 162, 166, 167, 182, 232; instructional 28, 33, 86, 88, 95, 105, 156 intonation 91, 93, 111, 122, 128, 231 Islam 117, 118, 121, 127, 128, 130, 132, 222–3; Islamic 13, 112, 123, 133,

134, 162, 167, 168, 169, 213, 216, 220, 222–3; Islamic education 126–8, 130, 131; new Islamic schools 131 Islamophobia 116; Islamophobic 216 Janes, Helena 22 Jewitt, Carey 45, 51, 163, 170 Jiménez, Robert T. 32, 35 Judaism 128, 178, 187; Jewish 72, 110, 176, 177, 179, 181–8 Kapitzke, Cushla 22, 33 Kenner, Charmian 5, 6, 13, 172, 213, 215, 224 Kermani, Hengameh 22 Khalsa 196; Khalsa greeting 196, 203–6 King, Martin Luther Jr. 91, 93, 94 Kurdish 116 Kwapong, Amoafi 8 langar 195–6; 209 language: sacred language(s) 10, 110, 111, 176; language acquisition 90, 110, 123; second language acquisition 136 language shift 111 Latino(s)/Latina(s) 11, 23; children 2, 33, 71; community/communities 23, 33; family/families 5, 21, 22; parents 33–4; students 74; writers 23 Lave, Jean 5, 41, 51, 71, 79, 179 learning: interpsychological 40, 51; intrapsychological 40, 51; see also memorization; sociocultural approaches LeCompte, Margaret 9–10 Lewis, Cynthia 21 Li, Guofang 21 linguistic ethnography 9, 23 literacy: artefactual literacies 143, 155; digital literacy/literacies 168, 170, 187–8; literacy acquisition 86, 90, 106, 113, 114, 120, 180, 181, 182; literacy development 86, 87, 88, 106, 165; literacy event(s) 23, 28, 35, 58, 59, 66, 86–7, 105, 220; literacy practices 7, 8, 12, 43, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 66, 74, 86, 88, 94, 112, 114, 115, 120, 123, 127, 136 145, 166, 171, 178, 184, 188; New Literacy Studies 111; school literacies 1, 33; schoolbased literacies 128; sponsorship network 88, 105

246 Index liturgical literacies/liturgical literacy practices 8, 12, 110, 111, 112, 114–16, 120, 123, 215, 230 Long, Susi 1, 135 loshn koydesh 176–86 Lytra, Vally 1, 5, 8, 9, 12, 142, 145, 163, 197, 215 McMillon, Gwendolyn T. 8, 22, 35, 86, 106 madrassahs 110, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119 mainstream schools 13, 40, 51, 116, 117, 120, 214, 215, 231 Mavers, Diane 43, 44 mediation 5, 10, 12, 21, 28, 35, 40–1, 51; mediator 5, 10, 41, 51, 143; see also sociocultural approaches membership 7, 60, 80, 142, 144, 150, 219, 230; membership identity 7, 94, 155 memorization 6, 11, 12, 22, 25, 31, 34, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 213, 219–220, 222; see also rote learning metaphor(s) 42, 52, 105, 114, 197; metaphorical representations/ meaning 42 Middle East 116, 126, 131, 134 migration 1, 2, 4, 8, 42, 43, 111, 116, 120, 141, 144, 151, 200; immigrant 11, 12, 39, 53, 71, 74, 75, 126, 127, 128, 134, 135, 141 mind map(s) 9, 213, 217, 220–3 mixed faith/mixed-faith 162, 164, 173, 230 modelling 52, 121, 122, 148 modernity 59, 67n1, 176, 177, 186 Moll, Luis 5, 40 Moore, Leslie C. 4, 6, 12, 22, 72, 122, 126, 129, 130, 134, 181, 215 moral: learning/development 4, 5, 21, 134, 181, 186, 199, 240; values 178, 199, 215; morality 181 Moreno, Robert P. 22 mosque 13, 35, 116, 120, 121, 122, 215, 216 Moss, Beverly 58, 86–7 multi-faith 161, 162, 164, 171, 173, 174n2 multi-layered analysis 23 multilingualism 3, 163, 166, 187 multimodal 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 44, 45, 47, 50–1, 52, 53, 56, 63, 142,

143, 163, 165, 166, 170, 173, 230; multimodality 9, 47, 143–4, 155, 163 Muslim 12, 13, 72, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, n123, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 135, 161, 162, 164, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 181, 216, 217, 220; non-Muslim educators 132, 136 narrative(s) 4, 8, 11, 51, 74, 143, 165, 168, 170, 176, 181, 182, 185, 186, 217; see also storytelling nationality 3, 9 Neff, Debora 40 Nieto, Sonia 21 Norton, Bonny 42 obedience 10, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33 Ochs, Elinor 3, 4, 8, 33, 71, 72, 154, 178 Olivos, Edward M. 22 Omoniyi, Tope 42, 123, 162 oral 11, 12, 24, 52, 88, 105, 111, 115, 116, 120, 122, 123, 135, 137, 163, 167, 169, 178, 179–80, 181, 184, 202, 230; orality 116, 120, 122, 123, 176, 177, 186 Orellana, Marjorie F. 10, 23, 34 Ortiz Cofer, Judith 23 Owodally, Mooznah A. 5, 6, 12–13, 167, 233 Pahl, Kate 6, 9, 22, 33, 143–4, 150, 163 Pakistani 113, 116 Pantoja, Segundo 23 Peele-Eady, Tryphenia 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 155, 215 Pentecostal(s) 2, 10, 23, 35n1, 213–214, 216–217, 220, 224–5; Pentecostal church 13, 21, 24, 213, 216, 217, 219; Pentecostal movement 23; see also Protestant performance 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 123, 164, 168, 172, 173; see also audience; performativity 114 phoneme(s) 30, 120; phonemic approach 30, 33; phonemic awareness 24, 34; phonemic distinction 120; phonemic rules 34; phonics 112; phonology 120 Pietikäinen, Sari 51, 144 Pitkänen-Huhta, Anne 51 places of worship 1, 8, 11, 13, 43, 110, 116, 126

Index 247 Pokémon 25 policy: as practice 194; see also ethnography of language policy; educational policies 233 Polish: community 13, 43–4, 52; language 43–5, 48–9, 229; migrants 43 Pothwari/Pahari 113 prayer(s) 24, 72, 74, 93, 98, 101–2, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 121, 122, 128, 130, 133, 142, 147, 148, 153–4, 168, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 184, 186, 209, 217, 219 prolepsis 5, 6, 10, 40, 52; see also sociocultural approaches Protestant 23, 35n1, 188; evangelical Protestants 23, 35n1; Protestantization 23; see also Pentecostal psalm 121 90–1, 94 Puerto Rico 24, 26, 27, 32, 35n4; Puerto Rican(s) 21, 22, 23, 24, 32; Puerto Rican community 22–3; neocolonial relationship with U.S. 32; transnational 32 Punjabi 13, 113, 118, 119, 193, 199, 201, 202, 204–10; kinship terms 193–4, 201 Qur’an 12, 13, 110–123, 128–9, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 181, 220, 222, 223; Qur’anic literacy 12, 110, 112–4, 118, 123, 222, 223; schooling 12, 126–137, 215; “hybrid” Qur’anic schools 133 race 7, 75 Rampton, Ben 9, 10, 23 reading 6, 10, 13, 23, 24–35, 52, 56, 59, 72, 73, 74, 87–106, 115, 121, 130, 133, 136–7, 167, 170, 177, 179–88, 208, 217, 220, 231, 232 recitation(s) 12, 73, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 121, 122, n123, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 143, 168, 179–80, 182, 184, 209, 222, 232 Reese, Leslie 22 refugee(s) 12, 127, 128, 132, 134, 135 rehearsal(s) 72–81, 115, 118, 119, 129, 165, 232 Reid, Daniel G. 23, 24, 35 religious education (classes) 1, 8, 11, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 130, 135, 145, 147, 154, 155, 233; Religious Education (RE) 199, 211n2; sensations 11, 72–80; socialization/socialisation 72, 73, 74, 80, 81, 142, 143, 154, 155

repertoire(s) (linguistic/language) 111, 119, 120, 167 repetition 6, 22, 34, 59, 79, 87, 90, 95, 104, 112, 120, 128, 129, 143, 180, 182, 186, 206, 232 respect 49, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 154, 155, 169, 194, 200, 202–5, 210, 215, 216, 233 responsibility 6, 7, 56, 61, 66, 115, 200, 223, 230 Responsive reading 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 103, 104, 105, 106; reading responsively 85, 94, 104, 105; see also call-and-response ritual(s) 7, 8, 10, 11, 42, 43, 45, 51, 52, 72–3, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 85, 111, 114, 115, 121, 142, 145, 147, 156, 168, 176, 180, 186, 195, 206, 209, 232 Rogoff, Barbara 5, 41, 51, 71, 129 Rosowsky, Andrey 4, 6, 8, 12, 110–11, 112, 114, 115, 116, 121, 122, 126, 176, 181, 215 Rowsell, Jennifer 6, 143–4, 150, 163 Ruby, Mahera 13, 156, 213, 215, 224 Rumsey, Suzanne K. 5, 6, 11, 56 rumspringa/Rumspringa 11, 56–66 Sagoo, Gopinder 5, 6, 13, 194, 198, 199, 200, 210 scaffolding 33; see also sociocultural approaches Schensul, Jean 9–10 Schieffelin, Bambi 4, 71, 72, 80, 178 scrapbook(s) 9, 47, 48–52, 53n7, 142–3, 145, 147–56, 157n2 Scribner, Sylvia 112, 136, 178 scripture(s) 56, 58, 64, 65, 77, 85, 86, 87, 95, 96, 97, 98, 104, 195 semiotics 9, 41; social semiotic perspective 44; semiotic ideologies 13, 176, 177–8, 179–82, 186, 188; semiotic practices/resources 13, 194–5, 197–8, 201, 207–10; see also communicative practices/resources sewa 199, 209 Shia 116 shunning 65–6; see also alienation Sikh(s) 13, 110, 193, 194–210 simultaneous worlds 172, 215 Skerrett, Allison 1, 8 Smitherman, Geneva 86, 89, 90 socialisation: language socialisation (approach/theory) 3, 4–6, 9, 11, 71, 73, 80, 88; religious socialisation/

248 Index socialization 72, 73, 74, 80, 81, 142, 143, 154, 155, 110, 178 sociocultural approaches 3, 5–6; sociocultural theory/theories 34, 40–1, 47, 71; critical sociocultural perspective 5, 10, 21; see also apprentice; funds of knowledge; guided participation; interpsychological learning; intrapsychological learning; mediation; prolepsis; scaffolding; syncretism Somali 2, 12, 116, 119, 120, 121, 126, 127, 127, 128, 132, 133, 134, 135, 215 Souza, Ana 5, 6, 8, 10, 42, 43, 44, 52 Spanish (language) 10, 21, 23, 24, 27–35, 74, 75, 229 Spolky, Bernard 177 storytelling 215, 231; see also narrative(s) Street, Brian 59, 111, 112, 163 Sunday school(s) 11, 24, 25, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94–106, 110, 215, 219, 232; Sunday school teachers 89, 94, 95, 96–9, 104, 105, 217 supplementary schools 110, 111, 236; see also complementary schools symbols 41, 43, 50, 74, 135, 142, 144, 145, 147, 155, 156, 162; symbolic knowledge 40, 42–5, 51, 151; symbolism 42, 51–2, 146, 154; tools 40–1, 47 synaesthesia 50 syncretic 6, 8, 12, 13, 33, 34, 117, 135, 142; literacy/literacies 33, 34, 35, 143, 155; literacy event 28; syncretism 22, 33, 143, 151; see also sociocultural approaches Ta’ase, Elia K. 4, 33, 72, 178 tajwid/Tajweed 134, 220 Tamil 2, 12, 13, 141–3, 145, 147, 148, 150, 155, 166, 213, 219; (faith/ Qu’ranic) teachers 1, 8, 11, 12, 13, 25, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 80, 112–13,

114, 116, 117, 118, 120, 122, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 144, 145, 155, 162, 171; (mainstream) teachers 2, 13, 33, 39, 40, 86, 104–6, 127, 137, 156, 162, 168, 169, 180, 181, 185, 214, 223, 224, 232 temple/Temple 12, 35, 75, 76, 78, 80, 141–56 testimonies (personal) 24 text(s) academic 87–8; biblical 33, 90, 215; sacred 8, 12, 74, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 122, 123, 128, 129, 130, 177, 178, 180, 181, 230 Torah 110, 111, 176, 177, 185, 186 tradition(s) 64, 66, 77, 89, 106, 123, 167, 176, 177, 186, 195, 209, 228 transcription 126 translanguaging 34 transliteration 120, 167 transvisuals 9, 11, 43–5, 47–8, 51 Turkish 116 Urdu 113, 118, 119, 166, 167, 169 variety (of language) 110, 111, 113, 116, 177, 186, 189n1 video data analysis 44 Villenas, Sofia 21 vocabulary 4, 30, 95, 98, 105, 143, 188, 202, 231 Volk, Dinah 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 21, 22, 34, 135, 228 Vygotsky, Lev 5, 40–1, 43 Wenger, Etienne 41, 51, 71, 79, 197 Williams, Ann 2, 9, 23 Woodham, Malgorzata 8, 10 writing 13, 25, 50, 52, 56, 58, 59, 73, 105, 106, 111, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 187; writing events 59 Yemeni 119, 178 Zentella, Ana Celia 22