“Dice que es bajo” (“She says he's low”): Negotiating breaches of learner identity in two Mexican families

•Breach-identifying interactions involve the negotiation of identities in educational contexts.•Mexican mothers and their children reproduced school-derived autonomous models of literacy in the home.•During homework completion routines, Mexican mothers and their children prioritized test-preparation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistics and education 2017-04, Vol.38, p.68-78
Main Authors: McConnochie, Meredith, Mangual Figueroa, Ariana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Breaches
Children
Conversation
Educational attainment
Elementary schools
English language
Ethnomethodology
Families & family life
Figured worlds
Fluency
Homework
Identity
Ideology
Language acquisition
Learning environment
Literacy
Mexican families
Mothers
Negotiation
Parents & parenting
Public schools
Repair
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Summary:•Breach-identifying interactions involve the negotiation of identities in educational contexts.•Mexican mothers and their children reproduced school-derived autonomous models of literacy in the home.•During homework completion routines, Mexican mothers and their children prioritized test-preparation over meaning-making.•Breaches of academic progress reported in mothers’ narratives were linked to the ways in which family members identified breaches during homework literacy activities. This article examines the ways in which elementary-aged children from two Mexican families were socialized to adopt figured worlds of literacy through breach-identifying interactions that took place in the home. By integrating theories of ethnomethodology and figured worlds, this article illustrates how the identification and repair of breaches involve the negotiation of identities in educational contexts. The analysis tracks how and when the mothers drew upon teacher discourse of children's “low” academic status to identify and repair breaches of pace, neatness, and English reading fluency during the completion of homework. The article provides new insights into how mothers and children reproduce school-derived ideologies at home when attempting to resolve learner-identity breaches. The findings are significant because they extend an ongoing conversation in the field about home–school relationships and literacy development among language learners enrolled in public schools.
ISSN:0898-5898
1873-1864
DOI:10.1016/j.linged.2017.02.005