STELLAR: Statistical (learning) and Translanguaging in Education: Leveraging Language Assets for Reading
Project STELLAR aims to develop and test a specific, research-informed approach to teaching reading to AAE-speaking children that integrates, honors and affirms their cultural-linguistic assets, improves their reading fluency, and by implication comprehension of text. We will accomplish this by leveraging children’s implicit knowledge of patterns that exist in language and text using a translanguaging approach.
General Information:
Statistical learning allows both infants and young children to discern phonological patterns, word structures and grammar in spoken language, all important skills for developing strong literacy skills. For African American children these patterns will have been learned in their homes and communities, and likely differ from the patterns identified for General American English (GAE) speakers. To our knowledge, this will be the first attempt to apply statistical patterning principles to AAE speakers. Translanguaging, views language as a unitary set of features that a child should integrate to achieve effective communication. In translanguaging paradigms students are given access to their full linguistic repertoires as they learn to internalize and integrate rules and to map the literate, school code onto their oral code, which is the code of their homes and communities. Accordingly, Project STELLAR will use translanguaging principles that do not discourage students from using AAE. In this way we will leverage existing, implicit language knowledge to support development of strong reading skills.
Funding:
STELLAR is a project funded by Reading Reimagined. Reading Reimagined is an inclusive Research and Development program under the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF), a nonprofit initiative that funds and supports breakthrough outcomes in student learning, well-being, and opportunity.
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Team Members
Principal Investigator
Julie A. Washington, Ph.D
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CO - Principal Investigator
Katherine T. Rhodes, Ph.D
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