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Description
As #blackgirlmagic continues to defy all odds and perceptions in sports, society, and other social spaces, Black girls have been rendered invisible in the expanding landscape for dual language education. This dissertation study employed visual participatory methods to center the narratives of Black girl multilinguals in two-way dual language elementary programs with the instructional languages of Spanish and English in Southern California. Using Black girlhood (Brown, 2009) and sociocultural competence (Howard et al., 2017) as the theoretical underpinnings, this study explored the lived experiences of Black girl multilinguals at their school sites, their homes, and in their communities. A critical visual constant comparison yielded findings suggesting Black girl multilinguals are both free and languageful, and they transverse their social and academic spaces while embodying their full linguistic repertoire and demonstrating their #blackgirlmultilingualmagic. The visual and interview transcriptions together provided evidence Black girl multilinguals practiced a freedom in and across their linguistic repertoires that ignored limitations and boundaries of language allocation and fixed language settings and offered a space of self-expression. Implications for policy, methodology, and pedagogy call for full inclusion of Black girl multilinguals in programming, research, and practice. This study makes progress in filling a gap in the research with #blackgirlmagia and suggests further research and practice that allows for two-way dual language education to be a potential freedom space for Black girl multilinguals at the full intersection of their identities: Black, female, young, and multilingual. Keywords: Black girls, dual language education, Black girlhood, multilingualism, elementary education, visual methods, participatory methods, intersectionality
