“They go hand in hand”: Dialogic pedagogy and linguistic belonging in two elementary classrooms

Main Article Content

Lisel Alice Murdock-Perriera

Abstract

Elementary school children bring a rich diversity of language to classrooms, a richness that often goes undervalued in educational settings in which teachers feel they must and do emphasize dominant ways of using English. The ways in which teachers interact with children about their language use can influence the linguistic belonging of children from nondominant linguistic backgrounds—their sense of being loved, valued, included, and recognized in positive ways for how they use and understand language. This work addresses connections between dialogic pedagogy and the belonging of multilingual children in two California, English-dominant elementary classrooms. The manuscript centers on the following questions: (1) How did teachers view dialogic instruction and plan dialogically? (2) What did dialogic instruction look like when enacted in these two classrooms? (3) How did dialogic instruction–including professional care and love for multilingual children–relate to the linguistic belonging of multilingual children in these two classrooms? The study concludes that these teachers saw dialogic instruction and the belonging of multilingual children as connected and that they worked hard to find space for dialogic instruction within scripted and district-planned curricula. During dialogic instruction, teachers accepted answers that were not conventionally correct, honored and demonstrated care for students and embraced multiple, diverse ways of expressing answers from their students, including affirming multilingual student language use that did not conform to dominant English standards. Dialogic pedagogy contributed to the belonging of multilingual children in these two classrooms.

Article Details

How to Cite
Murdock-Perriera, L. A. (2025). “They go hand in hand”: Dialogic pedagogy and linguistic belonging in two elementary classrooms. Dialogic Pedagogy: A Journal for Studies of Dialogic Education, 13(1), PLC21-PLC46. https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2025.606
Section
Love and Care in Professional Practices
Author Biography

Lisel Alice Murdock-Perriera, Sonoma State University, USA

Dr. Lisel Alice Murdock-Perriera is an Associate Professor at Sonoma State University in the Department of Early Childhood Studies. She earned her PhD from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2019. Her research is situated in social justice and early childhood, including how teachers can engage critically with the youngest learners about topics such as race, immigration, and gender. Her recent publications focus on critical conversations and teacher expectancies. She has been invited to provide guidance to teachers locally (in California), nationally, and internationally with her colleagues at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa as part of the Courageous Critical Collective. She is passionate about working with her undergraduate and graduate student colleagues–including and especially first-generation college students and working students with caretaking responsibilities–in engaging in justice-oriented learning and action.

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