Ava Becker
Biographic Data
| ID | 4414575 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ava Becker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ava |
| FAMILY NAME | Becker |
| SIGNATURE | BECKER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
From language portraits to language playlists
Inspired by the rich body of research that has used language portraits as a means to invite reflection on people’s lived experiences of language in relation to the body, this study asked: What happens when we ask multilinguals to bring music to an interview about their lived experiences of language? In this paper, I analyze excerpts from two interviews with one couple, Mira and Andrej, to examine how the autobiographical narratives they produced …
Undesired language
While translanguaging and other plurilingual pedagogies have gained popularity for their potential to validate students’ linguistic repertoires as they strengthen them, such approaches have generally neglected to acknowledge the distinct affective habitus that can accrete around certain linguistic resources and shape our (non-)use of them. In so doing, we may be inadvertently perpetuating the emotional harms we seek to guard against. As enthusias…
Trauma‐Informed Language Teaching
Trauma has been front of mind for many language teachers in the tumultuous first decades of the 21st century, but until quite recently, language teaching research that names trauma as such has been relatively scarce. In this short paper, I give a brief overview of different understandings of trauma, and draw on orienting principles and frameworks to make a case for language pedagogy that is informed by local and empirical wisdom about trauma so t…
Playing with funds of difficult knowledge
Migration stories are at the heart of how many immigrant-background Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) construct a sense of home, community, and identity across spatiotemporal scales. Nevertheless, narratives containing difficult knowledge (e.g., about war) are generally seen as threats to, rather than as assets in language learning and in education more broadly, and as such, are rarely drawn on in classrooms. In this paper I analyse excerpts from…
From Care Ethics to Care Writing
This article focuses on research into care writing, as we took it up in collaboration with teacher-researchers in three high school English language arts classrooms in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Drawing on feminist and posthumanist perspectives, the research engaged high school teachers and students in “complicated conversations” ( Pinar, 2019 ) about care that is oriented towards self, others, and the world in relation to societal, cultural, his…
Glued to the family’
This article, part of a larger ethnographic study, examines how a family's affective ties to the country of origin and to relatives still residing there supported their Spanish language development and maintenance efforts in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on data from participant observation and interviews, the article analyses the parents' diverse heritage language development (HLD) strategies and ideologies and the children's affective connections …
Glued to the family’
This article, part of a larger ethnographic study, examines how a family's affective ties to the country of origin and to relatives still residing there supported their Spanish language development and maintenance efforts in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on data from participant observation and interviews, the article analyses the parents' diverse heritage language development (HLD) strategies and ideologies and the children's affective connections …
Glued to the family’
This article, part of a larger ethnographic study, examines how a family's affective ties to the country of origin and to relatives still residing there supported their Spanish language development and maintenance efforts in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on data from participant observation and interviews, the article analyses the parents' diverse heritage language development (HLD) strategies and ideologies and the children's affective connections …
Playing with funds of difficult knowledge
Migration stories are at the heart of how many immigrant-background Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) construct a sense of home, community, and identity across spatiotemporal scales. Nevertheless, narratives containing difficult knowledge (e.g., about war) are generally seen as threats to, rather than as assets in language learning and in education more broadly, and as such, are rarely drawn on in classrooms. In this paper I analyse excerpts from…
From Care Ethics to Care Writing
This article focuses on research into care writing, as we took it up in collaboration with teacher-researchers in three high school English language arts classrooms in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Drawing on feminist and posthumanist perspectives, the research engaged high school teachers and students in “complicated conversations” ( Pinar, 2019 ) about care that is oriented towards self, others, and the world in relation to societal, cultural, his…
From language portraits to language playlists
Inspired by the rich body of research that has used language portraits as a means to invite reflection on people’s lived experiences of language in relation to the body, this study asked: What happens when we ask multilinguals to bring music to an interview about their lived experiences of language? In this paper, I analyze excerpts from two interviews with one couple, Mira and Andrej, to examine how the autobiographical narratives they produced …
Undesired language
While translanguaging and other plurilingual pedagogies have gained popularity for their potential to validate students’ linguistic repertoires as they strengthen them, such approaches have generally neglected to acknowledge the distinct affective habitus that can accrete around certain linguistic resources and shape our (non-)use of them. In so doing, we may be inadvertently perpetuating the emotional harms we seek to guard against. As enthusias…
Trauma‐Informed Language Teaching
Trauma has been front of mind for many language teachers in the tumultuous first decades of the 21st century, but until quite recently, language teaching research that names trauma as such has been relatively scarce. In this short paper, I give a brief overview of different understandings of trauma, and draw on orienting principles and frameworks to make a case for language pedagogy that is informed by local and empirical wisdom about trauma so t…
Multilingual Education and Policy (4 works) · Educational Philosophies and Pedagogies (2 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (2 works) · Field (mathematics) (2 works) · Heritage language (2 works) · Pedagogy (2 works) · Psychology (2 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (2 works) · Sociology (2 works) · Affordance (1 works)