Ava Becker-Zayas
Biographic Data
| ID | 6750186 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ava Becker-Zayas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ava |
| FAMILY NAME | Becker-Zayas |
| SIGNATURE | BECKER-ZAYAS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1336-0262 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| 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…
Toward an unsettling curriculum of care writing & care creation
While recent scholarly attention has been focused on deepening care ethics’ interdisciplinary conceptualizations, research has yet to attend to relationships between care and writing, and care and creation. This paper, cognizant also of a global devaluation of care in neoliberal times, thus originally introduces and conceptualizes possibilities toward a curriculum of “care writing” and “care creation.” We, three faculty members and three middle a…
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…
Finding Max’s wolves
For decades, language and literacy scholars working within a sociocultural framework have laboured to bring attention to the strengths of marginalized students in an effort to create more inclusive and equitable learning environments (e.g., Cummins, 2000 ; Dyson, 1997 ; González et al., 2005 ; Heath, 1983 ). While this work has moved the field forward in invaluable ways, it has not consistently engaged with processes of marginalization as a compl…
Too Much Earthquakes!”
International travel is still commonly touted as one of the most effective tools for language learning, yet it remains an elusive activity for those without a certain amount of economic or legal privilege. Although physical return to the home country is not always possible for refugees and their families—even one or more generation after arrival—imagined forms of travel, or ”imagined transnationalism,” is. Drawing on multiple data sources from a …
Closing the HIV and Aids “Information Gap” Between Children and Parents
In this study, we address the research question: “How might child-created billboards about HIV and AIDS help facilitate more open discussions between parents and children?" The premise of our study is that there may be considerable potential for using multimodal forms of representation in makerspaces with young children to create more open dialogue with parents about culturally sensitive information. Drawing on multimodal literacies and visual me…
Children’s images of HIV/Aids in Uganda
In this study we draw on three analytic frameworks (Goffman 1981. Forms of talk . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press; Rose 2007. Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials . London: Sage; Warburton 1998. Cartoons and teachers: Mediated visual images as data. In John Prosser (ed.), Image-based research: A sourcebook for qualitative researchers , 252–262. London: Routledge) to explore how multili…
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 …
Children’s images of HIV/Aids in Uganda
In this study we draw on three analytic frameworks (Goffman 1981. Forms of talk . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press; Rose 2007. Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials . London: Sage; Warburton 1998. Cartoons and teachers: Mediated visual images as data. In John Prosser (ed.), Image-based research: A sourcebook for qualitative researchers , 252–262. London: Routledge) to explore how multili…
Closing the HIV and Aids “Information Gap” Between Children and Parents
In this study, we address the research question: “How might child-created billboards about HIV and AIDS help facilitate more open discussions between parents and children?" The premise of our study is that there may be considerable potential for using multimodal forms of representation in makerspaces with young children to create more open dialogue with parents about culturally sensitive information. Drawing on multimodal literacies and visual me…
Too Much Earthquakes!”
International travel is still commonly touted as one of the most effective tools for language learning, yet it remains an elusive activity for those without a certain amount of economic or legal privilege. Although physical return to the home country is not always possible for refugees and their families—even one or more generation after arrival—imagined forms of travel, or ”imagined transnationalism,” is. Drawing on multiple data sources from a …
Finding Max’s wolves
For decades, language and literacy scholars working within a sociocultural framework have laboured to bring attention to the strengths of marginalized students in an effort to create more inclusive and equitable learning environments (e.g., Cummins, 2000 ; Dyson, 1997 ; González et al., 2005 ; Heath, 1983 ). While this work has moved the field forward in invaluable ways, it has not consistently engaged with processes of marginalization as a compl…
Toward an unsettling curriculum of care writing & care creation
While recent scholarly attention has been focused on deepening care ethics’ interdisciplinary conceptualizations, research has yet to attend to relationships between care and writing, and care and creation. This paper, cognizant also of a global devaluation of care in neoliberal times, thus originally introduces and conceptualizes possibilities toward a curriculum of “care writing” and “care creation.” We, three faculty members and three middle a…
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 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 (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Pedagogy (5 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (4 works) · Linguistics (3 works) · Literacy, Media, and Education (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (3 works) · Anthropology (2 works)