Mileidis Gort

Dr. Mileidis Gort brings an interdisciplinary orientation to her work, having been trained in Human Development, Sociolinguistics, and Education, with a focus on the language, literacy, and cultural experiences and practices of young bilinguals. Her program of research documents the complex and varied ways in which emergent bilingual children use their dynamic linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge to learn and interact with teachers and peers in school contexts where two languages are used for instruction. She also investigates teachers’ languaging practices in dual language classrooms, and the ways in which teachers draw on emergent bilingual children’s developing expertise and experiences to support their engagement with language- and literacy-based activities and experimentation with new language forms. 

Education

Ed.D. in Developmental Studies: Literacy, Language, and Culture, with a specialization in Bilingualism, Biliteracy, and Bilingual Education, Boston University, 2001  

Ed.M. in Elementary Education, with a specialization in Urban Education, Boston College, 1995 

A.B. in Psychology, Brown University, 1994  

My research documents the complex and varied ways in which emergent bilingual (EB) children use their dynamic linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge to learn and interact with teachers and peers in school contexts where two languages are used for instruction. I also investigate teachers’ languaging practices in dual language classrooms, and the ways in which teachers draw on EB children’s developing expertise and experiences to support their engagement with language- and literacy-based activities and experimentation with new language forms. Secondary, yet complementary, to my main body of work is my research on curricular and programmatic reform toward culturally- and linguistically-responsive teacher education and my analyses of education policies that restrict access to multilingual programming for EBs. My scholarship in each of these areas speaks critically to restrictive language instruction policies that aim to eradicate bilingual education and the rights of language-minoritized children to learn in their own language, and to current state and national education reform efforts that often demand that EBs perform like their monolingual English-speaking counterparts, often without appropriate support or consideration of the unique factors that influence EBs’ language, literacy, and academic development in U.S. schools.

Dual Language and Literacy Development of Young Spanish-English Bilingual Children

The study of emergent biliteracy is in its infancy in spite of the ubiquity of bi/multilingualism in the world and the growing numbers of EBs in U.S. schools. My research on the oral and written language development of young Spanish-English EB children seeks to understand the nature and role of cross-linguistic application (i.e., language transfer) and social interaction in this process. Embedded in the ethnographic tradition, my work addresses the complexities of young EB children’s language and literacy learning in dual language and general education contexts—positioning biliteracy not just as a different but a higher form of literacy than monolingual literacy.  Through a combination of ethnographic and ethnomethodological approaches, my analyses elucidate the phenomena of interliteracy (i.e., cross-linguistic literacy transfer in children’s creation of texts, including the application of linguistic elements and print conventions of one language to the other), metalinguistic awareness, and translanguaging through bilingual children’s uncoached composing, naturally-occurring self-talk, and writing-related interactions with peers and teachers. My body of work in this area challenges outdated notions of parallel monolingual development and deficit-oriented conceptions of normative bilingual and biliteracy development, particularly with regard to translanguaging and writing behaviors, by providing concrete empirical evidence to the contrary and is especially relevant and significant for children acquiring bilingualism/biliteracy in U.S. schools. This major strand of my work has been disseminated in national and international literacy and language journals including the Journal of Literacy Research, the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Miriada Hispanica, Multicultural Perspectives, special themed issues of the International Multilingual Research Journal and Language Arts which I guest edited, and several invited book chapters and articles in edited volumes. My co-edited book, Early Biliteracy Development: Exploring Young Learners’ Use of their Linguistic Resources (Bauer & Gort [Eds.], 2011, Routledge), for example, for which I authored three chapters, presents a rich portrait of EB children’s repertoires of metalinguistic strategies and interpretations as they go about reading, writing, and constructing literacy across two languages. 

Quality of Language and Literacy Instruction in Bilingual and General Education 

My second line of research considers the role of the social context in the dual language learning process of EB children, including that of teachers as interactional partners and language models, and instructional contexts as socially constructed spaces that encourage and sustain, or discourage and constrain, linguistic interaction and engagement. Using digital video recordings in dual language early childhood classrooms to capture teachers’ and children’s naturally-occurring classroom interactions, my research in this area explores: (a) the structural features of child and teacher speech across typical preschool activities (e.g., read aloud, show and tell, dramatic play) during officially-designated Spanish and English instructional activities; (b) the ways in which teachers mediate bilingual interactions with students and distribute Spanish and English across different classroom discourse functions to create contexts for meaning in support of young learners’ bilingual development; (c) how type and prevalence of teacher questions compare across typical early childhood learning activities; (d) how teachers coordinate the use of questions to scaffold young learners’ language and emergent literacy development; (e) teachers’ practices in support of young children’s bilingual vocabulary development, and (f) EB children’s early experiences with academic language across Spanish and English-medium preschool activities. Publications from this strand of my work appear in journals such as the Bilingual Research Journal, the International Multilingual Research Journal, Language and Education, as well as several book chapters in edited volumes and curricular and educational products designed to help literacy teachers better serve EBs. 

In an extension of this work, I am currently principal investigator of a three-year, IES-funded, multi-site study that investigates the relationship between instruction and writing outcomes, and possible differences in this relationship for students with different profiles of English and Spanish language and literacy proficiency, for 350 EB Latino students across 20 fourth grade general education classrooms in the southeastern U.S. This large-scale study specifically explores two key malleable factors that have the potential to improve EBs’ writing outcomes—the quality of sheltered instruction, which is designed to provide additional support for EBs, and the quality of genre-based writing instruction (with a focus on argument genre). 

EDUC 4425/5425: Foundations of Bilingual/Multicultural Education EDUC 5635: Sociolinguistics and Education EDUC 8615: Language Issues in Education Research 

Co-Editor, Journal of Literacy Research (Jan. 2007-August 2009) 

Editorial Boards: International Multilingual Research Journal (2014-present); Journal of Literacy Research (2011-present); Language Arts (2015-present); Journal of Education (2016-present)

Director (appointed), Scholars of Color Transitioning into Academic Research Institutions (STAR) Mentoring Program, Literacy Research Association (2016 – present)

Chair (elected), Bilingual Research Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association (2013 – 2014)

Program Chair (elected), Bilingual Research Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association (2012 – 2013)

Board Member (appointed), Ethnicity, Race, and Multilingualism Standing Committee of the Literacy Research Association (2012 – 2015)

Program Co-Chair (appointed), Area 8: Literacy Learning and Practice in Multilingual & Multicultural Settings of the National Reading Conference (2004, 2005, 2006)

Committee Member (appointed), Albert Kingston Award, Literacy Research Association (2014 – 2016)

Chair (appointed), Ethnicity, Race, & Multilingualism Travel Award, Literacy Research Association (2013, 2014, 2015)

Committee Member (appointed), AERA Bilingual Education Research Special Interest Group Dissertation Award (2014, 2015)

Mentor, Scholars of Color Transitioning into Academic Research Institutions (STAR) Mentoring Program (2014 – 2016)

Program Co-Founder & Mentor, AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG: Mentoring Program for Early Career Scholars (2013 – present) 

Journal Articles (last 5 years):

Bengochea, A., Sembiante, S. F., & Gort, M. (2018). An emergent bilingual child's multimodal choices in sociodramatic play. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 18(1), 38-70.

Avalos, M., Zisselsberger, M., Gort, M., & Secada, W. (2017). "Hey! Today I will tell you about the water cycle!":  Variations of language and organizational features in third grade science explanation writing. The Elementary School Journal, 118(1), 149-176.

Gort, M. (2017). Language ideologies in bilingual education policy and practice. Texas Education Review, 5(1), 67-75.

Turner, J. D., Haddix, M. M., Gort, M., & Bauer, E. B. (2017). Humanizing the tenure years for faculty of color: Reflections from STAR mentors. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(4), 582–589.

Pontier, R. W., & Gort, M. (2016). Coordinated translanguaging pedagogy as distributed cognition: A case study of two dual language preschool co-teachers’ languaging practices during shared book readings. International Multilingual Research Journal, 10(2), 89-106.

Gort, M., & Sembiante, S. F. (2015). Navigating hybridized language learning spaces through translanguaging pedagogy: Dual language preschool teachers’ languaging practices in support of emergent bilingual children’s performance of academic discourse. International Multilingual Research Journal, 9(1), 7-25.

Sembiante, S. F., & Gort, M. (2015). Emergent bilingual children’s early experiences with academic language in Show-and-Tell activity. Miriada Hispanica, 10, 155-178.

Settlage, J., Gort, M., & Ceglie, R. J. (2014). Mediated language immersion and teacher ideologies: Investigating trauma pedagogy within a “physics in Spanish” course activity. Teacher Education Quarterly, 41(3), 47-76.

Gort, M., & Pontier, R. W. (2013). Exploring bilingual pedagogies in dual language early childhood classrooms. Language and Education 27(3), 223-245.

Edited Books & Special Theme Journal Issues:

Gort, M., & Harris, P. (Eds.). (2018). Emergent biliteracy in early childhood. Special theme issue of Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 18(1).

Gort, M. (Ed.). (2017). The complex and dynamic languaging practices of emergent bilinguals: Translanguaging across diverse education and community contexts. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. ISBN-13: 978-1138827417

Gort, M., & Reyes, I. (Eds.). (2016). Biliteracy development in schools and communities. Special theme issue of Language Arts, 93(5). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Gort, M. (Ed.). (2015). Translanguaging. Special theme issue of International Multilingual Research Journal, 9(1). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.

Bauer, E. B., & Gort, M. (Eds.). (2012). Early biliteracy development: Exploring young learners’ use of their linguistic resources. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN-13: 978-0415880183

•   Reviewed by R. Borden in Language Teaching Research, 18(1), 2014

•   Reviewed by J. Lopez-Robertson in Language Arts, 91(5), 2014

•   Reviewed by K. E. Fite in Education Review, 16(1), 2013

•   Reviewed by T. Hodgson-Drysdale in Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(1), 2013

•   Reviewed by M. Byram in Teachers College Record, August 22, 2013