#43: Towards Dignity for Multilingual Learners in Science: A Framework to Examine Dignity-Conferring Classroom Interactions

Resisting dignity-denying practices in education is urgent. This paper is guided by Poza’s (2021) call to center racialized multilingual students as rights-bearing individuals through a dignity frame grounded in meaningful participation, social agency, and social equality. Using secondary qualitative analysis of our own prior studies in science classrooms, we reexamine classroom moments to identify how dignity is conferred. Two cases illustrate this frame: bilingual students’ poetic talk during formative assessment, and a teacher’s curriculum design that leveraged multimodality as poetic “talk” and inclusive sensemaking. Findings highlight how discourse moves, translanguaging, and multimodality can confer dignity by affirming students’ humanity and agency. The dignity frame provides educators and researchers with an analytic and pedagogical tool to identify, enact, and design dignity-conferring classroom interactions.