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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- 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

A second line of research considers the role of the social context in the dual language learning process of EB children, including that of teachers and peers 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 disciplinary discourses 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, The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, as well as several book chapters in edited volumes and curricular and educational products.

In an extension of this work, I was principal investigator of a four-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 Latinx students across 20 fourth grade general education classrooms in the southeastern U.S. This large-scale study specifically explored 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 argumentation).

This work has extended into a research-practice partnership with two bilingual elementary Denver Public Schools.

(CURRENT) FUNDED RESEARCH

Gort, M. (2023-2024). Role: Principal Investigator. Building on our collective strengths with McGlone educators to improve writing instruction for Latinx EBs. Co-PI: Vanessa Santiago Schwarz. Place-Based Partnership Award. University of Colorado Boulder, School of Education ($20,000).

EDUC 2425/4425/5425: Foundations of Bilingual/Multicultural Education

EDUC 2615/4615: Language Development for Emergent Bilinguals

EDUC 5635: Sociolinguistics and Education

EDUC 8615: Language Issues in Education Research

Questions or special requests:

Office Hours: Thursdays from 9:30 - 2 pm, via Zoom

Sign up via my Calendly appointment page (), or email me (mileidis.gort@colorado.edu) to suggest an alternative day/time to meet.

Editorships:

Book Series Editor, Research in Bilingual Education, Information Age Publishing (2017-present)

Associate Editor, International Multilingual Research Journal (2017-2021)

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

Editorial Boards:              

Language Arts; Reading Research Quarterly; Research in the Teaching of English; The Reading Teacher

Appointed & Elected Office - Professional Organizations:

Member, Standing Committee on Research (appointed office), National Council of Teachers of English (2021 – present)

Journal Articles (last 5 years):

Bulotsky-Shearer, R. J., McDermott, P. A., Futterer, J., Lopez, M., & Gort, M. (forthcoming). Preschool classroom behavior in context. Archives of Assessment Psychology.

Hamman-Ortiz, L., Santiago Schwarz, V., Hamm-Rodríguez, M., & Gort, M. (2023). Engaging teachers in genre-based pedagogy for writing arguments: A case study of shifts in practice and understanding. TESOL Quarterly, 57(2), 402-432. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.3156   

Sembiante, S. F., Restrepo-Widney, C., Bengochea, A., & Gort, M. (2023 [online first]). Sustainable translanguaging pedagogy in support of the vulnerable language: Honoring children’s ways of “showing” and “telling” in an early childhood dual language bilingual education program. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 26(8), 928-942. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2022.2161814 

Sembiante, S. F., Bengochea, A., & Gort, M. (2022 [online first]). Morning circle as a community of practice: Co-teachers' transmodality in a dual language bilingual education preschool classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687984221144232

Gort, M., & Hamm-Rodriguez, M. (2022). Centering language and communicative purpose in writing Instruction for bi/multilingual learners. The Reading Teacher, 75(6), 693-706. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2098

Snow Balderas, M. B., Hamm-Rodriguez, M., Santiago Schwarz, V., & Gort, M. (2022). Resisting high stakes educational reform through genre writing in a multilingual classroom. Language Arts, 99(3), 179-191.

Bengochea, A., & Gort, M. (2022). Translanguaging for varying discourse functions in sociodramatic play: An exploratory multiple case study of young emergent bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25(5), 1697–1712. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2020.1799319

Bulotsky-Shearer, R., McDermott, P., López, M., Gort, M., Bouza, J., Fernández, V., & Bichay, K. (2021). Development and initial validation of the Spanish form of the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention (ASPI).  Journal of School Psychology (84), 124-142. 

Bengochea, A., & Gort, M. (2020). Translanguaging for varying discourse functions in sociodramatic play: An exploratory multiple case study of young emergent bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

Bengochea, A., Sembiante, S. F., & Gort, M. (2020). Exploring the object-sourced transmodal practices of an emergent bilingual child in sociodramatic play. Journal of Early Childhood Research. 

Sembiante, S. F., Bengochea, A., & Gort, M. (2020). “Want me to show you?”: Emergent bilingual preschoolers’ multimodal resourcing in Show-and-Tell activity. Linguistics and Education, 55, 1-11.

Bengochea, A., Sembiante, S. F., & Gort, M. (2020). Attracting and responding to an audience: Preschoolers’ multimodal composing in Show-and-Tell activity. Language Arts, 97(3), 135-145.

Gort, M. (2019). Developing bilingualism and biliteracy in early and middle childhood. Language Arts, 96(2), 229-243.

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.

Edited Books & Special Theme Journal Issues (last 5 years):

Gort, M., Zapata, A., Seltzer, K. & Gómez, M. (Eds.). (forthcoming). Translanguaging perspectives on writing development and pedagogy: Learning from findings across teaching and learning contexts. Information Age Publishing.

Aquino Sterling, C., Gort, M., & Busto Flores, B. (Eds.). (2022). Innovative curricular and pedagogical designs in bilingual teacher education: Bridging the distance with P-12 contexts. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

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.). (2018). The complex and dynamic languaging practices of emergent bilinguals: Translanguaging across diverse education and community contexts. Routledge.

Chapters in Edited Volumes (last five years):

Hedrick-Shaw, D., Hamm-Rodríguez, M., Snow Balderas, M. B., Tetu, E., Peña, N. & Gort, M. (forthcoming). Flowing with the translanguaging corriente: Centering bilingualism in elementary report writing instruction through SFL genre pedagogy (forthcoming). In M. Gort, A. Zapata, K. Seltzer, & M. Gómez (Eds.), Translanguaging perspectives on writing development and pedagogy: Learning from findings across teaching and learning contexts. Information Age Publishing.

Yaden, D. B., Gort, M., Martínez, C., Rueda, R. (2019). The education of young emergent bilingual children: An update and call for action. In O. N. Saracho & B. Spokek (Eds.), Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children, 4th edition (pp. 234-253). Routledge.

Gort, M. (2019). Young emergent bilinguals’ literate and languaging practices in story retelling. In J. MacSwan & C. J. Faltis (Eds.), Critical perspectives on codeswitching in classroom settings: Language practices for multilingual teaching and learning (pp. 162-184). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gort, M. (2018). Introduction. In M. Gort (Ed.), The complex and dynamic languaging practices of emergent bilinguals: Translanguaging across diverse education and community contexts (pp. 1-7). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gort, M., & Sembiante, S. F. (2018). 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. In M. Gort (Ed.), The complex and dynamic languaging practices of emergent bilinguals: Translanguaging across diverse education and community contexts (pp. 28-46). New York, NY: Routledge. (Reprinted from International Multilingual Research Journal, 9[1], 2015, 7-25).

Pontier, R. W., & Gort, M. (2018). Coordinated translanguaging pedagogy as distributed cognition: A case study of two dual language preschool co-teachers’ languaging practices during shared book readings. In M. Gort (Ed.), The complex and dynamic languaging practices of emergent bilinguals: Translanguaging across diverse education and community contexts (pp. 47-64). New York, NY: Routledge. (Reprinted from International Multilingual Research Journal, 10[2], 2016, 89-106).