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Danqing's Prompt: I am curious to learn how you understand agency and identity among the stakeholders you study.

I understand agency as a concept discussed among various educational stakeholders in the literature, including student agency, teacher agency, leadership agency, and parent agency.

For example, in the case of student agency, it is often explored in contexts such as learning a heritage language or a foreign language. Parental agency, on the other hand, tends to be examined in relation to the ways parents take initiative and make decisions in their children's schooling, particularly during critical educational moments.

To me, agency refers to the human capacity to make meaningful decisions—especially during challenging life circumstances—that can significantly influence outcomes. It is a complex, dynamic, and often loosely defined concept. I also find that agency is deeply intertwined with identity, making the relationship between the two particularly intricate.

In my own work, I focus on parents of children from pre-K through K–12, and my nonprofit organization supports them in navigating home learning resources (in different subjects and interdisciplinary projects). I hope to deepen my understanding of agency to better define what parental agency looks like in this context.

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Anqi- I am interested in combining language in various social settings.

Education settings, even higher education settings, have limited research/biased mindsets on translanguaging.

Even in the Chinese domestic context, people tend to view it differently when English appears in Chinese language communications.

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Are there any specific moments when you’ve felt a power imbalance or hierarchy related to language and culture in the US? How did you navigate or respond to that ?

Sub-Questions:

- Have there been moments when your accent, silence, or way of speaking shaped how others perceived you—or how you perceived yourself?

- Have you ever held back from speaking due to concerns about language or cultural difference? What did that feel like?

Referring back to your first days in U.S. higher education—participating in group discussions or presentations—and now, has anything changed?

Sub-Questions:

- What were your initial thoughts or emotions when speaking up in academic settings for the first time? How do those compare to now?

- Did you feel pressure to present yourself in a certain way to be taken seriously? Has that changed?

- Have any mentors, peers, or classroom experiences influenced your confidence or language use over time?

- Do you think your evolving identity as a scholar has influenced how others value your speech or the way you speak?

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During today's learning session, I learned a lot about heritage language development/maintenance, which urges me to reflect on my extended family's attitude towards my San Francisco-born cousin's "inability" to speak Mandarin Chinese.

I love how as researchers we are theorizing/making sense of our lived experiences through dialogic group story-sharing, which can be considered establishing our transnational agency in this digital space created by ourselves.

Common threads emerging during the session include: language and culture, language and family hierarchy, language, agency, and space, language and social media.

I am particularly interested in the topic of language and space, thinking about the existence of Chinatown, Koreatown, etc., which somehow legitimizes the use of languages other than English. Also thinking about when, where, and with whom do we consider safe and appropriate speaking Mandarin Chinese? Even the dominance of Mandarin itself cannot be ignored--a lot of sociolinguistics have challenged the idea of dialect.

Regarding agency, I am thinking about how norms require conspiracy and repetition, and how the refusal of repetition can open up space for our transnational agency. Refusal to speak only English or Mandarin in our digital space can be considered our shared transnational agency in spite of the native GAZE.

Looking forward to our future discussions!

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Thinking about what I have learned about language and accent in academia and my real-life experiences. How I am still captured by the concept of accent in English even after I have learned that the so-called standard English is after all also based on the variety (or "accent") of English spoken in the Midwest. Accents still subconsciously affect how I perceive other people and how I perceive myself especially in English-speaking environments. While it is easy for me to sense the charm of English accents by Spanish-speaking people (as I am in a state with a lot of Latino/a/x people), it is harder when it comes to Mandarin/Korean/Japanese-speaking populations.

I remember an awkward experience with a Chinese friend in a museum in 2023. She pointed to an artefact and said "sword" (she pronounced the w sound). I immediately corrected her, thinking I was doing a favor. My friend was unexpectedly annoyed for about 5 minutes, repeating "我们以前上课的时候一直这样发音的". This incident led me to wonder: Is there a difference between accent and pronunciations? OR Should there be a difference? I raised this question in my previous sociolinguistics class. Unfortunately, it has not been answered.

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My experience with translanguaging is threefold. First, I was introduced to the concept during my graduate studies, where I learned how bilingual and multilingual brains function and how linguistic ideologies shape the value assigned to English and non-English languages. This helped me make sense of my identity as a non-native English speaker. I realized that in my early years of education, I subconsciously felt inferior about my language background. For example, I was “given” an English name when I began learning English, and I took pride in being able to speak fluent English, understand English-speaking cultures, and have English-speaking friends.

Second, becoming aware of translanguaging and linguistic ideologies made me recognize the layered values attached to being bilingual. Some were positive—such as the sense of pride or even superiority I just mentioned. Others were more negative. On social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, for instance, I noticed backlash when people use translanguaging in their posts. It’s often perceived not as a natural part of bilingual life but as a way of showing off—which is understandable given the first point I made.

Third, I’ve become more aware of how much I translanguage when I speak, especially when discussing academic topics I first encountered in English. This has led me to deeper inquiries: Do we need language to name something before understanding it? What concepts are underdeveloped or missing in the Chinese-speaking world? And might creating or expanding language in these areas help us engage more deeply with those issues?

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Transcaring: a culture of care, the use of Spanish, and the inclusion of Latino cultures and histories. Teachers put additional time, resources, and assistance to improve students' experiences and achievement. A new conceptual framework considering the support to Lanito emergent bilingual students. It includes:

1. Translanguaging

2. Transculturacion - instead of thinking of heritage culture and U.S. culture as divergent, they consider the two cultures interacting with each other, space and others as mediator, and hence there would be a "third place".

3. Transcollaboration - school, community resources, families, collaborate.

4. Transacting through dynamic assessment -- instead of using traditional assessment, new assessment valuing students' language and other capitals.

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What do y'all think? - Xinyi