What is Deficits

This chapter focuses on three-year-old Emma, a “satellite baby” who was born in the United States (the U.S.), spent her earlier years in China, returning to the U.S. to begin public schooling. The authors drew on a framework of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), translanguaging, and intersectionality to reveal and analyze Emma's school-based literacy practices using English and one of her heritage languages, Mandarin, with two research questions: How did CSP and translanguaging take place in Emma's everyday classroom practices? How did CSP facilitate translanguaging spaces in the early childhood classroom? Data analysis revealed that CSP was used as a gateway for Emma's translanguaging practices as she gradually adjusted to the contextualized and situated nature of the classroom with the facilitation of her special education teacher. The authors recommend CSP-informed literacy practices with young emergent bilinguals to sustain their transnational linguistic repertoires and to enact translanguaging pedagogy in early childhood education.