ABSTRACT
Framed by sociocultural understandings of literacy and principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy, this chapter details a three-year critical participatory action research study in three Fijian communities wherein researchers worked collaboratively with young children and their families and communities to develop culturally responsive and sustaining strategies that fostered children’s literacy in their heritage languages and English. The chapter is structured around ten principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy that focus on: community languages, community cultures, community ways, community inclusion, community modes, community relevance, community identities, community agency, ethics in communities, and assessment in community contexts. We present practices from the three focus communities associated with each of the aforementioned principles of culturally sustaining pedagogies. We end this chapter discussing the impact and evaluation of this work as well as implications of this work for the field.
