"Written as two interconnected articles, this dissertation study is about identifying literacy practices that are inclusive of multiple ways of being, knowing, and doing. Using these, the purpose of this study is to create a framework of inclusive literacy practices that teachers and researchers can use--implement and refine--based on their contextual needs and expectations. Driven by the rhetorical question of 'What does it means to be literate?' I use three lenses of culturally sustaining pedagogy, transdisciplinary thinking, and multiliteracies to challenge normative practices that dominate acceptable ways of being, knowing, and doing in the world. To achieve this, I conducted a two-part study. In this first part, I reviewed 170 highly cited articles to compile a framework of ten literacy practices--five for learners and five for teachers--that I call Culturally sustaining, Transdisciplinary, Multiliteracies (CTM) Practices. Using this preliminary framework, I offered a set of guidelines for teachers to implement it in their classrooms. In the second part, to test the feasibility of the framework, I situated myself in an underrepresented context in multicultural education--a predominantly white rural school, and studied the affordances and constraints of the framework. I designed an embedded case study and used ethnographic methods and critical discourse analysis to analyze the framework. I found that CTM Practices framework faced four major challenges: forms of marginalization disguised in practices of social networking, distancing from experiences of other people and places, conflict between discourses of school and self, and siloed practices and definitions of literacies. I offered resolutions for each of the challenges, and found the framework to be adaptable to the rural contexts. I call for further implementation of this framework across new contexts to test its feasibility"--Pages ii-iii.
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