Matching Items (2)
Description
This multilevel, institutional case study used ethnographic methods to explore the intersections of local language policies and emergent bilingual students’ identities in dual language and structured English immersion (SEI) classrooms at one urban elementary school. Using a sociocultural policy approach as means to explore the ways that educational language policies are appropriated and practiced in schools and classrooms and an intersectional literacy identity framework, I engaged in a multilevel qualitative analysis of one school, two fifth-grade classrooms, and four focal emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, I sought to understand the ways educators practiced and enacted language policies as well as how they conceptualized (bi)literacy for emergent bilingual students. At the student level, I engaged in identity-text writing sessions designed around student interests yet aligned with the opinion/argumentation writing style the students were working on in class at the time of data collection. Additionally, I conducted one-on-one interviews with the participants at each level of analysis (i.e. school-level, classroom-level, and student-level). The primary data analysis sources included participant interviews, classroom observations, and student identity-text artifacts.
Findings highlight the dynamic in-school and classroom-level realities of emergent bilingual students in an Arizona educational-language policy context. Specifically, at the school level, there was an ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies for emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, there were distinct differences in the ways students across the two classrooms were positioned within the larger school environment as well as variation surrounding how language and culture were positioned as a resource in each classroom context. The role of teachers as language policymakers is also explored through the findings. Analysis of student texts revealed the centrality of intersectional student identities throughout the writing processes. The discussion and conclusions more broadly address implications for educational practice, policy, and future research directions.
Findings highlight the dynamic in-school and classroom-level realities of emergent bilingual students in an Arizona educational-language policy context. Specifically, at the school level, there was an ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies for emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, there were distinct differences in the ways students across the two classrooms were positioned within the larger school environment as well as variation surrounding how language and culture were positioned as a resource in each classroom context. The role of teachers as language policymakers is also explored through the findings. Analysis of student texts revealed the centrality of intersectional student identities throughout the writing processes. The discussion and conclusions more broadly address implications for educational practice, policy, and future research directions.
ContributorsBaca, Evelyn Concepción (Author) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Beardsley, Audrey (Committee member) / Casanova, Saskias (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This interpretive dissertation study draws upon a sociocultural framework to understand what happened when a seventh-grade teacher introduced drama-based pedagogy into her English Language Arts (ELA) classroom to aid emergent bilinguals’ participation and positioning within the classroom network of practice. The classroom teacher had little training in best practices for supporting emergent bilinguals and no training in drama-based pedagogical approaches for teaching and learning before she participated in this study. I trained the classroom teacher in these practices and provided guidance and feedback during the implementation of drama-based pedagogy. The following research question guided this investigation: What happens when drama-based pedagogy is introduced into a seventh-grade ELA class to support emergent bilinguals? Twenty-seven students from an urban middle school in the southwestern United States participated in this study. According to the state’s English language proficiency exam, three students were identified as English language learners. All three had attended schools in the United States since kindergarten. I conducted classroom observations and interviews with the student and teacher participants to gather data on how emergent bilinguals participated and were positioned during drama-based lessons. Then I analyzed the data corpus using multiple forms of coding, social network analysis, and multimodal interaction analysis. My findings describe the emergent bilinguals’ multimodal classroom interactions with their peers and the teacher during drama-based pedagogy. I present excerpts from interview, reflection meeting, and multimodal transcripts to support my analysis of participation and positioning. Based on my findings, I generated five assertions: (1) emergent bilinguals increased their access to academic resources within the peer academic network after engaging in drama-based pedagogy; (2) emergent bilinguals demonstrated moments of resistance and adaptation during drama-based pedagogy; (3) emergent bilinguals' participation during drama-based pedagogy fluctuated between moments of maintaining and becoming certain kinds of students; (4) incorporating drama-based pedagogy into the seventh-grade ELA class required the teacher to preserve time for more traditional ELA practices while also re-envisioning classroom instruction; and (5) students sometimes misinterpreted teacher facilitation as requirements which limited student agency during drama-based pedagogy. The dissertation concludes with implications for research and practice and outlines potential directions for future research.
ContributorsTroxel Deeg, Megan (Author) / Farrand, Kathleen M. (Thesis advisor) / Moses, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Bernstein, Katie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021