Over the past decade, my research, teaching and service have focused on exploring how best to support the literacy and language development of bilingual and bidialectal learners in K-12 classrooms, especially in the current climate of high stakes school reform, anti-immigration discourses and racist discourses. Since arrival at the University of Georgia, I have published and developed courses in three overlapping areas that relate to this focus: systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and SFL-informed genre pedagogy; critical performative pedagogy (CPP) and YPAR in multicultural teacher education and K-12 education contexts; and critical discourse analysis (CDA) .I have used these approaches as tools to research and challenge social inequity in schools.
Culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics: Embodied inquiry with multilingual youth.
The purpose of our book is to share our vision and enactment of what we call a Culturally Sustain... more The purpose of our book is to share our vision and enactment of what we call a Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (CS SFL) Youth!Art praxis. Our approach aligns closely with recent educational and sociological research that highlights the power of performance, community research, visual artmaking and multilingual literacy practices to position youth as civic agents of change and artistic designers of new knowledge (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). Informed by Halliday’s theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), our approach complements this recent research by paying special attention to the meaning making resources and creative re-mixing and reflective processes of youth engaged in this relational and civic work (Heath, 1993; Humphrey, 2008, 2010). Simultaneously, our program supports apprenticeship of pre-service teachers and emergent researchers in the field of first and second language and literacy development. The approach encourages youth and adults iteratively and generatively to engage with issues connected to their world and community, with an eye towards designing innovative, equity-centered solutions to real-world problems. Educators who participate in our programs consistently interact with students to support youth engagement in multimodal projects and most importantly to develop their own capacity as multicultural participatory teachers and researchers. The hope, in this book, is that we can share with readers how and why embodied literacy practices support both the multi lingual and civic literacy development of adolescent youth and the culturally sustaining pedagogical practices of educators.
ABSTRACT
This volume explores how educators conceptualized and implemented critical approaches to... more ABSTRACT This volume explores how educators conceptualized and implemented critical approaches to systemic functional linguistics that support bilingual students in appropriating and challenging dominant knowledge domains in K-16 contexts.The researchers exhibit a shared commitment to enacting a culturally sustaining SFL praxis that validates multilingual meaning making, pushes against social inequity, and fosters creative re-mixing of available semiotic resources. It should prove a valuable resource for students, teachers and researchers interested in applied linguistics, education and critical theory.
Here’s the link to the online version of our paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs... more Here’s the link to the online version of our paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11165-019-9846-8 We report on the use of bilingual constructed response science assessments in the context of a research and development partnership with secondary school science teachers. Given the power that assessments have in today’s education systems, our project provided a series of workshops for teachers where they explored students’ emergent reform-oriented science meaning-making in our project-designed assessments. Within the context of these workshops, we used discourse analysis to explore how three different groups grappled with the new reform-oriented relationship between science and language: (1) the research team’s emergent understandings of how to create improved resources for teachers to better integrate science and language; (2) students’ emergent understandings as expressed in their assessment responses; and (3) teachers’ emergent understandings of how to integrate science and language in their instruction as expressed in interviews in the teacher writing workshops. Implications for curriculum designers, assessment developers and professional learning facilitators are discussed.
This paper conceptualizes the notion of embodiment in systemic functional linguistics by highligh... more This paper conceptualizes the notion of embodiment in systemic functional linguistics by highlighting the interplay between the body and language in the meaning-making process. Accordingly, it argues that learning happens through an interrelated range of modalities that physically engage students, support shifts in their conceptual understanding of disciplinary materials, and foster their investment in learning. It also illustrates how the SFL teaching-learning cycle can work simultaneously on two planes: one that deconstructs and reconstructs disciplinary practices through embodied activities and one that deconstructs and reconstructs disciplinary language through dialogic talk.
As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the l... more As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the local school district—middle-school-aged youth, preservice teachers, and doctoral candidates interested in arts-based literacy practices spent their mornings in June 2016 engaging in activities that both explored and expanded thinking around their communities, schools, and families. Whereas the youth were enrolled in a monthlong creative arts and tentative unschooling experiment that ran roughly the length of a typical school day, university faculty and graduate students were engaged in a course on the application of youth participatory action research (YPAR). This article is an examination of the experience of preservice teachers, through an analysis of their reflections on events within the course, to suggest ways forward through the promises and perils of project-based, clinical preservice teaching experiences. In our exploration of the experiences of focal preservice teachers when engaged with youth coresearchers in a monthlong YPAR project, we found the work to have been filled with contradictions, unexpected shifts, and moments of great understanding, community affiliation, and suffering.
I don’t understand how I’m supposed to interact with these kids. And all these studies I’m reading are like, “and then we interacted with youth and then results happened.” HOW? How do you do this? How do you build trust? This is just so complicated in reality. (Julie,1 1 All names have been changed. View all notes preservice teacher engaging in YPAR work)
he purpose of our paper is to discuss the theoretical and pedagogical premises of our critical sy... more he purpose of our paper is to discuss the theoretical and pedagogical premises of our critical systemic functional linguistics praxis. Our approach developed because of the deficit discourses about immigrant students prevalent in our New Latin@ Diaspora state. As multilingual educators from postcolonial Ireland and India, our theoretical framework has helped us conceptualize and design interventions that support the incorporation of the linguistic and cultural repertories of our multilingual immigrant students while acknowledging that disciplinary literacy needs an overt form of linguistic instruction. Our pedagogical and professional work, which we illustrate through excerpts from one of our ethnographic studies, has encouraged our students to code switch among registers and languages while accessing academic discourses in a high stakes testing culture. It has supported bilingual students in challenging normative discourses about immigration and other burning social issues that arise because of social and academic inequity.
Informed by performance studies and an interactional sociolinguistics orientation to meaning-maki... more Informed by performance studies and an interactional sociolinguistics orientation to meaning-making, this paper investigates how performing, analyzing, and reflecting on reenactments of classroom experience supported our thinking about how we negotiate institutional, societal, and global challenges in multilingual contexts. Two implications for language education and research are discussed: the potential of performance as an instructional tool in fostering reflexivity among teachers and students, and the potential of collaborative critical discourse analysis to support educators in stepping out of their everyday lives to analyze the multifaceted nature of bilingual education.
Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports participant... more Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports participants in embodying and challenging social equity issues. Informed by performativity theories (e.g., Butler, 1999) and a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective on meaning making, this paper investigates how multilingual educators in an arts-based language education course analyzed and negotiated language teacher identities. Specifically, the paper explores if and how a performance process, which included storytelling, performance and discourse analysis, supported the focal participants in developing awareness of interaction as discursive negotiation of institutional, cultural and agentive factors. Two implications for language education and research are discussed: the potential of performance as an instructional resource to support critical discourse awareness among language educators, and the potential of SFL as a resource to research arts-based processes in multicultural education contexts.
Education reforms in the United States have placed new demands on English language learners (ELLs... more Education reforms in the United States have placed new demands on English language learners (ELLs) and their teachers in K-12 public schools. In response, many teachers, teacher educators, and literacy scholars are reexamining genre theory and genre-based pedagogy as a way of supporting the academic literacy development of the growing number of ELLs attending primary and secondary schools in the United States. In this article, we briefly describe the impact of federal reforms such as No Child Left Behind legislation on L2 literacy practices in K-12 schools. Next, we outline some core epistemological and methodological assumptions informing different perspectives of genre and genre-based pedagogy and how these concepts and methods have relevance for supporting L2 academic literacy development in K-12 contexts. We conclude by outlining the components of a research agenda aimed at supporting K-12 teachers in critically using genre-based pedagogy to support the academic literacy development of ELLs over time.► Implications of No Child Left Behind legislation for L2 literacy. ► Relevance of different genre theories for K-12 literacy practices. ► Critical genre-based research agenda to support L2 literacy in K-12 schools.
Culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics: Embodied inquiry with multilingual youth.
The purpose of our book is to share our vision and enactment of what we call a Culturally Sustain... more The purpose of our book is to share our vision and enactment of what we call a Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (CS SFL) Youth!Art praxis. Our approach aligns closely with recent educational and sociological research that highlights the power of performance, community research, visual artmaking and multilingual literacy practices to position youth as civic agents of change and artistic designers of new knowledge (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). Informed by Halliday’s theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), our approach complements this recent research by paying special attention to the meaning making resources and creative re-mixing and reflective processes of youth engaged in this relational and civic work (Heath, 1993; Humphrey, 2008, 2010). Simultaneously, our program supports apprenticeship of pre-service teachers and emergent researchers in the field of first and second language and literacy development. The approach encourages youth and adults iteratively and generatively to engage with issues connected to their world and community, with an eye towards designing innovative, equity-centered solutions to real-world problems. Educators who participate in our programs consistently interact with students to support youth engagement in multimodal projects and most importantly to develop their own capacity as multicultural participatory teachers and researchers. The hope, in this book, is that we can share with readers how and why embodied literacy practices support both the multi lingual and civic literacy development of adolescent youth and the culturally sustaining pedagogical practices of educators.
ABSTRACT
This volume explores how educators conceptualized and implemented critical approaches to... more ABSTRACT This volume explores how educators conceptualized and implemented critical approaches to systemic functional linguistics that support bilingual students in appropriating and challenging dominant knowledge domains in K-16 contexts.The researchers exhibit a shared commitment to enacting a culturally sustaining SFL praxis that validates multilingual meaning making, pushes against social inequity, and fosters creative re-mixing of available semiotic resources. It should prove a valuable resource for students, teachers and researchers interested in applied linguistics, education and critical theory.
Here’s the link to the online version of our paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs... more Here’s the link to the online version of our paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11165-019-9846-8 We report on the use of bilingual constructed response science assessments in the context of a research and development partnership with secondary school science teachers. Given the power that assessments have in today’s education systems, our project provided a series of workshops for teachers where they explored students’ emergent reform-oriented science meaning-making in our project-designed assessments. Within the context of these workshops, we used discourse analysis to explore how three different groups grappled with the new reform-oriented relationship between science and language: (1) the research team’s emergent understandings of how to create improved resources for teachers to better integrate science and language; (2) students’ emergent understandings as expressed in their assessment responses; and (3) teachers’ emergent understandings of how to integrate science and language in their instruction as expressed in interviews in the teacher writing workshops. Implications for curriculum designers, assessment developers and professional learning facilitators are discussed.
This paper conceptualizes the notion of embodiment in systemic functional linguistics by highligh... more This paper conceptualizes the notion of embodiment in systemic functional linguistics by highlighting the interplay between the body and language in the meaning-making process. Accordingly, it argues that learning happens through an interrelated range of modalities that physically engage students, support shifts in their conceptual understanding of disciplinary materials, and foster their investment in learning. It also illustrates how the SFL teaching-learning cycle can work simultaneously on two planes: one that deconstructs and reconstructs disciplinary practices through embodied activities and one that deconstructs and reconstructs disciplinary language through dialogic talk.
As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the l... more As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the local school district—middle-school-aged youth, preservice teachers, and doctoral candidates interested in arts-based literacy practices spent their mornings in June 2016 engaging in activities that both explored and expanded thinking around their communities, schools, and families. Whereas the youth were enrolled in a monthlong creative arts and tentative unschooling experiment that ran roughly the length of a typical school day, university faculty and graduate students were engaged in a course on the application of youth participatory action research (YPAR). This article is an examination of the experience of preservice teachers, through an analysis of their reflections on events within the course, to suggest ways forward through the promises and perils of project-based, clinical preservice teaching experiences. In our exploration of the experiences of focal preservice teachers when engaged with youth coresearchers in a monthlong YPAR project, we found the work to have been filled with contradictions, unexpected shifts, and moments of great understanding, community affiliation, and suffering.
I don’t understand how I’m supposed to interact with these kids. And all these studies I’m reading are like, “and then we interacted with youth and then results happened.” HOW? How do you do this? How do you build trust? This is just so complicated in reality. (Julie,1 1 All names have been changed. View all notes preservice teacher engaging in YPAR work)
he purpose of our paper is to discuss the theoretical and pedagogical premises of our critical sy... more he purpose of our paper is to discuss the theoretical and pedagogical premises of our critical systemic functional linguistics praxis. Our approach developed because of the deficit discourses about immigrant students prevalent in our New Latin@ Diaspora state. As multilingual educators from postcolonial Ireland and India, our theoretical framework has helped us conceptualize and design interventions that support the incorporation of the linguistic and cultural repertories of our multilingual immigrant students while acknowledging that disciplinary literacy needs an overt form of linguistic instruction. Our pedagogical and professional work, which we illustrate through excerpts from one of our ethnographic studies, has encouraged our students to code switch among registers and languages while accessing academic discourses in a high stakes testing culture. It has supported bilingual students in challenging normative discourses about immigration and other burning social issues that arise because of social and academic inequity.
Informed by performance studies and an interactional sociolinguistics orientation to meaning-maki... more Informed by performance studies and an interactional sociolinguistics orientation to meaning-making, this paper investigates how performing, analyzing, and reflecting on reenactments of classroom experience supported our thinking about how we negotiate institutional, societal, and global challenges in multilingual contexts. Two implications for language education and research are discussed: the potential of performance as an instructional tool in fostering reflexivity among teachers and students, and the potential of collaborative critical discourse analysis to support educators in stepping out of their everyday lives to analyze the multifaceted nature of bilingual education.
Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports participant... more Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports participants in embodying and challenging social equity issues. Informed by performativity theories (e.g., Butler, 1999) and a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective on meaning making, this paper investigates how multilingual educators in an arts-based language education course analyzed and negotiated language teacher identities. Specifically, the paper explores if and how a performance process, which included storytelling, performance and discourse analysis, supported the focal participants in developing awareness of interaction as discursive negotiation of institutional, cultural and agentive factors. Two implications for language education and research are discussed: the potential of performance as an instructional resource to support critical discourse awareness among language educators, and the potential of SFL as a resource to research arts-based processes in multicultural education contexts.
Education reforms in the United States have placed new demands on English language learners (ELLs... more Education reforms in the United States have placed new demands on English language learners (ELLs) and their teachers in K-12 public schools. In response, many teachers, teacher educators, and literacy scholars are reexamining genre theory and genre-based pedagogy as a way of supporting the academic literacy development of the growing number of ELLs attending primary and secondary schools in the United States. In this article, we briefly describe the impact of federal reforms such as No Child Left Behind legislation on L2 literacy practices in K-12 schools. Next, we outline some core epistemological and methodological assumptions informing different perspectives of genre and genre-based pedagogy and how these concepts and methods have relevance for supporting L2 academic literacy development in K-12 contexts. We conclude by outlining the components of a research agenda aimed at supporting K-12 teachers in critically using genre-based pedagogy to support the academic literacy development of ELLs over time.► Implications of No Child Left Behind legislation for L2 literacy. ► Relevance of different genre theories for K-12 literacy practices. ► Critical genre-based research agenda to support L2 literacy in K-12 schools.
Second language writing across PK16 contexts: Intersections of teaching, learning, and development. , 2019
In this study, writing is viewed as a multisemiotic process that draws from embodied experiences ... more In this study, writing is viewed as a multisemiotic process that draws from embodied experiences and a range of modalities and intertexts to make meaning. Conceptually, the research study is informed by systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1978) and reflection literacy (Hasan, 1996), two intersecting theories that provide a frame for understanding writing as a pliable multimodal assemblage. Through the graduate course design, second language pre-service teachers were expected to transition recursively between their roles as co-researchers with bilingual youth and as reflective middle and high school educators. Findings from our intertextual and discourse analysis of pre-service teachers’ interactions, artifacts and interviews point to their deep commitment to multimodal approaches to literacy that developed through close inquiry with youth. Implications include the need to expand definitions of writing instruction to include embodied, multi-semiotic practices.
Teacher professional learning (TPL) can function as a powerful resource in supporting culturally ... more Teacher professional learning (TPL) can function as a powerful resource in supporting culturally sustaining educational practices for multicultural and multilingual students. However, as this chapter discusses through a detailed description of the literature, the design of current TPL initiatives often leads to a perpetuation of top down discourses about the role of teachers and bilingual learners in K-12 contexts. To speak to these challenges, our chapter provides readers with a detailed account of a bilingual National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded model of professional learning that could serve as an alternative culturally sustaining model for TPL. Specifically, the goal of the NSF initiative was to position in-service ESOL and science teachers of English as agentive and culturally responsive in their work. The systemic functional linguistic paradigm that undergirded the initiative placed emphasis on incorporating students' linguistic and experiential repertories in co construction of knowledge. This chapter concludes with recommendations for the field.
This chapter discusses the strengths and challenges of implementing the critical takes on SFL art... more This chapter discusses the strengths and challenges of implementing the critical takes on SFL articulated in this volume. The major strengths across the studies relate to their shared focus on a systematic SFL metalanguage, critical orientation to teaching and researching and use of a robust pedagogical design that supports multilingual students and teachers in investigating and critiquing how semiotic choices realize knowledge for specific audiences, purposes and contexts. A common and significant challenge is the lack of institutional and systematic support for longitudinal implementations of SFL-based instruction and research. Implications include the need for administrators and policy makers to be invited into the discussion about critical SFL-informed disciplinary approaches; and for more studies to be conducted on dialogic SFL-informed classroom instruction across the curriculum and across institutions. Abstract This chapter discusses the strengths and challenges of implementing the critical takes on SFL articulated in this volume. The major strengths across the studies relate to their shared focus on a systematic SFL metalanguage, critical orientation to teaching and researching and use of a robust pedagogical design that supports multilingual students and teachers in investigating and critiquing how semiotic choices realize knowledge for specific audiences, purposes and contexts. A common and significant challenge is the lack of institutional and systematic support for longitudinal implementations of SFL-based instruction and research. Implications include the need for administrators and policy makers to be invited into the discussion about critical SFL-informed disciplinary approaches; and for more studies to be conducted on dialogic SFL-informed classroom instruction across the curriculum and across institutions.
One of Halliday's original purposes in developing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was to ad... more One of Halliday's original purposes in developing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was to address and redress equity questions such as how and why certain groups of people are discriminated against because of their language use. This chapter provides an overview of SFL theory and why and how it has been used in recent years in the United States and elsewhere to support the academic, linguistic and cultural repertoires of multilingual and multicultural students and teachers. It further outlines key concepts drawn on by the mostly U.S. contributors throughout this volume, highlighting the similarities and differences of contributors' approaches to critical take(s) on SFL. Finally, it provides an overview of each of the three sections in the volume: (1) Reflection Literacy and Critical Language Awareness; (2) Register Variation and Equity; and (3) Multimodal Designing as they relate to SFL. Abstract One of Halliday's original purposes in developing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was to address and redress equity questions such as how and why certain groups of people are discriminated against because of their language use. This chapter provides an overview of SFL theory and why and how it has been used in recent years in the United States and elsewhere to support the academic, linguistic and cultural repertoires of multilingual and multicultural students and teachers. It further outlines key concepts drawn on by the mostly U.S. contributors throughout this volume, highlighting the similarities and differences of contributors' approaches to critical take(s) on SFL. Finally, it provides an overview of each of the three sections in the volume: (1) Reflection Literacy and Critical Language Awareness; (2) Register Variation and Equity; and (3) Multimodal Designing as they relate to SFL.
Handbook of Research on Pedagogies and Cultural Considerations for Young English Language Learners, Publisher: ICI Global
In recent decades, high-stakes school reforms and draconian budget cuts have constrained the auto... more In recent decades, high-stakes school reforms and draconian budget cuts have constrained the autonomy of public school teachers in developing multi literacy approaches with emergent bilingual learners (e.g., English-only laws, high stakes testing). This paper describes the community and multimodal instructional practices of two urban elementary school teachers/ researchers, developed in the context of a professional development initiative. Using critical, sociocultural conceptions of literacy and qualitative methods of investigation, the paper investigates different aspects of the teachers' writing instruction (i.e., community involvement; genre-based instruction; digital literacy; and multimodality); it also explores how the writing processes of focal bilingual students incorporated these practices. Findings show that this approach positioned bilingual learners as agentive text makers. In addition, the second grade students developed a heightened awareness of audience and context. Implications are discussed, including the pressing need for teacher collaboration, robust school-university partnerships, and innovative multimodal approaches to literacy. 2 2 INTRODUCTION
Inclusive pedagogy for English language learners: A handbook of researchinformed practices, 2008
Standards-based curriculum and other mandates within the current climate of high-stakes testing a... more Standards-based curriculum and other mandates within the current climate of high-stakes testing and government policies such as the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act have created challenges that many teachers find hard to navigate. The biggest challenge is meeting a variety of learner needs while also meeting the demands of mandated curriculum and instructional techniques and keeping all learners engaged. English language learners (ELL) need extra language support and often have many other needs and resources. Some ...
Exhaustion—after working for three days preparing for the upcoming MCAS test I felt totally exhau... more Exhaustion—after working for three days preparing for the upcoming MCAS test I felt totally exhausted. Not having lunch or taking a break I just wanted to lie down and sleep. Feelings of anxiety crept in also, not knowing if I was truly prepared for the next three days. I thought about what a waste of time this test is. Not only is it consuming for the students but for the teachers as well. And for what? Closing the doors to the MCAS closet, I slowly walked back to my office, sat down and I was reluctant to move.(Angelina's Journal Entry, May 21 '06)
Play and Performance offers hope to those lamenting the loss of play in the twenty-first century ... more Play and Performance offers hope to those lamenting the loss of play in the twenty-first century and aims to broaden the understanding of what play is. This volume showcases the work of programs from early childhood through adulthood, in a variety of educational and therapeutic settings, and from a range of theoretical and practical perspectives. The chapters cover an array of practices that can be seen across the play to performance continuum.
8. Conclusion In a seminal study about literacy studies, Street (1984) divided research into two ... more 8. Conclusion In a seminal study about literacy studies, Street (1984) divided research into two broad and competing categories. In the first domain, he critiqued research which conceptualized and investigated reading and writing as “autonomous” mental processes with little focus on how they were embedded in particular social practices. This cognitive-based perspective still dominates other perspectives in second language literacy and language acquisition journals.
In recent youth participatory action research authors describe how emergent bilingual youth have ... more In recent youth participatory action research authors describe how emergent bilingual youth have created counter narratives to express new perspectives on their sociohistorical lives through collective arts processes such as drawing, film making, performance, and poetry writing (Chapell & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2013; Chapell & Faltis, 2013; Faltis, 2013; Ginwright, 2008). Medina and Campano (2006) reported how their critical use of performance supported students in re-imagining and re-interpreting aspects of their personal, interpersonal, and institutional lives. Gutiérrez (2008) called for the creation of a resistant educational “third space” that privileges and builds on students’ culturally-learned approaches to learning, including discourse, social practices, and political stances, arguing that the use of teatro (theater), critical theory, and discussion supported students in reframing every day and institutional literacies into “powerful literacies oriented toward critical social thought” (p. 149). Our paper describes how an arts-based community was developed at Coile Middle school to engage youth and adult participants in storytelling, poetry writing, photography and public presentations during the year 2013-2014. Our third author, Edgar Escutia Chagoya a bilingual newcomer from Mexico at Coile Middle School in 2013-21014, reflects over the course of the chapter about what he experienced in our after school arts group.
One of Halliday's original purposes in developing systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was to ad... more One of Halliday's original purposes in developing systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was to address social equity questions such as how and why certain groups of people are discriminated against because of their language use. This chapter provides an overview of why and how critical takes on SFL have been used in recent years to support academic equity for multilingual learners. It also provides a brief introduction to the ten chapters in the edited volume.
In recent decades, high-stakes school reforms and draconian budget cuts have constrained the auto... more In recent decades, high-stakes school reforms and draconian budget cuts have constrained the autonomy of public school teachers in developing multi literacy approaches with emergent bilingual learners (e.g., English-only laws, high stakes testing). This paper describes the community and multimodal instructional practices of two urban elementary school teachers/ researchers, developed in the context of a professional development initiative. Using critical, sociocultural conceptions of literacy and qualitative methods of investigation, the paper investigates different aspects of the teachers' writing instruction (i.e., community involvement; genre-based instruction; digital literacy; and multimodality); it also explores how the writing processes of focal bilingual students incorporated these practices. Findings show that this approach positioned bilingual learners as agentive text makers. In addition, the second grade students developed a heightened awareness of audience and context. Implications are discussed, including the pressing need for teacher collaboration, robust school-university partnerships, and innovative multimodal approaches to literacy. 2 2 INTRODUCTION
One of Halliday's original purposes in developing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was to ad... more One of Halliday's original purposes in developing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was to address and redress equity questions such as how and why certain groups of people are discriminated against because of their language use. This chapter provides an overview of SFL theory and why and how it has been used in recent years in the United States and elsewhere to support the academic, linguistic and cultural repertoires of multilingual and multicultural students and teachers. It further outlines key concepts drawn on by the mostly U.S. contributors throughout this volume, highlighting the similarities and differences of contributors' approaches to critical take(s) on SFL. The purpose of focusing primarily on North American contexts is to show how educators contextualize their use of SFL theory and practice to respond to increasingly rigid immigration policies and to a very high level of children living in poverty. Finally, it provides an overview of each of the three sections in the volume: 1) Reflection Literacy and Critical Language Awareness; 2) Register Variation and Equity; and 3) Multimodal Designing as they relate to SFL.
This short article explores how a freshman high school student and his mentor, an educator at UGA... more This short article explores how a freshman high school student and his mentor, an educator at UGA, conceptualize the notion of autonomy and space for youth in urban areas with high poverty and few public resources.
As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the l... more As part of a youth summer program—a partnership between a large Southeastern university and the local school district—middle-school-aged youth, preservice teachers, and doctoral candidates interested in arts-based literacy practices spent their mornings in June 2016 engaging in activities that both explored and expanded thinking around their communities, schools, and families. Whereas the youth were enrolled in a monthlong creative arts and tentative unschooling experiment that ran roughly the length of a typical school day, university faculty and graduate students were engaged in a course on the application of youth participatory action research (YPAR). This article is an examination of the experience of preservice teachers, through an analysis of their reflections on events within the course, to suggest ways forward through the promises and perils of project-based, clinical preservice teaching experiences. In our exploration of the experiences of focal preservice teachers when engaged with youth co-researchers in a monthlong YPAR project, we found the work to have been filled with contradictions, unexpected shifts, and moments of great understanding, community affiliation, and suffering.
Wendy Seger made this comment when reviewing one of her student's re... more Wendy Seger made this comment when reviewing one of her student's responses to the practice exam shown in Figure 1. At the time, Wendy was teaching fifth grade at Fuentes Elementary School. Fuentes is a large, urban school serving mostly Puerto Rican and African American students in an economically struggling midsize city in Massachusetts. Because many of the students are English Language Learners (ELLs) and new to using English in academic ways, it is not surprising that many did poorly on this practice test and ...
This chapter reflects on our arts-based participatory research with Latinx middle school students... more This chapter reflects on our arts-based participatory research with Latinx middle school students and their teachers in the southeast of the United States, which took place over the course of eight years. Specifically, aligned with the overall objective of this edited volume, we share our process of first finding access to the school, deciding on how to work with our participants, how to collect and analyze data over time, and how to disseminate the work. We also explore how this approach helped (or not) to disrupt traditional power differentials in classroom action research (e.g., researcher/participant; student/teacher; and university professor/ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages)teacher). To also disrupt the conventional academic format of chapters of this nature, but in line with our collaborative approach to research and teaching, we have divided our narrative into two distinct voices. Voice One provides a first-hand narrative account of our research processes and cha...
Multilingual learners 1 are the fastest-growing student population in the United States. Accordin... more Multilingual learners 1 are the fastest-growing student population in the United States. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2019), 4.9 million public school students in the ...
ABSTRACT The authors explore the theoretical and pedagogical premises of their critical systemic ... more ABSTRACT The authors explore the theoretical and pedagogical premises of their critical systemic functional linguistics approach, which they developed to challenge the deficit positioning of bilingual students in the Southeast of the United States. As multilingual educators from postcolonial Ireland and India, the theoretical framework has helped the authors conceptualize and design interventions that support the incorporation of the linguistic and cultural repertoires of students while acknowledging that disciplinary literacy needs an explicit form of linguistic instruction. Key tenets of this approach include fostering a third space where voices, languages, and registers of students and teachers interweave to make and challenge disciplinary knowledge domains. The authors’ pedagogical and professional work, which they illustrate through discussion of data from a larger ethnographic study, has encouraged their students to switch among registers and languages while appropriating academic discourses in a high-stakes testing culture. It has also supported bilingual students in challenging normative discourses about immigration and other issues related to social inequity.
ABSTRACT SFL research has not focused a lot on how content area teachers engage with students as ... more ABSTRACT SFL research has not focused a lot on how content area teachers engage with students as critical text analysts, even if critical meta-awareness has been shown to afford learners with pivotal resources to appropriate and challenge dominant knowledge domains in our increasingly discursive society (e.g. Gebhard, Demers, & Castillo-Rosenthal, 2008; Harman, 2008; Morgan & Ramanthan, 2005; Pennycook, 2001; Simmons, 2012). In this chapter, we show how Amber’s critical SFL pedagogy with her upper level secondary school students in subject English supported their use of systemic functional linguistics in analyzing how particular patterns of meaning in literary texts enact a particular evaluative and ideological stance in building characterization and world view (e.g. Lukin, 2008; Macken-Horarik, 2003; Rothery, 1996; Unsworth, 2002). In other words, through critical language-based literary instruction, students were taught to see the “meaning-making capacity of language” (Byrnes, 2006, p.17) and how it is used ideologically (Harman, 2013; Simmons, 2012).
Abstract Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports pa... more Abstract Recent arts-based research has explored how instructional use of performance supports participants in embodying and challenging social equity issues. Informed by performativity theories (e.g., Butler, 1999 ) and a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective on meaning making, this paper investigates how multilingual educators in a graduate language education course analyzed and negotiated language teacher identities. Specifically, the paper explores if and how a performance process, which included storytelling, performance, and discourse analysis, supported the focal participants in developing awareness of interaction as discursive negotiation of institutional, cultural and agentive factors. Two implications of language education and research are discussed: the potential of performance as an instructional resource to support critical discourse awareness among language educators, and the potential of SFL as a resource to research performative processes in multicultural education contexts.
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Simultaneously, our program supports apprenticeship of pre-service teachers and emergent researchers in the field of first and second language and literacy development. The approach encourages youth and adults iteratively and generatively to engage with issues connected to their world and community, with an eye towards designing innovative, equity-centered solutions to real-world problems. Educators who participate in our programs consistently interact with students to support youth engagement in multimodal projects and most importantly to develop their own capacity as multicultural participatory teachers and researchers. The hope, in this book, is that we can share with readers how and why embodied literacy practices support both the multi lingual and civic literacy development of adolescent youth and the culturally sustaining pedagogical practices of educators.
This volume explores how educators conceptualized and implemented critical approaches to systemic functional linguistics that support bilingual students in appropriating and challenging dominant knowledge domains in K-16 contexts.The researchers exhibit a shared commitment to enacting a culturally sustaining SFL praxis that validates multilingual meaning making, pushes against social inequity, and fosters creative re-mixing of available semiotic resources. It should prove a valuable resource for students, teachers and researchers interested in applied linguistics, education and critical theory.
I don’t understand how I’m supposed to interact with these kids. And all these studies I’m reading are like, “and then we interacted with youth and then results happened.” HOW? How do you do this? How do you build trust? This is just so complicated in reality. (Julie,1
1 All names have been changed.
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preservice teacher engaging in YPAR work)
Simultaneously, our program supports apprenticeship of pre-service teachers and emergent researchers in the field of first and second language and literacy development. The approach encourages youth and adults iteratively and generatively to engage with issues connected to their world and community, with an eye towards designing innovative, equity-centered solutions to real-world problems. Educators who participate in our programs consistently interact with students to support youth engagement in multimodal projects and most importantly to develop their own capacity as multicultural participatory teachers and researchers. The hope, in this book, is that we can share with readers how and why embodied literacy practices support both the multi lingual and civic literacy development of adolescent youth and the culturally sustaining pedagogical practices of educators.
This volume explores how educators conceptualized and implemented critical approaches to systemic functional linguistics that support bilingual students in appropriating and challenging dominant knowledge domains in K-16 contexts.The researchers exhibit a shared commitment to enacting a culturally sustaining SFL praxis that validates multilingual meaning making, pushes against social inequity, and fosters creative re-mixing of available semiotic resources. It should prove a valuable resource for students, teachers and researchers interested in applied linguistics, education and critical theory.
I don’t understand how I’m supposed to interact with these kids. And all these studies I’m reading are like, “and then we interacted with youth and then results happened.” HOW? How do you do this? How do you build trust? This is just so complicated in reality. (Julie,1
1 All names have been changed.
View all notes
preservice teacher engaging in YPAR work)
Our paper describes how an arts-based community was developed at Coile Middle school to engage youth and adult participants in storytelling, poetry writing, photography and public presentations during the year 2013-2014. Our third author, Edgar Escutia Chagoya a bilingual newcomer from Mexico at Coile Middle School in 2013-21014, reflects over the course of the chapter about what he experienced in our after school arts group.