An Emergent Bilingual Child\u27s Multimodal Choices in Sociodramatic Play

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordances of his visual and actional resources, depending on his play purposes and collaborators. Anthony’s case illustrates how emergent bilingual children access a variety of modes to participate in literate discourses in complex and varied ways. This article concludes with a discussion on the importance of thoroughly accounting for the contexts and multimodal supports in interactive learning spaces

On the threshold of biliteracy: bilingual writing processes of English-dominant and Spanish-dominant first graders in a two-way bilingual education program

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston UniversityPLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you.This observational study investigates the writing processes of young, developing bilinguals from majority- and minority-language backgrounds. The research was situated in two grade 1 classrooms in a Two-Way Bilingual Education (TWBE) program in the Northeastern United States. A TWBE program is an educational model that integrates native English-speakers and speakers of a minority language for all or most of the day and promotes high academic achievement, dual-language and literacy development (i.e., bilingualism and biliteracy), and cross-cultural understanding for all students. The following research questions guided the study: How do first-grade English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students develop as writers in a TWBE program that employs a process writing approach? (a) What are the trends and patterns of bilingual writing processes and skills? (b) Do trends and patterns differ depending on classroom context (English/Spanish Writing Workshop)? Researchers observed and audiotaped 8 focal children as they composed stories in Spanish and English Writing Workshops (WW), collected artifacts from all stages of the writing process, and conducted interviews with focal children at the end of WW sessions. Triangulation of multiple data sources provided a comprehensive view of emergent bilingual writing behaviors, verified themes and patterns, and cross-validated regularities in the data. Cross-case analyses of students' individual profiles of bilingual writing processes revealed similarities and differences in their cross-linguistic skills, as well as patterns of transfer of writing processes and skills. Patterns of bilingual writing related to codeswitching and literacy transfer (both positive and negative) for Spanish-dominant and English-dominant young writers led to the development of a preliminary model of bilingual writing development for English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students. This model presents phenomena unique to bilingual writers, relates these to bilingualism and biliteracy, and proposes anticipated expression of the phenomena for students from linguistic minority and linguistic majority backgrounds. The findings suggest that access to two languages and support for bilingualism affect both the processes of writing and the products children create, leading to the development of biliteracy and metalinguistic awareness of two languages for Spanish-dominant and English-dominant students.2031-01-0

Texas Education Review, Volume 5, Issue 1: Language Ideologies in Bilingual Education Policy and Practice

Educatio

Navigating Tensions in the Process of Change: An English Educator's Dilemma Management in the Revision and Implementation of a Diversity-Infused Methods Course

In response to growing concerns among faculty regarding the lack of attention to the bilingual student population in our pre-service teacher education program, the authors engaged in a shared self-study of the process of revising and implementing a secondary English methods course with explicit attention to the special needs of bilingual/bicultural learners. The paper describes how the second author, an English educator, with support from the first author, a mentor/colleague in bilingual education, identified and negotiated tensions and dilemmas that arose in a process of curricular transformation toward culturally and linguistically responsive teacher education practice. The study highlights several points of disjuncture, or critical turning points, experienced by the English educator and the ways in which she navigated the contradictions that resulted at these points of disjuncture through conversation with her mentor. Our documentation and articulation of this process may assist content area teacher educators in negotiating new knowledge and creating strategies for managing the dilemmas in practice that arise in the design and implementation of revised course curricula aimed at supporting culturally and linguistically diverse learners.</p

Discomfort, Deficiency, Dedication: Preservice Teachers Voice Their ELL-Related Concerns

  Revisions focused on: (1) the reorganization of the course around essential questions intended to identify and address pervasive myths regarding the teaching of ELLs; (2) the incorporation of texts that represent often unheard and/or silenced voices, particularly works authored by Latino, Asian American, and African American authors; (3) the implementation of activities designed to explicitly address fears and misconceptions of working with ELLs and their families; (4) the embedding of ELL issues in the cumulative unit plan assignment; and (5) the discussion of ELLs in almost every class meeting, emphasizing their inclusion as enrichment to the existing curricula. [...] teacher education programs must engage faculty and novice teachers in a process of critical reflection and analysis to ensure that they (a) do not blame children's bilingualism and biculturalism for poor academic achievement (Cummins, 1995); (b) recognize that languages and dialects other than standard English are marginalized in U.S. schools (Au, 1993; Macedo, Dendrinos, & Gounari, 2003); and (c) actively resist deficit perceptions of bilingual learners

Teachers' Perceptions of Integrated Reading-Writing Instruction for Emergent Bilinguals

Integrated Reading-Writing Instruction (IRWI) is an approach for English Language Arts (ELA) instruction that has gained much attention since the adoption of college and career standards. Previous studies have shown that connecting reading and writing during instruction positively affects students' literacy outcomes as related cognitive processes are engaged in the construction of meaning. This qualitative study of five 4th grade elementary ELA classrooms serving diverse students, including emergent bilinguals, explored the transition from the previous form of writing instruction to IRWI, or analytical text-based writing in elementary classrooms when implementing college and career standards. The findings indicated that IRWI introduced several affordances for the five teachers' instruction, such as an explicit connection between reading and writing, and for their emergent bilingual students, overall improvement of reading comprehension and preparation for more college-like writing. Also, participating teachers reported several disadvantages for their emergent bilingual students stemming from how IRWI was implemented in the district. These disadvantages included the absence of creativity and genre variety for writing instruction, writing that was dependent upon English reading comprehension, and difficulties with teaching how to write evidence and elaboration

Engaging Teachers in Genre-Based Pedagogy for Writing Arguments: A Case Study of Shifts in Practice and Understanding

This article reports on findings from the first year of a professional learning partnership aimed at supporting elementary teachers in improving their writing instruction for emergent bilingual students. Specifically, we present a case study of one fourth grade teacher\u27s writing instruction, exploring how an introduction to a functional approach to teaching argument writing contributed to shifts in practice and in her understanding of effective writing instruction for emergent bilingual students. The research team engaged in two cycles of data collection across 5 months, conducted before and after an introductory seven-hour professional development workshop on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) genre pedagogy, in order to document changes in how the focal teacher was enacting and conceptualizing writing instruction for emergent bilinguals. Findings revealed three central shifts in the teacher\u27s writing instruction: (1) from surface-level genre engagement to exploring functional relationships between genre stages, (2) from assessment-oriented writing instruction to learning activities grounded in authentic purpose and audience, and (3) from general language supports to targeted, contextualized writing scaffolds. This study builds upon existing scholarship by illustrating the potential of (even limited exposure to) SFL genre pedagogy to shift teachers\u27 writing instruction toward social semiotic perspectives of language and literacy. We also extend existing research by interrogating the institutional and ideological challenges teachers encounter when taking up SFL genre pedagogy and by offering some initial insights into the potential for engaging in SFL genre pedagogy in bilingual learning spaces

“Hey! Today I Will Tell You about the Water Cycle!”: Variations of Language and Organizational Features in Third-Grade Science Explanation Writing

This study investigated third graders’ use and variation of linguistic resources when writing a science explanation. Using systemic functional linguistics as a framework, we purposefully selected and analyzed writing samples of students with high and low scores to explore how the students’ use of language features (i.e., lexicogrammatical resources) reflected those expected in the discipline, or register, of science, as well as alternative language patterns used to realize the cyclical explanation genre in science. The language features used in high-scored samples were more aligned with those of the discipline compared with the low-scored samples. Although the low-scored samples revealed that students possessed some valid scientific understandings, these understandings were not as evident due to the students’ limited use of language features commonly found in the science register. This work fills important gaps in the literature concerning the contribution of lexicogrammatical resources in conveying elementary students’ science knowledge through written explanations