Expanding Literacies (Asynchronous Session)
Understanding Diaspora Culture through Food: Identity, Adaptation, Assimilation, and Enrichment View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nancy Lynch Street, Marilyn J Matelski
As forced mass migration continues to proliferate in the twenty-first century, many countries must develop a new “diasporic literacy” unfamiliar to them in the past. Still, while the circumstances of resettlement may vary widely among war/genocide refugees, slaves, political dissidents, or religious targets, all must find a way to balance a pride in their original homelands with adapting and assimilating into new communities. One way of understanding and embracing this cultural conundrum is through food. Food is not only life-giving; it provides identity, contentment and cultural continuity as a link to the past and pathway to future generations. Moreover, it is a significant lens to historically contextualize cultures that have been forced to disperse at a moment’s notice, with little more than memories (and perhaps recipes) from their homelands to carry with them. It also enriches and broadens the worldview within each nation that receives them. A sample syllabus provides an expanded lexicon to better identify and describe specific diasporic groups (whether voluntary or not) as well as concrete historical examples of the connection between food culture and resettlement, as we continue to understand this precious, dynamic population and its impact on our world.
Piloting Success: Building Literacy and Reading Ownership in Teenage Vocational Students
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Helen Thompson, Sophia Keevey
This paper focuses on a pilot project designed to improve both reading and cultural literacy in a targeted group of students preparing to take national English exams in the UK. The project is designed to improve GCSE English language results by increasing concentration, cultural capital, active engagement in reading and analysing a piece of writing. The project is an extension of a study—Let’s Think in English—that has proven results of increased literacy scores in primary and secondary schools. However, our target group is comprised of vocational students in a further education college, predominantly 16-18 years old who have experienced multiple attempts at passing the GCSE exams and have not succeeded. The goal of the project is to address the areas where students need to develop skills, knowledge, and mindset in order to improve their chances of success in the exams. For this reason, we design lessons that incorporate reasoning patterns, prior knowledge, and inference, helping to go deeper as more complex ideas are gradually introduced. The lessons are designed to encourage students to actively engage with the text on an intimate level in a way that gives them ownership of the experience as they make decisions about what they think. The paper presents both quantitative and qualitative evidence of outcomes based on assessments and observations from class experience.
The Effects of Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Reading Teaching with Grades 3 and 4 Learners View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kellie Steinke, Rosemary Wildsmith-Cromarty
Past research has highlighted the correlation between reading skills and academic success yet there continues to be an under-emphasis on the development of reading skills at the earlier grade levels in South Africa. This paper discusses aspects of a study conducted on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and how it affects literacy teaching at Grades 3 and 4 levels. This is part of a mixed methods, multiple case study that was carried out at two Midlands schools in Kwazulu-Natal Province, between 2015 and 2017, with a total of 8 Grades 3 and 4 teachers. Data was collected by means of 35 recorded video lessons of language and reading teaching. The teaching practice of the teachers were captured via a classroom instrument called the Facilitative Orientation to Reading Teaching or FORT. The purpose of the instrument was to capture what teachers do when they teach reading that either helps or hinders literacy acquisition, and its design was based around current best practice in teaching. The teachers were separated into two groups: one that used additional training for literacy teaching and one that only used the Curriculum Assessment Policy education system (CAPS) current in South Africa. Findings were that, although the PCK of additionally trained teachers in this study has been shown to positively affect reading teaching practice, there are aspects of their PCK that remain resistant to change.
Plurilingual Practices for Monolingual Writing Instructors in the U.S.: Surmounting Perceived Barriers to Effective Pedagogy
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kay Losey
There are numerous perceived barriers to the use of plurilingual pedagogies in U.S. writing classrooms. Most derive from the country’s largely monolingual population that harbors inaccurate assumptions about multilingualism and language education (e.g., only the target language (English) should be used, and, if other languages are allowed, the teacher should be fluent in those languages). These assumptions exist even among secondary and tertiary writing instructors and school administrators; therefore, plurilingual practices are regularly deemed inappropriate or impossible to implement (Horner & Trimbur). However, teaching from a plurilingual perspective is crucial not only for increased intercultural understanding and normalizing of multilingualism, but also because such instruction supports the learning of additional languages (Stille & Cummins, 2013) and gives multilinguals the opportunity to fully engage in all aspects of the writing process (Fu, 2009 & 2019). Based on findings of an analysis of over 50 quantitative and qualitative studies of effective pedagogy in multilingual writing classrooms, this paper offers five key practices that allow students the benefits of using their plurilingual repertoire when learning to write, even if their instructors do not share their language(s): 1) Use of all languages during brainstorming/pre-writing activities, 2) Use of all language(s) when creating early drafts, 3) Use of shared other language(s) among peers when reviewing drafts written in the target language, 4) Use of other language(s) to support formal and informal vocabulary development, and 5) Use of all languages in journal writing. This paper describes the practices, their pedagogical benefits, and addresses implementation across contexts.
Re(examining) the Critical Need for Culturally Authentic Pedagogical Practices to Promote Bilingual Learners’ Language and Literacy Development View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Isela Almaguer
Our nation is rapidly becoming increasingly more culturally and linguistically diverse. The surge in diversity poses educational challenges for our schools. As such, there is a critical need for culturally responsive and empowering pedagogical practices in education that reflect cultural awareness and understanding of a diverse student population. Schools are confronted with working toward preparing students to be more competitive in this globalized world and there is increased support for implementing pedagogical practices that are founded on the Sociocultural Literacy Theory. This theory is founded on the positive impact that participation in social interactions around culturally organized activities have to further drive the academic and linguistic development and success of diverse bilingual learners. This is of critical importance as we re(examine) the power for bilingual learners to learn across cultures about literacy and language through a culturally empowering and sustaining teaching and learning framework. There are many parallels that exist between Mexican American and Native Hawaiian cultures and each bring strong cultural components such as language that is ethnically tied to their respective culture and heritage and that harnesses a volume of academic and linguistic capital that can be channeled into their literacy development both in and out of formal school spaces. Emphasis is on the language and literacy skills that Mexican American and Native Hawaiian English learners contribute to their learning experiences from both their educational experiences and their literacies of life and how these resources are used to mediate their learning. These opportunities catapult students as global scholars.
Online Learning During A Pandemic: Experiences of a High School Senior, a Graduate Student, and a University Professor View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maja Stojanović, Zachary Zaheer Robinson, Petra Alaine Robinson
This qualitative study presents the experiences of a high school senior, a doctoral student, and a university professor with online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a participatory approach through Scholarly Personal Narratives, we were empowered to share details and authentic knowledge regarding our experiences and perceptions of what skills are needed for successful teaching and learning in a 100% online learning environment and what gaps exist in educators' professional development. The findings show a need for the development of a variety of nontraditional, critical literacies, such as emotional literacy, technological literacy, game literacy, and equity literacy. In light of the imposed and necessary educational shifts in teaching and learning because of the global pandemic and based on the limited research on how different stakeholders experience these shifts, this study has strong practical implications for online learning in different contexts offered through an analysis of multiple perspectives. We conclude by offering practical suggestions for going forward and discuss professional development opportunities needed to best support online learners.
A Revision of Ubiquitous Digital Skills in English as a Foreign Language Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Soraya García-Sánchez
Nowadays, the most current learning is designed under a ubiquitous learning approach (onsite and outside; synchronous and asynchronous) since information is multimodal and global. To do so, digital literacy, which evolves with technological advances, is required. In applied linguistics, digital literacy is about understanding and using multimodal information, presented by computers (Gilster, 1997). This proposal aims at presenting a quantitative and qualitative bibliographic systematic review concerning the advances in digital and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) skills, using the academic literature registered in the databases Web of Science and Scopus from the period 1997-2020. The findings confirmed that growing innovations in pedagogy corresponded with technologies in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and collaborative ubiquitous EFL education. Moreover, this review addressed that the evolution of digital literacy in applied linguistics encourages multimodal active learning approaches that help EFL learners to build and communicate knowledge successfully and internationally.
