Learning Language, Gaining Autonomy: A Longitudinal Study Connecting Critical Place-Based Garden Unit With SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics)/Genre Theories

• In Event: Learning in Place: Situated Learning in Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Critical and explicit language teaching is needed if learners from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are to access literacies needed for academic success. Yet, explicitness in U.S. political contexts is primarily linked to discourses of economically-focused standardization that ignore students’ situated interests, lives and communities. This four year action research/ethnographic analysis, co-authored by a teacher educator and a teacher working to implement a unit on urban community gardening and farming, draws on complementary theoretical frameworks from critical place-based education and systemic functional linguistics/genre pedagogies. It explores how explicit teaching based on genre and register potentially expand students' academic language choices while continuing to support culturally responsive and socially engaging curriculum where strong identities as local community members are built.

Authors

• Patricia C. Paugh, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Mary B. Moran, Boston Public Schools