Emerging Writer Identities in a One-Way Spanish Immersion School: Internal and Authoritative Discourses of Writing

• In Event: Language Immersion Education: Comparing Multilingual Policies and Pedagogies in One-Way and Two-Way Programs

Abstract

Framed by sociocultural perspectives and critical discourse, this paper investigates the relationship between literacy practices at a Midwestern one-way Spanish Immersion Elementary School (SIES) and emerging bilingual children’s writer identities. In multilingual spaces for learning, diverse voices come together with multiple world views and idea systems. Identity development then takes place through struggles between “internally persuasive discourses”—the languages, texts and ideas that we value—and “authoritative discourses,” often of adults, teachers, and political institutions (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 342). Studies of biliteracy have paid little attention to how children’s writer identities are shaped in multilingual educational contexts (Orellana & D’warte, 2010; Reyes, 2012). Further, LIS studies rarely look at the intersection between writing policies and practices (authoritative discourses), and students’ interests as writers (internally persuasive discourses). Thus, this paper asks: (1) What are SIES’ expectations for literacy and writing development, and (2) what kinds of writer identities are revealed in school discourses and children’s discourses of writing?

Merging critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Gee, 2011; Rogers, 2003) and ethnographic approaches to language and literacy research (Heath & Street, 2008; Orellana, 2009; Dorner, 2012), this paper draws from ethnographic research over two years at SIES, a new charter school in a small city with only 5% foreign-born population. Data included teacher journal entries, field notes, classroom artifacts, school documents, student interviews, and students’ writing and drawing. Data were collected when (1) the researcher was SIES’ second-grade English Language Arts teacher, and (2) she followed her former students in their third-grade year as a participant observer. Four purposefully chosen case studies were developed with a girl from a Turkish-Russian-speaking home, one girl and one boy from Spanish-speaking homes, and an African-American boy from an English-speaking home.

Findings revealed that within authoritative discourses of writing there was a tension between the school’s vision for constructivist literacy instruction and the need to develop students’ basic literacy skills in Spanish and English. To meet state assessment requirements in English, SIES shifted from inquiry-based ELA instruction in second-grade, to direct instruction and independent skills work in third-grade. Similarly, within children’s internally persuasive discourses of writing, individual writer identities were clearly emerging yet not explicitly cultivated. Ironically, within the existing authoritative discourses (school and state policies), there was little to support and develop children’s multilingual strengths, especially youth from immigrant families who come to SIES already fluent in spoken Spanish. Perhaps with the focus on serving English-dominant students, children from other language backgrounds were not provided challenging/developmentally-appropriate writing opportunities. In turn, they often felt that they could not write well in English or Spanish. Meanwhile, English-dominant students struggled significantly with writing in Spanish, but all students wanted to be writers when given creative opportunities.

Implications suggest that writing instruction in multilingual contexts should attend more carefully to all students’ emerging bilingual writer identities, the literacies children are already acquiring, and how they think of themselves as writers. Discussion will critique the diverse ways that state and local policies may deny students’ development of bilingual writer identities in Midwestern OWI.

Author

• Angela B. Layton, University of Missouri - St. Louis