Teachers on the Side of Unaccompanied Youth: Pedagogical Perspectives From Science Educators

• In Event: 69.057 - Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 69.057-7 - Language and Literacy in Science Learning Contexts

Abstract

In recent years large numbers of immigrant students with interrupted schooling have arrived in secondary school classrooms in the United States. In this context, educators feel increasingly challenged to rethink teaching practices and programs to support emergent bilingual adolescents. This study explores three educators’ perspectives on the teaching of science to a group of secondary newcomer students in the Southeastern United States. Using critical thematic analysis, educators’ discourses about experiential knowledge, home language(s), science instruction, and student racialization were explored. Findings from the study offer ways to conceptualize the education of newcomer students from a multimodal and multifaceted perspective, incorporating pedagogical aspects but also the examination of racialized discourses and positioning of immigrant and emergent bilingual secondary students.

Authors

• Lourdes Cardozo-Gaibisso, University of Georgia - Athens

• Yainitza Hernandez-Rodriguez, University of Georgia - Athens

• Martha A. Allexsaht-Snider, University of Georgia

• Max Vazquez Dominguez, University of North Georgia

• Cory A. Buxton, University of Georgia - Athens