"This Isn't a Normal English Class": An EntreMundos Approach to Literacy Instruction for Latinx Youth

• In Event: The Necessity and Possibilities of Latinx Youth-Focused Participatory Action Research

Abstract

Objective/Purpose
The purpose of this presentation is to share the findings of a year-long ethnographic study focused on the academic and social benefits of Latinx English learner (EL) students engaged in Participatory Action Research (PAR) EntreMundos (Ayala et al., in press; Torre & Ayala, 2009) in a large urban high school in California. The session will focus on how PAR EntreMundos, as a pedagogical approach, reinforced and enriched the literacy instruction for EL students in an English SDAIE (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English) course. The author will share various materials from the study: student work samples; curriculum scaffolds; outline project integration into mandated curriculum; and detail the phases of PAR EntreMundos.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
SDAIE courses are intended to provide students access to core content curriculum with appropriate language support (Genzuk, 2011), yet often result in “teacher proof” (Delpit & White-Bradley, 2003) curriculum that is disconnected from the experiences of students. On the contrary, PAR EntreMundos foregrounds youth as experts of their lived experiences (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Morrell, 2004) and creates an environment in which teachers and students collaborate throughout the learning experience. This results in students developing various academic practices and competencies across content areas (Morrell, 2006; Rogers et al., 2007) while becoming more active civic participants (Mirra et al., 2013) in their attempt to evoke social change.

Data sources
Data sources include student work samples; written reflections and interviews; and ethnographic observations and field notes by the researcher of students in classroom and in larger social settings.

Results
This study demonstrates various academic and social benefits for students engaged in PAR EntreMundos. One major academic benefit includes a higher pass rate for students compared to peers in other English courses at the same grade level, who engaged in the same mandated curriculum except for PAR. Another academic benefit was the more rigorous and profound academic and language abilities students demonstrated as a result of the PAR process. Social benefits include increased engagement in their own learning and a better relationship to learning and school. An additional social benefit was an increased commitment to issues of social justice, as students created multiple groups on campus focused on eradicating systemic oppression.

Scholarly significance of the study or work
This work adds to the literature that demonstrates the academic and social benefits of youth exposed to curriculum that reflects their lives and lived experiences (Cabrera et al., 2014; Sleeter, 2011). This work also demonstrates how PAR EntreMundos, and the benefits posited, can 1) be integrated into traditional educational settings, not only in after-school (Cammarota & Fine, 2008), summer (Garcia et al., 2015; Morrell, 2006), and/or community-based (Wright, 2015) programs; and 2) be integrated into core content classes, not simply elective courses (Irizarry, 2011; Rubin et al., 2017). This type of literacy instruction allows Latinx EL students to begin to live their lives “with the specific intent of creating a more socially just world” (Reza, 1995) as they navigate underserved schools (Gutierrez et al., 2009) and educational neglect (MacDonald, 2004)

Author

• Rubén A. González, Florin High School