Teaching Contemporary Controversies to Develop English Language Learners' Academic Capabilities and Empower Immigrant Civic Participation

• In Event: 18.059 - MTCC Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: 18.059-4 - Atravesando Fronteras! Dreamers, Border-Crossing Pedagogies, and Immigrant Spaces of Belonging

Abstract

This paper examines how educators incorporate controversial issues as curriculum to engage immigrant English Language Learners (ELLs) both academically and civically. Students must understand the classroom is a place to discuss power. My conceptual frameworks intersect culturally sustaining pedagogy with second language acquisition literature to discuss how to best contextualize and scaffold English Language Learners’ backgrounds and capabilities to engage with the material. By applying multimodal discourse analysis, excerpts from students’ essays and unit reflections are used to support findings that a “critical consciousness” is raised amongst students. Therefore, I argue that teaching about contemporary controversies and the skills needed to dialogue and advocate for particular viewpoints promotes critical thinking and re-imagines students as invested participants in the democratic process.

Author

• Vincent Quang Pham, New York City Department of Education