English Language Learner Students Successfully Self-Determine Their Identity and Enhance Their Literacy Learning Despite Ideological Obstacles

• In Event: 45.092 - MTCC Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 45.092-8 - Engaging Learners in Responsive Praxis

Abstract

This is an ethnographic case study of a program for English Language Learners (ELL) in an urban elementary public school in a U. S. Midwestern state. The study aimed to explore what language ideologies were enacted in student-student classroom interactions, and to analyze how students exerted agency to redefine their literacy identities and learning in these interactions. Data included several documents, such as English language arts curriculum and focal students’ work samples, and weekly observations of the focal participants in different school settings during an academic year. Data analysis encompassed open coding and analytic coding. Findings showed that underlying ideologies were enacted, and co-constructed in, interactions and dealt with linguistic purism, othering dynamics, and a monoglossic view of literacy.

Author

• Mariana A. Ricklefs, Northern Illinois University