Preparing Multilingual Adolescents for Engaged Citizenship Through University-School Partnerships in High School History Classes

• In Event: Supporting the Disciplinary Literacy Development of Multilinguals Through School/University Collaboratives: Systemic Functional Linguistics Praxis in Action

Abstract

History education can prepare multilingual adolescents for democratic participation— beyond pursuing individual interests, engaging in public deliberation toward a common good (Barton & Levstik, 2004). Indeed, tragic events like the Parkland shooting impel high schools to equip youth to take a critical stance toward life’s incomprehensible questions: How could it happen? However, history students and teachers are challenged by standards spanning vast time periods/geographies and texts couched in abstract terms and complex linguistic structures (Schleppegrell, Greer & Taylor, 2008). These challenges should be addressed through professional development that bridges university and school educators and research attention aimed at promoting literacy skills associated with engaged citizenship. Accordingly, this paper presents case study analyses of the disciplinary literacy development of multilingual adolescents who participated in genre pedagogy through collaboration among a teacher educator, pre-service, and in-service teachers in world history classes in the northeastern United States.

First, the presenter describes a two-year collaboration during which secondary and university educators studied literacy development as adolescents expanded linguistic resources to move from documenting what happened to explaining why it did. Genre pedagogy provided an apprenticeship model for teachers and students with staged interactions that scaffold organizational and linguistic features of academic writing (Derewianka & Jones, 2016). The school-university partnership emphasized neither teaching nor writing should be approached alone; when students and educators work in sustained, intentional, and thoughtful collaboration, teaching and writing improve.

Since earlier investigations illustrated the collaboration (author & co-author, a) and resulting student and teacher learning (author & co-authors, b, c) this presentation showcases two multilingual adolescents chosen to represent the class diversity. The influence of genre pedagogy on student writing is examined. However, writing is not presented apart from the authors. Instead, case studies draw from surveys, recorded conversations, and student work including three writing samples each. These essays were analyzed holistically using systemic functional linguistics tools to track movement from congruent representation toward grammatical metaphor, when processes, attributes, and propositions are encoded as dense noun phrases.

Keith[1], an African-American English speaker understood the logic of historical explanations, “how things came about” before genre-based units and added language of causation to an already strong writing repertoire. Frida, a bilingual learner, who spoke Spanish at home, recognized a need for “checkpoints on assignments” inherent to scaffolded stages of genre pedagogy and made more dramatic writing improvement. Both students demonstrated increased grammatical metaphor, a feature of mature writing that construes appraisal, a key linguistic resource for taking a stand (Ryshina-Pankova, 2010).

Through case study analyses of student writing, this presentation demonstrates genre pedagogy benefits adolescents in heterogeneous history classes that represent a microcosm of U.S. society. In addition, historical explanations are a pivotal genre as adolescents develop linguistics resources to transition from narration (the concrete) to argumentation (the abstract) (Coffin, 1997). Explicit language instruction in history classes can build on multilingual students’ lived experiences to equip them with skills not just of historians documenting the past, but as activists writing a better future.

Author

• Laura Schall-Leckrone, Lesley University