Agentive Actions for Literacy Education of English Learner Adolescents: Toward Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Language and Literacy in Teaching and Teacher Education

Abstract

Grounded in a sociocultural theory, this three year ethnographic case study investigates how one white ESL teacher of immigrant adolescents in the U.S. enacted agentive actions toward culturally sustaining pedagogy in her classroom, school, and community. The teacher demonstrated agentive actions in her personal and professional spaces by re-contextualizing curriculum, constructing an English learner teacher community, visiting students’ homes, involving herself in refugee communities, inviting students’ parents to participate in class, and by recruiting community activists to present in her classroom. This study provides significant implications about how teachers can create the spaces where the family and community resources of immigrant students are identified, understood, legitimated and centered, and can connect those resources with their pedagogical practices.

Author

• Heeok Jeong, Stephen F. Austin State University