Teaching and Learning in a New Multilingual Refugee/Immigrant Diaspora: An After-School Writing Project

• In Event: Latina/Chicana Scholars Speak to Literacy Teaching and Learning for and Within Diverse Community Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
Set in a K-5 writing program for refugee/immigrant children in which seven different languages were spoken, this study examines the experiences of both the emergent multilingual learners (EMLs) and the practitioner/researcher to understand how the children’s' linguistic, cultural, and social identities influenced the teaching and learning in the program. The study provides insights to the complex teaching and learning contexts of new refugee/immigrant diasporas of the U.S.

Perspectives
Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP; Paris, 2012) served as a framework for the study, pushing back against deficit perspectives that center “Dominant American English” (DAE) (Paris & Alim 2017) and white middle class norms as the only path to success (e.g., Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1999). Additionally, the study centers writer identity theory (e.g., Pitman, Elander, Lusher, Fox & Payne, 2009; Wearmouth, Berryman, & Whittle, 2011; Ivanič & Camps, 2001), which states that a writer identity can exhibit self -awareness and awareness of others' judgments, is in process and dynamic, is responsive to contexts, and can be multifaceted, multi-voiced, and layered. This connects to the ideas within CSP which include critical reflection, critical consciousness, the fluidity and dynamics of language and culture, and the aforementioned ideology of pluralism.

Methods
The study employed a narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) method and analyzed the experiences of more than 20 K-5 emergent multilingual refugee and immigrant students who participated in an after school writing project at two elementary schools in an urban area in the southwest.

Data Sources
The study generated the following data sources: pre/post interviews about participants’ identity in the areas of language, culture, and writing, fieldnotes, audio and video recordings of each session, and student writing samples. Qualitative coding was used to examine the data in relation to writer identity (e.g., self-awareness, awareness of criticism, responsiveness to contexts, multilayeredness, and multivoicedness) and CSP (e.g., pluralism, fluidity and dynamics of language and culture, countering hegemonic systems, and self-critical awareness).

Results
Findings indicate that enacting CSP helped participants’ develop an asset-based writer identity while also producing new texts written for and by refugee and immigrant children. The practitioner-researcher experienced shifts in her approach to teaching in the areas of: bilingual teacher teaching bilingual K-12 students, bilingual teacher teaching bilingual pre-service teachers, bilingual teacher teaching monolingual pre-service teachers, and bilingual teacher teaching emergent multilingual learners. Understanding the latter shift is important to teacher longevity/retention in today’s complex classroom communities as teachers are more often being called to teach students whose language(s) and cultures they may not share.

Significance
This study offers insights to the kinds of teaching and learning experiences that benefit refugee students, some of whom may become future teachers. It also reveals implications for researchers interested in the individual and collective composing processes of EML students and educators within complex community contexts of new refugee/immigrant diasporas.

Author

• Myra Infante-Sheridan, University of Nevada - Las Vegas