Evasion Pedagogies in High School: Barriers to Learning

• In Event: Identifying and Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies

Abstract

Objectives
This paper uses classroom dialogue and activity to illustrate how evasion pedagogies (under review) are manifested in a high school classroom. This illustration amplifies the need for the disruption of evasion pedagogies in order to promote the learning process and push toward social justice for all students, especially multilingual students, in content area classrooms (Ladson-Billings, 1995). One case study of a high school English Language Arts classroom provides context for the interrogation of current evasion pedagogy in action and the attempt by students to disrupt the status quo.

Theoretical Framework
This study is framed using evasion pedagogies, which maintain oppressive classroom environments (under review) and analyzes the impact of the avoidance of cultural diversity (Ladson-Billings, 1995;Annamma et al., 2017). Evasion pedagogies act as an impedance to a dialogic classroom (Bahktin, 1981) where student and teacher work together to construct an environment of learning and discourse. The barriers that evasion pedagogies erect reinforce the concept of banking in education (Freire, 2018) which privileges the position of power a teacher has over their students by exercising control over how knowledge is achieved for students with the teacher acting as the sole outlet through which learning originates. The impact of evasion pedagogies on student learning uncovers unique interactions between the systemic structures of education and the students’ lived experiences.

Methods of Inquiry
This in-depth case study sought to understand the complexities of a single case within its unique circumstances (Stake, 1995). The focus was on one linguistically and racially diverse freshman, English Language Arts classroom at a large high school (over 2100 students), situated in a refugee resettlement city in the mid-western United States.

Data Sources
The data for this study is one element of a larger study which included classrooms in elementary, middle and high schools in two states. Data consists of classroom observations and post-observation interviews with the teacher. Researchers were in the classroom twice a week for approximately two months. This classroom was purposely chosen due to 1.) the number of multilingual learners it contained as well as and 2. the teacher volunteered in order to learn more about working with multilingual students as a participant in this study.

Results
Utilizing concept coding (Saldaña, 2016), two distinct themes emerged from the data. First, there was no motivation to contribute by the students and therefore no participation in classroom learning. Second, had there been motivation, there was still a lack of space for student voice in the learning. Both themes are derived from the barriers erected as a result of evasion pedagogies to which the students were subjected.

Scholarly Significance
In order to disrupt evasion pedagogies, they must first be fully described and illustrated. This study provides this illustration and furthers the evidence. The status quo in high school classrooms inhibits learning and defies opportunities for social justice. By illuminating evasion pedagogies, educators have the opportunity to change the status quo to ultimately disrupt, and positively change, the experiences and learning outcomes for multilingual students.

Authors

• Brandon Heinz, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Cindy Hammer Linzell, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Molly Heeren, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Xiaoyan Gu, University of Nebraska - Lincoln