A Discussion-Based Literacy Intervention Using Indigenous Students' Cultural Narratives

• In Event: Fostering Learning, Agency, and Empowered Identities Through Dialogic and Multimodal Language Pedagogies

Abstract

Indigenous students of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, speak a variety of languages at home, but learn in Bangla at school. This experimental study investigated the effect of classroom discussion intervention based on traditional Indigenous stories on Indigenous students and their native Bangla-speaking classmates. The intervention program was evaluated with 2,865 students of grade three to ten from 83 classrooms in 15 schools. Classrooms were randomly assigned to discussion and control conditions. Multilevel modeling showed students from the treatment group scored 18.6% higher in taught vocabulary than students in the comparison group. Results also show that Indigenous students learned more than native Bangla speakers. These results provide evidence that discussion with cultural resource-based content supports academic language development of Indigenous students.

Author

• Maung T. Nyeu, New York University