Taking Responsibility as Advocates: Research on Advocacy Work for Equitable Education of Immigrant-Origin Youth

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Educators, scholars, and educational stakeholders are redefining advocacy for immigrant-origin youth by focusing on the complex social and educational inequities that immigrant-origin youth face. In this symposium, presenters share research on the advocacy work of educators for immigrant youth in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Presenters will describe advocacy coalitions between researchers and practitioners to advocate through curriculum, and between teachers, students, and families to advocate through linguistically responsive pedagogy, mobile bilingualism, and spatial justice. Together, these papers demonstrate how advocacy is being enacted to support immigrant-origin youth by disrupting inequitable practices and refocusing educational stakeholders on curricular, pedagogical, and organizational supports.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Second Language Research

Chairs

• Catherine Michener, Rowan University

• Sora Suh, Fairleigh Dickinson University

Papers

• Curriculum as Advocacy: How Teachers and Students Shape the Content of the "English" - Kate Seltzer, Rowan University

• SuperBilingüe: Languages, Literacies, and Emergent Bilinguals in a Community Literacy Center - Stephanie Lynn Abraham, Rowan University; Kate E Kedley, Rowan University

• Practicing Teachers Narratives about Funds of Knowledge in Schools - Meredith McConnochie, University of Saint Joseph

• "Strength in Numbers": Advocacy of a Teacher Coalition to Provide Linguistically Responsive Teaching for Emergent Bilinguals - Sora Suh, Fairleigh Dickinson University; Catherine Michener, Rowan University

Discussant

• Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Graduate Center, City University of New York