Teacher Instruction and Bi/Multilingual Student Engagement During a Language-Based Reading Curriculum

• In Event: Relationality in Multilingual Language and Literacy Learning

Abstract

Although recent reading research has explored the positive correlation between teaching for metalinguistic awareness and bi/multilingual students’ reading development gains, there has been little qualitative exploration of the interplay between teacher approach and student participation in the context of this domain. The present study highlights the classroom instruction, activity, discourse, and social processes within the practice of three teachers and their small group fourth-grade Spanish/English bi/multilingual students during a language-based reading curriculum. Cultural Historical Activity theory and Heteroglossia theory serve to further illuminate the relationship between teacher practice and student engagement. Findings highlighted patterns of teachers’ instructional moves and genres, students’ habits of mind and social processes, and the emerging elements of classroom culture during what is termed metalinguistic engagement.

Author

• Renata Love Jones, Georgia State University