Developing Teacher Critical Language Awareness Through Narrative (Funds of) Knowledging

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Language Awareness: Consequential Truth(s) in Multilingual Contexts (Table 14)

Abstract

This paper examines how practicing teachers enrolled in an MA in TESOL program developed critical language awareness (CLA) (Alim, 2010) as they implemented ethnographic action research projects to learn about the multilingual, multicultural students in their classrooms. Drawing from research proposals, papers, and unit plans, the study highlights how teachers use CLA as they engage in a process of narrative knowledging (Barkhuizen, 2011) at each stage of the research process that determines which funds of knowledge (Moll et al. 1992) get framed as legitimate in schools. By integrating theories of narrative and funds of knowledge, we conceptualize critical language awareness (CLA) as teacher attunement to the sociolinguistic structures of their interactions with students and families and how these structures shape which, how, and whose narratives become resources for funds of knowledge teaching.

Grounded in Merriam’s (1998) definition of case study, this article represents a narrative case study approach to the examination of the ways teachers in one course developed critical language awareness for the purpose of implementing linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogy. Data include all project-related assignments collected in a course called “Advanced Studies of Culture and Learning: Intercultural perspectives.” This course is one of the final courses of an MA in TESOL program at a private university located in New England. The participants were practicing teachers who had already achieved initial certification and taught in various grades from PreK-12 and a range of school districts. The program leads to cross endorsement in TESOL and/or bilingual certification. We used a grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) to analyze our data.

The findings demonstrate how teachers navigated time constraints to ethnographic research by restructuring PK-12 school routines such as playtime or morning meetings to create opportunities to observe and inquire about students’ funds of knowledge and to identify community-based activities during which they could learn more about their students. As they reflected on district policies on curriculum and restrictions on classroom talk, the teachers found ways to recontextualize student discourses identified in their research in categories such as morals, technology, or food, to frame their unit plans. By highlighting how teachers navigated various contextual barriers to the design of funds of knowledge-focused action research projects, the study suggests the need for district-wide professional development that facilitates collaboration between administrators and teachers to implement similar projects that make student discourses central to curriculum development. Moreover, the analysis shows how teachers learned to employ CLA by a) recognizing education policies that restrict community-based discourses in schools; b) developing strategies to navigate policies and elicit narratives of multilingual, multicultural students and families that involve restructuring the interactions of everyday routines in schools; and c) analyzing the funds of knowledge embedded in the linguistic features of narratives that can serve as bridges to new forms of knowledge.

Authors

• Meredith McConnochie, University of Saint Joseph
  Presenting Author

• Eileen Mercedes González, University of Saint Joseph
  Presenting Author