Investigating Mandarin/English Immersion Students' Literacy Learning With a Critical Lens

• In Event: Multiliteracies in Diverse Contexts: New Possibilities for School and Community Collaboration

Abstract

As globalization shapes a new international economic structure with language at the center, along with the increasing plurality in language use, the commodification of language that is rooted in monoglossic language ideologies (Heller, 2007) is reinforced. The tension between “trying to find strategies which fully embrace linguistic and cultural diversity and strategies which suppress or erase it” (Heller, 2007, p. 540) is intensified. Many dual language immersion (DLI) programs in the United State are illustrative of such a phenomenon. Rather than speaking to the fluidity and the plurilingual demand in the global world, the increasing popularity of DLI programs reveals a discursive shift from bilingual education to dual language education, which further normalizes monoglossic ideologies (García et al, 2014). In this paper, the researcher aims to investigate three 4th graders’ literacy learning in a Mandarin/English one-way immersion program with a critical lens.

The study took place at a private immersion school located in the northeast of United States. As stated on the school website, the educational goal of the school was to “educate children to become multilingual global citizens who were flexible and creative thinkers.” Students enrolled in the school were predominantly English speakers who came from middle- and upper-class families and were learning Chinese or Spanish as another language. About 10% of the students were from a heritage family background.

The data were collected from four sources–classroom observations, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, student writings, and student performance reports. There were a total of 114 hours of observations, one 30-minute semi-structured interview with each participant, many unstructured interviews that usually followed a class activity, two pieces of English writing and one piece of Chinese writing of each participant, and the DRA2 report and Chinese mid-term report of each participant. The data analysis included two major cycles -- within-case analysis and cross-case synthesis.

Findings from the study revealed that instead of embracing flexibility and creativity in students’ thinking, the instructions in Mandarin and English language arts classes had no connection to each other. The three participants were not encouraged to flexibily draw upon their bilingual repertoires to develop biliteracy competence. Reading passages in the prescribed MLA textbook were predominantly social studies and science but included little about Chinese communities and people in the United States. Therefore, the students’ Mandarin learning remained at an instrumental level instead of serving as the medium for developing creativity and criticality. Implications from the study included actions on multiple levels to integrate flexible, critical, and culturally-relevant practices to transform the students’ learning in an immersion context.

Author

• Xiaochen Du, Jump! Immersion School
  Presenting Author