Mapping the Dynamic Literacy Practices of Bilingual College Students

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session Two
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding Students' Thinking, Learning, and Writing Outcomes (Table 18)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how bilingual college students engage with various resources to construct meaning during the composition process while they and their texts move through spaces. Although previous research is insightful, it creates a problematic byproduct: by focusing on in-school and out-of-school spaces, researchers have presumed a reality composed of an in-school/out-of-school dichotomy, which both positions space as static rather than relational and hinders the ability to capture the numerous ways that meaning unfolds across various spaces in students' lives. To examine how meaning unfolds across time and space, I conducted a semester-long collective case study that heavily drew on the principles of multi-sited ethnography. While currently analyzing data, this study has found preliminary findings regarding how students seek and construct spaces driven by their conception of an ideal literacy space, rather than prioritizing physical and geographical spaces. These conceived literacy spaces enable them to engage in literacy practices to accomplish a goal. This study, thus, can provide additional insight into the complex ways that students construct meaning--complex ways that are concealed while viewing the final draft as a static object--in their complex lives: lives that are rife with movement.

Author

• Timothy M. Foran, University at Albany - SUNY
  Presenting Author