Raising Standards and Reducing Literacy: Writing Practices in New Mainstream Subject-Matter Classrooms

• In Event: Adolescent Language Learners Engaging in Literacy Practices: Multilingual Pathways to Writing

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes:
This paper reports findings from the Diverse Adolescent Literacies (DAL) project to illustrate a compelling contradiction for English learners' development of advanced writing skills. On one hand, accountability policies emphasize standardization to expand students' access to more advanced curricula and instruction. On the other hand, in many schools, the ways in which these mandates are implemented encourages a narrowing of the curriculum for all students, with English learners experiencing the most constrained literacy norms in mainstream subject-matter classrooms.

Theoretical Framework:
This inquiry into English learners' experiences of academic writing in high school subject-matter classrooms presumes that context influences classroom writing practices, and that these practices socialize young people into particular norms for academic writing within and across curricular areas. I draw from theories of later language socialization (Baquedano-López & Kattan, 2008; Duff, 2008; Heath, 1983) and academic literacies (Barton & Hamilton, 2005; Ivanic, 2004; Lea & Street, 1998) to examine the classroom norms and literacy practices related to academic writing in 12 ninth-grade English, mathematics, science, and health classes.

Methods/Modes of Inquiry:
The DAL project was a year-long qualitative study that employed ethnographic (Heath & Street, 2008) and case study methods (Dyson & Genishi, 2005; Merriam, 2009) to examine academic language and literacy practices across the curriculum in a linguistically diverse California high school. Our analyses were both descriptive and interpretive, with deductive coding schemes based on concepts in the literature, and inductive analyses grounded in themes and patterns that we identified through ongoing constant comparison and review of the data.

Data Sources:
The research team took extensive fieldnotes on literacy and language use in 146 class sessions, audio-recording classroom discourse, small group discussions, and teacher-student conferences. We also gathered classroom artifacts, including instructional materials and assessments, photographs of whiteboard and overhead notes, and copies of student work. Finally, we interviewed 12 focal students, representing different academic ability "tracks," native languages, and English proficiencies.

Conclusions/Results:
These New Mainstream (Enright, 2011) classes integrated English learners and native English speakers to promote greater access to advanced uses of English. In practice, though, the needs of English learners were collapsed within a broader group of "struggling students," making their unique skills and challenges invisible. Writing practices in the core curricular areas of English, mathematics, and science were limited, prescriptive, and tightly aligned with district-mandated accountability measures in each subject area. The most personalized writing occurred in health classes, and the most advanced writing, conceptually, took place in honors English and science classes-- the classes with the fewest English learners.

Significance:
The ways in which students from different language backgrounds and proficiencies understood and responded to academic writing norms and practices suggested that English learners are being socialized into very narrow understandings of the uses, norms, and purposes of academic writing in English. This outcome subverts the stated goals--nationally and locally--of these policies and practices, and suggests a need for more flexible accountability measures that account for the diversity of students' skills and needs.

Author

• Kerry Anne Enright, University of California - Davis