Reimagining History: Preparing Teachers to Teach Critical Literacy Skills of Civic Engagement to Bilingual Learners

• In Event: Preparing Social Studies Preservice Teachers to Teach English Language Learners: Pedagogy Promoting the Civic Purpose of Social Studies

Abstract

Objectives : Bilingual learners (BLs) should be taught critical literacy skills, such as analyzing texts, civil deliberation, and argumentation to engage in the civic purpose of social studies. However, abstract historical content and language can challenge BLs. History educators benefit from developing sufficient pedagogical content and language knowledge to teach BLs disciplinary literacy skills (Santos, Darling-Hammond & Cheuk, 2012). This study investigated teacher and student learning when a teacher educator, teacher, and student teacher implemented genre pedagogy in 9th grade history classes to equip BLs with critical literacy skills of civic engagement.

Perspective(s): Teachers can be apprenticed into pedagogical innovations when learning is classroom-based (Glazer, Hannafin & Song, 2005). Genre pedagogy implemented through the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC) offers a framework to guide teaching and learning of critical literacy skills (author, 2017); scaffolding inheres in TLC phases: building background, modeling, co-construction, and independent writing of genres (Derewianka & Jones, 2012). Genres connote purposeful language use with particular organizational and linguistic features (Gibbons, 2015). Story, explanation, and arguing genres represent ways historical content is presented (Coffin, 2006). Learning how language constructs historical knowledge prepares BLs to “recogniz[e] and . . . [even] challenge a particular ideological encoding of the past” (Coffin, 1997, p.215): literacy skills that can fuel civic engagement.

Methods : This study took place in ninth grade classes in a northeastern United States city from 2014-16. Thirty percent of “honors” students were BLs and 41% of “standard” students. A teacher educator, teacher, and student teacher, taught genre-based units aimed at apprenticing students into critical literacy skills of history. Because a social learning theory (Hammond, 2006) guided our research, we examined teacher and student learning during interactions.

Data sources : To understand the role apprenticeship played in teacher and student learning, we collected observation videotapes, teacher interviews and journals, student conversations and essays. We coded recorded interactions and evaluated three sets of essays from 45 students using an analytical tool adapted from Brisk (2015). Results are presented from one group representative of class demographics (see Table 1).

Results: Apprenticeship supported teacher and student learning. Classroom coaching enabled teachers to teach critical literacy skills. Scaffolded interactions of genre pedagogy promoted civil deliberation and writing development, as Keith and Luke, strong writers, honed skills specific to historical explanations, and Cherie and Frida, BLs, improved most. Overall, we found significant growth in student writing from uncoached to post essays as students increased linguistic resources to present critical interpretations of the past.

Significance : Teachers benefitted from learning to teach literacy skills of history within classrooms. When teachers, student teachers, and teacher educators together teach BLs to craft historical explanations, BLs can learn literacy skills associated with the civic purpose of social studies: to interpret the past and present, and work toward a more inclusive future.

Authors

• Laura Schall-Leckrone, Lesley University

• Debra Barron