Decolonizing Yugtun Literacy Instruction through Lesson Study Research

• In Event: Indigenous Language Immersion and “Mainstream” Dual Language Bilingual Education Allyship: Learning From/With Each Other

Abstract

Objectives
We used lesson study as a decolonizing method of inquiry for a participatory teacher action research study in a K-6 Yugtun immersion school in Alaska. As Yugtun teachers, we all had concerns about the mandated reading curriculum that had been translated from English.

Conceptual Framework
Lesson study (Lewis, 2002; Lewis & Tsuchinda, 1998; Murata, 2011) is a professional development tool for educators, where a group of teachers problematize an area they want to investigate as a group, create long-term goals, seek to find more knowledge on the content, create a lesson plan to observe, collect data as the lesson plan is taught, and analyze the data as a group.

Methods and Data Sources
We conducted two full cycles of a lesson study for a first-grade literacy lesson, with consultation from Indigenous and non-Indigenous linguists. The data collection included recordings of our lesson study meetings, reflection journals of all participants, artifacts created by teachers including the research lessons, charts, and tables.

Findings
Our main finding was that we cannot approach literacy instruction in Yugtun like we do in English. This is mainly because of structural differences between the two languages. Unlike English, Yugtun is a polysynthetic agglutinative language: words are constructed with multiple morphemes, and can get quite long. A word like ‘neryuumiitellruunga’ (I didn’t want to eat’) has four morphemes: nere- ‘to eat’; yuumiite- ‘don’t want to’; -llru- past tense; and -unga- first person singular ‘I’.
English literacy instruction approaches traditionally focus on phonics and syllabification, and usually do not teach morphological awareness until late elementary years. In our case, following the mandated literacy curriculum meant that our students became good at pronouncing words in Yugtun, but did not know what the words meant, which negatively affected their Yugtun proficiency.
As part of our lesson study, we made changes to literacy and vocabulary instruction, and decided to teach morphological awareness as early as first grade. We selected high-frequency morphemes that would help students move faster toward Yugtun language proficiency. For example, we focused on the morpheme -yuumiitua (I don’t want to) and modeled how that chunk can attach to other verb bases such as iter- (to go in) to say ‘iteryuumiitua’ (I don’t want to go inside).
We noticed a significant difference in the Yugtun literacy and language proficiency skills of the students who had received morphological instruction in first grade. Not only did the students better understand the meanings of the words they were reading, but also when I had these students in second grade the following year, I noticed that they were staying in the Yugtun language more than the students I had had in previous years.

Significance
This study carries practical and theoretical significance. It models how literacy instruction can be tailored to Indigenous immersion settings. And it also illustrates how lesson study can be used as a decolonizing method of inquiry, as it aligns well with Indigenous values of collaboration and reciprocity, including with non-Indigenous allies.

Author

• Sally Samson, University of Alaska - Fairbanks