Abstract
This case study research documents how one teacher’s personal language and literacy practices and the sociopolitical structures of her profession intersect in her literacy instruction for her multilingual third grade students. Centering my analysis on Graff’s (1987) notion of the “literacy myth,” I discuss how the dialectic between Bourdieu’s habitus and field unfolds in the performative space of the classroom, challenging this discourse in small but significant ways. Complimenting research exploring students’ out-of-school language and literacy practices, this paper addresses how a teacher’s literate life history is performed in the classroom and who stands to benefit from these discursive performances.
Highlights
Perhaps the most critical challenge facing educators is how to serve an increasingly multilingual and multiliterate student population amidst popular discourses and policies privileging monolingualism and narrow conceptualizations of literacy, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in the US (2001), and Australia’s government policy document, Australia’s Language (DEET, 1991)
Joyce’s 19 students included 12 African Americans, five Latinos of Mexican origin, one French/English bilingual from the Republic of the Congo, and one White monolingual English-speaker. Her five Latino students were at various stages of English language development, and received pull-out bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction for two hours a day, while her French-English bilingual student was exited from the ESL program the year prior to this study
While I do not organize my presentation of the data in this paper according to specific codes, my discussion of the data is centered around the axial codes of Literacy as Gospel, Discourses of Progress, and Being/becoming American
Summary
Perhaps the most critical challenge facing educators is how to serve an increasingly multilingual and multiliterate student population amidst popular discourses and policies privileging monolingualism and narrow conceptualizations of literacy, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in the US (2001), and Australia’s government policy document, Australia’s Language (DEET, 1991). Teachers may be unfamiliar with students’ cultural practices or discourse styles or make false assumptions regarding students’ abilities and needs, resulting in watered down instruction and low expectations. Practices such as integrating students’ native languages and home-community literacy practices into instruction may slow native language loss and support students’ L2 development and academic achievement As McKay & Wong (1996) found in their research on Chinese immigrant students, factors affecting students’ investment in learning a second language
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