Contexts of Reception as Figured Worlds: Recent‐Arrival Immigrant Youth in High School ESL and Content‐Area Classrooms

Abstract

Theorizing classrooms as contexts of reception shaped by ideological, relational, and pedagogical dimensions, and drawing on ethnographic data from a yearlong study of recent‐arrival immigrant youths' educational experiences in an urban U.S. high school, this paper describes how a group of recent‐arrival youth acted upon the discourses, pedagogical practices, and identity categories in their content‐area and ESL classes. It challenges traditional depictions of school engagement that focus on youths' personal traits and individual attributes.