How Two Emergent Bilingual Students from Refugee Families Make Inferences with More and Less Culturally Relevant Texts during Read‐Alouds

Abstract

AbstractThis study explored how two emergent bilinguals (EBs) from refugee families made inferences with more and less culturally relevant texts. The study took place in a third‐grade pull‐out small group class in a Midwestern U.S. city. Data included video‐recordings and transcripts of all 12 read‐aloud discussion lessons of four books, interviews with the teacher and students, and children’s and teacher’s cultural relevance ratings for each book. The Construction‐Integration Model guided our coding, for which we identified focal students’ (a) inferences, (b) use of text information in the inference process, (c) use of background knowledge in the inference process, and (d) inference coherence or incoherence. Using constant comparative analysis, we found three themes. (1) While students generally made more coherent inferences when the text was more culturally relevant, how they used text information and their background knowledge intersected with particular dimensions of cultural relevance ratings, such as experiences. (2) Students still tried to use text information and background knowledge to construct situation models when the book was less culturally relevant, but it was sometimes more difficult to construct a coherent situation model with these books due to the mismatch between the text information and the students’ background knowledge. (3) Sometimes students constructed situation models that did not align with their teacher’s situation model, likely due to the culturally situated nature of background knowledge. Implications include that teachers should get to know students’ nuanced backgrounds, then choose texts that are culturally relevant (especially for experiences) to support EB’s inference construction‐integration process.