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Negotiating Multilingual Identities at School

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How are multilingual identities socially constructed at Oyster Bilingual School? ... (pluralist/resource) is reflected in all of Oyster's policies and practices. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Negotiating Multilingual Identities at School


1
Negotiating Multilingual Identities at School
  • Rebecca Freeman Field
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • Caslon Publishing Consulting
  • rdfield_at_casloninc.com

2
Abstract
  • This workshop provides teachers with tools and
    strategies to explore how multilingual students
    identities are negotiated and displayed through
    schooling, with attention to the critical roles
    that educators play in this process.
  • After a brief theoretical orientation,
    participants are given a series of guiding
    questions they can use to reflect on the
    implications of their policies, curriculum
    content, materials, organization of classroom
    interaction, assessment practices, and
    extracurricular activities for multilingual
    students social identity construction at school.
  • Some examples illustrate how the choices that
    educators make can contribute to the
    subordination of particular identities at school.
  • More importantly, other examples demonstrate how
    the choices educators make can challenge and
    potentially transform possibilities for
    multilingual students identity construction in
    their schools.

3
Big Idea
  • When you understand how identities are socially
    constructed through discourse in particular
    communities of practice, you can identify
    strategies for action ?
  • Support discourse practices that lead to more
    equitable relations among social groups
  • Challenge and potentially transform social
    relations that perpetuate inequality

4
Objectives
  • Participants will
  • Use guiding questions to explore how multilingual
    students social identities are negotiated and
    displayed at school, with attention to the
    implications of the choices that they make in
    this process.
  • Experience a series of instructional strategies
    they can use to shelter instruction for their
    English language learners (ELLs).

5
AGENDA
  • BEFORE
  • Do now! Quick-write
  • DURING
  • Mini-lesson Challenging language prejudice
  • Guiding questions for reflection and action
    Expert jigsaw w/notemaking guide ? carousel
  • AFTER
  • Ticket-out-the-door
  • What stood out? What did you learn? What can you
    use? What questions do you have?

6
DO NOW! Quickwrite(p. 2)
  • 1. Quickwrite a short response to the
    following
  • How do students learn what it means to be a
    multilingual, multicultural, globally-aware
    student? What roles do educators/schools play
    in this process?
  • 2. Exchange papers with your neighbor. Read
    their response and, without talking, write a
    brief response to their response on their paper.
  • 3. Give your partner their paper back and read
    their response to your writing. Discuss whatever
    stands out for you.

7
Mini-lesson
  • Challenging language prejudice
  • on the local level

8
What is language prejudice?
  • Higher status attributed to the prestige
    language, which is used to fulfill higher status
    functions in society
  • Lower status attributed to other languages or
    varieties of languages in that society
  • This social stratification of languages in
    society can lead to discrimination against
    minority languages and speakers of those
    languages

9
What do we see/hear when we look locally?
  • What language groups do we find in your context?
  • How are those groups represented and evaluated in
    your school environment, language policies,
    language education programs, curricular choices,
    instructional materials, classroom interactional
    routines, assessment practices, extra-curricular
    activities?
  • What are the implications of these choicesfor
    members of these language groups, other students
    understanding of those groups, intergroup
    relations?
  • What can you do to contribute to the development
    of multilingual, multicultural, globally-aware
    students in your context?

10
Competing Discourses
PLURALIST
  • ASSIMILATIONIST

Language-as-resource
Language-as-problem
English-plus
English-only
Mother tongue, DL
ESL
Multilingual literacies
Subtractive bilingualism
Additive bilingualism
Conflict and Controversy
11
Its much more than language
  • Constructing social identities through discourse
  • Position
  • Role
  • Agency
  • It would be a mistake to assume thatpositioning
    is necessarily intentional. One lives ones life
    in terms of ones ongoingly produced self,
    whoever might be responsible for its production
    (Davies Harré,1990)
  • Social identity? Multi-faceted, dynamic,
    situated, negotiated, negotiable, structured by
    power relations

12
Power as symbolic domination
Society
The ways that we use language can reflect and
perpetuate social relations
Institution
Interaction
The ways that we use language can challenge and
potentially transform social relations
13
We have choices in the ways that we use language
to position multilingual students.
  • The choices we make have important implications
    for our students, schools, and communities.

14
Essential Questions
  • How are educators at your school positioning
    multilingual students relative to the rest of the
    school and community?
  • What are the implications of those choices for
    multilingual students social identity
    construction at school?
  • Investigating the representation and evaluation
    of languages and speakers of languages at school.

15
Expert jigsaw with notemaking guide
  • Step 1 Introduce text read aloud first two
    paragraphs (p.4)
  • Step 2 Divide into groups of three to four
    people.
  • Each group is assigned a number, either 1, 2, or
    3. Each person in that group reads their
    paragraph (p.5), and uses the notemaking guide
    on p.8 to make notes about their paragraph.
    FOCUS ON MAKING CONNECTIONS!
  • Step 3 Write down your purpose on your
    notemaking guide.
  • For paragraph 1 How are the languages used by
    your students represented and evaluated
    throughout your school? What are the
    implications of this representation for
    multilingual students social identity
    construction at school?
  • For paragraph 2 How are the cultures of the
    students at your school related to the
    curriculum? What are the implications of this
    approach for multilingual students social
    identity construction at school?
  • For paragraph 3 How are the linguistic and
    cultural resources of your students integrated
    into the curriculum content/classroom teaching
    and learning? What are the implications of these
    choices for multilingual students social
    identity construction at school?

16
Expert jigsaw with notemaking guide (cont.)
  • Step 4 Get together with the other two or three
    members of your group that read the same
    paragraph. Share your notes. Appoint a group
    leader that will report a) the purpose of your
    reading, b) what the authors say, and c) the
    connections you make with your context.
  • Step 4.5 Get together in a group of at least
    three people and no more than six people that
    includes at least one representative of group 1,
    2, and 3. First the ones, then the twos and then
    the threes report out, first reading aloud their
    purpose, then the important facts, then the
    connections they made.
  • Step 5 Read aloud the concluding paragraph. RF
    shares example of how multilingual identities are
    socially constructed at Oyster Bilingual School.

17
How are multilingual identities socially
constructed at Oyster Bilingual School?
  • An alternative educational discourse that aims to
    position Spanish-speaking students more or less
    equally to English-speaking students.
  • This ideological orientation (pluralist/resource)
    is reflected in all of Oysters policies and
    practices.
  • Dual language program (50 Spanish/50 English)
    every subject taught in two languages
  • Curriculum content reflects histories,
    contributions, perspectives of students at school
    (primarily Latino, African American, and European
    American
  • Materials authentic materials in two languages
    in classes and library
  • Student-centered, student-directed classroom
    interaction inquiry-based, problem-posing
    approach
  • Authentic assessment for linguistically and
    culturally diverse students
  • All communication to parents in two languages
  • All students gain the ability and the right to
    participate in the school discourse, and all
    students achieve more or less equally.

18
Expert jigsaw with notemaking guide (cont.)
  • Step 6 Return to your small group and generate
    a one-to-two sentence summary of the article
    where it says summary.
  • Step 7 Extension activity ? Continue the
    investigation at your school using the guiding
    questions (on p. 6 or your loose handout).

19
Extension Using the guiding questions for
reflection and action
  • How can a schools discourse practices position
    multilingual students relative to the mainstream
    students and community?
  • Policies and accountability requirements?
  • Program structure?
  • Curriculum content?
  • Materials?
  • Classroom interaction?
  • Assessment practices?
  • Unofficial classroom/school discourse?
  • School/community relations ?

20
Carousel
  • Step 1 In your smaller group, answer the
    following questions about your focal aspect of
    the school discourse system.
  • How can YOUR FOCUS position multilingual
    students negatively relative to the mainstream
    students and community?
  • How can YOUR FOCUS position multilingual
    students more or less equally to the mainstream
    students and community?
  • Write your answers in the form of a T-chart on
    poster paper and post it in the designated part
    of the room. Be specific and be prepared to
    provide details!

21
School environment
  • Negative positioning of ELLs
  • Positive positioning of multilingual students
  • Languages other than English are invisible or
    negatively evaluated
  • Cultural contributions of students other than
    native speakers are invisible, or negatively
    evaluated
  • Languages and cultural contributions of students
    and community are visible and audible
  • In student work on the walls in the halls and in
    the classroom
  • Materials in library
  • In content-area instruction
  • In school-home-community partnerships

22
Curriculum content
  • Negative positioning of ELLs
  • Positive positioning of multilingual students
  • Standardized
  • Eurocentric
  • Skills-based
  • Culture as a lesson or a subject to be taught
    (noun)
  • Linguistic and cultural backgrounds of students
    invisible or marginalized
  • Multicultural ? includes perspectives, histories,
    contributions of groups in school/community/world
  • Culture as an integral part of curriculum, a
    human-rights issue, a social reform movement, a
    multi-faceted framework for action (verb)
  • Power relations are focus of study and action
  • Cultural funds of knowledge as a basis for
    content area instruction

23
Language policy? Program Structure
  • Negative positioning of ELLs
  • Positive positioning of multilingual students
  • No language policy
  • No mention of languages that students
    speak/cultural expertise they bring to school
  • ESL only type of language education program
    offered for ELLs
  • ESL teacher exclusively or largely responsible
    for education of ELLs (mainstream teachers not
    held responsible)
  • Rapid transition from ESL program to mainstream
    program encouraged, without giving time needed to
    develop academic English
  • Written language policy that is understood and
    supported by all
  • Clear language-as-resource orientation
  • Additive bilingualism, multilingual literacies
    promoted to the greatest degree possible (mother
    tongue classes/programs for ELLs community/world
    language programs for English speakers)
  • Professional development for mainstream teachers
    and administrators so they have knowledge and
    skills to address needs of multilingual students
    in international school.

24
Classroom interaction
  • Negative positioning of ELLs
  • Positive positioning of multilingual students
  • Transmission of knowledge Teacher-fronted
  • Teacher-dominated
  • Lecture format
  • IRE routines (initiation-reponse-evaluation)
  • L1 invisible
  • ELLs marginalized
  • Social construction of knowledge
  • Student-centered, student-directed
  • Cooperative learning, reciprocal teaching
  • Inquiry-based, problem-posing
  • Variety of interactional routines with students
    using language for wide range of purposes
  • L1 used as resource in and goal of learning (e.g.
    preview/view/review dual language books)
  • ELLs are actively engaged

25
Assessment practices
  • Negative positioning of ELLs
  • Positive positioning of multilingual students
  • Standardized testing? assessment of learning
  • Separate from instruction
  • English-only
  • High-stakes
  • Designed for monolingual English speakers ? not
    valid or reliable for ELLs
  • Demonstrate what ELLs lack
  • Formative assessments complement standardized
    tests? assessment for learning
  • Integrated with and inform instruction
  • Performance-based, in L1 as appropriate
  • Designed for multilingual students
  • Demonstrate what students know or can do

26
Carousel (cont.)
  • Step 2 Travel in groups around the room. Read
    what is written on each poster, and add to it.
    If you have any questions or comments, post them
    with a post-it.
  • Step 3 Pulling it all together.
  • A schools policies, programs, practices can
    contribute to the reflection and reproduction of
    the subordinate status of ELLs relative to
    mainstream students at school.
  • A schools policies, programs, practices can
    challenge and potentially transform multilingual
    students positions and roles at school and in
    the community.
  • Step 4 Taking action. What action steps can
    you take to position multilingual students more
    favorably at your school?
  •  

27
We have choices in the ways that we construct our
educational policies, programs, and practices.
  • The choices that we make have important
    implications for our students, schools, and
    communities.

28
Revisiting our objectives
  • Negotiating multilingual identities at school
  • Sheltered instruction strategies for ELLs
  • Theoretical orientation Challenging language
    prejudice
  • Guiding questions for reflection and action
  • Identified ways that American or British schools
    policies, programs, practices can contribute to
    subordination of ELLs
  • Identified ways that international schools
    policies, programs, practices can potentially
    transform opportunities for multilingual
    students and society
  • Before/During/After (BDA)
  • Think-pair-share
  • Quick-write
  • Mini-lesson
  • Expert jigsaw with notemaking guide ? literacy
    scaffold for expository reading
  • T-chart ? literacy scaffold for expository
    writing
  • Carousel

29
Ticket-out-the-door
  • What stood out?
  • What did you learn?
  • What can you use?
  • What questions do you have?
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