Critical perspectives on plurilingual students' identity performance in sustainability education

Doctoral thesis (2019)

The purpose of this critical video-ethnographic study is to gain new perspectives on how the open, dialogic structures in an alternative high school setting afford plurilingual adult students’ to take ... [more ▼]

The purpose of this critical video-ethnographic study is to gain new perspectives on how the open, dialogic structures in an alternative high school setting afford plurilingual adult students’ to take agency and the development of a positive student identity. With this goal, the study seeks to contribute to the research literature on plurilingual adult students and on nontraditional students learning about sustainability. The overarching question that guides this study is how does the figured world of multilingual sustainability education based on socioscientific issues mediate plurilingual adult students identities as competent science students? This study is multi-theoretical, multi-method, and multi-level, and as such, the manuscriptstyle dissertation presents several case studies of students as they participate in an interdisciplinary unit on sustainability. Situated in a superdiverse context, the data collection took place at an alternative high school, where students who dropped out of the traditional school system have the chance to get a leaving certificate. Data resources include video data, audio data, student artefacts, fieldnotes and photographs. Multimodal discourse analysis based on Gee (1996) was used to reveal the structures at the micro, meso and macro level that mediate learning for students in the alternative educational setting and afford them to make connections to their everyday lives. Three individual manuscripts examine three separate case studies regarding students’ use of transmodalling, students’ engagement in socio-scientific issues, and students’ perspectives on the holistic teaching and learning approaches in their school. Drawing on dialectic understandings of learning, the three case studies each illuminate holistic approaches to learning focusing on students’ multimodal means of expression, emotions and identity development that afford them with opportunities to take agency and create solidarity in the class and school community. This study concludes that dialogic pedagogy as space of possibilities mediates student’ development of identities as competent science learners, which has implications for their identities as agents positioned for transformative actions. [less ▲]

Reconstructing science education within the language I science relationship

in Tobin, Kenneth; Bryan, Lynn (Eds.) 13 Questions: Reframing Education's Conversation: Science (2018)

Our research is embedded in the multilingual national context of Luxembourg, a small diverse country in Western Europe, and as such our research participants are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD ... [more ▼]

Our research is embedded in the multilingual national context of Luxembourg, a small diverse country in Western Europe, and as such our research participants are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD). Luxembourg’s public schools reflect the diversity of the country, with 44% of students identifying as a nationality other than Luxembourgish, and 55% speaking a first language other than Luxembourgish (Ministère de l’éducation nationale, de l’Enfance et de la Jeunesse [MENJE], 2015). Certainly, students draw on a wide variety of resources as they make meaning in science, and a key resource in this process of meaning making is language, which serves to mediate learning as well as position participants in the learning process. However, for students with proficiencies in languages other than the ones used for instruction in schools (such as the students we work with), the nuances of how language(s) can serve as resource(s) for learning are crucial for researchers and teachers to consider and understand. Science, language, and learning are interwoven, connected, and we believe, inseparable, to the processes of science education. In this chapter we use a critical lens to deconstruct the use of language(s) in science education as we address the overarching question posted by the title of this section, “In what ways does language affect (and is affected by) the science educational process?” Throughout this process of deconstruction, we address several critical questions that arise from our research and lived experiences connected to Reconstructing Science Education within the Language | Science Relationship Reflections from Multilingual Contexts sara e. d. wilmes, christina siry, roberto gómez fernández, and anna maria gorges c h a p t e r n i n e t e e n 254 | sara e. d. wilmes et al. the relationship between science education and language. Specifically, we address the following interrelated questions: • Who decides which languages are used in classrooms? • How can we create classroom spaces that value diverse student resources? • What is the relationship between language used in science education, power, and agency? [less ▲]

Problematizing video analysis rooted in the verbal: Examples from culturally and linguistically diverse science classrooms in Luxembourg

Scientific Conference (2017)