Sociocultural Contexts of Language and Literacy

Bertha Perez, Teresa L. McCarty, Lucille J. Watahomigie, To thi Dien, Bertha Perez, Mar¡a E. Torres-Guzman, Teresa L. McCarty, Lucille J. Watahomigie, To thi Dien, Bertha Perez, Mar¡a E. Torres-Guzman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135630157
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Sociocultural Contexts of Language and Literacy, Second Edition engages prospective and in-service teachers in learning about linguistically and culturally diverse students, and in using this knowledge to enrich literacy learning in classrooms and communities. The text is grounded in current research and theory that integrate sociocultural and constructivist concepts and perspectives and provide a framework teachers can use to develop strategies for teaching reading, writing, and thinking to diverse students.

The focus on English literacy development does not imply advocacy for "English only" or ESL as the primary mode of literacy instruction. Rather, the authors take the position that learners need to develop literacy in their native language and that the concepts and skills learned in developing the native language create a foundation of strength from which students can develop English literacy.

Part I introduces relevant research and language learning theories. Part II provides research reviews and information about literacy learning within specific culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The chapters in Part III challenge the reader to view the multiple social, intellectual, cultural, and language differences children bring to the classroom as an opportunity for learning and building on the diversity among students. Activities and suggested readings at the end of each chapter involve readers in reflection, observation, meaning making, and the construction of application processes for their new understandings.

New in the Second Edition:

*updated research and theory on multilingual and second language literacy;

*a focus on the interpretation of these research findings to make them useful for teachers and teacher educators in understanding and articulating the research bases for literacy practices;

*attention to current intensely debated issues, such as standards, the phonics movement, and high-stakes testing; and

*new activities and suggested readings.

I

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

1

Literacy, Diversity, and Programmatic Responses

Bertha Pérez

A teacher who grew up in Kentucky and moved to northern California, where she is teaching sixth-grade language arts, reading, and social studies, describes the diversity of her classroom:

Samoan, Tongan, Hispanic students from Central America and Latin America; we have Russian children, and a lot from Fiji, Japan, of course, many from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia. Did I say Vietnamese? We have a lot of Vietnamese, and quite a few from the Philippines. And, we have people migrating from the east coast, from the south. We have all colors and languages and nations here. (Olsen & Mullen, 1990, p. 59)

Since the 1990s, when this northern California teacher described her classroom, the diversity has continued to dramatically increase. A visit to almost any urban public school will illustrate the linguistic and cultural diversity found in our schools and communities. In some schools, linguistically diverse students may share one common home language, such as Spanish; however, in many other schools students may come from homes that speak a number of other languages. Regardless of language and level of bilingualism and biliteracy, children's knowledge of their home language, literacy, and culture will influence how they perceive, negotiate, and process school literacy and learning.

The growing number of speakers of languages other than English and the current hostile political climate toward immigrants have created a dilemma for teachers. Not only must teachers provide the best instruction for increasingly diverse English language learners (ELLs), but also they must do so in an increasingly restrictive political climate that is openly dismissive of native-language instructional support. Teachers also find themselves under tremendous pressure to prepare children to use their nascent English literacy to perform on state tests in the name of accountability. Nonetheless, teachers must focus on making the right ethical decisions that will assist all children to learn and become literate.

In order for teachers to provide all linguistically diverse students with the most effective instruction, it is important that they have an understanding of the past efforts and relevant research. The lessons learned from previous instructional improvement efforts create a context for current practices, and they can inform educators and policymakers about future efforts.

This chapter begins by examining some of the literacy assumptions and programs. It discusses a sociocultural theory of literacy; cultural and linguistic diversity in the United States; additive and subtractive approaches and bilingualism; and programmatic responses, such as bilingual education, ESL (English as a second language) instruction, newcomer centers, and foreign-language education.

A SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY OF LITERACY

Current research and perspectives define literacy within a sociocultural context. Literacy is defined not just as the multifaceted act of reading, writing, and thinking, but as constructing meaning from printed text within a sociocultural context (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Erickson, 1984; Gee, 1992, 2000; Heath, 1983; Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Street, 1995). The sociocultural context organizes literacy and what counts for literacy. A view of literacy from a sociocultural theory of learning considers and seeks to understand the cultural context within which children have grown and developed. It seeks to understand how children interpret who they are in relation to others, and how children have learned to process, interpret, and encode their world. The sociocultural theory is derived from Vygotskian (Vygotsky, 1978) views that emphasize the social world where learning and literacy emerge. A central tenet of Vygotsky's theory was that more knowledgeable members of a group engage in social mediation to bring others into the cultural practices. Wertsch (1998) extended this notion to posit that how one comes to know something cannot be separated for the cultural tools that mediate and transform the very act of knowing.

Ferdman (1991) examined the relationship between literacy and culture: “Each of us maintains an image of the behaviours, beliefs, values, and norms—in short, of the culture—appropriate to members of the ethnic group(s) to which we belong. This is what I call cultural identity. Cultural identity, I argue, both derives from and modulates the symbolic and practical significance of literacy for individuals as well as groups” (p. 348). All literacy users are members of a defined culture with a cultural identity, and the degree to which they engage in learning or using literacy is a function of this cultural identity. Literacy cannot be considered to be content free or context free, for it is always used in service of or filtered through the culture. The struggle for making meaning of a text on one's own terms, which may or may not be the “official” or “standard” interpretations—that is, the reader's or writer's “agency”—is central to any act of literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998). Thus, literacy is always socially and culturally situated. We grow, develop, and learn as we interact with and interpret our world within our culture and in our social group. The ways in which literacy users interpret and encode information about the world and their experience are determined by their cultural identity (Ferdman, 1991; Purcell-Gates, 1995).

Understanding literacy as the construction of meaning within a sociocultural context attempts to account for aim, purpose, audience, text, and the context in which reading and writing occur. The framing of literacy within the sociocultural constructivist view is informed partially by the theories of constructivist psychologists such as Jerome Bruner. According to Bruner's (1996) constructivism tenet, the learner uses the cultural tools, the symbols, texts, and ways of thinking, in an active process of “meaning making and reality construction” (p. 20). Thus one brings the experiences with the world, the ways of interacting with text learned in the culture group, the knowledge and skills with letters, words, and text organization as they interpret a written text. The construction of reality is also situated within the cultural context where the environment and purpose help shape the meaning (Au, 1998). For example, the construction of meaning and literacy for food shopping might require knowledge of foods, organizations of food markets, as well as the ability to interpret print in numerous typefaces on a variety of packages. In contrast, the need to write a letter will require construction of the literacy task in a totally different way; the person will need some ability to handle writing instruments, the cultural form for letters, and so forth (Ferdman, 1991). The environment and purpose provide the sociocultural context within which meaning is constructed.

A sociocultural constructivist's framework of literacy rejects the view that literacy consists of decontextualized linguistic skills (sounds of letters, knowledge of words, etc.) and that becoming literate requires the learning of discrete skills. The notion of literacy as a set of autonomous, transferable, basic reading and writing skills gives way within a sociocultural framework to a more functional, constructivist, and culturally relative view of literacy as situated social practice. Literacy is contextualized into everyday life and sustained by talk, time, and place (Street, 1995). Being literate is defined not only as being able to read and write the symbols, but also as the ability to do so in a culturally appropriate manner. In an increasingly pluralistic society, it is important to recognize that literacy is not an autonomous cognitive practice, but is an interactive process where talk plays a significant role in defining and negotiating meaning as readers and writers transact with text in sociocultural environment.

CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Many cultures are represented in the classrooms of today, and major linguistic diversity concerns and issues faced by schools and teachers will persist and become more political as we proceed into this new century. The term linguistically diverse is used to refer to students whose first language or home language is either a language other than English or a language other than the middle-class, mainstream English used in schools. For example, many Hispanic students speak Spanish as their first language, and some African American students may speak and use English differently from English used in schools and classrooms (Delpit & Dowdy, 2002; Lippi-Green, 2000). Many linguistically diverse students are bilingual, or able to speak two languages: their home language and English. Other terms used to describe linguistically diverse students are English language learners (ELLs), second-language learners, language-minority students, or limited English proficient (LEP) students. Speaking in a home language other than English is not in itself a barrier to student success in school; in fact, there are studies that show some advantage to knowing more than one language (Ben-Zeev, 1977; Bialystok, 1986; Cook, 1997; Díaz, 1983; Hakuta, Ferdman, & Díaz, 1987; Náñez, Padilla, & Máez, 1992). What is essential is for teachers to allow students to use strengths in their home language as the basis for learning to read and write in English (Snow, 1990).

The term culturally diverse refers to students who may be distinguished by ethnicity, social class, and/or language. Ethnicity is determined by national origin or one's ancestors and a “sense of peoplehood” (Au, 1993, p. 1), reflected in shared history, values, and ways of and for behaving. For example, many culturally diverse students are grouped or labeled African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American, although these may not be the terms students and their families might use to describe their ethnicity. Rather, individuals are likely to speak of themselves as Haitian, Chinese American, Mexican American, or Navajo. The background knowledge and experiences that culturally diverse students bring to reading and writing have been shaped by their cultural and social group.

These concepts of linguistic and cultural diversity and the role they play in literacy development are discussed further in later chapters. Here we discuss the cultural and linguistic changes that have occurred and are occurring as a result of population trends and what that means for teachers and students.

Historical Diversity

Public education, following the social and political mood of the times, has a long history of inclusion and exclusion of languages other than English for instruction. During the colonial period the United States attempted to obliterate American Indian linguistic communities while showing tolerance to European immigrants, who were allowed to maintain and use their native languages for public and private education. The European immigrant languages were also used and supported by social and religious organizations, newspapers, and community governments. During most of the 18th and 19th centuries, many immigrant groups, whether German, Dutch, French, Norwegian, Polish, or Swiss, were able to incorporate native-language instruction into community schools as separate subjects or as languages of instruction (Heath, 1981; Leibowitz, 1982). During this time, schools were controlled by and reflective of their communities and were staffed by bilingual or native-language teachers from the local community (Perlmann, 1990). It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that legal, social, and political forces began to oppose the maintenance of native languages. According to Heath (1981), the lack of competition between public and private schools contributed to the lack of support for native languages. In the early 19th century, public schools had to compete with private academies where instruction was often given in the native languages. By the end of the century, the number of new immigrants increased and public schools filled up their classrooms. The need to make accommodations for immigrant children or to compete with private academies became less important (Heath, 1981).

Increases in immigration and specifically the changing source countries of immigrants from Northern and Western Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe as well as China gave rise to fears of the “foreign element” and to the resurgence of nativism. The Nationality Act, passed in 1906, became the first legislation to require aliens to speak English in order to become naturalized (Leibowitz, 1982). This set the stage for the use of language as a mode of exclusion or discrimination for many culturally and linguistically diverse populations. During this period, the use of languages other than English was prohibited in schools. Throughout the Southwest, language was used as the rationale for the segregation of Mexican American and A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
• PART II LANGUAGE AND LITERACY ACQUISITION IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES
• PART III LITERACY DEVELOPMENT IN MULTILINGUAL, MULTICULTURAL CLASSROOMS
• About the Authors
• Author Index
• Subject Index