Adolescent Literacies in a Multicultural Context

Alister Cumming

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780415898904
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136318542
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book presents results from a four-year project addressing the central question: What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse backgrounds? Researchers consider the importance of several, interrelated factors that support the development of adolescents' literacies in multilingual contexts: support from educators, community groups, families, and peers; recognition of the multi-faceted complexity of literacy through multiple, complementary methods of research and assessment; approaches to pedagogy that engage learners' zones of proximal development in humanistic and purposeful ways; and promoting students' vocabulary knowledge, strategies for reading, writing, and learning, and orientations to engaging with epistemic purposes of literacy critically, through multiple media, and with self-confidence.

1 Purpose and Approach

Alister Cumming and Esther Geva

What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse backgrounds? This book describes the results of a four-year project that attempted to answer this question from a variety of complementary research perspectives. The project produced—and this book provides—certain answers, insights, and recommendations for educational policies and practices. Like most inquiry, however, the questions raised about the conceptual, pragmatic, and methodological issues we addressed may be as important as are the findings from the research. This opening chapter introduces these issues and the research methods we used to investigate them, providing a preliminary basis for the analyses and findings presented in the nine subsequent chapters and appendices. We called the project Adolescent Literacy in Three Urban Regions: Toronto (ALTUR) because (as explained in the Preface) we conducted it in parallel with colleagues in two other urban regions, Amsterdam and Geneva, although the present book presents results only for Toronto: The international, comparative dimensions from the research remain to be synthesized in future publications.

ALTUR was conceived with the purpose of describing, explaining, and making educational recommendations for the development of literacy among culturally diverse adolescents in an urban context considered to be “at risk” for academic achievement. Numerous other initiatives around the world have surveyed, assessed, and aimed to improve conditions for literacy development among students completing public education. Despite these initiatives and advances in knowledge, much uncertainty exists about the impact of policies for literacy education and even about the nature of literacy education itself (Bascia, Cumming, Datnow, Leithwood & Livingstone, 2005; D. Olson & Torrance, 2009). Surprisingly little systematic inquiry up to now has attempted to account comprehensively for the unique complexities of—and to provide concrete, useful policy guidance for—populations of adolescent students in multilingual, culturally diverse urban settings. The literacy achievement of adolescents in multilingual, culturally diverse urban schools is a universally recognized concern because dramatic and compelling differences consistently appear in their literacy achievement, impacting on life and career opportunities as well as societal harmony. Knowing what actions may be needed to address these concerns requires research that accounts not only for adolescents’ unique states of maturation (e.g., formation of identity, peer and social relations, and cognitive development), and for their diverse cultural and linguistic experiences using and learning various forms of literacy, but also knowing precisely which and how educational practices and conditions actually influence their literacy achievement.

To these ends, the issues considered in ALTUR are at once conceptual, pragmatic, and methodological. The issues concern how to understand, act on, and inquire appropriately into:

• adolescence as a particular phase in human development and education,

• cultural and linguistic diversity as an increasingly distinct phenomenon in large metropolitan areas, and

• literacy learning as a multifaceted complex of individual skills, sociocultural practices, and macrosocietal processes.

ADOLESCENT LITERACIES, LEARNING, AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Abilities and opportunities to read and write effectively are integral not only to educational engagement and academic success but also to the future careers of students, their capacities as citizens, and the well-being of their societies (Machalski, 2001). An especially pressing concern is literacy education among adolescents in culturally diverse urban schools—the critical age and prevailing site for school failure, decline in motivation, and dropout. However, as various prior publications have attested, current knowledge about literacy development among culturally diverse adolescents is limited (Cumming, 2008; Dressman, Wilder & Connor, 2005; Franzak, 2006; Fox, Connolly & Snyder, 2005; Geva, 2006; Gunderson, 2007; Johannessen & McCann, 2009; Mahiri, 2004; Partnership for Reading, 2004; Rush, Eakle & Berger, 2007; Schultz & Fecho, 2005; Snow, Porsche, Tabors & Harris, 2007). We designed ALTUR to address, and to attempt to overcome, some of these limitations, while at the same time aiming to extend current knowledge about literacy, culture, language, learning, and education, as described in the remainder of this chapter.

Limitations in Current Knowledge and Policy Concerns

One limitation in current knowledge is that the considerable body of research on literacy that has emerged over past decades has mostly focused either on children in pre- or elementary schools (where initial reading and writing are crucial, to be sure) or on adults (in or out of work) rather than on adolescents. In the U.S., for example, the Partnership for Reading (2004) appealed for the “basic need to understand the continued learning and development that takes place during adolescence in the areas of reading and writing” (p. 2), arguing that findings from research on initial literacy acquisition among children do not transfer to the situations or processes of development, education, or socialization during the teenage years. Various developmental psychologists have demonstrated how adolescence is a crucial and unique age for the formation of cognitive knowledge, identity, and social relations (Bandura, 1986; Case, 1985; Egan, 1990), and so is a particularly crucial stage of life for adolescents who are developing literacy in environments that are culturally and linguistically diverse (Cummins, 2000; Gibson, 1988; Gunderson, 2007; Harklau, 2003, 2007; Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2008; Saario & Poyhonen, 2008). Moreover, it is widely recognized that adolescents today acquire and need diverse, complex, and sophisticated practices of literacy that involve conventional as well as new, multimedia forms of expression, understanding, and affiliation (Alvermann, 2002; Bereiter, 2002; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Freebody & Luke, 1990; Gee, 2000, 2003; Hull & Schultz, 2001; Jewitt, 2005; New London Group, 1996). Adolescents in the 2000s require many diverse “literacies,” as signaled by the plural form of “literacy” that is now prevalent in the published literature and that features in the title of the present book.

For educational policies, a crucial issue is that adolescence is the period in which school dropout and its precursors (such as disengagement, underachievement, truancy, and loss of motivation) become visible in relatively large subpopulations. Numerous national and international studies have demonstrated that the literacy development of distinct groups of adolescents—mostly in lower-track school programs and multilingual, economically impoverished, urban contexts—lags behind that of majority populations and is associated with high rates of school dropout (Canadian Education Association, 2004; Elley, 1992; Gunderson, 2007; Levin, 2004; Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez & Kennedy, 2003; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2004; for Ontario, see Educational Quality and Accountability Office, 2004, 2005; Ferguson et al., 2005; for Toronto, see Brown, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2008; for the Netherlands, see Dagevos, Gijsbers & Van Praag, 2003; Wijnstra, 2001; for French-dominant countries, including Switzerland and Quebec, see Nidegger, 2002; Soussi, Broi, Moreau & Wirthner, 2004).

These concerns were an initial impetus for our beginning the ALTUR project. Something related to literacy and school achievement was evidently awry but not well understood for adolescents in culturally diverse cities. Other than to point to lower-track educational programs in urban settings, research, theories, and policies had scarcely investigated what, where, how, or why these phenomena occur. For example, in the Toronto District School Board in October 2004, by Grade 10, only 42% of the students in the “applied” program successfully achieved the basic competency level on the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, compared to 87% of the students in the “academic” program. Moreover, only 33% of the students registered in English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Skills Development (ESD) programs who took the provincial literacy test (and many did not) successfully passed it (Educational Quality and Accountability Office, 2005). Looking to the Netherlands, research was showing for students between ages 13 and 15 reading attitudes and behaviors were tending to decline overall (Van Schooten, De Glopper & Stoel, 2004; Van Schooten, Oostdam & De Glopper, 2001), as were their scores on reading comprehension in Dutch (Gelderen, Schoonen, Sotel, De Glopper, & Hulstijn, 2007). Likewise, students in this age range showed little growth in writing abilities (Schoonen, Gelderen, Stoel, Hulstijn, & De Glopper, 2011, cf. Reynolds, 2005 for the U.S.).

How might one explain the limited knowledge about, and lack of success in, literacy development among particular groups of adolescents? Critics of current policies for literacy education have pointed to several possible explanations. First, current policies and educational practices are based on outmoded ideas and sources of information and restricted resources to address the complexities and changing nature of student populations and societal and technological demands for literacy internationally (Alvermann, 2002; Bereiter, 2002; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Levin, 2005; Luke, 2005; New London Group, 1966). Second, current educational policies are heavily centralized, so they tend to address the interests and values of majority students in upper-track, academic programs, neglecting the situations of minority or culturally diverse populations (August & Shanahan, 2006; Cheng, Klinger, & Zheng, 2007; Cummins, 2000, 2001; Dickson & Cumming, 1996; Garcia, McKoon, & August, 2006; Heath, 1983; Hornberger, 2003; King & Hornberger, 2005; Levin, 2004; Macedo, 1994). This tendency becomes increasingly conspicuous and problematic for adolescent students who do not fit the prevailing mould as they continue (if they do) through middle or secondary schools (Callahan, 2005; Dressman, Wilder & Connor, 2005; Ferguson et al., 2005; Gunderson, 2007; Harklau, 1994, 2003; Page, 1990; Schultz & Fecho, 2005). Likewise, recent emphases on outcomes-oriented curricula and standardized achievement testing have overshadowed concerns and resources for teachers’ and students’ locally situated processes of teaching, learning, and formative assessment, particularly for literacy (Anagnostopoulos, 2003; Canadian Education Association, 2004; Canagarajah, 2005; Cumming, 2001, 2009; Gipps, 1994; Gipps & Cumming, 2005; Hillocks, 2002, 2006; McCarthey, 2008; Rivera & Collum, 2006). Moreover, the normative standards for students’ achievement defined in many local curricula or tests lack theoretical or empirical substantiation beyond the particular curricula or tests themselves, obscuring the inherently pluriform and culturally embedded nature of literacy, language, and learning (Brindley, 1998; Cumming, 2001, 2009; Lantolf & Frawley, 1988; Lantolf & Poehner, 2008; Linn, 2000; Purves, 1992b). The assessments themselves offer little to explain the diverse combinations of factors that interrelate to influence literacy achievement among maturing teens (Dressman, Wilder, & Connor, 2005; Hillocks, 2002; Purves, 1992b), other than to indicate that certain students can, on the basis of current policies and assessments, be identified with terms that themselves are contentious or even stigmatizing, such as “at risk” for academic failure, “struggling” readers or writers, or “disadvantaged” economically or culturally (Franklin, 2000; Franzak, 2006; Guitiérrez & Orellana, 2006). Chapters 2 and 3 of the present book review in detail complementary perspectives on research and theories about these issues.

Conceptualizing Literacy Learning

Perhaps the greatest limitation on current knowledge about adolescent literacy concerns conceptualizations of the fundamental constructs to explain literacy learning. Theories and research about literacy learning have been fragmented and contentious. Historically, the ideologies guiding curriculum reforms for literacy have espoused militaristic metaphors (e.g., using terms such as “campaigns” or “literacy for all”) as well as irrelevant debates over a “great divide” between literate and oral modes of expression (D. Olson & Torrance, 2009; Street, 1984; Triebel, 2005). Although in recent decades these dualities have mostly been dismissed, three differing theoretical orientations to literacy learning have prevailed: cognitive, sociocultural, and macrosocietal. Each orientation focuses on different, although interrelated phenomena, leading to different foci in research and recommendations for policies and pedagogy (Cumming, 1998; Dressman, Wilder, & Connor, 2005; Hornberger, 2003).

Cognitive orientations to literacy learning have focused on individual students’ development of psychological skills for normative literate abilities, such as sound-symbol correspondences, lexical knowledge, or metalinguistic awareness for reading (e.g., Adams, 1990; Koda, 2007; Miller, 1988; D. Olson, 1994; Perfetti, 1985; Stanovich, 1986, 2000) or on problem-solving, self-regulatory, or knowledge-building heuristics for writing (e.g., Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Graham & Perin, 2007; Hayes, 1996; C. Olson & Land, 2007; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2007).

Sociocultural orientations have focused on the cultural and historical construction of discourse practices, demonstrating how students gain awareness of and socialize into the repertoire of culturally dominant, rhetorically appropriate modes of literate discourse (Duff, 2010; Gee, 2000; Heath, 1983; Jimenez, 2000, Johns, 1997; Wells, 1999; Wiemelt, 2001) or learn to express, shift, or expand their literate identities with the multiple, competing demands of academic discourse as well as new multimedia technologies and global communications (Cummins, 2001; Harklau, 2007; Ivanic, 1998; Lankshear, Gee, Knobel, & Seale, 1997; Norton, 2000; Prior, 2006; Smagorinsky, 1997; Willinsky, 1990).

Macrosocietal orientations have focused on structural, institutional forces in societies—such as the reproduction of socioeconomic classes; legal, economic, and historical bases of privilege; conceptual frameworks of knowledge and discourse; and the structures and functions of institutions and bureaucracies—that systemically impose social distinctions and inequities, manifest as literacy practices and semiotic barriers, beyond the agency of individual members of a society, and so conflicting with or resisted by them (Bourdieu, 1991; Dei, 1996; Delpit, 1995; Foucault, 1979; Freire, 1970; Gibson & Ogbu, 1991; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Levin, 2004; McGrew, 2011; Ogbu, 1978; Street, 1995; Willis, 1981).

The ALTUR project attempted to address all three theoretical orientations. Rather than treating these orientations as competing or preferable hypotheses, we believe that educationally relevant research needs to conceive of them as complementary and offering valid, alternative perspectives on different aspects of literacy achievement and education, particularly evident in culturally diverse contexts. Importantly, research needs to establish which variables related to literacy are within the direct control of educational systems and jurisdictions (cf. D. Olson, 2005; Scribner & Cole, 1981), and so able to influence the achievement of adolescents in culturally diverse, urban schools. of the present book takes up this challenge, summarizing recommendations for educational policies that follow from the findings presented in previous chapters. Formulating implications for education are important because macrosocietal forces may not be amenable to change from within educational systems (because these forces may depend on the long-term history and status of minority groups [cf. Gibson & Ogbu, 1991], and schools are institutional agents of such forces [Cummins, 2000, 2001]), except through sociocultural or cognitively oriented pedagogical interventions (cf. C. Olson & Land, 2007; Snow, Porsche, Tabors, & Harris, 2007). As described in Chapter 3 of the present book, Pathways to Education Canada established a program, supplementary to regular schooling, that has attempted to counter the effects of poverty and other sociosystemic barriers to school achievement at the individual, community, and macrosocietal levels. Although the Pathways program was the vehicle for addressing macrosocietal aspects of education (as described in Chapter 3), a primary purpose of the ALTUR program was to investigate, through cognitive and sociocultural research perspectives (described in Chapters 4 to 9), how the program could suit the interests and development of literacy among Pathways’ students.

We combined these different theoretical orientations by adopting an ecological perspective on the composite individual, family, school, and community variables that shape adolescents’ literacy development. Various prior studies have demonstrated that a multifaceted perspective on these intersecting social domains is necessary to understand the complexity of interrelations and processes related to adolescents’ literacy development in culturally diverse urban settings (Bigelow, 2010; Borrero & Yeh, 2010; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Gunderson, 2007; Harklau, 2003, 2007; Hornberger, 2003; Luke, 2005; Saario & Poyhonen, 2008; Schultz, 2002; Snow, Porsche, Tabors, & Harris, 2007). For instance, Koc and Nunes (2001) interviewed immigrant adolescents in Toronto to identify the barriers they had confronted as well as the opportunities they had taken to integrate successfully into schools. The students’ perceptions of the social domains of family, school, and community were closely interrelated. In their families, the adolescents described loss and instability of family members and friends through migration as well as poverty, uncertainty about housing, and little awareness of available support services. At school, the students described deficiencies in English, placement in classes and grades that seemed arbitrary, and experiences that were discriminatory or racist. In their local communities, the adolescents felt their skills for employment were limited, they would be restricted to low-wage, temporary employment, and they had limited support networks to find jobs.

Studies in other culturally diverse contexts have similarly demonstrated the importance of the intersections among family, peer, and school relations for adolescents’ literacy and school achievement. For example, Bigelow (2010) took a panoramic perspective across all these social domains to analyze the situations of Somali youth in Minnesota. Snow, Porsche, Tabors, and Harris’ (2007) longitudinal study of low-income students from age 3 to Grade 10 concluded that troubled relationships with parents were one factor that “derailed a successful academic trajectory” for three focal students who, despite above-average scores on literacy measures, had “poorer academic outcomes … compared with those in the group who fared better” because of “supportive adults in general, and strong parental support in particular” (pp. 65–66). Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines (1988) and Delgado-Gaitan (1992) have described the importance of literate interactions among extended families in inner-city and minority communities. For teens particularly, peer groups “facilitate the adolescents’ transition into the larger social environmental world” (Sussman, Pokhrel, Ashmore, & Brown, 2007, p. 1603), either by supporting academic literacy collaboratively—for example, by helping one another with school-based reading and writing (Valenzuela, 1999; Villalva, 2006) or jointly authoring poems (Moje, 2000) or less formally through instant messaging (Lewis & Fabos, 2000) or reading magazines together (Finders, 1997)—or by constraining it, as Finders (1997) showed with girls in middle school who refrained, based on their perceptions of peers’ reactions, from reading and writing about topics that personally interested them. Teachers obviously also figure in such interpersonal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1. Purpose and Approach
• 2. Tutoring Adolescents in Literacy: A Thematic Synthesis of Published Research
• 3. Pathways to Education and Its Accomplishments
• 4. Students and Their Social Networks for Literacy
• 5. Reading Practices and Achievement
• 6. Writing Practices and Achievement
• 7. Issues in Socialization, Literacy Learning, and Educational Processes
• 8. Bridging Lexical Knowledge and Literacy
• 9. Tutoring in the Zone of Proximal Development
• 10. Summary and Recommendations
• Appendix A. Angel: A Resistant, Multilingual Learner: Case Study by Yuko Watanabe
• Appendix B. Hassan: An Independent Learner with Future Goals: Case Study by Mohammed Al-Alawi
• Appendix C. Jacob: An Introverted Learner, Needing English Vocabulary: Case Study by Seung Won Jun
• Appendix D. K-9: A Creative Student Pursuing Vocational Education: Case Study by Robert Kohls
• Appendix E. MMFresh: A Goal-Oriented, Multilingual Student: Case Study by Mario E. López-Gopar
• Appendix F. Ning: A Recent Immigrant Student: Case Study by Jennifer Shade Wilson
• Appendix G. Peter: An Affable, Distracted Lad: Case Study by Gloria Ramírez
• Appendix H. Score Summaries for Seven Case Study Students on Five Assessments
• References
• Index