Drawing on Students’ Worlds in the ELA Classroom

Toward Critical Engagement and Deep Learning

Richard Beach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032160511
• eBook ISBN: 9781000576467
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book approaches English instruction through the lens of "fi gured worlds," which recognizes and spotlights how students are actively engaged in constructing their own school, peer group, extracurricular, and community worlds. Teachers' ability not only to engage with students' experiences and interests in and outside of school but also to build connections between students' worlds and their teaching is essential for promoting student agency, engagement, and meaningful learning. Beach and Caraballo provide an accessible framework for working with students to use critical discourse, narratives, media, genres, and more to support their identity development through addressing topics that are meaningful for them— their families, social issues, virtual worlds, and more.

Through extensive activities and examples of students writing about their participation in these worlds, this text allows educators to recognize how students' experiences in the classroom aff ect and shape their identities and to connect such an understanding to successful classroom practice. With chapters featuring eff ective instructional activities, this book is necessary reading for ELA methods courses and for all English teachers.

Part IOverall Framing of Co-Authoring Practices in Figured Worlds

1IntroductionStudents Co-Authoring Figured Worlds

DOI: 10.4324/9781003246886-2

This chapter posits the need to recognize how students construct or co-author their “figured worlds” through informal learning of different practices in community, peer group, extracurricular, sports, family, workplace, and social/digital media worlds. Providing students with opportunities to write and reflect about their practices in these different worlds in the ELA classroom contributes to their deeper learning. In writing and reflecting on their practices, students are contextualizing their use of languaging actions for enacting these practices for interacting with others; languaging actions that include emotions and embodied actions. This suggests the value of fostering “boundary-crossing” practices for bringing students’ informal learning experiences in these different worlds into the classroom in ways that value the significance and worth of those experiences, leading to students’ growth over time.

In writing a description of her peer group for her 12th grade English class, Laura noted how members of her group created a name for their group, “The Australian Voice Crackers:”

When I was first introduced into the group, they were asking me what kind of music I listen to, so I said “Alternative” and listed off a couple of my favorite groups. … Then they had asked where I come from, so I told them, ‘Australia.’ D. then shouts, “Why would you listen to the Australian Voice Crackers, they are awful!” It became an inside joke for a while then we changed it to our group name on Snapchat, so we’ve called ourselves that since then.

Laura values her participation in this group given that

before I met these people, I was in a really tough place in my life. I hit rock bottom. So when they first invited me to a bonfire, I was a little anxious about going, but I decided that it would be a good idea. I thought that I should probably get my life together and meet more people and try to fix myself up. I went, and they started to ask me to hang out with them more often, and I enjoyed being with these people. I told them what I was going through; they all mostly seemed to care at least a little bit.

They helped me get better, and they tried their best to understand. There were days where they knew I was sad or upset, and I wouldn’t talk to them, but they would show up to my house and say, “Laura, tell us what’s wrong, and we’ll make it better.” They made a huge impact on my life for the better. I would say I would call the people the love of my life just because I love them all a lot for being there for me and letting me talk to them about anything whenever I needed them.

Members of the group helped me order food at fast-food places and talk in front of strangers. Now, I can be more myself in class and out in public. They taught me to be myself and that nobody actually judges as much as I thought … They are my little family of friends, and they are a lot greater than they come off as … I’m glad they were so accepting of me and all my problems because, without their help, I’m not sure where I would be in my life right now, but I don’t think it would be a good place. I really appreciate these people, and I think they should get more credit than they are given.

Laura describes how she and other peer group members co-authored their world as “my little family of friends.” In addition, she portrays how, through participation in this world, she gained confidence in how to “talk in front of strangers.”

Variation in Students’ Engagement in School Worlds

Students’ engagement in their school worlds often varies depending on the extent to which ELA teachers tap into their experiences outside of school worlds. In this book, given that experiences such as Laura’s in her peer group world outside of school are essential for students’ development, I posit the value of ELA teachers, as they often do, importing these experiences into the classroom to enhance students’ engagement in school.

Recent research suggests students are often not engaged in school worlds. The YouthTruth project (2020, Spring; 2020, Fall; 2021, Spring) surveyed students across America about their perceptions of their experience in schools during the Covid pandemic. Only 42% of students in Spring, 2020 reported that their teachers made some attempt to learn about their lives outside of school. In Fall, 2020, that percentage declined to 30% but then increased to 43% in the Spring, 2021 survey. The results also indicated a decline in teachers’ interest in students’ non-academic identities, from 43% in Spring 2020 to 30% in Fall, 2020 and 28% in Spring, 2021.

While half of students perceived relationships with teachers as positive, only 31% experienced a strong sense of belonging to their school, and only 30% experienced a sense of being a member of the school community, although that increased to 39% in Fall, 2020 and 43% in Spring, 2021.

While there were shifts across the three different surveys, and some of these results reflect the difficulties with switching to remote instruction during the pandemic, the overall results suggest that many students often do not necessarily experience a strong sense of connection or belonging with their school worlds. At the same time, students also have a strong sense of connection with being in their schools, something that they missed during the pandemic with only remote learning as an option.

A study of high school dropouts found that half of them indicated that they dropped out due to a lack of interest in their classes, given a lack of connections to their lived-world family and community experiences (Cohen & Smerdon, 2009). In addition, 70% noted that they were not motivated to learn, and two-thirds noted that they would have been more motivated given higher demands.

Students in another study noted their lack of engagement in school was related to how their learning revolved around a knowing-that acquisition of facts and information. Twenty-five students in an Irish school, ages 13 and 14, kept reflective journals and engaged in focus-group discussions of their engagement in their school relative to other worlds outside their school (Quinlan & Curtin, 2017). Only 24% indicated that they enjoyed learning in their school. Only 32% indicated that they enjoyed being in school, often due to lack of interest, leading to boredom based on perceptions of the content as not interesting or relevant to their lives.

During the pandemic, adolescents were often limited to virtual schooling, with fewer opportunities for face-to-face interactions with teachers and peers sharing their lives outside of school. They also had fewer opportunities to engage in school-sponsored sports or extracurricular activities. Jenny Radesky noted that a survey of parents found that their children as “remote learners had significantly higher hyperactivity, peer problems, defiance and sleep difficulties compared with children attending in-person school” (Bazelon, 2021, p. 58).

On the other hand, Andrea Hunley noted that as a school administrator, I have never felt such a high level of energy around transforming education … We’re not going back to the way that things used to be. They have gained so much independence about what it means to be a learner. Some of the projects that kids have created while they were at home on remote learning have been incredible. We want to bring in more of that.

p. 61

While the pandemic may have long-term negative effects on students, Hunley’s comments suggest the need for teachers to acquire knowledge of students’ experiences in their worlds, to draw on those experiences for instructional activities, and to enhance their engagement in their learning, the focus of this book.

Students need to perceive their learning as having some relevance to their worlds outside the classroom, often related to perceptions of disparities between what they perceive as “book smarts” in school and their own “street smarts” associated with their daily experiences with issues of poverty, street culture, law enforcement, and unemployment in their communities, resulting in their critiquing the limitations of their school experiences (Fecho et al., 2020). As Mehta and Fine (2019) note, “schools need to become much more deeply attached to the world beyond their walls” (n.p.).

Alejandro Diasgranados, the District of Columbia 2021 Teacher of the Year, perceives his classroom as a two-way street for drawing on his students’ experiences in worlds outside the classroom into his world (Torres, 2021). He notes that

all students come to school with an abundance of cultural wealth. They are experts in their community and culture. These things are important to students and they should be able to remain important to students when they enter into our school buildings.

p. 21

Making these connections then leads his students to address issues outside his classroom:

They’ve seen how learning to write a simple persuasive essay isn’t just an assignment we do every Friday, but how a persuasive essay can change a law or bring funding to our school or convince our principal to allow a teacher to loop up to the next grade.

p. 20

Adolescents Co-Authoring Figured Worlds

Through participation in worlds outside the classroom, students are learning to actively co-author these worlds as “figured worlds,” as shared “realm[s] of interpretation in which a particular set of characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 52). Figured worlds are constituted by:

• “Historical phenomena, to which we are recruited or into which we enter, which themselves develop through the works of their participants.”
• “Processes or traditions of apprehension which gather us up and give form as our lives intersect them.”
• “Social encounters in which participants’ positions matter.”
• “Activities in the usual, institutional sense. They divide and relate participants (almost as roles), and they depend upon the interaction and the intersubjectivity for perpetuation.”
• “Relating actors to landscapes of action (as personae) and spreading our senses of self across many different fields of activity, but also by giving the landscape human voice and tone.” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 41)

James Gee (2015) described a figured world a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Author and Contributor Biographies
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Overall Framing of Co-Authoring Practices in Figured Worlds
• Part II Students Co-Authoring Different Figured Worlds
• Part III Implications for Teaching
• Index