Cultivating Literacy Engagement in Multilingual and Multicultural Learning Spaces
Date
2018-01-15
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Abstract
Classrooms are changing rapidly in response to Canada’s linguistically and culturally diverse demographic profile. Learning in the 21st century calls for inquiry into different ways of designing curriculum, teaching, conducting assessments and educational research than is found in K-12 education today. In this doctoral research, I examined the impact of a curricular innovation to challenge the monolingual and monocultural norms of literacy practices and to be responsive to the linguistic and cultural landscape of 21st century classrooms. Using design based principles and a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis, I collaborated with 11 university pre-service teachers to bridge theory and practice to inform early literacy practices for 28 students who are learning English, i.e., English Language Learners (ELLs). The primary question framing this study was, “How can educators cultivate literacy engagement to support English language development?” The findings of this study show the positive impact the designed literacy intervention had on supporting the linguistic and cultural needs of the young ELLs as well as how the implementation of the literacy intervention supported the pre-service teachers’ emerging practice. Through the design based research process, I created design principles to inform early literacy practices for young ELLs.
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Keywords
literacy, literacy engagement, multilingualism, multiculturalism, English Language Learners, English as an additional language, language
Citation
Kapoyannis, T. (2018). Cultivating Literacy Engagement in Multilingual and Multicultural Learning Spaces (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.