ABSTRACT

This book revolves around educating recently arrived immigrant youth in the United States who are emergent bilinguals.

Drawing on a seven-year research collaboration with three ESL teachers in an urban secondary school in the United States, it addresses questions around taking a critical approach to language and literacy education, including what this looks like in everyday practice and what emergent bilingual youth can learn from it. The chapters illustrate the praxis of critical language and literacy education undertaken by everyday ESL teachers, curricular materials and pedagogical practices that promote emergent bilingual youths’ engagement with words and worlds, and finally, a methodological and relational approach to researching with classroom teachers. The book introduces teaching practices such as dialogic problem-posing, translanguaging and translation, the use of multimodal texts, and youth research on language.

Arguing for the potential power of critical language and literacy education for immigrant youth and their teachers, this book will benefit educators, researchers, and graduate students in the fields of language and literacy, second language acquisition (SLA), ESL and TESOL pedagogy, and in curriculum studies, education of immigrant children and youth, and multicultural issues in education.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

The Who, What, and Why of the Book

chapter 1|24 pages

The Foundation and Frameworks

Critical Approaches to Language and Literacy Education

chapter 2|22 pages

The Context

The ESL Classroom, Teachers, and Emergent Bilingual Youth at Community Middle and High

chapter 3|24 pages

Critical Multilingual Pedagogies in Action

From Principles to Practice

chapter 4|25 pages

Who is American? What is Race?

Dialogic Problem-Posing for Emergent Bilinguals

chapter 5|25 pages

Found in Translation

Discovering Language, Meaning, Self, and Worlds in Poetry Translation

chapter 6|23 pages

Seeing (through) Multimodal Texts

Graphic Novels and Documentaries in Critical Multilingual Education (with Lori Simpson)

chapter 7|23 pages

“The History Behind Our Language”

Youth Research on Language (with Lori Simpson)

chapter 8|24 pages

From the Margins to Power

The Promise of Critical Language and Literacy Education