scholarly journals (I)literate Identities in Adult Basic Education: A Case Study of a Latino Woman in an ESOL and Computer Literacy Class

2011 ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Computer Literacy ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Adult Basic Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literate Identities ◽  
Speakers Of Other Languages

Adult Basic Education (ABE), namely English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in the United States has been understood and assessed as the mastering of skills increasingly aimed at meeting the demands of the workplace. This ethnographic case study examines how the literacy practices a Latino woman engages in through her participation in an ABE-ESOL class relate to her developing identities of mother, student and citizen. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the findings demonstrate the contextual nature of adult literacy, showing how learners appropriate available tools and texts and enact purposeful and meaningful literacy practices, which traditional ABE assessment dismiss or do not account for. Implications for adult literacy pedagogy and research are discussed.

scholarly journals Engagement From the Periphery: Reconceptualizing Adult English Language Learners’ Resistance in Developmental Literacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-173
Author(s):  
Emily K. Suh
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Language Class ◽  
Speakers Of Other Languages ◽  
Literacy Class ◽  
Classroom Literacy

English language learners’ nonparticipation and reticence in adult literacy classes are often presented problematically from a deficit lens of student resistance and disengagement. This article draws from an ethnographic case study of Generation 1 learners, who are defined as adult-arrival immigrant learners, transitioning from an adult English as a Second Language class to a developmental literacy class. By examining learners’ resistance through a framework of agency enactment, the study bridges the fields of adult literacy and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, both of which support adult-arrival immigrants entering the U.S. education system. The resulting analysis illustrates how Generation 1 learners’ acts of resistance can be complex presentations of their literacy identities and their engagement in classroom literacy practices.

Technical Literacy versus Critical Literacy in Adult Basic Education

1988 ◽  
Vol 170 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Macdonald Fueyo
Keyword(s):  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Adult Basic Education ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Learning Theories ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
Literacy Organization

The demands placed upon Adult Basic Education programs in the United States are more rigorous and involve more people than ever before in our history. Government-supported programs as well as private ones capture in microcosm the best and worst in American education. Literacy education is modeled along a continuum moving from a technical conception of literacy, wherein students mark progress by numbers of completed worksheets, to a conception of literacy as praxis, or critical literacy, wherein students construct meaning for themselves and effect change in their lives. These competing models are contrasted, and special emphasis is given to one adult basic literacy organization that is managing to humanize the process. In this program founded in 1973, the students' own words demonstrate the liberating nature of literacy learning that puts into practice the best of current understandings in the field. The challenge of the next decades demands a critical literacy that is consistent with participatory democracy. The convergence of social learning theories, process teaching, critical consciousness, and adult literacy offers constructive responses to the epidemic incidence of illiteracy in our society.

Legitimation strategies in discourse surrounding Sino-American trade friction: A case study of Chinese government white papers

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132198983
Author(s):  
Xi Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Trade Friction ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Trade Policy ◽  
Chinese Cultural Values ◽  
Trade Frictions

This article reports a critical discourse analysis of the legitimation strategies used in two Chinese government white papers about trade frictions between China and the United States. Drawing on the legitimation framework advanced by van Leeuwen to political discourse, it shows how the white papers use four main legitimation strategies: authorization, moralization, rationalization, and integration. It argues that the Chinese government uses these strategies to legitimate its responses to US trade policy and delegitimate the US government’s motives for initiating/escalating tensions. This article also discusses how the use of these legitimation strategies draws from certain traditional Chinese cultural values, such as Confucianism, the culture of face, and collectivism. This article is a part of a larger research project studying discursive strategies in trade friction discourse and hopes to shed light on the attributes and functions of this type of discourse.

Busy Intersections

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Tucker Childs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language Documentation ◽  
Important Goal ◽  
Pedagogical Model ◽  
Community Organizers

This chapter reports on the applicability of a pedagogical model for use in West Africa that is drawn from adult literacy practices in the United States. It proposes bridging the gaps between linguists, teachers, and community organizers, and building on the ethnographic skills of language documenters. One increasingly important goal of language documentation has been creating and mobilizing documentation in support of pedagogy or even as a social movement. A documentary perspective is here synthesized with an adult literacy one, fitted to the context of West Africa, to offer some guidelines for revitalization efforts.

Necessary Changes: Professional Involvement in Adult Literacy Programs

1988 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Kazemek
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Strategies ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Literacy Programs ◽  
Institutional Barriers ◽  
Literacy Learners ◽  
Gender Based

Adult literacy programs have achieved recent prominence as studies documenting huge numbers of illiterates in the United States provoke national anxiety. In this article, Francis Kazemek first critiques demeaning attitudes toward adult literacy learners implicit in the practices of major literacy programs, and then examines underlying assumptions about the nature of literacy in the light of recent sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies on actual literacy practices. He argues that among the challenges facing adult literacy professionals is the responsibility to confront political and institutional barriers to effective literacy education. In conclusion, he offers an alternative, holistic methodology based on dialogic and socially oriented instructional strategies, and which responds to gender-based and cultural differences in ways of learning.

Management Issues in the Botswana Adult Basic Education Program

2015 ◽  
pp. 83-98
Author(s):  
Oitshepile MmaB Modise
Keyword(s):  
Education Program ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Adult Basic Education ◽  
Study Analysis ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Office Furniture ◽  
Management Issues

This chapter is a case study analysis of the management of the Adult Basic Education Program in Botswana. The chapter focuses on management issues in the ABEP program using two districts as a case study. The case study examined management issues faced by those implementing the program. The findings reveal that while the program has undergone several comprehensive structural changes, the reality on the ground has remained the same and worsened in some areas. The program faces a problem of lack of resources such as office accommodation, office furniture, and transport to effectively run the activities of the program. The lack of transport leads to poor supervision, late payment of facilitators and at times to cancellation of planned program activities. Responses were consistent in the two districts to suggest there are some wide ranging issues that probably affect all parts of the program.

scholarly journals The Emergence of transnational awareness among children in immigrant families

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Compton-Lilly ◽  
Jieun Kim ◽  
Erin Quast ◽  
Sarah Tran ◽  
Stephanie Shedrow
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Funds Of Knowledge ◽  
Immigrant Families ◽  
The United States ◽  
Collective Case Study ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
Over Time

In the past, physical barriers such as geography and distance limited global communication. In this paper, we explore how young children in immigrant families engage in transnational literacy practices. Specifically, we explore the transnational funds of knowledge that result from those experiences. This three-year longitudinal collective case study involves ten children from immigrant families who have come to the United States from around the world. The students entered the study in four-year-old kindergarten, grade 1 or grade 2. Each year, we collected observations, spoken data and student-created artefacts (e.g. writing samples, maps, photographs). Data sources were designed to highlight the various spaces that the immigrant families occupy or have occupied over time (i.e. home/neighbourhood/ school; native country/country of residence). Our reading and rereading of coded data across the sample led us to focus on families’ digital transnational practices and children’s transnational awareness. We argue that these funds of knowledge should be recognized in classrooms and schools and that they have the potential to contribute to the nurturing of cosmopolitan perspectives for all children.

Languages and Literacies in Translocation

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 364-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Skerrett
Keyword(s):  
Adolescent Girl ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
The World ◽  
Multiple Languages

Transnational youth represent an increasing demographic in societies around the world. This circumstance has amplified the need to understand how youths’ language and literacy repertoires are shaped by transnational life. In response, this article presents a case study of a Mexican adolescent girl who immigrated to the United States and continued to participate in life in Mexico. It examines shifts in her multiple language and literacy practices that she attributed to transnational life and the knowledge she acquired from transnational engagements with languages and literacies. Data include interviews of the young woman, observations of her in a variety of social contexts, and literacy artifacts that she produced. Research on transnational youths’ language and literacy practices and theories of multiliteracies and border crossing facilitate analysis. Findings include that language and multiliteracy practices shift in interconnected ways in response to transnational life and engagements with multiple languages and literacies foster transnational understandings. Accordingly, attending to transnational youths’ multilingual as well as multiliterate practices can deepen understandings of how people recruit multiple languages, literacies, and lifeworlds for meaning making. Implications of this work are offered concerning the features of a transnational curriculum that can both draw from and build up the language and literacy reservoirs of transnational youth.

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