Adult English Language Learner Pathway to Literacy Initiative

In 2017, Kari Moore of Exodus Refugee Immigration and Ginger Kosobucki of the Immigrant Welcome Center met and discussed the unique needs Kari had noticed in her beginning literacy learners at Exodus. In 2018, Ginger led the Immigrant Welcome Center’s Adult ELL Research Project, which exposed the need for more classes geared for literacy-level learners, as well as more teacher training. In 2020, Kari and Ginger collaborated to lead professional development opportunities for Indianapolis teachers, including ATLAS Study Circles and a 2-day TESOL training with an expert from Literacy Minnesota. Since that time, they have formed a cohort -- the Pathway to Literacy development team -- consisting of teachers from programs around the city. The team has developed a 10-week pilot program, an assessment tool, and a website all designed to more effectively serve the needs of adult immigrants and refugees developing literacy skills for the first time. The Adult ELL Pathway to Literacy Initiative, a collaborative effort among educators in Indianapolis, is an attempt to provide access to vulnerable learners who have had limited access to educational opportunities.

ENGLISH TEACHERS’ CONCEPTUALIZATION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LITERACY IN RELATION TO INDONESIA’S GERAKAN LITERASI SEKOLAH (SCHOOL LITERACY INITIATIVE)

This study aims to explore how, in relation to Indonesia’s Gerakan Literasi Sekolah (GLS – School Literacy Initiative), Indonesian English teachers of secondary schools conceptualize L2 literacy in terms of linguistic and other sign systems, cognitive, sociocultural, and developmental dimensions, a model of literacy beliefs profile by Kucer (2014). The data were collected through a survey questionnaire adapted from Kucer’s model, comprising 37 closed-ended items on conceptual understandings of foreign language literacy, presented in values of 1 to 5 Likert-scale indicating statements from strongly disagree (SD), disagree (D), neutral (N), agree (A), to strongly agree (SA). After being moderated for validity and clarity, the questionnaire was distributed to various groups and forums of English teachers through Google-form. With this convenience sampling procedure, 157 English teachers, mostly from East Java Province, Indonesia, responded to our questionnaire. The results of descriptive analyses in the forms of mean percentages portray how English teachers in our study successfully frame L2 language literacy as reflected in Kucer’s dimensions, which potentially equip them with knowledge about taking part in the success of GLS implementation. They seem to understand that the core of literacy lies in the cognitive dimension, suggesting the use of literacy to express meanings, and that the expressions of meaning require linguistic literacy dimension as the vehicle. These cognitive and linguistic literacy dimensions are affected by the sociocultural literacy dimension, and the employment of the three dimensions tends to continually exist as we are experiencing new and novel events from day to day. Future research might focus on exploring how these understandings about literacy are finally realized in the classroom.