Teachers Working With Refugee Children and Families

In this chapter, the authors tell the story of the GÖÇ-MAT project in Turkey, a two-year professional learning project designed to foster early childhood education teachers' development of competencies for teaching students with refugee status. The authors elucidate the different aspects of the GÖÇ-MAT project implementation and some of their findings from the research with teachers and with families having refugee status. Their goal, then, is to provide a possible roadmap for programs of professional learning in other settings around the globe. The authors hope to motivate other educators to take inspiration from the lessons learned in the GÖÇ-MAT project in Turkey to create professional learning spaces for teachers adapted to the unique contexts in which they are working. These professional learning spaces can support teachers' development of new ways to provide inclusive and equitable quality education for students with refugee or migrant statuses.

Chinese Students' Learning Strategies in Learning Spanish as a Second Language

Since the beginning of the 21st century, international education has grown at an extraordinary rate, and even countries like Uruguay, which has not been a recipient country of a significant flow of international students, has experienced an important increase of students from other countries and cultures. L2 Spanish learners from several Chinese universities travel to a Spanish-speaking country in the third year of their major to attend Spanish and culture lessons during two academic semesters. The aim of increasing the knowledge of Chinese approaches to learning is part of the interest of researchers and teachers in expanding their understanding of individual differences in learning. This chapter summarizes the research carried out at Universidad ORT Uruguay that focuses on identifying and understanding L2 (Spanish) strategies to learning.

Becoming Interculturally Adaptable

The prevailing picture of intercultural adaptation among international student sojourners features a reified process of overcoming culture shock or culture-related stress and anxiety. In the context of increasing recruitment of Chinese students by German higher education institutions, there has been a growing interest in understanding Chinese students' intercultural adaptation experiences, and in exploring approaches that can be adopted by Chinese and German higher education to support these sojourners' learning experience. Drawing on a six-month mixed-methods study of 84 Chinese students attending German universities, researchers explored their intercultural experience regarding psychological, sociocultural, and educational aspects to university life. The challenges faced by these students are discussed in terms of psychological, sociocultural, and educational adaptations.

Reclaiming the Multilingual Narrative of Children in the Borderlands Using a Critical Integration Approach

By joining together different methods and curriculum delivery in an elementary school setting, the author defined a unique critical integration approach to address questions of inclusive multilingual literacy practices. The author encouraged students to build upon their prior knowledge, ways in which to show that knowledge, and specifically, their linguistic cultural wealth, which generated a respect for the linguistic diversity of all students. The author created a collaborative pedagogical space in which the students constructed an innovative curriculum by co-mingling student experiences, their cultural and linguistic resources, and their interpretive frameworks. The teacher-research project involved a Funds of Knowledge orientation, the use of a variety of pedagogical tools influenced by the theory of Multiple Intelligences, gifted strategies, community cultural wealth, emancipatory education, critical and culturally responsive pedagogy, and visual arts aesthetics.

Interpreting Solidarity

In metro Charlotte, North Carolina, dynamic newcomer Latinx communities have changed the demographics of K-8 education as the region has emerged as a new gateway for an influx of immigrants and migrants. Today, in what has come to be known as “the New Latino South,” K-12 teachers are eager to expand their knowledge base for working with this relatively new population. To that end, bilingual (Spanish/English) educators are increasingly tapped to serve as impromptu interpreters as monolingual administrators and teachers interact more frequently with Spanish dominant communities. Drawing from an in-depth interview sequence, the chapter narrates a Dominican-American's lived experience with simultaneous K-12-based interpreting as a K-12 student teacher, and a licensed early-grades educator. This chapter theorizes the layered emotional and professional advocacy of heritage-language bilingual school-based professionals and their agency in advancing access and equity to public resources with recommendations for policy and practice.

Developing ‘Bridging' Semiotic and Pedagogic Knowledge for Pre-Service Subject Area Teachers in the ‘New Mainstream'

This chapter reports on ongoing research that has focused on supporting pre-service and practicing mainstream subject-area teachers to develop disciplinary semiotic and pedagogic knowledge. It aims to provide a principled rationale for the design and application of curriculum literacy units for secondary teachers, with a focus on fostering a more equitable engagement of the EL's students and other linguistically and socio-economically diverse learners. The chapter presents recent developments in the understanding of semiotic knowledge in secondary content-areas and relevant pedagogic principles for its teaching and learning. Principles related to the why, the what, and the how of teaching and learning are discussed and exemplified through teaching cycles applied in the context of a curriculum literacy unit, integrating both knowledge about language and pedagogy and a range of critical perspectives that are key in contemporary reflexive pedagogies.

Toward Interdisciplinary Theoretical Frameworks for Educating Secondary School Immigrant Students

This chapter discusses the theoretical frameworks that guide research on educating secondary school immigrant students. Three theoretical lenses, namely Bourdieu's theory of practice, assimilation theory, and linguistic anthropology of education, are reviewed and discussed regarding their epistemological, ontological, and methodological implications. The chapter first briefly discusses the status of the immigrant population and the conceptual framework used in the study. Next, it reviews the key tenets of each theoretical lens and discusses their applications in the discipline of education. These three frameworks, with their contemporary theoretical extensions and developments, are also compared and contrasted based on their similarities and differences in providing guidance for the empirical studies of the chosen research topic. Finally, the conclusions and implications are presented for further discussion.

Transformative Forces for Education

In this chapter, the author discusses the power and possibilities that linguistic diversity, identity, and community have for the education of Latino and immigrant children. To do so, she shares her experiences conceptualizing and implementing Familias Aprendiendo, a series of workshops designed for families whose dominant language is Spanish and who have children in early elementary school. The author starts by offering a reflection on the role of family engagement in advancing equity practices for children and families who are linguistically diverse. Then, the author dedicates the second part of this chapter to describe the family workshops as well as some of the resources used in the workshop's implementations. The chapter closes with a note on the idea of transformation in education.

Straddling Two Worlds

Education is a challenge confronting immigrants in a country where they are perceived as cultural and linguistic outsiders. School becomes, for immigrant youth, the next most important societal institution to family, given that it is a powerful indicator of the child's ongoing and future well-being. School also serves as a primary form of contact with mainstream society. However, schools of the majority culture become potential sites of dissent. This chapter derives from a larger project on “Immigrant Literacy Practices in and Out of School in South Africa.” The aim of this chapter is to explore, through their narratives, how adolescent immigrant youth interpret their subjective identities and position themselves in relation to the host country, South Africa.

The Evolution of Drawing as an Equitable Way to Assess ELLs in a Middle School Science Classroom

In this chapter, the authors discuss what they observed and learned as drawing was integrated into assessments already in use in a middle school science classroom. Informed by a growing body of evidence that supports the notion that allowing students to draw answers on assessments disrupts normative assessment practices, promoting more equitable assessments for ELLs. Their overall goal was to add to the understanding of how drawing can provide a more complete picture of ELL students science content understanding. This chapter begins with the historical importance of drawing in science, and then the intersection of ELLs, drawing, science, and assessment, followed by a description of how drawing was adapted into middle school science assessments. Examples of how middle school students responded to prompts to draw answers on assessments are included followed by implementation barriers that were confronted by their teachers. The authors then conclude this chapter with a discussion focusing on recommendations to fellow teachers.