Working with immigrant students: A matter of context

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Working with immigrant students A matter of
context

• Julian Jefferies Lisa Patel Stevens
• jefferij_at_bc.edu lps_at_bc.edu
• Boston College

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Case study

• Age
• Story of immigration
• Day to day life
• Language use
• Aspirations

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School

• History
• Funding
• Size
• 15 teachers
• 175 students
• International

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(No Transcript)
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Length of time in the US
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Languages spoken at home

• 60 - Spanish
• 11 - English
• 10 - Cape Verdean or Haitian Creole
• 19 - Albanian, Arabic, Amharic, French,
  Folani, Greek, Gujarati, Madigon, Portuguese,
  Somali, Swahili

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Global context

• Globalization (Suarez-Orozco, 2001)
• Internationalization of goods, services, and
  consumption
• Emergence of borderless ICTs and texts
• Waves of migration across the world
• Increase in immigrant populations from 1990 to
  2005 in two countries
• Spain - 4 million
• United States - 15.9 million

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Federal context

• Risk of deportation
• Barriers and misinformation - documentation and
  financial aid
• McCain - Kennedy bill
• Dream Act - potential pathway for young people to
  access citizenship and perhaps higher education

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State context

• Immigration and politics
• Governor race
• http//www.healeycommittee.com/video-addifferences
  .html
• Access to higher education
• Admissibility / Affordability
• Lack of information
• High stakes assessment
• MCAS - English and Math (science in 2007)
• Restrictive language policy
• English only - question 2

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Research approach Action/Participatory

• Professional development to teacher-initiated
  questions about language and literacy
• Partnering with the staff
• After-school tutoring and college visits
• Independent reading initiative
• Classroom-based research into academic English in
  multi-lingual contexts
• Case studies of teens out of school lives

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Use of L1 in this context

• Teacher /student interactions
• Teacher / whole class interactions
• Student /student conversations
• Teachers beliefs about how and when to use L1

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Developing academic language objectives

• Necessary knowledges - language and content
• Challenges
• Avoiding idiosyncratic selections
• Pinpointing students linguistic and content
  knowledges

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Necessary knowledges for secondary content
teachers in multilingual contexts

• Knowledge of the context (local, state, national,
  global)
• Knowledge of the student (language, culture,
  content)
• Knowledge of the content
• Knowledge of linguistic demands found in the
  content

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Education and immigrant students

• Pedagogy and curriculum must be considered
  within
• Economic, legal and cultural complications of
  access to higher ed
• Social services (mental health, legal services,
  employment opportunities)
• Immigrant experience (xenophobia, loss of family,
  lack of capital)