From the heart to the world and back again: Co -constructing school literacy practices with children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds

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From the heart to the world and back again: Co -constructing school literacy practices with children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds

H. Gerald Campano-2003-01-01-Scholarly Commons (University of Pennsylvania)

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TL;DRAbstract

My dissertation is the product of my work as a fifth grade teacher researcher at a multi-ethnic neighborhood elementary school in California between the years 1998–2001. It examines how school literacy may be deeply inflected with the students' own culturally based values and commitments. I take a critical look at deficit models of instruction that homogenize classroom practice and devalue the rich experiential diversity of our school population. I also explore alternatives: for example, the role that memory and storytelling play in creating solidarity within the class; the way children use autobiography to work through the traumas bequeathed to them by history; the potential for school writing to enhance a child's understanding of her own membership in a diaspora community; and how the performance arts can become a vehicle for students to critically engage as well as understand their worlds. All my research is informed by a conception of literacy as embedded in history and culture and

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My dissertation is the product of my work as a fifth grade teacher researcher at a multi-ethnic neighborhood elementary school in California between the years 1998–2001. It examines how school literacy may be deeply inflected with the students' own culturally based values and commitments. I take a critical look at deficit models of instruction that homogenize classroom practice and devalue the rich experiential diversity of our school population. I also explore alternatives: for example, the role that memory and storytelling play in creating solidarity within the class; the way children use autobiography to work through the traumas bequeathed to them by history; the potential for school writing to enhance a child's understanding of her own membership in a diaspora community; and how the performance arts can become a vehicle for students to critically engage as well as understand their worlds. All my research is informed by a conception of literacy as embedded in history and culture and

Keywords

RefugeeImmigrationLiteracyMigrant workersGender studiesSociologyPolitical sciencePedagogy

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