Bogum Yoon

Junsuk and Junhyuck: Adolescent Immigrants’ Educational Journey to Success and Identity Negotiation

A parent-researcher examines two adolescent immigrants’ educational journey to success through the analysis of positioning theory and negotiated identities. Through the boys’ direct voices about their schooling experiences with a particular focus on the middle and high school years in the United States, this article reports on the complexities of their identity negotiation and the process of their self-positioning and interactive positioning. This longitudinal study suggests that, rather than a single focus on language or culture, the immigrant students’ critical awareness of identity, negotiated identities, and external confirmation of unique abilities enable them to construct and reconstruct the context that contributes to their success. This study aims to help educators reframe the dialogue on immigrant students to include a new voice, from their own perspectives, of how they have been able to be successful in the U.S. social and educational systems.

An Historical Overview of the Middle School Movement, 1963–2015

Abstract Over 50 years of articles related to the middle school movement in the United States were examined and analyzed in order to uncover the movement’s primary themes associated with practice, research, and policy. Using a qualitative content approach, researchers created themes to represent the movement decade by decade. The years 1963–1979 were identified as the beginning of the Middle School Movement and its search for an identity. The next decade, 1980–1989, was a time of advancement and progress, and the movement became identified with practices, such as team teaching, interdisciplinary curriculum, and advisory. The years 1990–1999 saw pressure on the movement advancing from national policies, but the movement persisted with a sense of hope. To combat challenges to the middle school movement’s core beliefs and practices, an era of research on middle school practices emerged, and this research focus characterized 2000–2009. The current decade continued the research focus with an international perspective and efforts to identify and describe a “signature” middle school pedagogy. From this historical perspective, it was determined that core middle school practices must continue to grow and thrive in order to meet the social and academic needs of future generations of young adolescents.

Complexities of Critical Practice: The Conflict Between the Teacher’s Ideological Stance and the Students’ Critical Stance

The purpose of this chapter is to show complexities in implementing critical practices when the teacher’s ideological stance and the students’ critical stance on social issues conflict with each other. Through a qualitative case-study method in a middle school setting, the chapter describes both possibilities and challenges of critical practice. In an English as a second language (ESL) classroom, where the ESL teacher attempts to create a safe place, English language learners (ELLs) talk freely and bring social issues into classroom discussion. However, the teacher’s assimilation ideology that focuses on dominant cultural norms and “standard American English” tends to limit ELLs’ opportunities to be further engaged in critical literacy practice. The findings provide an important implication that the teacher’s ideological stance might be an important factor for the consideration of teacher education programs.

Meaningful Learning of Literary Elements by Incorporating Critical Literacies

Grounded in the theoretical constructs of envisionment building and critical literacies, this article discusses a case study on how the teacher invites the students to make their learning of literary elements (e.g., point of view) more meaningful by incorporating components of critical literacies. The teacher’s critical practice and the students’ written responses to adolescent literature including novels are discussed as the supporting examples from the study. The findings challenge the misconception that there is little space to implement critical literacies under the prescriptive curriculum during the present standardized testing era.

Future Research and Practice

This chapter provides several suggestions for future research and practice. There are various areas that educators and researchers may consider to enhance the practice of critical global literacies. Although my suggestions are specifically to educators who are based in the United States, educators and researchers around the world with interest in critical literacies for children’s education might find these recommendations helpful.

Rationale for the Project

In this chapter, my motivation and interest in writing this book are illustrated in detail with specific examples. These examples are drawn from my extensive experiences in and beyond the classroom as a researcher, teacher educator, and mother of two immigrant boys. Several excerpts and teacher and student quotes from the studies that I conducted highlight the need for this book project. In this chapter, I invite the reader to join me in thinking about why the educational field in general and the literacy field in particular needs global and multicultural perspectives.

Understanding Teachers’ Instruction from Broader Perspectives

In this chapter, I synthesize the seven case studies in the previous chapters by using the method of cross-case analysis. I particularly focus on the possible factors that might influence the successful or unsuccessful implementation of the teachers’ practice from global and multicultural perspectives. I discuss these factors from broader social and political perspectives. Before I discuss the potential factors, I briefly introduce my position about the cases to the reader.

Case Studies in the Middle School Classroom

In this chapter, I present three qualitative case studies that I conducted at a middle school over the course of one semester. I start with the cases of Ms. Young and Mr. Brown, who are Reading/English Language Arts teachers. After discussing their instructional approaches and what I learned from observing these two educators, I conclude this chapter with the third case, Ms. Grant. Ms. Grant is the ESL teacher who works with the regular classroom teachers.

Case Studies in the Elementary Classroom

In this chapter, I invite the reader to the two elementary classrooms. I present the study that I conducted over one semester in an urban public school. I entered the research site with a broader question: how do novice teachers work with refugee and immigrant students and assist them in their language and literacy development? In examining this question, I prepared interview questions focusing on the teachers’ perceptions of the students, instructional approaches, and the resources that they use to support the students’ language and literacy learning. This study, therefore, supplements my focus on studying more experienced teachers in the previous chapter. The major difference between the previous case studies and the current study is the student population in the classroom: ELLs are the majority in this urban school setting.

Theoretical Foundation of Critical Literacies and Global and Multicultural Education

In this chapter, I invite the reader to a more in-depth discussion on critical literacies from global and multicultural perspectives by presenting important theoretical constructs of each field. I first provide a historical and theoretical review of global and multicultural education, followed by the literature review of critical literacies, including relevant definitions. Overall, this chapter serves as the literature review of the three areas. Through this review, I attempt to answer the question on why global and multicultural perspectives matter in the field of critical literacies.