Shelley Wong

Women Faculty of Color in TESOL: Theorizing Our Lived Experiences

Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. (Lorde, 1984a, p. 112)

Developing literacy in second‐language learners: Critique from a heteroglossic, sociocultural, and multidimensional framework

The authors review and discuss the work presented in Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of The National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth, edited by Diane August and Timothy Shanahan.

Forging Multilingual Communities: School-based Strategies

In this article, we share how 2 multilingual/multicultural school communities work to build strong relationships with immigrant families to support parent involvement and language minority student achievement.

Academic Achievement and Social Identity Among Bilingual Students in the U.S.

This chapter discusses academic achievement and social identity development among bilingual students with respect to changing demographics of increased linguistic diversity and poverty for school-aged children in the United States. Institutional policies and practices are described that lead to blaming the victims of institutional inequity for low test scores and high dropout rates. Contrasting paradigms in literacy research are also discussed in relation to how perspectives of monolingual meritocracy lead to language loss and perpetuation of deficit discourses that negatively affect social identity formation for bilingual students. The authors argue that educators can play an important role in transforming inequities in the politics and practices of schooling, and they provide a model for the successful academic achievement of English language learning (ELL) and bilingual students. The model includes three essential components for literacy development and academic achievement: (a) human resources, including ELL students, their families and communities, and ESL and bilingual education professionals; (b) dialogic pedagogy; and (c) a curriculum for democratic citizenship, and economic and community development.

Examining social political contexts in teacher preparation in Palestine

This study explores teaching English as a foreign language in the West Bank, Palestine. It investigates the perspectives of a group of faculty, preservice, and in-service teachers about teaching and learning English in the primary grades under the overarching harsh realities of political conflict and instability. The study demonstrates the importance of addressing socio-political contexts to make teaching meaningful and to set pedagogical strategies that correspond to the context of the students in teacher preparation programs. Participants interviewed responded to open-ended questions about teaching English as a foreign language and discussed major issues and challenges they face.