Mary Amanda Stewart

Texas Woman's University · Reading

Understanding Adolescent Immigrants: Moving toward an Extraordinary Discourse for Extraordinary Youth highlights the voices of these young people by sharing the stories of seven newcomer youths aged 13 to 20 years in U.S. high schools. By learning their histories, present situations, and dreams for the future, we can understand both these students’...

This article details a project with students who are refugees who read and wrote about the refugee experience to give the instructor important information about their lives. The high school students first read various texts about the refugee experience that guided their class discussions, journal writing, and graphic illustrations of their journeys...

Although, traditionally, the purpose of the social studies class in secondary schools is to teach content knowledge, this article argues that historical learning can be a powerful vehicle for English language development for late-arrival English learners (ELs) in middle and high schools. ELs bring a wealth of life experiences, diverse perspectives,...

Using a New Literacy Studies perspective that recognizes multiple literacies that are meaningful within their sociocultural traditions, this collective case study investigated the range, form, and purpose of the out-of-school literacies of four Latina/o adolescent English learners. The qualitative methodology employed constructivist interviews, dig...

Teaching and learning are infinitely complex enterprises, particularly in classrooms where adolescent English learners strive for academic success. This article offers ethnographic accounts in two settings in the United States, both of which involved similar instructional experiences and resources to support literacy learning among high school Engl...

As bilingual scholarship increasingly examines who counts in bilingual education, we join the conversation by exploring how two DLBE teachers’ languaging is often marginalized, even in bilingual education contexts. In this comparative case study, we draw from the testimonios of two differently racialized DLBE teachers (one of Mexican and one Persia...

Vivencias son experiencias poderosas para construir una identidad cultural y como hablante de un idioma. Muchos futuros maestros bilingües en los Estados Unidos han tenido varias vivencias que afectan el uso de sus lenguajes, como español e inglés, y sus ideologías lingüísticas, las cuales influyen en la forma cómo enseñan en el aula bilingüe. Este...

Durante la pandemia global de COVID-19, los maestros han tenido que ser creativos para poder conectar con las familias de los estudiantes bilingües emergentes. Este análisis de contenido de cuatro grupos focales de maestros revela las maneras en que estos conectaron con sus estudiantes a distancia. El propósito de este ensayo es descubrir, de los e...

A high school English teacher/doctoral student and two university researchers share a three-part framework for educating emergent bilinguals across disciplines with these constructs: language, literacy, and love. Through long-term professional development, teachers at two high schools began to view language as translanguaging, literacy as multilite...

Resistance takes on many forms in modern society as people effectively engage in resistance literacies, the sending and receiving of meaning in culturally embedded contexts framed by unequal power. This article foregrounds two Mexican-identifying women who live in the U.S. through their testimonios of resistance to xenophobic and racist rhetoric in...

This phenomenological study follows an asset-based approach to understand how Latinx families utilize their cultural wealth in their children’s education, and how teachers activate families’ capitals to support their engagement. Data collected through focus groups reveal that the seven Latinx parents in the study use aspirational capital by communi...

Anti-immigrant vitriol is growing, even disturbing our educational spaces. Teachers are also affected by the negative discourses around them and need to develop knowledge that shapes their attitudes and actions regarding immigrant youth. This article details a professional development with high school teachers that used reader response to develop c...

The burgeoning work of translanguaging and bilingualism has much to offer adolescent learning spaces in order to provide bi/multilingual students more equitable opportunities to engage in disciplinary literacy at the high school level, particularly where there are many low‐incidence languages. Drawing from critical theories in both literacy and lan...

This book names and confounds the mono-mainstream assumption that invisibly frames much research, the ideologies that normalize monolingualism, monoculturalism, monoliteracy, mononationalism, and/or monomodal ways of knowing. In its place, the authors propose multi- and trans- lenses of these phenomena steeped in a raciolinguistic perspective on Bo...

In this chapter, we illustrate how researchers are defining myriad forms of languaging across contexts, including race languaging, bilanguaing, and the most prominent today, translanguaging and related terms. In doing so, we seek to highlight the compelling purpose of researching from a (trans)languaging frame: to center an asset-oriented view of b...

In this chapter, we describe how an interconnected critical and sociocultural lens may uniquely capture the dynamic impact of the literacies and languaging research explored in the previous chapters. Then, we consider how raciolinguistic perspectives on Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology may be one critical sociocultural approach to elucidate the robus...

In this chapter, we share a review of the construct of literacies to highlight how researchers are defining multiple literacies across contexts and platforms which, when viewed through particular lenses, might be included in the following categories: home and community, school, digital and multimodal, to be seen, and global literacies. We especiall...

A requisite part of testimonio research is a call to action. This chapter foregrounds the radical response our testimonalistas’ experiences ask of us. We explore how we might name and interrogate the mono-mainstream assumption through our pursuit of complex truth(s) of literacies and languaging from a critical sociocultural perspective, in light of...

Through Angélica’s testimonio, readers will take a journey with her through her elementary dual language bilingual program into her English-dominant high school. Her experiences with literacy and language show how the terms literacies and languaging provide a more accurate and multidimensional view of this former English learner’s full skill-set. S...

Chitra’s testimonio illustrates another layer of translingualism, transnationalism, and translanguaging. Although multilingual, because Spanish is not one of her primary languages, she was often seen as monolingual through her elementary, secondary, and even university schooling experiences. Her literacies and languaging illustrate how rich practic...

Through Carmen Elvira’s testimonio as an adult, we explore how one’s multiple literacies and languaging dynamically shift through life stages. Carmen Elvira is a proud Mexican woman who moved to the U.S. nearly five years ago with her multilingual daughters and husband. In addition to the physical Mexico-U.S. border, she explores many cultures and...

In this chapter, we bring together the four testimonios to illustrate the themes and nuances of their counternarratives that “strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32). Indeed, the testimonialistas are doing far more than surviving; they are decidedly resisting a monolithic vi...

Through Mia’s testimonio, readers will meet a college student residing in the U.S., who self-identifies as Mexican. She traverses worlds and languages through her literacies as a nepantlera. “Pocha” is not a dirty word to her, but something she laughs at and embraces. Having benefited from a bilingual program in her first year in the United States...

In this introductory chapter, we explain the meaning behind radicalizing literacies and languaging. Understanding how literacies and languaging are potentially powerful constructs, we use them to engage in research that reveals complex truth(s) with armed love for the end goal of transformative justice. Before doing so, we take a critical look at t...

There is a growing chasm between the instruction of secondary emergent bilinguals (EBs) and research illustrating the benefits of adolescent EBs using translanguaging practices for academic engagement and gains. Specifically, this qualitative study purposes to understand how monolingual teachers enact a translanguaging pedagogy in a high school cla...

This book names and confounds the mono-mainstream assumption that invisibly frames much research, the ideologies that normalize monolingualism, monoculturalism, monoliteracy, mononationalism, and/or monomodal ways of knowing. In its place, the authors propose multi- and trans- lenses of these phenomena steeped in a raciolinguistic perspective on Bo...

Project PIONERAS is a U.S grant funded program designed to strengthen the Spanish language development and pedagogical knowledge of Dual Language teachers. 3rough a strong research base, study abroad, and use of emergent technologies, PIONERAS teachers develop critical competencies to bene4t their bilingual students.

The children of (im)migrants are the fastest growing population in U.S. schools at the same time there is increased anti-(im)migrant discourse, creating a unique linguistic ecology for its students. These multinational, multilingual, and multicultural students often encounter mononational, monolingual, and monocultural ideologies in their schools a...

Adolescents who are newcomers in a country and beginning to acquire English as an additional language are often in secondary classrooms with teachers who do not speak their languages. Due to these communication obstacles, there is a great need for teachers to build relationships with their students while setting optimal conditions for literacy deve...

Dual language (DL) programs experience many tensions stemming from English hegemony in its curriculum, instruction, and assessment. These tensions often work in concert to usurp the three goals of DL programs to develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and bicultural competence while achieving grade level standards for its students. Subsequently, there is...

Full text here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/jyH4uumvtdCU4zGMQGTz/full Research acknowledges the value of youths reading books that represent their lives and cultures, yet there is a growing need to better understand how youths of understudied groups respond to multicultural stories. This single-case study of a multilingual refugee adolescent...

Full text here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/srhG63nf6q4gkBRfqizJ/full La resiente afluencia de literatura infantil en español representa una excelente oportunidad para los que los programas bilingües generen enseñanza auténtica de la lectoescritura en español, pero, ¿podrían estos textos estar representando una sola historia de la población...

Full text here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ciCQeSep5ajwEuCdF8An/full This mixed-methodology study surveys 63 fifth graders in a one-way dual language school. Findings alarmingly indicate that although these students are native Spanish speakers in a school that delivers 50% of their instruction in Spanish, they prefer English both academicall...

A growing number of adolescents in the United States are transnationals who regularly engage in translanguaging practices by drawing on their full linguistic repertoires in their everyday lives. Many of these students are also emergent bilinguals, learning language and content simultaneously. Yet, as the number of these diverse students significant...

The purpose of this study was to explore how emergent bilinguals’ emerging identities interact with their language attitudes and choices in various contexts to create their investment in English, Spanish, and bilingualism. Using a mixed method design, the researchers analyzed surveys and social networking maps of 63 Mexican-American, bilingual fift...

Adolescent English Learners (ELs) possess cultural knowledge and skills that can be leveraged for academic success through relevant classroom literature. Using literature that connects to ELs’ personal lives can benefit their literacy learning as well as the educational experience for native English speakers. Specific age-appropriate and culturally...

This article details a project with students who are refugees who read and wrote about the refugee experience to give the instructor important information about their lives. The high school students first read various texts about the refugee experience that guided their class discussions, journal writing, and graphic illustrations of their journeys...

Using a New Literacy Studies perspective that recognizes multiple literacies that are meaningful within their sociocultural traditions, this collective case study investigated the range, form, and purpose of the out-of-school literacies of four Latina/o adolescent English learners. The qualitative methodology employed constructivist interviews, dig...

This single-case study demonstrates one bilingual Latino youth's out-of-school literacy practices and how he has learned to disconnect them from his academic work. Qualitative data taken from interviews, the participant's social networking sites, poetry journal, and observations of him in community organizations demonstrate the frequency and purpos...

Previous scholarship demonstrates that immigrant students are using digital technologies for unique purposes in their out-of-school writing. This study explores the writing on Facebook of four Latina/o immigrant youth who are English Learners. The findings show that the participants write on Facebook to further their English acquisition and express...

Under the category of diaspora media studies, the present case study investigates the social networking use of four newcomer adolescent English Learners in a U.S. high school. Demonstrating their transnational skills, the students use the social networking site of Facebook prolifically outside of school in order to connect to their home countries,...

The article presents the circumstances of a recent Salvadoran immigrant high school student who puts forth great effort to learn despite difficult circumstances caused by her immigration status, economic realities, and the educational system itself. The author issues a call to action for literacy educators to revolutionize their relationships with...

Mary Amanda Stewart is conferred the 2013 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award for her enterprising and timely work in the field of education research. Stewart's dissertation highlights the ways in which Latino and Latina immigrant youth who are newly arrived to the U.S. possess many skills, including managing transnational relationships through...

Previous scholarship demonstrates that immigrant students are using digital technologies for unique purposes in their out-of-school writing. This study explores the writing on Facebook of four Latina/o immigrant youth who are English Learners. The findings show that the participants write on Facebook to further their English acquisition and express...

The author encourages teachers to explore themes in literature that connect to experiences of young female immigrants and that eschew stereotypical representations. She discusses a list of recommended texts.

After noting the disconnect between students' passionate oral stories and their lifeless writing, an adult education instructor made specific instructional and curriculum changes in an ESOL reading and writing course. All changes served the purpose of teaching the element of voice in second language writing. The instructor used the issue of immigra...

This paper argues that educators interested in sustainability should look to complexity science for guiding principles. When we view our classrooms and campuses as living, dynamic ecologies, we can, as insiders, make sense of what might otherwise seem chaotic or meaningless. This perspective enables us not only to describe and explain what is happe...

In most secondary classrooms English language learners' native languages are ignored (Cummins. 2007) despite the fact they are a very important factor of students 'academic success. The level of native language proficiency a student has at the time of arrival in the new country is the strongest predictor of their academic success in English (Thom...