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Social Support Networks for Literacy Engagement among Culturally Diverse Urban Adolescents Social Support Networks for Literacy Engagement among Culturally Diverse Urban Adolescents

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This qualitative thesis study explores the influences of social networks and social support on the literacy engagement of seven high school students from a multicultural, multilingual, and economically disadvantaged urban neighbourhood in a large, diverse North American city. Guided by Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 2005), at three times during an 18-month period the seven participants completed social network maps and interviews, checklists about their reading and writing choices, and retrospective interviews about their reading and writing practices on self-selected texts. After the data from these instruments was analyzed based on Tardy’s (1985) typology of social support and the tripartite model of engagement proposed by Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004), an individual case report was created for each participant; to conduct cross-case analysis (Stake, 2006), these reports were compared across similar, predetermined themes. Two primary conclusions are supported by the data and analysis: these adolescents received varying amounts and types of socioliterate support from certain members of their social networks, and this support at times positively influenced their literacy engagement. Useful outcomes of this study include a deeper understanding of the relationship between social support, motivation, and engagement on single literacy events, including a proposed model of how those three concepts work together, as well as a new perspective on the role of technology in adolescent social network formation and on the sources from whom adolescents seek literacy-based social support. Finally, this study describes pedagogical spaces that can provide and activate such literacy support.
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... A socially supportive space also is one in which multilingual writers are not allowed to 'fall between the cracks,' as illustrated by the case of Elisa, a quiet, well behaved ESL student whose teacher "took her for granted" (Valdés, 2001, p. 87); Elisa's model behavior actually worked against her in that the teacher did not spend much time with her and had no sense of how Elisa's language skills were or were not progressing. This 'falling through the cracks' occurs when a student could benefit from direct assistance yet does not seek it out or make her needs known in any way or is not visibly at the top or bottom of the class-teachers may actually praise these students for behaving in class, although this silence more often renders the student invisible to the teacher or to other adult sources of support . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 On the other hand, in a recent study I conducted with multilingual adolescents in a large city in Canada (Wilson, 2012c), students found supportive socioliterate relationships primarily with teachers and tutors who reached out to them. A Jamaican-Canadian tenth-grader who resembled students I had seen in my teaching career who were 'falling through the cracks' developed a strong relationship with his English teacher as an eleventh-grader, which contributed to a renewed interest in writing and school: ...
... From these specific examples, we see that socioliterate interactions appear to influence the 'writing engagement' of multilingual adolescent writers, which I define as taking up a writing activity in a positive, effortful, goal-directed manner (see Wilson, 2012c). The traditional conception of literacy engagement is that students are 'engaged' either when they are actually doing a literacy activity and/or are using strategies to complete an activity (for example, see Guthrie, Alao, & Rinehart, 1997). ...
Chapter
Drawing on an understanding of literacy as social practice, this chapter reviews published studies on adolescent literacy in order to explore the social relationships that appear to influence the writing activities, practices, and skills of multilingual high school students. These relationships are described according to the three ecosystems most germane to teenagers—home, school, and neighborhood—and the specific influences of the reported relationships on students’ writing are discussed.
Book
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Spotlighting the challenges and realities faced by linguistically diverse immigrant and resident students in U.S. secondary schools and in their transitions from high school to community colleges and universities, this book looks at programs, interventions, and other factors that help or hinder them as they make this move. Chapters from teachers and scholars working in a variety of contexts build rich understandings of how high school literacy contexts, policies such as the proposed DREAM Act and the Common Core State Standards, bridge programs like Upward Bound, and curricula redesign in first-year college composition courses designed to recognize increasing linguistic diversity of student populations, affect the success of this growing population of students as they move from high school into higher education.
Chapter
How are children's social lives at school related to their motivation to achieve and how do motivational and social processes interact to explain children's adjustment at school? This volume, first published in 1990, features work by leading researchers in educational and developmental psychology and provides perspectives on how and why children tend to thrive or fail at school. The individual chapters examine the unique roles of peers and teachers in communicating and reinforcing school-related attitudes, expectations, and definitions of self. Relations of children's school adjustment to school motivation, interpersonal functioning, and social skillfulness are also explored. The developmental and social perspectives on motivation and achievement presented in this volume provide new insights into the complex processes contributing to school success.
Chapter
Goal theory offers perspectives to understand L2 writing development as well as for the design of curricula, instruction, and learning activities. In this chapter I review these perspectives in relation to my research on two contrasting populations in Toronto: adult international students preparing for university admission and at-risk adolescents participating in an afterschool tutoring program. These analyses show that students' goals for writing reflect their relative development of literacy as well as orientations to knowledge and the world, both shaping the potential for educators to intervene effectively to enhance the students' abilities. Educators need to respect and attend to such differences when organizing curricula, selecting tasks for writing, and assessing individual needs for learning and students' achievements. It may only be from interacting with students about their writing individually over extended periods that instructors can perceive, distinguish, and establish appropriate goals for students' writing development. As indicated in principles of dynamic assessment, goals emerge from the convergence of students' development with relevant opportunities for learning and instruction. Goals follow from but also determine development. For these reasons, goals cannot be predicted in advance nor separately from close analyses of individual students' abilities at specific points in time. As a consequence, goals make suitable foci for teaching as well as self-assessment, as demonstrated by the present findings. An implication, however, is that goals are not suitable as content for general curricula or large-scale tests because goals are contingent upon contexts, learners, and purposes for writing improvement.
Book
Rev.& expanded from Case study research in education,1988.Incl.bibliographical references,index