1st Edition
In Pursuit of a Multilingual Equity Agenda SFL Teacher Action Research
This critical volume provides accessible examples of how K–12 teachers use systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and action research to support the disciplinary literacy development of diverse learners in the context of high-stakes school reform. With chapters from teachers, teacher educators, and researchers, this book paves the way for teachers to act as change agents in their schools to design and implement meaningful curriculum, instruction, and assessment that builds on students’ cultural and linguistic knowledge. Addressing case studies and contexts, this book provides the framework, tools, and resources for instructing and supporting multilingual students and ELL. This volume – intended for pre- and in-service teachers – aims to improve educators’ professional practice through critical SFL pedagogy and helps teachers combat racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric by contributing to an equity agenda in their schools.
List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Series Editor Introduction 1. Pursuing a Multilingual Equity Agenda: SFL and Teacher Action Research in Hard Times 2. "How Do You Do This?": Getting Started with SFL and Genre Pedagogy with Multilingual Middle Schoolers 3. Supporting High School Heritage Language Learners’ Spanish Literacy and Multicultural Identities through Biography Writing 4. Reflection Multiliteracies: Teaching Meaning-Making across the Visual and Language Arts 5. Becoming Scientists: Scaffolding Multilingual Learners’ Science Literacy Practices with SFL 6. Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back: Reading to Learn, Raciolinguistic Ideologies, and White Supremacy in Elementary Literacy Instruction 7. More than Vocabulary: Verbal Scaffolding of Mathematical Word Problems with Elementary Emergent Bilinguals 8. Implications of Genre Pedagogy for Refugee Background Youth with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education 9. SFL, Critical Literacy, and Social Justice: Apprenticing Students to the Language of Persuasion as a Pre-service Teacher 10. Isabelle Goes to College: Rethinking Grammar Instruction in Advanced Placement English 11. Finding Ways Forward from the Inside Out: Reflecting on SFL in Action Appendix A: High-frequency Disciplinary Genres in K-12 Schooling Appendix B: Annotated Model Texts
Biography
Meg Gebhard is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Co-Director of the Secondary English Education Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has been a plenary speaker at SFL and related conferences and presents frequently on SFL topics.
Kathryn Accurso is an Assistant Professor of Teaching Language and Literacies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
"The editors have done a remarkable job in writing chapters with teachers and maintaining what is clearly a remarkable and sustained collaboration with the teachers from ongoing professional development courses to providing guidance and support for the teachers’ action research; from creating opportunities for teachers to presenting their work at an SFL conference to the publication of this book. Their respect for teachers and their work is a shining example for other teacher educators as is their commitment to marginalised communities and a more just society."
--From the Foreword by Hilary Janks, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
