Date of Award
2024-08-01
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
English Rhetoric and Composition
Advisor(s)
Beth Brunk
Abstract
Student multilingualism is already becoming the norm (Schreiber, 2018) rather than the exception in US higher education, and there are increasing discourses that describe multilingualism as the norm for productive resources and meaning making, not a deficit (Schreiber & Worden, 2019). Universities often "valorize students' multilingual competenceâ?? as â??commodities and resources that the entire student body can consume and benefit from," while at the same time, through activities, "students' desires, struggles and dispositions become irrelevant or silenced, including linguicism and microaggressions that they encounter on campus on a regular basis " (Wang, 2022, p. 43). Writing programs often create false binaries, for example, classes for multilingual writers vs. â??standardâ?? classes (Michaud & Hardy, 2023). When it comes to classroom instructional practices, multilingual students are not usually asked to use their full linguistic repertoires in their learning (Losey & Shuck, 2022).Against this backdrop, my dissertation explored three distinct but materially interrelated ways of enacting social justice in multilingual undergraduate writing classrooms: Through implicit and explicit programmatic policies and initiatives, through pedagogical practices (teaching contents/materials, pedagogical approaches, assignments, assessments, etc.), and through students' experiences. Viewed from the perspective of social justice, translanguaging, linguistic justice, multimodal, decolonial, and antiracism, in this project I embraced a phenomenological research methodology in which I used surveys, interviews, and documents as tools for data collection from Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) and writing instructors, and surveys and open-ended questionnaires from multilingual students. I used a survey tool prepared based on the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Statement on Second Language Writing and Multilingual Writers (SLW&MW) 2020, to recruit and orient survey participants to the phenomena that are being investigated, and then to collect qualitative data. My survey results indicated that all WPAs and most of the writing instructors surveyed are enacting social justice in the writing classrooms by, for example, recognizing and supporting multilingual studentsâ?? practices of integrating their unique linguistic and cultural practices, by investigating multilingual writing issues, etc. Similarly, participating multilingual students also experienced social justice in their writing classrooms, for instance, as their writing instructors value their linguistic diversity, incorporate studentsâ?? home-culture reading materials and experiences, provide options/choices for their assignments, embrace socially just assessment practices, etc. My dissertation findings from interviews with WPAs and documents analysis revealed that writing programs exhibit in their respective programs either implicit or explicit policies for enacting social justice. Universities lacking explicit policies often enact social justice in their programs through designing socially just philosophies and learning outcomes, offering professional development activities and workshops on social justice issues, allowing instructors to incorporate reading materials about multilingual students and by multilingual authors, giving leeway to design assignments and create assessment criteria that fit multilingual students, etc. The findings from interviews with instructors and document analysis indicated that instructors enact social justice in their classrooms by formulating socially just classroom policies and by pedagogical practices, for example, disrupting â??common senseâ?? ways of understanding writing, providing multiple options/choices for major assignments, assessing studentsâ?? work from a just approach, etc. Studentsâ?? open-ended questionnaire responses showed that instructors teach using diverse textsâ??texts about their own cultures, in multiple genres, and they encourage exploration of topics like literacy narratives, immigration, and linguistic justice, along with allowing assignment resubmissions. Further, studentsâ?? open-ended questionnaires showed that instructors do follow just assessment practices in their classes. For instance, instructors assess studentsâ?? projects based on ideas, content, and organization, and the honest labor students put into their assignments.
Language
en
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Copyright Date
2024-08-01
File Size
286 p.
File Format
application/pdf
Rights Holder
Jagadish Paudel
Recommended Citation
Paudel, Jagadish, "Multilingual Students In Higher Education Writing Classes: Policies, Practices, And Experiences To Promote Social Justice" (2024). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 4198.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/4198