Newcomer Learners’ Experiences of Literacy in Canadian High Schools: An Interpretive Inquiry

• Author / Creator

  Ahn, Sung Kyung

• While diverse classrooms are an inevitable reality in educational settings today, our knowledge of literacy learning and development in a new language during the adolescent years is limited (Fitzerald, 2017; Uccelli, 2023; Wilcox & Jeffrey, 2018). As there is a close relationship between linguistic proficiency and school learning (Leki et al., 2008), education for English as an additional language learners (EALs) has focused primarily on their linguistic development rather than focusing on the expansion and strengthening of their cognitive capacity (Cummins, 2014b) as maturing individuals. This study sought to explore the phenomena of literacy learning in a new language in school by examining former EAL high school students’ narratives of their literacy learning experiences, specifically content-area writing (social studies), which has not received much attention from researchers until recent years.
  Theoretically informed by the underpinnings of Vygotskyan sociocultural theory and Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics, this study adopted a qualitative and interpretive approach to the inquiry. Data was collected from two post-secondary students, who completed a high school program in Canada as ELLs. The data used in the study include pre-interview activity, interview, participants’ written artifacts (essay-type writing samples or notes taken during and after their high school years), and email communication. The study was developed spirally, consisting of three phases. The data collected from one participant in the first two phases served as the basis for developing the interview questions included in the third phase of the study.
  The study illustrates how two former EAL learners approached and adapted to content-area literacy in their continuum of literacy development in a new language in English-speaking schools. It identifies factors contributing to their development of content-area literacy, focusing on social studies writing. Their L2 writing development in social studies during their high school years is visually presented through a flowchart, which consists of three phases–learning how to think, learning how to write, and writing skill development. As the study illuminates the distinct phases that the newcomer students underwent in their process of learning to write, it can inform teachers what to expect in the development of content-area writing among newcomer students in diverse classrooms. It can also serve as a starting point for future research that attempts to offer more refined models of writing development for school-aged emergent multilingual learners.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • adolescent literacy
  • L2 writing
  • social studies
  • sociocultural theory
  • philosophical hermeneutics
  • interpretive inquiry

• Graduation date

  Fall 2024

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-gcxm-9x69

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.