Rethinking Literacy Education for Newcomer Students at the Penn Ethnography Forum

Posted by on April 02, 2014

Hello again!  This is Noel Li, the Technology and Social Media intern at PHENND.  As my internship is coming to an end, I would like to contribute one more time to the K-16 Partnerships Newsletter.

I attended the 35^th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum, which took place at the University of Pennsylvania from February 28^th to March 1^st, 2014.  Through this forum review, I want to highlight one ethnography project that showcases today’s ethnography research, in hopes that it may provide inspiration to K-16 educators in using non-traditional modes of teaching and learning.

In the opening plenary session, Dr. Christine Helot from the University of Strasbourg in France spoke on Rethinking Literacy Education for Newcomer Students in France: Literacy through Photography…

This project sought to use photography as a mode of expression and literacy for newcomers in France.  In the education system in France, domestic children learn English at seven years old, another language at 11, and then a third at 14.  At some undergraduate institutions in France, it is not uncommon to have 56 languages available for study.  Furthermore, if one wanted to learn a language not offered by the school, the school will pay for distance learning.  There are also numerous bilingual programs where fields such as history and math could be taught in German or another language in addition to French.  The French refer to this as plurilingualism.  (In the U.S., this may be referred to as multilingualism.)  To be plurilingual means “to see the world through the eyes of another.”

Despite this diversity in the languages represented in France, there is little tolerance for allophones, immigrants to the country who can only speak their native language; it is impossible to truly adapt to French society if one does not speak French.  As a result, the schooling of newcomers in France focuses on helping the individual to adapt rather than focusing on how the school could implement plurilingual spaces.  Mainstream teachers in France are not educated to include diversity in their pedagogies; newcomers are left to sink or swim in the mainstream.

Dr. Helot described a project that sought to use a multimodal approach to bridge this difference in languages for newcomers. As part of a doctoral thesis at University of Strasbourg, this project was led by a doctoral student identified as TB who taught French as a second language to newcomers for ten years.  She was well aware of the isolation felt by subordinate groups who could not use French as a first language.  Based on the notion of integration, the objective was to develop an approach to learning French through the use of autobiographical poetry and photography, tapping on students’ lived experience, creativity and non-verbal skills.  Students who participated in the project wrote an autobiographical poem in their first language.  Then, they selected a part of the poem to translate to French to share with others.

It was important to do the writing before the photography portion of the project in order for the students to focus on the kind of picture they wanted to take, to visualize images in a critical way.  Combining writing and photography encouraged students to think about the visible and invisible forces that influenced their lives.

After they translated their poems, they depicted these poems through photographic self-portraits.  The photographs they took were meant to be visual expressions of the autobiographies that they worked on in the previous stage, thus connecting literacy with photography.  Students learned proper usage of the French language by writing directly on the photographs.  These photographs were displayed in an art gallery in the center of the city, validating them as artists, students and new French citizens.  A portion of this exhibit can be seen now in the common study room at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

This project brought out interesting parallels between writing and photography, such as framing, point of view, timing, and use of symbols and details.  The intricacies of both modes of expression have more similarities than one would think.  This project was successful in helping newcomers in France explore meaning making through their first and second languages using a non traditional approach to learning.

Students delved into their inner identity through the process of writing an autobiographical poem and then further expressed their identity through the photographs. A comparative study is currently being implemented in Bronx, NY for newly immigrated students which will provide an opportunity for both French and American participants to compare their experiences as new immigrants. It will also add to research regarding the use of photography and poetry in ESOL classrooms.  While this project is just one example of a multimodal approach to literacy, K-16 educators can incorporate elements of it into their own classrooms with newly immigrated students.