Theorizing literacy from the ground up in French immersion: challenging contemporary perspectives through cross-disciplinary connections

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Date
2019
Authors
Arbez, David
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Abstract

Contemporary literacy pedagogy is rife with theories and practices that attempt to foster development for all children. The plethora of options available to classroom teachers can feel convoluted and difficult to navigate even though they all have roots in one of three paradigmatic orientations towards language and literacy pedagogy: skills orientation, meaning orientation, and balanced orientation. The current paradigm is nevertheless becoming insufficient in responding to the needs of increasingly diverse classrooms. This is especially true within French Immersion education which is commonly marginalized as elitist, teacher-centric, conservative, and exclusive. This study engages in an autobiographical narrative inquiry of the researcher’s 10 year career as an Early Years (K–4) French Immersion teacher. Specific events throughout the autobiographical narrative that challenged the researcher’s sense of identity as a French Immersion educator or his theorizing of language and literacy development were labelled as “Critical Moments” and were explored through themes of tension, key questions, and resolution. Primary source texts that played a role in those “Critical Moments” were critically analyzed and connected in an ongoing theorizing of language and literacy that ran in parallel with an ongoing critical reframing of the researcher’s identity as a French Immersion teacher. This study demonstrates that a cross-disciplinary perspective of language and literacy allows for pedagogical approaches that are not constrained by skills, meaning, and balance orientations. It also serves as an example of teacher identity construction within French Immersion teaching contexts and raises important questions about, and suggests future directions for, French Immersion education.

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Keywords
French immersion, Literacy, Narrative inquiry, Teacher identity
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