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Article published In: Preparing Teachers for Addressing the Sociocultural Issues with Asian Pacific Immigrants and Refugees
Edited by Yin Lam Lee-Johnson and Hsiao-Chin Kuo
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 31:1] 2021
► pp. 79–99

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Agency and pedagogy in literacy education

Toward culturally sustaining pedagogy for immigrant adolescents

 | University of Massachusetts Amherst
Published online: 17 September 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00058.jeo
Abstract
This longitudinal ethnographic case study examines, from a sociocultural perspective, how a White female English as a second language teacher of immigrant adolescents enacted agency toward culturally sustaining pedagogy in her classroom, school, and community. The teacher demonstrated her agency in her personal and professional spaces by (a) re-contextualizing curriculum and instruction with students, (b) engaging in daily conversations with students, (c) recruiting community members to participate in class, (d) constructing an ELL teacher community, (e) visiting students’ homes and involving herself in refugee communities, and (f) performing community services with students. This study provides significant implications about how teachers, who will be working in classrooms and schools and encountering deficit discourses about immigrant students and standardization forces, can create agentive pedagogical spaces where the linguistic, cultural, and community resources of immigrant students are identified, understood, centered, and can connect those resources with classroom and community practices.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Theoretical perspectives
  • Research on FoK, CRP, and CSP
  • Methods
    • Context and participants
    • Researcher positionality
    • Data collection and analysis
  • Findings
    • Re-contextualization of curriculum and materials in the classroom
    • Connecting classroom instruction with community resources
    • “Oh, that worked? Tell me.”: Construction of ELL teacher community in school
    • Active involvement in community
  • Agentive CSP vs. assimilative pedagogy
  • Discussion and implications
  • References
References (56)
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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