Imagination as Anchor and Cue: Latina/o Middle School English Learners in a College-Going Program
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Imagination as Anchor and Cue: Latina/o Middle School English Learners in a College‑Going Program Reynaldo Reyes III1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract English learners have long been defined as faulty linguistic beings, liabilities in a school system that values immediate academic readiness to perform like those in the mainstream. With a need to look at the many other facets that constitute who English learners are and what they are capable of in their academic pursuits, this case study looked at how academically marginal middle school English learners used the imagining of college to anchor, cue, and redefine their practices, identities, and perspectives as students in the pursuit of post-secondary possibilities. The paper explores tensions and contrasts in learning identity and practices based on movement from being academically peripheral to participating in a new learning community with high expectations for academic performance. Findings reveal how English learners negotiated new expectations of academic performance that forced a realignment of practices and trajectory; and how their experiences surfaced new understandings of their identities as students. Keywords English learner · Imagination · Community of practice · Identity · College-going
Introduction English learners (ELs) historically have experienced a great deal of personal, social, cultural, and/or linguistic isolation in US schools (Callahan and Gándara 2004; Arias 2007). They have had limited access to academic communities (e.g. course content, interactive classrooms, programs with high expectations in learning) and the academic capital that allow for the development of particular practices and ways of being and thinking that adequately prepare them for the rigors of post-secondary education (Anstrom et al. 2010; Kanno and Cromley 2013; Callahan et al. 2010; * Reynaldo Reyes III [email protected] 1
Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, The University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University, Rm. 801‑C, El Paso, TX 79902, USA
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The Urban Review
Olsen 2010; Stanton-Salazar 2001). Still subjected to tracking and lower-level course placement in programs based in deficit policies and pedagogies (Callahan 2005), many US schools (intentionally or not) have created barriers for English learners that deny “their identities as active seekers of educational opportunity” (Shapiro 2014, p. 395). As a result, English learners often experience a diminished habitus that reflects not only academic under-preparation but a seemingly extinguished ability to see themselves as future college students (Kanno and Kangas 2014) and to know what to do to get there (Thompson 2015). There is a need for research that focuses on the English learner in their own right, beyond just challenges of language, and on the many variables that influence their college preparation and access (Kanno and Cromley 2013). To address this gap in the literature on English learners and their unique path to post-secondary schooling, this case stu
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