“Is there another word for ‘water’?” Designing for student progression in academic literacies and epistemic agency

Abstract

This longitudinal study conducted over one school year reports on a design-based research intervention which investigates conditions for fostering academic literacies in a small-group setting of English language learners aged 9-10. The aim is for the learners to achieve increased proficiency enabling them to fully participate in the mainstream class subjects. The study analyses issues of teaching practices in a middle school that support subject literacies development of students from diverse language backgrounds in the multilingual classroom.

Drawing on language learning as subject literacies practices, knowledge building for deeper learning and transferable skills, this intervention enacted a set of DPs across four iterations fostering progression in students’ knowledge along the Everyday Language and Academic Language continuum. The design is informed by sociocultural theory and situative perspectives on meaning-making in the social context of the classroom. It draws on the knowledge construction metaphor of learning as joint collaboration for constructing shared, improvable objects, which are conceptualized not only as material artifacts but as the practices of epistemic work embedded in their construction.

In a science topic, anchor texts and representation construction are used as entry points for discursive moves to discuss academic terms and diagrams for knowledge construction. There are three moves: meta-talk around repeated read-alouds of the anchor texts, focussing on academic word choices for concept-building; text editing through languaging to over-write academic terms; and epistemic work with representation construction or using appropriate disciplinary registers to re-write the anchor texts. A focus on reasoning practices enabled students to experience epistemic agency and authority, and progress from transcribing words and representations to reconstructing artifacts through edits. Such processes then led to constructing original artifacts where learners showed mastery in using academic literacies as sign forms and cultural tools. DPs with specific descriptors were developed, providing new design knowledge to support learning of academic literacies as appropriation of sign-making tools for epistemic work. The study therefore contributes new insights by articulating the underlying mechanisms for ELL progression and building a local theory of practice.