Negotiating Academic Literacy in Mobility

Book excerpt: Our university classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse globally. Scholars in many disciplines, among them TESOL and applied linguistics, have been working on developing effective pedagogies for linguistically diverse students, including the nature of academic literacy support for such student populations. However, there is a lack of studies on linguistically diverse students experiences of academic literacy across the curriculum (Poe, 2013) in US higher education. To address this gap, my dissertation explored literacy experiences of a subset of linguistically diverse students, i.e. students with refugee backgrounds, at a large public research university in the Northeastern USA, which I have called Dreamland University (DU) for the purposes of this study. Through a teacher-research-based, ethnographic multiple case study approach, this longitudinal study followed three male Bhutanese refugee students, who I have called Gyan, Lal, and Raj for the purposes of this study, from Fall 2012 to Summer 2017, when they successfully graduated from Dreamland University. To explore their literacy experiences, I started my study with two broad research questions: i) What academic literacy challenges do students with refugee backgrounds experience in mobility?, and ii) How do they negotiate (academic) language and literacies in transnational contexts? The main forms of data I collected for this study were observations, interactions, and artifacts. First, starting from my own writing classes, I observed the three participants in both formal and informal settings. Formal settings included two language and literacy courses and nine content courses across the curriculum. Informal observations occurred in university dorms, off-campus apartments, soccer fields, and at social gatherings. Second, I formally interviewed the participants eight times each (approximately 35 hours total) between Fall 2012 and their graduation from Dreamland University in 2017. I also conversed informally with them on a regular basis about their academic literacy experiences (approximately 60 hours of recorded conversations). Third, I collected their writings (along with teacher feedback) as well as various other study and assessment materials from both general education and major courses. Additionally, Gyan and Lal gave me access to their university email communication for the whole 5 years of their time at DU, which included exchanges with various literacy sponsors including professors and teaching assistants.While the most common academic literacy support for linguistically diverse students in the US universities focuses on academic writing, the analysis of data presented in this study shows that my students experienced textual, interactional, material, and perceptual challenges at DU. The major cause of my students academic literacy challenges was minimal or non-existent academic literacy support in both language and literacy classes in English as well as across content classes. Because of the cumulative effect of the four types of challenges just outlined, my students were challenged by many issues considered basic, including comprehending academic discourses and genres such as class lectures and assigned readings, participating in class discussions, and answering assessment questions. Nevertheless, because of their resilience and the rich linguistic resources they had developed in the process of migration, they were eventually able to negotiate these challenges by learning from their own practice, using their informal networks, and mobilizing ecological affordances at DU such as many supportive literacy sponsors. Building on my findings and on Haneda (2014), Molle et al. (2015), and Wingate (2016), I argue that academic literacy should be conceptualized broadly as developing an ability for successful academic communication. Additionally, students with refugee backgrounds need multi-pronged and continuous support throughout their studies rather than only during their first year(s). My research provides not only helpful descriptions of literacy experiences of refugees across the curriculum in US higher education, but it also contributes to socially sensitive pedagogy debates while our classes are becoming increasingly diverse linguistically and culturally in the age of trans (Hall, 2018).