Multiple discourses of literacy meaning-making : case studies of two English and French classrooms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this thesis, I examine the influence of institutional control on three teachers' and twelve linguistically and culturally diverse childrens' perceptions and constructions of literacy meaning making in English and French in two grade six English and in two grade six French classrooms in the province of Quebec. The children in this study represent a cultural and linguistic mosaic of new arrivals, second-generation immigrant and native Montreal families that include Cambodian, East Indian, French, Italian, Lebanese and Portuguese families. Similarly, the three teachers come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds that include a native Montreal anglophone, an immigrant from Egypt who is fluent in Arabic, English and French, and a second-generation Italian Quebecer who is fluent in Italian, English and French. The diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the participants add a further dimension to the research project, that is, an understanding of the dialogic encounters between multilingual children and teachers during literacy events in two languages and two classroom contexts. I draw from Halliday's (1978, 1985) social theory of language use, Bakhtin's (1981, 1984) dialogical theory of discourse and Vygotsky's (1978, 1981, 1986) socio-cultural theory of language and learning to provide a theoretical lens for viewing the childrens' appropriation of literacy meaning making practices. I audiotaped, transcribed and interpreted the literacy events, teachers' discourse and discursive practices and the childrens' literate actions and artifacts for emerging patterns. In addition, interviews were transcribed, coded for emerging patterns and interpreted as socially negotiated texts. The findings led me to four major conclusions. First, while institutional controls such as textbooks, programs, evaluation, and teacher beliefs about literacy continue to maintain power of literacy meaning making practices in these four classroom contexts, the reconstruction and negotiation of this power varies across the classroom contexts and amongst the teachers and children. Second, the teachers' discourse and discursive practices, as well as, situational complexities such as the intersections of cultures, communities, classrooms and languages shape the childrens' literacy perceptions, interpretations and constructions in English and French within and across the classroom contexts. Third, teaching practices for literacy meaning making are neither solely analytical or experiential nor are they solely explicit or implicit. The three teachers' literacy practices appear to be more along a continuum than a dichotomy, that is, they appear to be local, strategic and contexts-related. Fourth, the recognition of a plurality of literacies suggest that childrens' cultural stances and viewpoints need to be considered, as well as, the kinds of literacy experiences they are and are not being asked to engage in their English and French classrooms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.026 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".