A Study of Critical Literacy Lau 2013

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A Study of Critical Literacy

Work with Beginning English
Language Learners: An
Integrated Approach
a
Sunny Man-Chu Lau
a
School of Education, Bishop's University,
Sherbrooke, Canada
Published online: 21 Feb 2013.
To cite this article: Sunny Man-Chu Lau (2013) A Study of Critical Literacy Work with
Beginning English Language Learners: An Integrated Approach, Critical Inquiry in
Language Studies, 10:1, 1-30, DOI: 10.1080/15427587.2013.753841
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2013.753841
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Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 10(1):1–30, 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/15427587.2013.753841
A STUDY OF CRITICAL LITERACY WORK WITH BEGINNING

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS: AN
INTEGRATED APPROACH
SUNNY MAN-CHU LAU

School of Education, Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Canada
This article reports some main findings of a year-long participatory action

research study of critical literacy (CL) practices with middle school recent
immigrant English language learners (ELLs) in Ontario, Canada. The CL
program followed an integrated instructional model informed by Cummins’
(2001) Academic Expertise Framework and Janks’ (2010) synthesis
model of CL as well as the poststructuralist/feminist advocacy for emotional
engagement and self-reflexivity in CL education. The researcher and the
teacher collaboratively developed an emergent curriculum based on the ELLs’
concerns about discrimination and cultural adjustment. Through these
transformative literacy practices, students gained not only language skills
but also a sense of efficacy for social change. The research challenges the
linear and segregated view of literacy and CL development, and points to the
need to position ELLs as competent learners and to structure classroom
conditions and practices to facilitate their gradual development as critical
language users.
Introduction
What I like is when we . . . work together, we won’t have any negative

perspectives or tease each other . . .. What I learned most is grammar and
vocabularies, we did these a lot in ESL class. What I remember most is when
the whole class was discussing about a theme just like the part “The Other
Side,” we shared our opinions, and we learned a lot from each other. (Melody)
Melody1 was one of the grade 7 English language learners (ELLs)

who took part in a year-long project on critical literacy (CL)
Sunny Man-Chu Lau, PhD, is the recipient of the Critical Inquiry in Language Studies
2012 Founders’ Emergent Scholars Award.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sunny Man-Chu
Lau, School of Education, Bishop’s University, 2600 College Street, Nicolls Building Room
108, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada J1M 1Z7. E-mail: slau@ubishops.ca
1
All participants’ names mentioned here are pseudonyms.
1
2 S. M. C. Lau
I conducted in a middle school in the northeast area of Toronto.

In a follow-up interview conducted a year after the research
project’s end, Melody described the three elements of the
program she felt were most memorable (shown in the quote
above). She appreciated being immersed in a safe and inclusive
learning community that enabled her to gradually build her
language skills and knowledge, and at the same time allowed her
to actively participate in critical discussions of social issues, such as
racism and segregation, themes addressed in The Other Side2
(Woodson, 2001), the children’s book used in the course.
Melody’s comments epitomize some important findings of this
participatory action research on CL work with beginning ELLs,

and these findings are the focus of this article.
CL education aims to equip individuals with a language of
critique, to analyze and challenge dominant social assumptions
and ideology embedded in cultural texts as well as a language of
possibility, to rewrite cultural texts in such a way that “their
interests, identities, and legitimate aspirations are more fully
present and are present more equally” (Lankshear & McLaren,
1993, p. xviii). With the “social turn” (Block, 2003) in the field of
Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, there has
been increasing research from a more sociopolitical perspective
analysing the intersection of language with race, class and gender
(Ibrahim, 1999; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Norton & Toohey, 2001;
Pennycook, 2000). Research on critical ways of teaching
English—pedagogies that help address those social and structural
inequities—is also growing steadily; however, in most cases,
especially in the North American setting, it is largely confined to
adult or college-level ESL classrooms (Benesch, 2001; Burns,
1999; Gallo, 2002; Lesley, 2001; Wallace, 2001) while in the K– 12
context it is still comparatively rare. Further, for ELLs with a
beginning or intermediate language level, CL is largely omitted in
the curriculum; where it is included, for example in Australia,
there is always a tension between satisfying the imperatives for
basic reading and writing instruction and survival English skills
2
The Other Side is a picture book about two little girls who are puzzled by the fence that
separates the African-American from the whites in town and decide in the end to challenge
this racial divide by sitting on the fence talking and playing together, and wishing for its
eradication one day.
A Study of Critical Literacy Work 3
with those for CL education (Eastman, 1998; Perkins, 1998).

The withholding of CL from less advanced ELLs in the North
American context reflects a linear and segregated view of literacy
development: that the cognitive processes are separable from the
social, and that CL can only be practiced with students possessing
a higher level of literacy skills.
This article attempts to offer an alternative perspective, one
based on the assumption that instruction in basic reading and
writing skills can be done with a critical orientation to facilitate
ELLs’ gradual critical/literacy3 development. I will illustrate this by
using two vignettes from my research study in which the students
engaged in critical discussions on bullying through an integrated

CL instructional model that I designed, informed by Cummins
(2001), Janks (2010), and poststructuralist/feminist CL theories.
Theoretical Framework
Cummins’ Academic Expertise Framework
Cummins’ (2001) Academic Expertise Framework was drawn on

for this study because it offers a transformative orientation to
second language teaching. The framework challenges the
unequal power relations inherent in mainstream ESL classrooms
where ELLs are often defined by their lack of English skills rather
than by their wealth of cultural and linguistic resources and
talents. As a result, these students are often relegated to more
simplistic language instruction practices (Haneda, 2006; Soko-
lower, 2006) focusing mainly on surface-level comprehension.
The practice of social tracking, whereby students are labeled and
relegated to skills-based instruction, further disadvantages ELLs
3
The term “critical/literacy development” here refers to both CL development as well as
literacy development, which is to foreground the fact that both developments are mutually
dependent. CL should be seen as “a disposition or attitude toward texts” (Curriculum
Services Canada, 2007). The way we are taught to read the word will necessarily affect how
we read the world. Hence, CL should be integral to any form or mode of literacy
development. Both CL practices and the learning of literacy skills should go hand in hand,
rather than being seen as an adjunct introduced to students when they are more advanced
in literacy skills. Vivian Vasquez’s (2004) CL work with young learners has shown that CL
can easily be integrated into early literacy classrooms.
4 S. M. C. Lau
who, as research shows, will often take five to seven years to catch up
to their English-speaking peers (Cummins, 1981; Hakuta, Butler, &
Witt, 2000). According to Cummins (2001), to counter the
oversimplifying practice of withdrawing cognitively-demanding
learning, English language teaching should be supported with
adequate linguistic scaffolds along with mobilizing students’
prior knowledge, including their multicultural and multilingual
experiences and resources. The more students’ cultural,
linguistic and personal identities are valued in their learning,
that is, maximized “identity investment,” the more they will be
engaged cognitively.
The Academic Expertise Framework hence proposes three

important focuses for ESL instruction. The focus on meaning
ensures that comprehensible input goes beyond literal compre-
hension to a depth of understanding as students relate new
learning to their prior knowledge and experiences and critically
examine information with respect to its social implications. This
should be complemented by a focus on language by which
students develop critical language awareness through overt
instruction on formal language features and on the ways they
are tied to power relations. The last focus on use is to ensure that
students have ample opportunities to use the target language to
act on social realities through literacy practices that express their
unique talents and identities.
Janks’ Synthesis Model of CL
Further informing this research was Janks’ (2000, 2010) synthesis

of the four existing CL directions: domination, access, diversity, and
design. Domination, according to Janks, refers to a view of language
as a powerful means to maintain and (re)produce relations of
domination. This CL orientation emphasizes the need to
deconstruct cultural texts through examining the textual
characteristics such as grammar and genre to understand how
language (re)produces and regulates relations of power.
Examples of such an approach include Systematic Functional
Linguistics (Halliday, 1994), Critical Discourse Analysis (Fair-
clough, 1995), and Critical Language Awareness (Janks, 2000).
Janks (2010) argued that this kind of ideological critique,

however, should go hand in hand with access to the dominant
language. Delpit (1995) has illustrated that access to the language
of power is valuable in helping ELLs achieve academic and social
success. An example of how students’ access and mastery of the
dominant discourse conventions and mainstream academic and
cultural practices can empower disadvantaged students to overcome
institutional barriers for academic and social advancement is found
in genre studies research (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Kress, 1999).
Janks’ idea of a balance between access and critique resonates with
Cummins’ (2001) focuses on language and meaning—both arguing
for ELLs’ mastery of mainstream academic language and

development of critical language awareness for deep understanding
(although Janks, as a scholar in Critical Language Awareness,
provided a more detailed discussion on the ways to conduct a
systematic and rigorous ideological textual critique).
The last two CL directions, diversity and design (Janks, 2000,
2010), refer, respectively, to the inclusion of students’ diverse
cultures and languages and the mastery of different semiotic
systems to challenge and change existing discourses. According to
Janks, New Literacies Studies (NLS; Gee, 2000) offers an example
of the implementation of diversity. NLS scholars view literacy as
socially situated practices connected to socially-situated identities.
Literacy is, therefore, not only about reading and writing but also
about the characteristic ways of thinking, acting, interacting,
feeling, valuing, and the use of tools and symbols in context-
specific situations (Gee, 2001). Inclusive of students’ diverse “ways
with words” (Heath, 1983), as Janks argued, will help them reflect
on their own taken-for-granted ways of reading, thinking, and
valuing. Multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kalantzis &
Cope, 2008), on the other hand, is a good example of design,
which emphasizes students’ harnessing of the multiple modes of
meaning-making (e.g., spatial, audio, visual, gestural) so that they
can challenge, resist, reconstruct, and re-present meaning in a
creative and socially just way (Janks, 2010). The directions of
diversity and design resemble Cummins’ (2001) focuses on meaning
and use through which students invest their diverse cultural
experiences and identities in their active use of the target
language through multimodal form of literacy practices. While
Cummins maintained the importance to provide students with
6 S. M. C. Lau
rich opportunities on the three areas of language, meaning, and

use, Janks argued for the weaving of domination (or critique), access,
diversity, and design together in a “productive tension” to achieve
the shared goal of equity and social justice (p. 27).
Poststructuralist/Feminist Reconfiguration of CL
Both Cummins’ (2001) and Janks’ (2010) approaches to ESL/CL

education are comprehensive and balanced in that they both
address the need for students to access and critique dominant forms
of language, as well as to use diverse tools and designs to resist and re-
mediate meaning. However, neither of them fully embraces the
poststructuralist/feminist call for self-reflexivity and emotional engage-
ment in CL education (Ellsworth, 1992; Gore, 1992; Mission &
Morgan, 2006). CL, as argued by Misson and Morgan, has to be
reconfigured such that social issues are examined and connections
made between social realities, personal desires, beliefs, and values.
Misson (1996) and Rizvi’s (1993) research on homophobia and
racism, respectively, show that when teachers develop anti-
homophobic or anti-racist education, much more than a simple,
rational examination of racism and homophobia is required as
people’s subscription to certain beliefs often involves strong
emotional investment. Misson and Morgan (2006) explained that
our engagement with texts, whether it is a Shakespearean play, a
movie, or a song, is not merely “intellectual” but also “affective” as it
often generates “exciting and pleasurable thoughts and feelings”
(p. 75). For example, our rational self may tell us that the ideology
behind a romantic comedy contradicts the feminist principles we
uphold, but we might nonetheless get caught up in, or even moved
by, the tensions developed in the characters’ romantic relationships.
Hence, educators should explore the emotional experiences a
cultural text generates in us—why we find the experiences attractive
or repulsive—instead of simply having them “objectified intellec-
tually and thus defused” (p. 224). Janks (2010) admitted that one
limitation of her synthesis model is that “it does not sufficiently
address the non-rational investments that readers bring with them
to texts and tasks” (p. 211). She agreed that CL education and
critical pedagogy in general have profound rationalist under-
pinnings and tend to ignore students’ emotional engagements with
texts—their pleasures, desires, and identification. However, as

Buckingham (2003) cautioned that, given the inherent unequal
power relations within classrooms, students can supply politically
correct answers to their teachers in their efforts to claim more
powerful positions within the classroom context as intelligent and
rational consumers of cultural texts. Therefore, if ideological textual
critique does not relate to students’ affective and emotional
reflections, it can easily be reduced to a “form of language games”
(p. 111) or a purely academic exercise, which may not lead to
authentic social transformation. Connected to emotional engagement,
poststructuralist/feminist scholars also call for a greater degree of
self-reflexivity (Ellsworth, 1992; Gore, 1992; Lather, 1992); instead of

taking students’ responses to rational critique at face value, teachers
should ensure a safe classroom environment for students to explore
their complex emotional responses to cultural texts. Although
Janks, did, in her earlier research (2001), bring up the importance
of encouraging students’ open, plural readings and their sharing of
emotional responses in CL class, this aspect is not directly integrated
into her synthesis CL model (2010). Cummins (2001) also talked
about “identity investment,” but its emphasis was mainly on the
activation and investment of ELLs’ social, aesthetic, and intellectual
identities in their learning and use of the target language. There is
no explicit mentioning of how engaging students on the affective
level can be used as a starting point for class discussions of the
socially constructed nature of personal responses. Embracing a
greater degree of self-reflexivity and a balance between affective and
intellectual engagements is to ensure a deeper reflection of one’s
tacit beliefs, better self-awareness and critical understanding of
social realities, all of which are necessary to incite social change
(Silvers, 2001).
CL Instructional Model: Toward an Integrated Approach
Informed by the aforementioned theories, I designed an

integrated CL instructional model (Figure 1). It was inspired by
Ada and Campoy’s work on reading process (2004), and some of
the concepts and terms used in their Creative Dialogue (Ada &
Campoy, 2004) were borrowed or adapted to address the theoretical
concerns discussed earlier.
8 S. M. C. Lau
FIGURE 1 An integrated CL instructional model.
Ada and Campoy’s (2004) Creative Dialogue is a reading

response model built on a four-phase interactive dialogue among
teachers and students, namely (a) Descriptive Phase, (b) Personal
Interpretive Phase, (c) Critical/Multicultural/Anti-bias Phase,
and (d) Creative/Transformative Phase. Even though they
stressed that the four phases do not necessarily proceed in a
linear fashion or occur separately, as the word “phase” can carry
those connotations, in my integrated CL model, I instead used the
word “dimension,” which highlights a more dynamic and fluid
relationship among the four aspects (depicted in the intersecting
circles of Figure 1). The circular arrows surrounding the
overlapping circles reiterate the important guiding principle of
the integrated CL work: self-reflexivity. The four dimensions are as
follows:
(1) The Textual dimension is used (in place of Ada and

Campoy’s Descriptive Phase, which focused on developing
“an understanding of the content of the book” (2004,
p. 82) to underline a more overt focus on the linguistic
structures and multimodal designs of different text types,
print or nonprint, and how they present and construct

certain messages. This is to ensure students’ mastery of
the dominant and other forms and modalities of
meaning-making (i.e., Cummins’ focus on language and
Janks’ access, diversity and design), which in turn will
facilitate their critique of ideological messages embedded
in different cultural texts.
(2) The Personal Dimension (similar to Ada and Campoy’s
Personal Interpretive Phase) is to encourage students to
weigh the text against their experiences, feelings and
emotions for critical reflection, which will foster self-
awareness and, in turn, generate greater potential for

change and social engagement (i.e., emotional engagement
and self-reflectiveness). It is also to allow students’ unique
voices to be heard as there can be plural, even
contradictory readings with the same textual structure
and content (i.e., Cummins’ focus on meaning and Janks’
diversity).
(3) The Critical Dimension (similar to the Critical/Multi-
cultural/Anti-bias Phase proposed by Ada and Campoy) is
to encourage critical examination of social issues
generated from reading the text (i.e., Cummins’ focus
on meaning and Janks’ domination or critique). But again,
the critical here is understood to intersect with the
personal and textual to take into account the personal
affective investments in textual receptions so that
students can personally relate to the issue or have a
better understanding of how textual productions
structure our likes and dislikes (Buckingham, 2003;
Misson, 1996; Misson & Morgan, 2006).
(4) The Creative/Transformative Dimension (much like Ada and
Campoy’s Creative/Transformative Phase) is to encourage
creative, constructive actions that address the social
realities discussed in classrooms, through a variety of
transformative literacy practices using different modalities
(i.e., design and diversity). Involving students in textual (re)
production, just like Cummins’ focus on use, will heighten
their awareness of how textual constructedness positions
individuals, and allow them to explore how their percep-
tions are shaped on the aesthetic level (Misson & Morgan,
10 S. M. C. Lau
2006, p. 224), which explains why it needs to intersect with

the textual, personal and critical dimensions as well.
Context for the Research
I came to know Ms. Li, a grade 7/8 ESL teacher, through a

university professor of one of the Master’s of Education courses
which Ms. Li took. Ms. Li was very interested in the idea of
collaborative research in second language literacy and saw it as a
professional development opportunity, since she had only started
teaching ESL a year prior. I volunteered in her classroom for a

year to get to know her, the ESL class and the school before
starting the project. Since Ms. Li had no prior experience in CL, I
took the lead in designing a working CL program based on the
integrated model and consulted her on an ongoing basis to
ensure alignment with the ministry’s curriculum expectations and
the school’s specific evaluation and assessment requirements. The
aim of the study was to explore how this integrated approach to
CL education would play out in her ESL classroom, particularly to
find out:
1. What curricular choices, power relations and identity options

(cf. Cummins, 2001; Janks, 2010) were available for the
teacher and the students using this approach?
2. What challenges, limitations and constraints did the teacher
and students face in the program, given the emphasis on self-
reflexivity and emotional engagement?
3. How, if at all, was students’ critical/literacy development
facilitated?
In line with the idea of self-reflexivity, I adopted a participatory

action research model (Kemmis, 2001; McTaggart, 1996) to
ground research in practice and practice in research, with cycles of
strategic planning, action, evaluation, and critical reflection. The
data-collection process lasted the entire school year. As an active
participant, I kept a research journal with detailed field notes on
Ms. Li’s and my teaching and interactions with the students. Apart
from audiotaping lessons, I had pre- and post-program interviews
with the teacher and student participants. While the teacher
interviews were all in English, those with the students were mainly
conducted in Mandarin and Cantonese. Ongoing regular formal
conversational interviews were also conducted with the teacher
and the students for collaborative reflection and communal reflection
(Rearick & Feldman, 1999). Their views on the substantive and
logistical matters of the CL program fed back into other sets of
data for gradual co-development of the CL program. This
dialogical data collection process was to ensure “reciprocity”
(Lather, 1986) for grounded and participatory theory building. I
also collected students’ work, including those assignments posted
on a class blog Ms. Li set up at the start of the program, along with
journals and exercises. All lesson and interview transcriptions,

field notes and students’ work were coded and analyzed with the
spiral process of describing, classifying, and interpreting
(Creswell, 2007).
Ms. Li’s school is located in a community populated by
recent immigrants from South and Southeast Asia. Almost 80%
of the student population had a primary language other than
English with most of the students of Chinese descent. Despite
the high Asian student population, however, only two of the
teaching staff were of Chinese descent (Ms. Li, and another who
was in fact Eurasian); the rest were English-speaking and/or
Caucasian. When that school year began, 12 students were
identified as in need of ESL support through a placement test
widely used in the district school board. Three other ESL
students joined the class later in the year after moving into the
neighborhood. They were all (except one) from mainland
China, with Mandarin and one other regional dialect as their
mother tongue. The other one was Vietnamese-Chinese who
spoke some Cantonese. Most of these students had been in
Canada for less than a year, with, according to the placement
test, a beginning to lower intermediate English proficiency level.
The students were withdrawn from their regular classrooms for
one to two 50-minute ESL periods per day.
As mentioned earlier, Ms. Li welcomed the collaborative
research opportunity. As a novice ESL teacher, she found that her
colleagues often questioned her professional ability, especially in
her placement of students in the ESL class: On what grounds did
she decide which students could get the ESL support? Why didn’t
she take in more students? Knowing that most of her colleagues
12 S. M. C. Lau
would not want to and/or did not know how to accommodate

ELLs in their subject areas, Ms. Li tried to support these teachers
by putting together teaching material for ELLs on different
subjects, but none of the teachers asked to use them in their own
classes. Ms. Li saw our collaboration as an opportunity to
consolidate her ESL teaching strategies, and perhaps to also raise
her profile at the school. Despite her eagerness, our initial
collaboration was not easy, especially because she was not used to
the integrated approach and felt the need to address each
language skill discretely (most of the time, out of context) in
order to submit marks on the students’ report cards (details are
discussed elsewhere in Lau, in press).
The CL Program
Since Ms. Li was new to CL, I took the lead in the curriculum
planning but consulted her on the school and provincial ESL
curriculum requirements on an ongoing basis, making changes
along the way in response to students’ needs. I usually went into
the classroom twice a week to co-teach with Ms. Li. We focused
mainly on the textual dimension in the first month to help
students master some basic classroom English and everyday
vocabulary enough to function in an English school environment.
We also set up a class blog where students could post poems and
short narratives written in class and to comment on each other’s
work. This was to ease them into the role of being active
participants in a collaborative learning community, a social
practice foreign to their prior exam- and teacher-oriented
learning experience. Reading, to most of them, was about
“cracking the code” and finding the right answers to teachers’
questions (often on the literal level). To help them benefit from a
collaborative learning environment, we focused our early efforts
on language scaffolds in constructing personal responses and
formulating opinions ( personal & textual dimensions).
As we moved forward, we introduced, in a progressive and
spiral manner, more complex reading processes, such as
predicting, inferencing, guessing meaning from context, sum-
marizing, identifying different perspectives, and generating
questions. We also engaged students in reading and producing

different text types (such as picture stories, photo stories, poems,
expository texts, and media texts), all the while making sure we
wove together the four dimensions—textual, personal, critical, and
creative/transformative—in a balanced way. We also chose topics
that were relevant to their social situations, such as stories of their
names and families, and immigration experiences to Canada,
especially the challenges of social adjustment, employment and
discrimination. To showcase the CL practices students engaged in
and their learning, along with the challenges of this expansive
program, I will focus on two vignettes:
Vignette 1: Anti-Bullying Campaign
One month into the program, the students began to relate stories
of being bullied at school to me and Ms. Li: “ . . . people would look
at me like some kind of an alien since I didn’t speak English”
(Terri), or “they would order us around like saying, ‘Hey, you, you
sit here, and you sit there’” (Yolanda). The following incident,
however, was what made us realize we needed to take action. The
class was reading the story The Name Jar (Choi, 2003) and discussing
the concept of “difference”—whether it was something they desired
or dreaded—as taken from the character in the story who wanted to
change her Korean name to an American one to fit in with her
English-speaking schoolmates. Melody firmly said “No” to my
question of whether she liked to be different, and added, “I’m ESL
student, too many people laugh at me.” She burst into tears and in
Mandarin and broken English shared what had happened before
lunch. She and Yolanda, another ELL, had been chatting in
Mandarin in the change room after gym class when a black
classmate strode over, slapped her in the face and accused her of
saying the “n” word. Neither Melody nor Yolanda understood what
the “n” word meant. Melody believed she had been bullied because
she was an ELL. Although they told the principal, who then
promised to investigate the situation, they were worried that with
their limited English they had not explained what had happened
clearly enough. Ms. Li reassured the girls that she would speak to
the principal again on their behalf, and I resumed our discussion
14 S. M. C. Lau
on difference as planned. At the time, I chose not to invoke

Melody’s experience for two reasons: I was concerned that the
situation was too raw and volatile to be useful as teaching material,
and earlier Ms. Li had explained that we needed to submit marks
for the impending first report card, which made me feel pressured
to move on to the next task. Looking back, I know I lost a valuable
teachable moment; commending Melody and Yolanda for stepping
forward with their story could have engaged the students in an even
more meaningful discussion on difference and discrimination,
especially the sociopolitical implications of the “n” word and
the pain and anger it can conjure.4
Ms. Li and I did get together later to discuss the ESL

students’ situation among the student body, the severity of the
bullying and what action we could take. We found that the ELLs,
especially the girls, felt a strong sense of helplessness and shame
(Rockhill & Tomic, 1995) about their perceived lack of English
abilities, and reluctance to seek help when bullied. Ms. Li and I
decided to insert a unit on bullying into our original program to
help students understand what bullying is: what forms it takes,
why people bully, and what roles people play in a bullying
incident. Students explored alternative ways to deal with bullies,
and learned to critically examine the issue of discrimination and
cultural differences and reflect on their own assumptions.
We used Marianthe’s Story (Brandenberg, 1998) as our
springboard for discussion. The book consists of two combined
stories, “Painted Words” and “Spoken Memories.” “Painted
Words” is about Marianthe, a new arrival in America, who
struggles with English and bullying at school. To express herself,
she paints and draws pictures to illustrate her family history,
memories of her homeland and the events that brought her family
to the new country (“Spoken Memories”). In addition to the
4
I later talked to an English-speaking friend of mine who worked in China for some time
and encountered a similar experience of misunderstanding. In Mandarin, the phrase”那
个” (meaning “that one,” pronounced as nèi gè) is often used as a filler in conversation. My
friend guessed that the black student could have mistaken Melody’s saying nèi gè as using
the n-word. By the time I came to know about this, we had already finished the bullying
unit. I explained this to Ms. Li, Melody and Yolanda, and later the vice-principal as well as
the black student involved in the incident. After some time, the conflict between Melody
and that student seemed to have resolved as Melody later told me that they were then on
good terms.
language focus (the use of past tense), we also incorporated

reading strategies to deepen students’ understanding (textual and
personal dimensions). We employed bookmarking techniques
(adapted from McLaughlin & Allen, 2002) whereby the students
used symbols to indicate the parts of the text they found
interesting, confusing, or that they connected with personally
(Lau, 2010). This helped students monitor their comprehension.
Another reading strategy was the commonly used personal-
response question format: text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-
world (Trehearne, 2006). The concepts encouraged the students
to relate what they read to their personal experiences, to another
text for comparison, and to issues in the world. While reading

Marianthe’s Story, we based our discussions on the bookmarks and
the connections students made with the text. Also, to facilitate
discussion and understanding, students needed the language to
discuss the social processes of bullying and to name strategies they
could use against it (M. J. Botelho, personal communication,
November 30, 2007). Hence, following Christensen’s (2001)
Acting for Justice work with her students, we used the role categories
of a) target, (b) bully, (c) bystander, (d) intervener, and (e) perpetrator
(McKenna, 1999) to help the students understand what bullying is
and what roles people play in a bullying incident (textual, personal
& critical dimensions).
After studying “Painted Words,” the students were asked to
individually write about a bullying incident they had encountered
or witnessed, after which they gathered in small groups and chose
one of their stories to analyze using the identified role categories
(e.g., target, bystander, perpetrator) and brainstormed alternate
actions, such as reporting, ignoring or intervening. They then
rewrote the story together showing a more proactive approach to
the incident (creative/transformative dimension). Table 1 shows an
excerpt from Terri’s original story (Terri) and how it was revised
in the small group.
Terri’s group related an incident that occurred in French class:
one of Terry’s classmates deliberately broke her pencil when he
should have given it back to her. In the revised version, Terri is
portrayed as an assertive person who does not tolerate being bullied
but demands the other student treat her respectfully. Note that this
group identified the bully as “a black people.” A pattern appeared
among this group of ELLs whereby they consistently used
16 S. M. C. Lau
TABLE 1 Creative/transformative rewriting of the self—from a bully victim to an

agent of change
Original version Revised version (X ¼ the bully, T ¼ Terri)
Last year when I was grade 7. In X: Yo! Give me your pencil!!! I don’t have pencil for
my class had a black people. He the french test.
always bullied at the ELLs. He T: (T scare by X and uncomfortable, give the pencil to
always talk to his friend “ESL are X . . . X not said anything, just go back to her seat.
stupid, why we have so many ESL After the French class, T try to ask X to give back the
in our class!!!” His friend never pencil.
said anything but he never stop T: Can.. can.. can you give me back my pencil? (X give
him also. I remember one time the pencil to T but the pencil is brock.
in French class he wanted to T: excuse me, you broke my pencil!!!
borrow my pencil, I let him
X: So?
borrow it. But after the French T: I will tell the teacher.
class, I told my friend to ask him X: Fine. Sorry (said very uncomfortable)
to give me back the pencil. He
break my pencil, give back to me
and just go away.
derogatory terms when referring to their black classmates (while

using neutral terms for nonblack students, such as “classmates”).
I will discuss how I confronted their prejudices in detail in the next
vignette about “uncomfortable conversations.”
Following the rewriting of a bullying incident by all the small
groups, students practiced different possible English phrases to
respond to bullies, such as “Cut it out!”, “Grow up!”, “That’s not
cool,” “Stay away from me!” or “Leave me alone!”, using the
appropriate tone of voice. Students also designed posters for an
anti-bullying campaign, incorporating media literacy skills (e.g., the
use of space, colors, and the textual and visual narratives to convey
messages) to target a specific audience, whether it was the bully, the
bystander or the target (details can be found in Lau, 2012). Ms. Li
and I understood that unless the school administration also stepped
in to help combat bullying, our in-class efforts would be futile, so we
negotiated with the administration to hold a Lunch and Learn
Professional Development (PD) session for the staff. Several ELLs
presented their own version of “Spoken Memories”—their lives
before and after moving to Canada. Hearing these students
describe their personal stories and encounters with bullying
inspired the teachers to think of ways to help these students’ social
and cultural adjustment at school (creative/transformative dimension).
Following the PD session, a science teacher emailed Ms. Li to

say she was now more sensitive to the needs of the ELLs in her
class and had adjusted her instruction. Ordinarily she would give
them a different assignment (often simplified) from the rest of
the class. However, for one particular assignment, she gave the
ELLs the option of partaking in the project along with everyone
else. All the ELLs chose to do the assignment. To ensure their
comfort, the teacher let them discuss and write their work in
Chinese before handing in the final version in English. The
teacher wrote this email to Ms. Li about the results:
. . . Today, Melody and Chicken showed up with the COMPLETED

EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH . . . totally typed and everything answered. I
was shocked . . . basically over the last couple of days, they had translated
everything on the sheet (must have taken forever!) and wrote it out in
their own words. I was so proud of them that I showed the rest of 7D and
everyone clapped!!! I think it was really important for their class to see that
ELLs are capable of doing everything (and in this case—so much better!)
than English-speaking students. If only their class would give them a
chance . . . sigh.
The PD session brought to light the bullying situation faced by the

ELLs, which inspired a greater sensitivity in this science teacher to
adjust her instruction of ELLs to a competence model that focused
on the resources they could bring to the class rather than on their
lack. It was a pity though, as she expressed in the email, that not all
their English-speaking peers held this positive image of the ELL
classmates.
Vignette 2: Uncomfortable Conversations
Not only did the integrated CL program engage students in

objective ideological analyses of social issues, but it also encouraged
personal reflection on their emotional investment in these issues as
a response to the poststructuralist/feminist call for a greater degree
of self-reflexivity and emotional engagement in CL education.
When exploring the issue of bullying, we critically discussed its
causes, its impact and ways to combat it (textual, critical and creative/
transformative dimensions). However, we also endeavored to engage
students emotionally: What were their feelings and perceptions of
18 S. M. C. Lau
cultural differences and stereotypes, and how did these feelings

impact their attitude and behavior toward other social groups? In
our discussions, we reinforced the idea that feelings and attitudes
were valid responses and there was no “right” answer.
As we invited students to make personal connections and
share their stories, we found there was no lack of, to borrow
Tolentino’s (2007) term, “uncomfortable conversations.” When
one of Tolentino’s class discussions on race issues became heated
and emotional (minority students felt their voices had been
appropriated and the white students experienced guilt), Tolentino
was caught off guard, unprepared to deal with such an
uncomfortable moment.
In our case, the conversations became “uncomfortable”
because of the disagreements in class, when neither side wanted
to give up its stance, often because of a strong emotional
investment in the issue. When this happened, sometimes the
dialogues closed off and irrational mudslinging ensued. They also
were “uncomfortable” because, as teachers, we often felt in those
situations that we were pushed to walk the thin line between
guiding students to come to a rational realization of their blind
spots and imposing our own point of view. We wondered about
how to conduct class discussions in such a way that no individuals
would feel hurt and that everyone could learn something
meaningful in the process.
During our reading of “Painted Words” in which a character
is teased by classmates, I invited students to share their own
unpleasant experiences. James suddenly accused Jerry (the only
Vietnamese in class) of spreading a rumor about James’s love
affair with another girl in the class. Jerry insisted that it was the
truth, not a rumor, and this started some finger pointing between
the two (fortunately the girl was not in class that day). Everyone
watched the argument, but when the boys tried to rally support
from their classmates, the students averted their eyes. James
started to list the things Jerry did that he thought were
inconsiderate and mean, and soon the tension escalated. Jerry,
in his defense, blurted out what he thought was the root cause for
James’ accusations—his discrimination against Vietnamese:
Jerry: He know me, Vietnamese people, . . . and he don’t like all

Vietnamese people.
The whole class was quiet, waiting for me and Ms. Li to respond. I
asked James if the accusation was true. James thought for a moment
and said:
James: Because I heard Vietnamese people, they are like . . . I don’t know
how to say it.
Sunny: In Chinese?
James: 無家教 (wú jiā jiào, lacking in family education or upbringing)5
Sunny: They are not polite?
James: (nodding)
Both Ms. Li and I had not anticipated conversations like this,

especially during discussions about stereotyping and racism. There
were times when the whole class was in solidarity, as if it were “Us
against Them”—the ESL class (the target) against the rest of the
school (the bully). With such complicated subject matter, our hope
had been to guide the students to self-reflection, showing how their
biased assumptions or attitudes might affect their own behavior
toward their peers. When the argument between James and Jerry
broke out, on one hand, we were glad they felt safe enough to be
honest with us and were making personal connections with our
reading. On the other hand, we felt disappointed that despite our
discussions on bullying and its global debilitating impact, these
discussions did not immediately bring about self-reflection or
change at the personal level. Everyone is implicated in complex
power structures—being the oppressed in one locale while being the
oppressor in another—yet the irony that these ELLs could them-
selves be bullies in a different context was not yet apparent to them.
What was apparent to me, particularly after not seizing the
opportunity to use Melody’s “n-word” incident as a teachable
moment, was that Ms. Li and I needed to address this incident
headlong. I pointed out to James that he was making a sweeping
generalization about Vietnamese people; Ms. Li then added that
she had several close friends who were Vietnamese. I asked James
on what grounds he was making his claim against Vietnamese
people, and he repeated the things Jerry did that he thought were
socially inappropriate. I then invited Jerry to speak up for himself
5
Confucianism places a great emphasis on the role of the family in providing guidance
and training to ones’ character and moral development. Chinese people tend to view one’s
ill-mannered or socially inappropriate behaviour as a failure of the family in providing such
crucial education.
20 S. M. C. Lau
and explain the reasons he had behaved as such in the hopes that
the two would resolve their misunderstanding. My chief concern
during the discussion was how to help the students turn inward
and interrogate their assumptions and yet to prevent them from
feeling “cornered” and becoming defensive or feeling they had to
comply because of pressure from the teacher.
In the end, the two struck a tenuous peace, but it remained
unclear as to whether it was genuine or whether it was to placate me.
Ms. Li divulged to me later her relief that we had tackled this issue.
The rift between Jerry and some students in the class had been
growing, and Jerry was becoming increasingly isolated during group
work. This was not to say that Jerry was completely innocent, but
until this discussion we had not been aware that such prevalent racist
assumptions about Jerry existed among the group.
Another example of a similar difficult conversation
concerned the way these ELLs identified their bullies. Only this
time, I felt discomfort not just from confronting the students’
biases but also my own. I noticed that the ELLs often used the
term “black people” in English, or 黑人(black people) or 黑鬼 (black
ghosts)6 in Chinese, which is a derogatory term, to identify their
black classmates, while using neutral terms like “a classmate” or
“some students” for students of other racial backgrounds. This is
also shown in the students’ work earlier in Table 1.
One day, after Terri repeated the term “black people,” I asked
the class why they would identify their bullies’ race if they were
black. Initially, Terri simply said because they were black.
However, she was not able to explain why she would not do the
same if it were a bully of another color. After some probing, she
finally blurted out (italics show original speech in Cantonese):
Terri: My mom said black people are horrible . . . My mom would say if you
have nothing to do with them, they would have nothing to do with you. Other adults
would say, don’t go near them, if you mess with them, they will beat you up.
6
The term Gweilo (鬼佬), literally meaning “ghost man”, was a Cantonese slang to
describe Europeans who first appeared in China. The term is often translated into English
as foreign devil which carries a racially derogatory meaning. It is partly to describe the
“strange” looks of Caucasians: their pale skin and green or blue eyes and secondly, their
invasion of the mainland and the destruction brought to the country. The word “ghost”
(鬼) has since taken on the general meaning of foreigner. The term “Black ghost” carries
the same level of despise.
I drew their attention to the disparity in their use of terms and

pointed out how highlighting the ethnicity of these classmates and
not others was essentializing black students as bullies and trouble
makers. Terri agreed this naming practice was not fair to the black
students and it was a form of discrimination as well, but she added
quickly and emphatically in Cantonese: “But it was them who
discriminate against us first.” Terri’s personal experience of being
bullied reinforced her negative beliefs and feelings toward her
black peers, even though rationally she knew that was discrimi-
nation. I reminded Terri that bullying took many forms, one of
which was name-calling, and that if she was against bullying, she
should not be doing it herself. She thought for a while then nodded
hesitantly.
I did not pursue the issue; expecting an immediate shift in
her beliefs or feelings about black people would be unrealistic.
But though I had had this minor breakthrough with Terri, I was
unsure how much the students overall had absorbed from this
lesson or whether it would translate into any changes in their
attitudes. All the while, I was feeling uneasy; I myself have
thoughtlessly used the term Gweilo (鬼佬, “ghost man” or “ghost
devil”) to describe Caucasians, thinking that because it was so
widely used, it was not as discriminatory as the term “black ghosts.”
I did not share this with my students or Ms. Li, however, but
continued the class discussion as if prejudice were solely the
students’ problem. I was not ready to admit my own prejudices
and open up to the group, but I often wondered what would have
happened if I had. Perhaps admitting to my own limitations
would have helped the students better understand the hegemonic
effect of the normativization of this othering discourse and
opened up the discussion yet further into more intimate,
thoughtful territory. Or it could have discredited my moral
authority, hence undermining the very lesson I had worked so
hard to impart.
Findings and Discussions
The two vignettes above illustrate how the integrated CL program

played out in a beginning ESL classroom. Here are some of the
findings:
22 S. M. C. Lau
Integrated CL feature: Social research on students’ real issues
While we were teaching, Ms. Li and I continually asked ourselves

what possibilities there were for students in terms of their learning
the linguistic features as well as the critical reading and writing
processes. Our focus in the first month or so was more on the textual
and personal dimensions, which was beneficial in helping students
adjust to having open class discussions and formulating personal
responses and arguments. As we moved on, students became more
and more engaged in critical discussions and explorations of
alternative ways to deal with social issues they read in stories that
reflected their own situations (critical & creative/transformative

dimensions). The unit on bullying showed their meaningful
exploration of the issue through literacy learning and practices
that crisscrossed the four dimensions—textual, personal, critical, and
creative/transformative. We used students’ experiences and concerns
as a guide for our emergent curriculum (Auerbach, 1995) so they
could read, talk, and write meaningfully about their unique cross-
cultural experiences and struggles as immigrant ELLs. All the
curricular and instructional choices of this unit reflected a positive
and affirming attitude toward ELLs (Cummins, 2001); they were
positioned as autonomous, competent learners who through a
dialogic process of exploration and action on their social realities
gradually came to use the target language in a meaningful way to
effect change in their immediate environment. We invited them to
take action to combat bullying by rewriting a bullying incident they
witnessed or experienced, and through re-imagining and re-
presenting themselves as assertive and articulate combatants of
bullies, they came to inhabit the social position of an agent of
change. This momentary rupture in the dominant deficit discourse
of ELLs allowed them to come to see the possibility of change, even
if only on the personal level rather than on a larger social level
(Kamler, 2001). Terri commented that the class discussions helped
her regain her “voice” to negotiate her identity as a conversant and
strong individual among her peers:
Terri: It helps me to speak back . . . it is also good that now others know that I can
speak.7
7
Words in italics show utterance originally spoken in either Cantonese or Mandarin.
Melody, on the other hand, learned something about

herself and began to reflect critically on her past attitudes and
behaviors:
Melody: Now I am bullied, but back in China, it was always me who bullied others.
Now I finally learned to look at things from other people’s perspective . . . It’s
devastating.
Through engaging their English language learning in real issues,

and using a shared language to name and challenge the process,
students gained a sense of efficacy.
Integrated CL feature: Emotional engagement and self-reflexivity
Of course, not all students in the program were able to articulate

personal reflections and learning like Terri and Melody did, nor was
their growth consistent. This was reflected in some of the
“uncomfortable conversations,” such as James’ racist remarks of
his Vietnamese classmate, or Terri’s and other students’ use of labels
to essentialize their black classmates as trouble makers and bullies.
However, those moments were valuable exactly because they were
difficult, forcing us to cast a critical look at all our assumptions and
not just analyze a social issue from a distance. Those moments also
pushed Ms. Li and me to deal with the emotional dynamics of the
class when students encountered less honorable aspects of
themselves. It also pushed me to be more reflective of what I
preach and what I practice. As Tolentino (2007) concluded,
“learning comes in the cracks when we are open and willing to deal
with the uncomfortable conversations, the unpredictable questions,
and the spontaneous outbursts” (p. 50).
Integrated CL impact: Changed conception of CL and role

of an ESL teacher
Many students at the end of the program still expressed fear when
it came to intervening in a bullying act. Bullying is an emotionally
charged issue; there is no easy answer. It required a stronger effort
at the school level to combat bullying. Those who attended the
24 S. M. C. Lau
Lunch and Learn PD session did come to see the urgency to

advocate for ELLs and need to change their usual approach to
teaching ELLs. The science teacher, for example, instead of
removing cognitively challenging tasks from her ELLs,
capitalized on their first language and cultural resources to
encourage them to complete their earthquake projects. The unit
also had a great impact on Ms. Li’s perception of herself as an ESL
teacher:
Ms. Li: I think now that I begin to see myself more of an advocate, I enjoy
the role more. Before I enjoyed working with ELLs, but putting issues
to the forefront, it becomes more personally rewarding . . . and
because . . . I want the other teachers to know . . . to be concerned with

the ELLs. They can’t forget them and leave them at the back of the
classroom . . .
In a later interview, Ms. Li expressed a changed conception of CL

with beginning ELLs:
Ms. Li: I’ve been worried about the beginners, but it’ll be interesting to see
what they can [do].. I think my answer is more positive about whether
beginners can do CL work, and it’d been interesting to see what they
came up with . . .
Integrated CL impact: Students’ critical/literacy development
In terms of students’ mastery of language features and critical/

literacy development, a steady improvement was evident in their
class participation and assignments, some of which was shown in
the two vignettes. In the end-of-program interview, I asked
students to use a 10-point scale to evaluate their change in
confidence level of their English abilities and their perceived
growth in overall language skills (critical reading, writing, and
production processes). Most reported a significant growth in
both aspects. Melody’s reply to my follow-up interview as shown at
the beginning of this article captured what the students most
valued in this program: their full participation in this learning
community, not just as beginning ELLs but also as competent
researchers and active agents of change of their own social
conditions.
Conclusions and Implications
The two vignettes described in this article, though not capturing

students’ growth in the later modules, do give a glimpse of the CL
practices and learning in which they took part. The study showed
that with careful language scaffolds and guidance as well as
classroom structures and conditions that facilitate open and
critical discussions of real student concerns, beginning ELLs were
quite capable of cognitively challenging literacy work. They
started as passive language learners, reading and writing to find
the “correct” answer. As the program progressed and as they
became more involved in reading and writing about real life

issues, they came to understand that literacy is about formulating,
evaluating and questioning opinions. It is about participa-
tion in a learning community which they have the responsibility
to shape and transform to make it a more just and equitable
environment.
One question that often arises is, “At what age or grade level
can students be introduced to CL?” This question reflects a linear
and segregated view of literacy development: that the cognitive
processes are separable from the social, and that a higher level of
literacy skills has to be attained before one can be introduced to
CL. We cannot engage students in “simplistic and reductive”
learning, thinking that the “more complex and sophisticated”
(Comber, 2001b) will come later. Literacy is primarily a social
practice (Gee, 1996; Luke & Freebody, 1997). Through engage-
ment in literacy practices that value depth of understanding,
dialogic reasoning, and responsible expression of personal
opinions, students in this study were gradually acculturated into
talking, reading, and writing with a critical orientation. Hence,
what we should rather ask ourselves is whether we are providing
the classroom conditions and social structures as well as modeling
practices that foster student learning geared toward helping these
students to gradually become critical language users.
In practicing CL with students, “uncomfortable conversa-
tions” do arise, (Tolentino, 2007); however, it is often these “real”
responses that reflect students’ immediate needs and concerns.
The CL practice should not just be about getting students to
analyze social issues as purely an intellectual exercise (Luke, 1997).
Involving students on the emotional level to discuss how their
26 S. M. C. Lau
desires and fears shape their beliefs and attitudes toward

certain social issues is equally significant. Emotional engagement
and self-reflexivity should always be integral to CL education, not
just for students but also for the teachers, who should also be
challenged to confront their own values and learn alongside
their students.
As the program progressed, Ms. Li’s attitude towards CL with
beginning students changed from skeptical to positive. She even
began to see herself more as an advocate for ELLs and expressed
greater confidence in her ability to speak out on their behalf. As
Vasquez (2004) pointed out, teachers need to experience what CL
practices are and how they affect their students before they feel
safe to practice them themselves. Therefore, there should be
more participatory classroom research between university-based
researchers and classroom teachers to capture the detailed accounts
of innovative CL practices in their particular material and cultural
locations and circumstances, which is what Comber (2001a) has
been calling for. This article is in part a response to such a call and
the hope is that it will serve as an invitation, if not an inspiration, to
other educators to encourage them to try similar engagements with
their students, whether ELLs or not, and take them on such a
politically and educationally significant learning journey.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the teacher and students involved
in this project as well as Jim Cummins, Antoinette Gagné, and
Maria José Botelho for their guidance throughout the research study.
She is especially grateful to Sarah Benesch, Ryuko Kubota, Elizabeth
Miller, Avril Aitken, and Jenna Kalinsky for their invaluable comments
and support in writing this article.
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A Study of Critical Literacy Lau 2013

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney]

On: 08 July 2013, At: 23:35

Critical Inquiry in Language

A Study of Critical Literacy

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2013.753841

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

A STUDY OF CRITICAL LITERACY WORK WITH BEGINNING

SUNNY MAN-CHU LAU

This article reports some main findings of a year-long participatory action

What I like is when we . . . work together, we won’t have any negative

Melody1 was one of the grade 7 English language learners (ELLs)

I conducted in a middle school in the northeast area of Toronto.

participatory action research on CL work with beginning ELLs,

with those for CL education (Eastman, 1998; Perkins, 1998).

engaged in critical discussions on bullying through an integrated

Cummins’ Academic Expertise Framework

Cummins’ (2001) Academic Expertise Framework was drawn on

The Academic Expertise Framework hence proposes three

Janks’ Synthesis Model of CL

Further informing this research was Janks’ (2000, 2010) synthesis

Janks (2010) argued that this kind of ideological critique,

for ELLs’ mastery of mainstream academic language and

rich opportunities on the three areas of language, meaning, and

Both Cummins’ (2001) and Janks’ (2010) approaches to ESL/CL

texts—their pleasures, desires, and identification. However, as

self-reflexivity (Ellsworth, 1992; Gore, 1992; Lather, 1992); instead of

CL Instructional Model: Toward an Integrated Approach

Informed by the aforementioned theories, I designed an

FIGURE 1 An integrated CL instructional model.

Ada and Campoy’s (2004) Creative Dialogue is a reading

(1) The Textual dimension is used (in place of Ada and

print or nonprint, and how they present and construct

awareness and, in turn, generate greater potential for

2006, p. 224), which explains why it needs to intersect with

Context for the Research

I came to know Ms. Li, a grade 7/8 ESL teacher, through a

teaching ESL a year prior. I volunteered in her classroom for a

1. What curricular choices, power relations and identity options

In line with the idea of self-reflexivity, I adopted a participatory

journals and exercises. All lesson and interview transcriptions,

would not want to and/or did not know how to accommodate

discussed elsewhere in Lau, in press).

questions. We also engaged students in reading and producing

Vignette 1: Anti-Bullying Campaign

on difference as planned. At the time, I chose not to invoke

Ms. Li and I did get together later to discuss the ESL

language focus (the use of past tense), we also incorporated

text for comparison, and to issues in the world. While reading

TABLE 1 Creative/transformative rewriting of the self—from a bully victim to an

derogatory terms when referring to their black classmates (while

Following the PD session, a science teacher emailed Ms. Li to

. . . Today, Melody and Chicken showed up with the COMPLETED

The PD session brought to light the bullying situation faced by the

Vignette 2: Uncomfortable Conversations

Not only did the integrated CL program engage students in

cultural differences and stereotypes, and how did these feelings

Jerry: He know me, Vietnamese people, . . . and he don’t like all

Both Ms. Li and I had not anticipated conversations like this,

I drew their attention to the disparity in their use of terms and

Findings and Discussions

The two vignettes above illustrate how the integrated CL program

Integrated CL feature: Social research on students’ real issues

While we were teaching, Ms. Li and I continually asked ourselves