The symbolic power of print literacy among somali immigrant youth
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Part of the 2013 AAAL Colloquium on Low-Literate and Adult L2 Learners
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The symbolic power of print literacy among somali immigrant youth
- 1. The symbolic power of print literacy among Somali immigrant youth Martha Bigelow & Kendall A. King University of Minnesota (Dallas, March 2013)
- 2. Thanks to: O Nicole Pettitt (Georgia State University) O Kathleen Mitchell (University of Minnesota) Bigelow & King 2
- 3. Objectives O Illustrate how processes across timescales of multiple decades shape everyday classroom interactions; O Examine relationships between the symbolic power of Somali print literacy and current classroom dynamics; O demonstrate how these shape how Somali adolescents see themselves and others as Bigelow & King 3 learners.
- 4. Timescales O are ‘spatiotemporal envelopes’ within which a particular process develops (Wortham, 2004; Lemke, 2000); O vary in duration; O highlight the ways in which all phenomena are both constrained and made possible as a result of processes which are part of multiple timescales. Bigelow & King 4
- 5. Somali Diaspora O Bigelow & King 5 http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/somalias-global-diaspora-0022000
- 6. Being Somali in the Diaspora O feeling of connectedness to the nation state of Somalia and the imagined community (Anderson, 1983) of Somalis; O affinities are mediated in part via interpersonal technology (e.g., cell phones) and new media (e.g., www.hiiraan.com); O intensive language contact and shift, but connections to a wide variety of texts and scripts for centuries. Bigelow & King 6
- 7. Timescales relevant to Somali literacy practices O colonization and post-colonial nation-building; O the development, standardization and spread of a unified, Romanized Somali script (1972); O civil war and refugee experiences; O U.S. language education policy Bigelow & King 7
- 8. Methodology & Context O Four months of classroom-focused ethnographic research
- 9. Methodology & Context O Two newcomer reading classes O Teacher: Ms. Mavis O Data: O 5 hrs. of interviews O 59 hrs. of video-taped classroom observation O 44 hrs. of tutoring sessions O informal assessments of English / Somali skills O Two focus students: Ayan and Saiful
- 10. “Saiful” O Better picture? Bigelow & King 10
- 11. “Ayan”
- 12. Authority as a Somali ‘expert’ Bigelow & King 12
- 13. Excerpt 1 (March 14, 2011) 1 Ms. Mavis: Where did Anasi plant the beans? 2 Ms. Mavis: Where did he plant the beans? In the -> (gesturing digging motion) 3 Luis Alberto:Garden. 4 Ms. Mavis: In the garden. But there’s another word -> sounds a little bit like garden it starts with a ‘g’ -> (writing ‘g’ on document projector) Starts with a ‘g’ ‘r’ ‘gr’ -> (making grrr sound) 5 Ms. Mavis: Ground:: 6 Students: Ground. 7 Ms. Mavis: Can you say ground? (looking around to left side of room) 8 Students: Ground. 9 Ms. Mavis: Ground:: 10 Ms. Mavis: Sengchanh. How do you spell ground? (poised to take dictation) 11 Sengchanh: inaudible 12 Ms. Mavis: Very good. Ground. 13 Ms. Mavis: (pause) You can plant many things in the ground? Correct? Yea. Ground is like la tierra. (this is her translations of ground in Spanish) How do you say ground in Somali? (looking in Saiful’s direction) 14 Ms. Mavis: Ground or dirt? (walking toward Saiful and sweeping desk) How do you say ground in Somali? 15 Ayan: Dur Dur (loudly) 16 Ms. Mavis: Dur? Dur? Floor or ground? 17 Ayan: inaudible 18 Ms. Mavis: Dur? 19 Ms. Mavis: So is dur floor or ground? (walking towards Saiful making eye contact) 20 Saiful: Dur is the earth. 21 Ms. Mavis: Dur dur. OK. Sounds like dirt. Bigelow & King 13
- 14. Saiful’s role as English ‘expert’ Excerpt 2 (March 1, 2011) [play silently, min 1) Bigelow & King 14
- 15. Discussion O Multiple historical timescales at play O development of Somali script O uneven access to print (civil war, collapse of formal schooling and refugee camp conditions) O Brief interactions O sedimentation of identities O demonstrate issues of authenticity Bigelow & King 15
- 16. Conclusion O informal classroom language policy can enact hierarchies within language groups; O value of O welcoming welcoming any Somali lexical equivalent of an English word; O student fieldwork into dialect and register diversity; O print literacy often the result of gendered social practices that disadvantage girls. Bigelow & King 16
Editor's Notes
- The data we’ll share illustrate how global processes, some of which have developed across timescales of multiple decade, shape everyday classroom interactions. In particular: we explore the dynamic relationship between the symbolic power of Somali print literacy, on the one hand, and current classroom politics on the other. These findings demonstrate how the history of the Somali script and the symbolic power of Somali script shape how Somali adolescents see themselves and others as learners and individuals.
- Understanding current Somali language and identity practices mandates examination of multiple timescales. As Wortham (2004, p. 166) explains, a timescale is a ‘spatiotemporal envelope’ within which a particular process develops. Multiple, overlapping timescales are relevant in analyzing present-day Somali language and literacy practices, and these vary widely in duration.For instance, colonization and post-colonial nation-building unfolds across a very lengthy timescale of hundreds of years.In turn, the development, standardization and spread of a unified, Romanized Somali script took place within a spatiotemporal envelop of just four decades. Whileindividuals develop their capacities and dispositions, and live out their lives, across an ontogenetic timescale of multiple decades. Particular schools or classrooms develop collective practices or over briefer, intermediate timescales such as several months or several years. And specific events, such as classroom negotiations for meaning, take place across even shorter timescales of just a few minutes. Timescales are useful here b/c they highlight the ways in which all phenomena are both constrained and made possible as a result of processes which are part of multiple timescales. Here, for instance, what it means to be a Somali youth is the product of both widely circulating, global discourses across the diaspora, but also locally enacted through individual agency.Futher, timescales brings to light the fact that learning cannot be separated from social positioning, with the curriculum affording “opportunities for identification, and social positioning affect[ing] who learns what”
- As you v. likely know, there are hundreds of thousands of Somalis living outside of SomaliaThere are big Diaspora communities in the Horn of Africa and Yemen, the Gulf States, Western Europe and North America. Numbers are contested --- point is that huge numbers in diasporaLarge-scale Somali migration started in 1991 due to civil war. The on-going lack of political stability in Somali has contributed to continual migration and generations of children who grow up or were born in the Diaspora. Minnesotais home to one of the largest Somali communities in in the U.S.; recent census data reports 32,000 Somali residents (U.S. Census, 2011) although community estimates are much higher.
- The concept of Diaspora has come to have local meaning for Somalis living in different countries. At the same time the sudden creation of so many large Diaspora communities unifies many (not all) Somalis in many places of the world.By this we refer to afeeling of connectedness to the nation state of Somalia and the imagined community (Anderson, 1983) of Somalis. It is imagined in the sense that it is not a concrete, actual community but rather an abstract community, an affinity with other Somalis around the world. These affinities are mediated in part via interpersonal technology (e.g., cell phones) and new media, which connect Somalis through multilingual and interactive websites such as www.hiiraan.com. Somali youth in Minnesota are part of a larger phenomenon of transnationalism that brings with it substantial dialect diversity, intensive language contact with non-Somali languages, and as a result, a language mixing and change.While the dissemination of the Somali script is a recent phenomenon of the last few decades, Somalis have had deep connections to a rich variety of texts for centuries
- SO number of processes, unfolding across timescales of different durations, are relevant to present day Somali literacy practices.+++One is the development of formal schooling within contextcolonization and post-colonial nation-building: Formal education varied widely across rural and urban areas, and depending on location, was deeply influenced by British or Italian colonial powers and languages, Qur’anic schooling or pastoral traditions. Also critical is the particular trajectory of the development of Somali, and the officialization of the Somali Roman script, which began 40 years ago. In 1972, SiadBarre’s government decreed that Somali would be written using the Roman script. Following that decision, large numbers of individuals engaged in basic literacy teaching and learning across the country. Nevertheless, access to formal schooling remained uneven, and, adoption of the Roman system was not universal, nor uncontroversial. The third historical timescale of importance here is the disintegration of Somali state and school system: As the country slid into civil war, formal schooling was suspended in the 1990s. Children born after this time in the country have never had consistent access to formal schooling. For the many refugees who spent years in camps, schooling was at best sporadic, and often excluded girls.Other timescales based in the U.S. are important too, including the development of U.S. language education policy, which has failed to give consistent attention to students’ first languages.
- Data were collected in a newcomer high school context over four months. All research was conducted in a mid-size U.S. city with a large Somali population, and at one centrally located urban high school: Franken International. All students at Franken International were English language learners who came to the U.S. as adolescents or young adults. For many, Franken International was their first encounter with formal schooling. Students ranged in age from 14 to 21, and the majority had either Somali or Spanish as a first language, although there were also speakers of Oromo, Amharic, Vietnamese, Lao, French, Hmong, and Nepalese. Franken International, the year of the study, had ten full-time teaching staff and enrolled about 150 students, 90% of whom are eligible for free or reduced price lunch
- We did intensive participant observation (2-4 days a week) in two English-as-a-second-language (ESL) reading classes, both taught by Ms. Mavis, who valued students’ languages and cultures, focused on developmental reading skillsDATA consisted OFIn order to illustrate how historical processes developing across multiple-decade timescales shape individual language and literacy practices, we’ll next present abbreviated case profiles of two students in Ms. Mavis’ class: Saiful and Ayan, and then look closely a few classroom interactions.Martha will tell you about them…
- Saiful had been in the U.S. for only seven months. He came directly from a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Saiful’s first language was Somali, although he also spoke a little Oromo.. Saiful reportedly attended school for ten years prior to coming to the U.S., and our native-language assessments supported this. His informal literacy testing in Somali indicated that he was very competent in reading and writing in Somali . Occasionally, his notebooks or backs of worksheets had short notes written in Somali. His free writing /essays stressed the importance of education and religion. At age 19, he was one of the older students. Saiful had a serious, quiet, and respectful demeanor in class, and was always neatly dressed. He was usually focused and on task, frequently providing the answer the teacher was looking for. He often finished his work before other students and was eager to have it checked by teacher (or by us). Nearly all of the work we examined was complete, accurate, and had comments of ‘Good!’ by Ms. Mavis. Saiful frequently helped other students in class and frequently provided answers that the teacher was looking for.
- Ayan is in her second year in Ms. Mavis’ introductory English class, yet her English writing skills and productive oral skills were among the weakest in the class. She had been in the U.S. for one year and this was her first formal schooling experience. Ayan frequently sought support from us, the teacher, and fellow students. Her manner of dress was often flamboyant, with bright and sparkling hijabs and dresses. She was casual and creative in her ways of veiling, which resulted in frequent adjustments of her headscarf. This was one of many ways Ayan’s bodily movement was noticeable. Ayan also struggled to stay in her desk, and seemed to fidget non-stop.. She was often the target of Ms. Mavis’ reminders and reprimands for talking out of turn, engaging other students around her, or not staying on task. Ayan sometimes engaged in overtly oppositional resistance to teacher requests.The writing of Ayan’s that we were able to examine stressed, in contrast to Saiful, the role individual resistance and agency in overcoming life challengesAyan often asked peers for help with written work, and she frequently turned to other students to appeal for assistance, to relieve boredom, or to share a joke. Students rarely turned to her for help.While Ayan does not write in Somali, she is a proficient speaker of that language. In our informal written assessment activities, she refused to look at the Somali literacy tasks or materials, and was reluctant to do any of the written English work
- We shared this background b/c it is important in understanding the excerpts we’ll share next. These excerpts are useful in understanding the social meaning of Somali print literacy among students.In our many hours of observation, we began to notice clear differences between the Somali and non-Somali students, with regard to first language literacy. The most marked difference was evident when the teacher, in an effort to check comprehension on key terms, asked the students to say the vocabulary word in their home language(s). Routinely, speakers of others languages would settle quickly on an equivalent; Somali students, in turn often engaged in extended debates (in Somali) during these instances.We found that Saiful was the de facto Somali expert in the class.This role as the expert was co-constructed by Saiful and by younger female students (who asked for help, checked understanding with him), but also by the teacher, as we see here.. During this particular class, Ms. Mavis was reviewing vocabulary words related to the folk tale students had read earlier in the month. In the story, the main character, Anasi, plants beans in the ground. In this exchange, she is prompting them to recall the word, ‘ground’.
- This excerpt is informative because Ayan’s clear and assertive translation was questioned three times by the teacher. Despite Ayan’s apparent confidence that ‘dur’ was the correct word, Ms. Mavis still verified the translation with Saiful, the older, male student. Indeed, Ms. Mavis only moves on to the next word once Saiful confirms (line 20). This interaction developed as such because Saiful was the de facto Somali expert in the class, despite the fact there were many speakers of Somali. Ayan’s identity in the classroom as a younger, less academically successful, at times oppositional student undermined her expertise as a native speaker of Somali. Despite the teacher’s welcoming stance towards students’ native language use, Ayan’s attempts to contribute and draw from her native language were minimized or overlooked. In turn, Saiful’s identity as the older, more serious and successful academic learner, with literacy skills in Somali, and anointed him as the expert speaker in the class. Thus, an informal classroom language policy sedimented or enacted hierarchies within language groups, in this case Somali. Saiful’s expert status in the classroom seemed to be due, at least in part, to the symbolic power of his print literacy. This print literacy came with formal schooling in the refugee camp, in addition to years of Qur’anic schooling. Saiful was not hesitant to share his knowledge of Somali script which, possibly together with his conservative demeanor, earned him an authoritative role in the class. FURTHER: our work suggests that Saiful’s status as an excerpt Somali speaker was linked to his role as an expert English learner as well.
- This next excerpt illustrates Saiful’s expert status in the classroom with respect to English academic work, both among his peers and his teacher. The focus of this particular class was past and present irregular verbs. Students were given a worksheet with a list of 16 irregular verbs in the past tense (e.g., saw, went, began, was, drank, blew, hid) and told to provide the present tense. These verbs had appeared in the folk story the students had been working with over the last few weeks. After modeling the task at the front of the room with document projector, she tells them: “Ok, you see how many you can do. Try to find verbs you know. See how many you can do on your own, OK? Try to do some on your own.” Immediately, Ayan signaled to Ms. Mavis that she needed help with ‘saw’. Ms. Mavis walked over to her desk and assisted her through body language (pointed at her eye). The interaction below is what occurred after Ms. Mavis moved on to help another student.
- Understanding the different skillsAyan and Saiful each bring to school (and theirexperiencies there) entials taking into account multiple timescales. These include: the very particular trajectory of the development of the Somali script;unvenaccess to formal schooling resulting from civil war and refugee process.These two historical timescales intersect with the ontogenetic scales of the life histories of Ayan and Saiful. The language, literacy and schooling experiences of Ayan and Saiful to date have been profoundly shaped by these events, with Saiful gaining access to Somali literacy skills, while Ayan’s opportunities were more limited. The two particular interactions examined here, unfolding within timescales of just a few minutes, in turn, illustrate the ways in which these skill sets and associated values shape and constrain everyday classroom interactions, both influencing and reflecting student identities.Of course, these two brief interactions represent just a few moments of the hundreds of hours of classroom life during that one academic year. We suggest, however, that through repeated engagement in interactions such as these, particular identities are sedimented,ttogether have a powerful cumulative effect on how students perceived themselves as potential speakers, readers and writers, and on who can claim legitimate ‘authentic’ national, ethnic, or religious identity
- . As a more practical level, we stress that our aim is certainly not to critique Ms. Mavis for allowing this dynamic to occur in her classroom. Most observers would commend her ability to make language choice a fairly uncontested issue as students moved around the classroom, clarified their tasks, or checked their answers using any language they wished.However ourclose analysis suggests that the teacher’s informal classroom language policy enacted hierarchies within language groups, in this case Somali. Among Somalis, there are probably pedagogical advantages to welcoming any Somali lexical equivalent of an English word. Somali is still not standardized, and it there are lexical variations based on geographic region in Somalia, as well as formal vs. informal registers. Somali youth in Minnesota are part of a larger phenomenon of transnationalism that brings with it substantial dialect diversity, intensive language contact with non-Somali languages, and as a result, a language mixing and change. A future issue to explore among students may be what is formal or academic Somali and what is informal or ‘social’ Somali. Students may wish to do field work in their communities on this topic to determine which lexical choice is more formal or informal – an important skill to develop in English. This practice may afford students opportunities to do linguistic research among elders from rural, urban, formally schooled or home schooled backgrounds. Educators must also be sensitive to the fact that lack of print literacy may be the result of gendered social practices that disadvantage girls. The data here suggest the ways in which gendered inequalities outside the classroom (i.e., differential access to formal education and Somali literacy skills) live on inside the classroom in ways that intersect powerfully with student identities. Many girls like Ayan were not able to learn to read at a young age, which typically makes the process slower and more difficult.Finally, we close with the simple and perhaps obvious reminder that there are advantages to promoting home language literacy among newcomers, especially for girls like Ayan. With Somali students, there is the added advantage that Somali and English both use the Roman alphabet and students can transfer newly acquired English literacy skills back to Somali literacy development. As highlighted here, this process is not politically neutral and students’ relationships with print literacy in their home language are seldom unconflicted; nevertheless, five decades of research (Walter & Benson, 2012) supporting the academic value and importance of first language literacy cannot be ignored. 12: share 2xS: cut provide anserA: condense desc