Navigating the Read 180 Literacy Program with English Language Learners: A Teacher Inquiry Lens

Abstract

This research study used teacher inquiry to examine the ways one White, monolingual teacher navigated a prescribed literacy program with English Language Learners (ELLs). The purpose of this study was to explore ways in which teachers could potentially navigate prescribed programs in culturally and linguistically relevant (CLRP) ways, particularly as the standardization of literacy programs, along with the number of ELLs in U.S. schools, continue to rise. The qualitative data analysis was completed in two phases: Phase One outlined critical incidents and Phase Two analyzed within and across those critical incidents to identify patterns, themes, and tensions for components of CLRP, defined by critical love, multilingualism, and multimodality. Finding explored the ways in which I navigated tensions and challenges while attempting to create space for critical love through relationality, translanguaging through pedagogical processes and cognitive processing, and multimodality through new literacies. Implications drawn from this study including considerations for practice for teachers to shift towards CLRP by “teaching in the cracks” of prescribed programs while disrupting their own implicit, biases, whiteness, and niceness to make space for those changes.