Becoming advocates: Positioning immigrant youth to share, connect, and apply their stories as tools for social change

Abstract

Although TESOL educators often incorporate autobiographical narrative as pedagogy to develop language and literacy among language learners, research has paid little attention to how immigrant youths’ personal stories relate to advocacy and social justice. This article addresses this gap by investigating and theorizing how student advocacy developed in an autobiographical narrative project, the Immigrant Student Stories Project (ISSP). Using a positioning theoretical lens and an ethnographic approach, the authors focus on students’ participation and voices in their narratives and draw upon interviews and observational fieldnotes across ISSP contexts within and beyond one high school. The authors’ investigation of the ISSP examined what students do with their narratives and how they are positioned both in and outside of a classroom context, which the authors argue have consequences for language learning and social justice. The study found that learners are positioned as legitimate speakers, community members, and advocates when they are afforded opportunities to share their stories publicly, connect their stories with a larger community, and apply their stories as tools for advocacy. This study contributes to TESOL scholarship by exploring student advocacy through the lens of positioning theory and revealing how advocacy, language, and literacy can develop synergistically through storytelling.

Podcasting for peace: Resettled refugee youths' self‐sponsored counter‐storytelling practices

“…In particular, we align with Montero and Al Zouhouri's (2022) assertion that “refugee children and youth are empowered when they become the authors and arbiters of their stories, when they control what they want to share, how to share, and to whom to share their stories” (p. 89), noting that telling such trauma stories is crucial to healing and recovery. Sharing their counterstories reinforces that these narratives are “worthy to be heard” (Martin‐Beltrán et al, 2020, p. 7) and also creates a “psychological refuge” (Choi & Yi, 2016, p. 304) for the storytellers themselves. Through composing and sharing our NYHU podcast globally, we actively move ourselves and our listeners along Pentón Herrera and Martínez‐Alba's (2021) peace–conflict continuum away from violence, racism, sexism, and xenophobia and towards respect, empathy, and peace.…”

“…For example, Barabas's (2022) classroom exploration found podcasting to be an effective technique for Chinese secondary school students of English as a foreign language (EFL) to communicate with their target English‐speaking audiences. Martin‐Beltrán et al (2020) also noted that advocacy‐centered writing contributes to effective language learning by providing opportunities to use language in more meaningful ways. The lessons of our self‐sponsored EAL podcast show that bringing in meaningful opportunities to connect with self‐selected, public audiences in contextually and culturally relevant ways can both foster peace and lead to increased language learning.…”

Peace and well‐being with storytelling in TESOL: Exploring peacebuilding through voices of English language learners in Pakistan

“…To heal from conflicts, people need to share their problems, receive responses, and build connections (Staub, 2008). One way to do so is to allow students to share their narratives (Martin‐Beltrán et al, 2020). When students' narratives are heard, then their histories come into contact with counter‐narratives from other learners, teachers, or the course content, thus turning the classroom into a space where conflict can be transformed into peacebuilding (Vasilopoulos et al, 2019).…”

“…Through learning English, they access Western ideologies and values, which are often in contrast with their traditional values (Rana & Chishti, 2019; Zubair, 2006), and as a result students suffer from mental conflicts in adjusting themselves to both societal and academic demands. To address this problem, teachers in a public university using EMI in the capital city of Pakistan began to employ storytelling to allow students to share their personal and social problems (Martin‐Beltrán et al, 2020; Park, 2011). Teachers, acting as advisors, listened to students' narratives in a safe space sometimes individually and sometimes collectively in the class depending on the nature of the issue, where all students were considered equally valuable.…”

When Immigrant Mothers of Color Become Public School Teachers for English Language Learners: Intersectionality for Transformative Teacher Preparation

“…In the field of educational research, counter-stories have been adopted by researchers for transforming teacher education (Cho, 2017;Martin-Beltran, Montoya-Avila, & Garcia, 2020). In addition to these studies, based on a review of 60 empirical articles which cited counter-narrative 3 as transformative methodology, Miller et al (2020) purported an emerging frame that argued for "counternarrative as full methodology" (p. 277).…”