Philippine E-Journals

Informing and transforming schools: Ethnographic research

Lucia Buttaro

Discipline: Literature, Early Childhood Education, Languages

 

Abstract:

The study which is the focus of Words on the Wet Paper emerged from work with families in a variety of settings and contexts. Interactions with these families as part of my work with the children often reveal circumstances surrounding immigration. The teachers were invited to a Collaborative Learning Community for English Language Learners and met once a month to delve into research on second language learners and crafted instructional strategies based on the variety of scholarly sources which were piloted in the classroom. Two of the strategies were identified as being particularly successful with the students. One was the use of reciprocal teaching (Hook, 2006) to model and scaffold the use of comprehension strategies and the other was the use of cognates in vocabulary instruction. To gain a more complete understanding of the experience of immigration, I designed a study that is unlike any other because I focus exclusively on the experience of foreign born families. This study captures the realties of those who are contending with the profound changes of moving to a new country, with all that implies: culture shock, linguistic disorientation, the loss of old relationships as well as the excitement of blazing a path to a new horizon. Migration is not for the faint of heart. It almost inevitably involves feelings of dislocation, and at least temporary loss of status, difficulty in communicating, and most significantly, leaving behind loved ones. It is hard to be open and eager to learn if you have to be constantly on guard against being attacked. while Balanced Scorecard is not being fully utilized. Impliedly, there is need to develop a strategy that will provide competitive advantage to SUCs in the country.