Literature Review
Engaging Funds of Knowledge to Create Inclusive Adult ESOL Classrooms
The first ESOL class I was part of took place at an urban community college in the southwestern United States. It was a 15-week citizenship class for individuals preparing to take the U.S. naturalization test, and I was there as an aide to a student with low vision. The class comprised an outgoing Syrian lawyer in her fifties; an agricultural worker from Columbia and his teenage son; two smiling and quiet Vietnamese men in their seventies; a rowdy Saudi Arabian family, in which the mother perpetually tried to keep her son and daughter off their cell phones, and the son and daughter razzed her for being so old-fashioned; and the student I was paired with, a young Iraqi man looking to get a GED and study computers. These descriptors of age, occupation, national origin, kinship, and personality could easily be replaced by others, and they drastically reduce the complexity each student actually embodied. One student had a graduate degree, and others had not completed secondary school. Some students were of the majority culture in their home countries; the father and son and two older men were Indigenous. Some had left their countries voluntarily and some had not. Several of their paths of emigration were traumatic. The Columbian students fled cartel violence, the Syrian student fled civil war, and the Iraqi man had been outcast by his family, lest his visual condition bring shame to them, and he spent years living on the streets of Baghdad. Both of the Vietnamese men had been children when war broke out in their country, and as a boy one lost a leg to a landmine. I know about these individuals’ personal experiences because they came up in class. These students spontaneously and irrepressibly shared their stories in the ESOL classroom.
Variation and diversity in adult ESOL settings has inspired and plagued me. How does a teacher meet it? From the citizenship class to other ESL classes I sat in on at the community college to my own first attempts at teaching ESL at a university-affiliated immersion program, what has most impressed me is all the life gathered in these classrooms — so many whole lives, whole lifetimes, so many strains of experience. Unlike a primary or secondary class where students might hail from the same neighborhood or share a cultural or socioeconomic background, adult English learners are from all over the world, possess highly divergent life histories and worldviews — discrete bodies of knowledge and understandings inseparable from place and migrations — and they present a dizzying amount of variety as individuals and as students. As a new ESOL instructor, I realize that addressing the heterogeneity of this population requires intentional instructional approaches, and finding out more about those was my motivation for this project.
Heterogeneity in Adult English Education
The diversity I encountered in the citizenship class is the norm in adult ESOL settings (Abbott, 2019; Crandall, 1993; Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011). Throughout this project, I use the term adult to encompass individuals who have entered professional life, are college students, and/or are over the age of 21. Illustrating the complex heterogeneity of this population, an 18-year-old undergraduate surely differs in many ways from a 70-year-old great-grandparent, yet both might be considered adult English learners and be members of the same classroom.
Adult ESOL Settings
Settings for adult English education are also heterogenous. They broadly channel participant–learners by their circumstances and motivations for studying English. Adult ESOL spaces can be public or private. They can occur through refugee and resettlement programs, agency-based service providers, community development centers, colleges and universities, businesses, and professional organizations. Because these settings are so varied and decentralized in the United States, aggregated national data on them do not exist. This poses problems for understanding who U.S. adult English learners are and how they are being served. Some data from state and federally funded programs are collected, yet these focus more on enrollment than program or learner features or setting variations. Current federal statistics place the number of participants in state-administered ESL programs during fiscal year 2017 at 520,939 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019a). Enrollment in 2016 was even higher, at just over 590,000 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019a). Combined with participants in private, corporate, and non-profit settings, adult English learners in the United States number well over half a million per year. While these combined ESOL settings are further differentiated by teaching philosophy and methodology, group size, curriculum and instructional materials, and the prior training and credentials of instructors (Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011), only for some learners are these features a matter of choice.
Adult English Learners
American Community Survey data for 2019 number “limited English speaking” households in the United States at 5,274,101 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020b). The number of adults (over age 18) in these households who speak a language other than English is higher — 10,095,039 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020a). While not all of these adults seek or need English education or consider themselves English language learners, the size of the non-English-speaking population in the United States speaks to the potential size of the total population of adult English learners. Individual learners within this population vary across myriad dimensions. These include but are not limited to age, home language, national origin, ethnicity, ability status, prior education, literacies, immigration status, cultural practices and cultural relationship to classroom learning, exposure to trauma, learning preferences, degree of English development, cognitive resources, personality, and personal resonance with print language and language learning. Some of these dimensions are native or endogenous to the individual, while many are socially constructed and confer external statuses that influence an individual’s identity as a learner. Students’ varied expressions and identities across these many dimensions combine to make adult ESOL classes multilingual sites of cross-cultural exchange.
Social Justice Implications
Attendant to this complex diversity, power and positionality are potent forces in an adult ESOL classroom. In the United States and Canada, the language of ESOL instruction is hegemonic; instructors are often native English speakers from majority populations, and learners are predominantly from linguistic and ethnic backgrounds that are minoritized in their new country. Again the dearth of aggregated national data is problematic. While teachers of adult ESOL anecdotally report this racial and linguistic imbalance, no statistics exist to support the claim. Data from K–12 settings might be an indicator; as of fall 2015, 80% of public school teachers were White (and presumably English speaking), yet only 49% of K–12 students were White (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019b). While adult ESOL cannot be considered an extension of K–12 education, there is also no reason to think instructor demographics differ significantly, and certainly adult ESOL students are overwhelmingly non-White. Because of divides like these, without deliberate inclusion practices, ESOL instruction can be ineffective and fail to reach individual learners. Worse, if instructors do not understand the positionalities of each of their students and sensitize instruction and materials to them, the ESOL classroom can reproduce social inequities and become a site of alienation.
It is important to me to prevent ESOL settings I participate in from compounding social, racial, and educational disparities. I believe these spaces in fact have tremendous potential to combat inequality, and I believe they can be sites of respite from marginalization and cultural imperialism. As an educated White woman, a native English speaker, and a lifelong U.S. citizen, I experience a great deal of privilege and power in the United States and in ESOL classrooms. I am in insider in many academic settings. I do not want these privileges to prevent me from seeing the realities of learners whose lives are different from my own. As a teacher, I want to recognize the abilities adults arrive with and embody in the classroom, and I want to engage them as the assets they are for language learning and intercultural connectivity.
Research Question
The question that guided my inquiries in this project was: Given the heterogeneity of adult English learners, how do instructors of adult ESOL use students’ funds of knowledge to create inclusive classrooms? To investigate this and find out how the diversity of these learners is currently addressed in research, I employed a funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) lens to conduct a literature review. Findings from this inquiry lead me to believe that adult students’ funds of knowledge function as powerful learning resources, and ESOL instructors in adult settings who recognize, respect, and build on their students’ funds of knowledge are better able to effect inclusion in their classrooms.
Theoretical Framework
The term funds of knowledge was coined thirty years ago by Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González (1992; González et al., 2006) in their groundbreaking research with Mexican communities in southern Arizona. The researchers theorized that knowledge and skills held in local households in these communities could be brought to bear on K–12 education and used to “organize classroom instruction that far exceeds in quality the rote-like instruction these children commonly encounter in schools” (Moll et al., 1992, p. 132). Their analysis of the social and labor histories of individual families revealed that each household possessed “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being” (Moll et al., 1992, p. 133). These were the broad and diverse funds of knowledge that informed children of these families in their lives outside of school but which were seldom recognized in the classroom as assets to academic learning. Moll et al. advocated the development of participatory pedagogy that draws on the strategic knowledge employed by families and exchanged and expanded through community social networks. Since that publication, teachers and researchers have taken up this charge, conducting home visits and ethnographic inquiry into students’ experiences outside of school to enable them to design curriculum and classroom activities that engage the skills young learners use in their real lives (Rice, 2013).
Although funds of knowledge has existed as a theoretical approach to teaching and learning in multilingual contexts since the early 1990s, only in the last 10 years has it been applied to adult learners in ESOL settings. Several authors featured in this review (Cun et al., 2019; Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012; Larrotta & Serrano, 2011) have observed a dearth of research in these settings and in response are reimagining funds of knowledge for a new population — adult English learners. Funds of knowledge is a natural theoretical fit with andragogy, which “stresses the importance of respecting and drawing upon the adult’s experiences” (Crandall, 1993, p. 5). The community-constructed and family-mediated funds of knowledge Moll et al. (1992) examined are precisely the bodies of knowledge that adult learners possess when they enter a language classroom. Because of their age, the “living and learning biographies” (Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011, p. 37) of adults are inherently more extensive and varied than those of children. Life experiences beyond childhood — working, caring for a family, being a citizen, maintaining one’s health, navigating the physical and emotional demands of life — allow adults to bring extensive self-awareness, area-specific knowledge, and cognitive skills honed through practice to their education. From a funds of knowledge perspective, teaching English in adult classrooms entails more than delivering information about language; it “requires looking at what learners can do as whole persons” (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011, p. 318) and creating space in the classroom for those skills and identities to be expressed and to inform language learning tasks. The studies reviewed here expand the existing literature on how multilingual adults’ funds of knowledge manifest in classrooms and shape learning, as well as how teachers respect and capitalize on multilingual adults’ funds of knowledge in their instructional approaches.
Methodology
To gather articles for this literature review, I conducted searches on the University of New Mexico Libraries databases with combinations of the search terms adult, adult learner, ESL, ESOL, EAL, English language, classroom, funds of knowledge, inclusivity, inclusive, heterogeneity, heterogenous, grouping, and power. I filtered all searches to yield only peer-reviewed journal articles published since 2000. Of the results, I selected 10 empirical studies conducted in ESOL or multilingual adult classrooms. I analyzed these articles for emergent themes pertaining to classroom practices that met student diversity and enhanced inclusivity.
This literature review comprises 10 qualitative studies, all published after 2010 and concerning adult English learners of college age or older. Nine took place in ESL or EAL classrooms — six in the United States, two in Canada, and one in Germany. Class contexts included three community programs, two agency-based classes, two community programs affiliated with public schools, one university-affiliated TESOL lab school, and one university-affiliated intensive academic English program. One study did not take place in an ESOL setting; it was conducted in multilingual content classrooms at two Canadian universities. Instructors’ educational backgrounds, teaching experience, and native languages were not specified in all articles. Four studies specified instructors had master’s degrees or TESL/TESOL certificates, and two specified instructors were master’s students. Eight studies specified instructors were native speakers of English, and all studies indicated instructors had prior experience teaching ESOL.
Though English language education is in the midst of a proliferation of open-source online learning sites — the rise of the “borderless classroom” (Duff et al., 2012, p. 51) — this review is concerned only with teachers and learners in live, in-person classroom settings. And while the benefits of bilingual education for English learners are well-established, my focus here is on multilingual classrooms in which English is the language of instruction. By this I do not mean to imply these educational settings should be English-only; to the contrary, I discuss the efficacy of using home languages in class. In framing and conducting my analysis, I consulted books and journal sources that featured in my master’s studies, two of which were published contemporaneously with Moll et al.’s (1992) original funds of knowledge research.
Findings
I discerned three main themes in the reviewed body of literature pertaining to efforts instructors are making to increase inclusivity in multilingual, multicultural adult classrooms. These are promoting learner voice, fostering interculturality, and supporting learner agency. Each of these approaches facilitates inclusion in distinct ways and presents distinct opportunities for instructors to draw on students’ funds of knowledge. Here I examine the nature and implementation of each effort in turn.
Promoting Learner Voice
The concept of learner voice is both literal and figurative. It encompasses students’ speech and self-expression, their ideas and classroom contributions — the literal voices they use to participate in language learning. Figuratively, it implies student engagement and learners’ goals and interests informing classroom practices and activities. In a teacher-dominated class, learners are robbed of voice; in an equitable, inclusive class, learner voices are solicited, respected, and amplified. Means instructors can use to promote learner voice in adult ESOL classrooms include sharing authority, allowing the use of home languages, and viewing life outside the classroom as a resource.
Shared Authority
Perhaps the most significant commonality among the instructors profiled in this body of research is their belief that they are not the sole source of knowledge in a classroom. This stance is a necessary precursor to recognizing and soliciting the knowledges of others; without this belief, the funds of knowledge adults enter ESOL education with find no space for expression. Kleinmuntz (2011), an adult ESL instructor in New York, chronicled his evolution in this regard by recalling of his previous approaches to teaching, “I would offer what I felt, speak of what I thought, without attempting to involve the class as a whole” (p. 222). He reported infrequently seeking student input or encouraging student engagement with his comments, rarely “inquiring whether anyone had had a similar experience” (p. 222). Such an instructional stance supports only a unidirectional flow of knowledge from teacher to student; teacher talk dominates the class, and learners disengage as they find no links to their own thoughts or feelings in the instruction. “Flipping the classroom from a transmission approach” (Van Viegen & Zappa-Hollman, 2020, p. 182) to one in which students also have voices and the instructor is simultaneously a learner is foundational to inclusive ESOL practices.
Instances abound in the literature of instructors communicating this orientation to their students. Cun et al.’s (2019) study of an adult ESL class at a U.S. community center featured a student explaining to a classmate in need the process of applying for daycare through a caseworker. As she began speaking, the teacher transparently commented, “I don’t know this [process]. This is new for me” (p. 345). He listened as she spoke, prioritizing student knowledge in an arena where he had none and creating a classroom moment in which a student’s knowledge became the central instruction. This teacher recognized not only the student’s out-of-class knowledge, but also her multiple literacies in “finding and obtaining childcare, knowing how the system works, and communicating with the caseworker” (Cun et al., 2019, p. 345). Similarly, the instructor of an ESL course at a Canadian community center viewed her students as “being in a position to give expert advice to other newcomers” (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012, p. 57). In order to not position herself as the sole expert on Canadian culture simply because she was Canadian-born, this teacher drew on her own stories “sparingly, but drew heavily on [students’] personal experience and opinions” (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012, p. 58). She frequently solicited cultural information from students about their home countries, and discussing students’ processes of cultural adaption became a significant part of her language instruction.
For students, instructional efforts like these can supplant classroom experiences of subordination and silencing with an experience of co-membership in the learning environment. Waring and Yu (2018) characterized these interactions as momentarily reversing “the epistemic asymmetry that typically inhabits the classroom” (p. 668) when a teacher is positioned as more knowledgeable than students. Authentic conversation in any language is defined by “social, interactional, or epistemic symmetry” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p, 665), which can be achieved in the classroom in moments when a student “gains access to a typically teacher-owned turn type” (p. 667) like questioning or explaining, and the teacher is “pushed into a position of answering rather than asking questions” (p. 667). To achieve this, Kleinmuntz (2011) established a “norm of informality” (p. 225) in his community ESL class by getting animated, humorous conversation going, in which anyone could pose a question to anyone else, himself included, and anyone could volunteer an answer. He found that doing so “challenged the common one-sided power structure” (Kleinmuntz, 2012, p. 225) of classrooms where the teacher is seen as an authority. Instructional practices of being receptive, admitting to gaps in specific knowledge, and deferring to student knowledge when possible creates space for adult English learners to participate in classrooms not only as students, but as whole individuals “with a kaleidoscope of interests, expertise, and occupations outside the classroom” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 668).
Use of Home Languages in Class
To prevent ESOL classrooms from becoming sites of linguicism, defined by Skutnabb-Kangas (1995) as “the domination of one language at the expense of others” (p. 40), instructors can employ plurilingual pedagogies and welcome the use of home languages in class. Linguistic skills in languages other than English are the primary fund of knowledge that all ESOL students have in common; it is what brings each of them to the classroom. Van Viegen and Zappa-Hollman (2020) defined this fund as plurilingualism — the “multilingual knowledges and literacy practices students bring to the classroom as learning resources” (pp. 173–174). They advocated instructors not just welcome those resources, but intentionally engage them by planning curriculum, lessons, and language tasks that entail plurilingual practice. In their study of multilingual classrooms at two Canadian universities, Van Viegen and Zappa-Hollman (2020) found faculty encouraging international students to consult sources published in languages other than English in their research for a class project, “provided that any work consulted was eventually reported in English” (p. 181). In that project, proficiency goals in the language of instruction were met without sacrificing students’ continued development in their home language/s or their use of home languages as aids to their learning. In the same study, students reported that being allowed to use home languages in group discussions, especially about assignments and academic challenges, improved their understanding of class content and expectations. Multilingual students saw their L1s as assets when working in a new language, and instructors interested in furthering students’ comprehension wisely created opportunities for them to exploit the full range of their linguistic resources.
Plurilingual practices also function as learning strategies in ESOL classrooms. Spanish-speaking students of teacher–researchers Larrotta and Serrano (2011) used their L1 Spanish extensively in a Texas ESL class for parents of schoolchildren when they were assigned to develop a personal glossary. In this version of the ESOL vocabulary mainstay, each glossary entry consisted of an English word of the student’s choosing, a Spanish translation of the word, a sentence in English using the word, and a Spanish translation of the sentence. Without explicitly linking new L2 words and expressions to known L1 equivalents, this vocabulary practice could not be grounded in students’ prior linguistic knowledge. By encouraging translations, the researchers conveyed to students that their home language was respected and of value in the process of learning English. The Canadian teacher in Dytynyshyn and Collins’s (2012) study likewise “regarded the students’ L1s as equal to the target language” (p. 55). In an innovative pronunciation activity, she grouped students in her multilingual ESL class by L1 and had each group translate an English text into their native language. Students then practiced narrating their L1 text with a strong English accent, as if they were English-speaking tourists visiting their own home country. Here knowledge of a home language and knowledge of English specifically as a native speaker of a language other than English combined to further students’ understanding of English phonology.
Part of promoting learner voice is recognizing and valuing the voices learners have before they become ESOL students — voices they have spent a lifetime cultivating and which are expressed through the medium of first and home language/s. Allowing L1s in class on one level is purely practical, as “even when monitored and pressed to operate in a monolingual mode, students engage in plurilingual practices to meet their learning and communicative needs” (Van Viegen and Zappa-Hollman, 2020, p. 183). ESOL instructors do better to embrace this tendency than fight it. On a broader level, welcoming native languages is an important political and human stance for ESOL instructors. Recognizing that “different languages have different political rights, not depending on any inherent linguistic characteristics, but on the power relationships between the speakers of those languages” (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1995, p. 41) is a duty for ESOL teachers. Particularly for native English speakers teaching ESOL in their home country, sensitivity to their inherited power is essential for understanding the positionality of their students, who often become minoritized upon entering English-speaking societies, and it is essential to supporting these learners’ linguistic and human rights.
Life Outside the Classroom as a Resource
In addition to their linguistic knowledge, adults also possess rich non-linguistic knowledge when they enter a classroom, deriving from their extensive life experience. These funds of knowledge are as diverse as the students themselves, shaped by work they have done, interests they have pursued, relationships they have maintained, and challenges they have learned to navigate. Repeatedly in the reviewed literature researchers identified these broad and varied knowledges as a resource for language learning (Cun et al., 2019; Van Viegen & Zappa-Hollman, 2020; Waring & Yu, 2018). Life outside the classroom includes “any identities or experiences outside the institutional setting of a classroom but made relevant by the participants themselves during classroom talk” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 661). ESOL instructors can engage these identities and experiences and apply a funds of knowledge approach in their teaching not only through curriculum and activity planning, but also in micromoments of interaction in class. Waring and Yu (2018) used conversation analysis to examine such micromoments in a U.S. community ESL program. In each conversational exchange, a student spoke spontaneously about an out-of-class activity (i.e., working, traveling, going to a book signing) and engaged a non-student identity in class. Teachers seized on these unplanned moments in various ways, including by explicating vocabulary not yet covered in class but introduced by the student and expressing interest in a way that doubled as a corrective recasting of a student’s pronunciation. Both teachers and students used these moments as “opportunities for introducing, fine-tuning, and locating relevant linguistic resources” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 662) to help students in their out-of-class lives and simultaneously further their English development.
These acts of bringing knowledge from life experience to the ESOL classroom and working with it there so as to re-implement it with augmented understanding later outside of class exemplifies what Cun et al. (2019) characterized as a “home/community to ESL classroom to me/community” (p. 338) pattern that is specific to adults, given their engagement in social and civic life. Knowledge shared in this way may be especially beneficial for refugee students, who “face numerous challenges that require accessing new funds of knowledge” (Cun et al., 2019, p. 338). When instructors promote students sharing from their knowledge funds, ESOL classrooms become primary spaces for solving the adult problems that accompany life in a new society. Students in Cun et al.’s (2019) study worked together to help a classmate understand how to secure childcare through a social service agency, and Kleinmuntz’s (2011) students offered each other recognition and empathy in response to their common experience of feeling invisible and second-class as immigrants in the United States. When language “rooted in the rich soil of learner lives” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 665) is invited into and heard in the classroom, the classroom becomes a place that “crystalises the distinctive profits” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 665) learners have accrued through life experience. Even when instructors do not dedicate space to problem-solving during class, student discussions and exchanges of significance continue during less formal contexts like group work, pair work, and break time (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012; Kleinmuntz, 2011) — the “cracks and seams” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 660) of institutional space in which authentic dialogue can arise spontaneously.
For ESOL teachers to intentionally engage students’ funds of knowledge and provide topics and materials that are relevant to learners’ lives, it is imperative they ask their students questions and get to know them purposefully (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011). By investigating what their parent–students were doing outside the classroom and what prior knowledge they brought to language learning, Larrotta and Serrano (2011) found students’ funds included “personal stories; learning motivation and goals; perseverance and resilience in learning the language; extracurricular activities and strategies they used to learn and communicate in English; and their points of view, attitudes, values, and inquiries about language” (p. 323). This is a rich list to draw curricular inspiration from. In addition to taking an ESL class, each student was also engaged in English practice and language learning activities in their workplace, home, and/or community. Taking the time to understand and assess students’ individual relationships with English prompted the teachers to take a project-based approach to ESL rather than a language-based approach. They designed a storybook assignment in which students thought of a topic, took photos to illustrate it, and developed a written story through brainstorming, drafting, and revising. Not only did students create final products informed by their out-of-class identities, the project “triggered student questions about language function/structure” (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011, p. 317). Direct instruction was provided as needed in mini-lessons, and students presented their storybooks to each other and school personnel with pride. Here students sharing feelings, experiences, and understandings from their own lives was the specific mechanism through which language learning was accomplished.
A Caveat to Promoting Learner Voice
In any classroom, some student voices are louder than others. Kayi-Aydar (2013) observed that “classroom participation does not just happen; it is a complex phenomenon” (p. 130) involving student and teacher positionalities and the interplay of power among participants. Encouraging student contributions does not ensure all students contribute equally or are equally heard. In her study of participation in an academic ESL class at a U.S. university, Kayi-Aydar (2013) found that the ways a vocal, dominating student positioned himself, and thus positioned his classmates, “impacted their access to learning opportunities, and thereby their second language learning” (p. 146). Students’ participation in a classroom is not controlled by a teacher. It is strongly influenced by responses speakers receive from classmates, as well as classmates’ conversational behaviors. The dominant student in Kayi-Aydar’s (2013) study “created learning opportunities for himself” (p. 146) and, in the process, difficulties for others in “taking turns or extending their talk” (p. 146). She concluded that, due to the dynamics of participation, certain students get more language learning out of ESL classes than others, both in how many learning experiences they have and in the quality of those experiences. Her research stands as an awareness check for instructors. It is unrealistic to expect a multilingual, multicultural ESOL class to be an exclusively harmonious space, and given the agency of adult learners, no teacher is the only or the strongest influence in a classroom.
Fostering Interculturality
Interculturality, also known as intercultural competence, is a complex construct that differs from simply acknowledging cultural differences and forming intercultural friendships (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012) — two events that occur or can be effected somewhat readily in a multicultural ESOL classroom. Dytynyshyn and Collins (2012) argued that interculturality is a more involved experience that is harder to effect yet may be “required for a peaceful, fully functional, multiethnic society” (p. 46). These researchers borrowed from previous literature a definition of interculturality as “respect of difference, as well as the socioaffective capacity to see oneself through the eyes of others” (Kramsch, 2005, p. 553). It is the latter part of this definition that is demanding; that capacity is predicated on other attitudes and abilities, including openness to people of cultures different from one’s own and the ability to suspend judgment, look beyond otherness, and transcend ethnocentrism (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012).
Sentiments Kleinmuntz (2011) expressed in his study offer an illustration. When his students discussed their feelings of invisibility in U.S. society and Kleinmuntz (2011) “began to wonder what it must feel like to be seen by others in this manner” (p. 230), he only approached interculturality; he did not achieve it. In an interculturally competent response, Kleinmuntz would have taken his inquiry further to wonder how he himself appeared, as a member of the majority culture, to an immigrant who feels invisible. Self-reflexivity on this level takes time to develop, and facilitating it in a classroom requires a great deal of nuance. In the Quebecois classroom, the instructor successfully facilitated the class’s development of the building blocks of interculturality, but not interculturality itself (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012). To ensure inclusion for culturally diverse students, a more achievable goal for instructors might be integrating the foundations of intercultural competence into the classroom, with an eye to effecting interculturality when possible. Pathways for the growth of intercultural competence include dialogue among students, intercultural communication, and understanding emotions and trauma.
Dialogue Among Students
In adult ESOL settings, conversation functions as “both the means and the end of language learning” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 660). A robust, productive class might sound cacophonous to an outsider as students practice the interactions and exchanges they need in their daily lives. Adept ESOL teachers promote dialogue and prompt students to engage with each other in English, and they encourage students to teach one another through these interactions (Cun et al., 2019). In classrooms of students from diverse national backgrounds and varied cultural affiliations, these interactions are inherently intercultural and are the means through which individuals’ funds of knowledge can be expressed and shared for one another’s benefit. As students get to know each other in a dialogue-oriented environment — especially where instructional topics revolve around their real lives — adult ESOL classrooms come to function as a community of learners. The prevalence of conversation as a teaching and learning strategy in these classrooms as well as the extensive knowledge students share with one another in classroom interactions cause some instructors of adult ESOL to see themselves more as facilitators than teachers (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012; Kleinmuntz, 2011; Van Viegen & Zappa-Hollman, 2020) — facilitators of dialogue within a classroom community.
This is no incidental role for instructors. Facilitating effectively in a diverse class is an intentional act that requires planning. For Kleinmuntz (2011), coming to ESL instruction from a background in social group work caused him to conceive of his class of diverse immigrants as “a group working toward a common goal” (p. 220), even in the midst of their ethnic and linguistic differences. Aiming to encourage students’ mutual participation through a combination of whole and small group work, Kleinmuntz realized that in addition to planning class content and delivery structure, he also needed to look after the health and balance of the group itself. To do so, he invoked pre-group planning that attended to non-content considerations. Anticipating commonalities and differences among participants, identifying individual learners’ needs and issues of concern, and considering the implications of group size and small group compositions became core components of his role as a facilitator of dialogue and participation (Kleinmuntz, 2011). These efforts prevented haphazard groupings in class and better positioned students to have productive cross-cultural interactions.
The Canadian instructor in Dytynyshyn and Collins’s (2012) study likewise curated classroom dialogue with care and forethought for her multilingual, ethnically diverse learners. In structuring group work, she conscientiously avoided “fixed, culturally homogenous groupings” (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012, p. 61) in favor of groupings that “actively promoted direct contact between learners” (p. 60). In every class, she ensured students mingled by employing novel groupings, like lining up in order of length of residence or height or date of birth, and at least one activity in each class could not be completed unless students got up, moved around, and spoke with multiple classmates. Through these kaleidoscopic groupings over time, not only did cross-cultural communication occur, but cross-cultural relationships emerged (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012). Teachers of adult ESOL are not only purveyors of content; to ground language learning in the authentic conversation that is so vital to it, teachers must become dynamic, responsive facilitators of intercultural exchange.
Intercultural Communication
Instructors’ ability to facilitate cross-cultural exchange is predicated on their awareness that for both themselves and students, “thought and behaviour is culture-dependent” (Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011, p. 48). Classroom interactions express the cultures of each participant, and all knowledge students formulate and contribute in class is in multiple ways culturally sourced. Van Viegen and Zappa-Hollman (2020) embrace these facts as opportunities for “internationalising the curriculum” (p. 184) — that is, intentionally “creating opportunities for intercultural knowledge exchange [by] drawing on students’ global experiences” (p. 184). Van Viegen and Zappa-Hollman’s (2020) study of plurilingual practices in university settings demonstrated that when instructors recognized language differences that arose in class and examined them with students — rather than ignoring or steamrolling them with a homogenizing pedagogy — ensuing discussion “provided an entry point to connect with deeper conceptual knowledge and intercultural understanding” (p. 182). This deeper knowledge and understanding, in turn, becomes an entry point to interculturally competent exchanges.
In response to the increasingly multicultural composition of educational settings, some researchers are pushing for “movement toward multilingual norms” (Van Viegen & Zappa-Hollman, 2020, p. 173) in language classrooms. Multilingual norms, unlike standard or monolingual norms, permit the use of non-majority languages in class and recognize the natural and varied Englishes learners speak. European social linguists Grzega and Stenzenberger (2011), in their study of the communicative efficacy of the pared-down Basic Global English, unflinchingly argued, “The central aim of English classes should no longer consist in promoting near-native proficiency of English, but in providing the learners with intercultural communicative competence” (p. 44) — that is, the ability to understand and be understood by interlocutors across cultural and linguistic differences. In this schema, linguistic competence is no longer measured against that of native speakers, grammatical exactitude takes a back seat to functional communication, and awareness of cultural differences is prioritized. Beyond “ensuring intelligibility... rather than insisting on correctness” (Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011, p. 47), the researchers cited as another primary goal for those teaching non-native English helping learners develop “strategies that will promote comity” (p. 47). Van Viegen and Zappa-Hollman (2020) conceived of this instructional role as encouraging students to “make meaning and communicate skillfully, strategically and creatively according to communicative demands, social contexts and personal identifications” (p. 175). Both sets of researchers position intercultural communication as the end goal of both teaching and learning English. Accepting students’ deviations from hegemonic standards of expression and making sure curricula feature “authentic material from native and near-native as well as successful non-native speakers” (Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011, p. 55) are two ways ESOL instructors can implement a shift toward multilingual norms and support students’ developing intercultural abilities.
Cultural funds of knowledge are profound informants for authentic, relevant language contexts, but only if instructors avoid essentializing differences among nations and cultural groups. The instructor in Dytynyshyn and Collins’s (2012) study achieved this by viewing her ESL students as individuals, not representatives of a particular country, and she took care to treat students’ opinions as personal opinions rather than representations of any linguistic, national, or cultural group. Culture came up often in her 9-week class, as is common in interactive, multicultural settings, and her approach to it was carefully controlled. She focused discussion on (a) cultural information — “describing a particular group’s practices, products, or perspectives without reference to adaptation, comparison, or values” (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012, p. 52) — and (b) cultural adaptation — “the changes individuals experience as they adjust to new contexts” (p. 52). Rather than comparing cultures or focusing on differences among students, this instructor instead focused on commonalities, drawing out through interaction the students’ shared experiences. This was not meant to convey that all participants were essentially alike, but rather that “there is common ground no matter how different we may seem” (p. 58). Classroom practices of non-judgment and non-comparison establish a climate of respect and support participants in developing “relationships of trust with those normally seen as other” (p. 64) — a hallmark of increasing intercultural competence. Dytynyshyn and Collins (2012) suggested these may be essential underpinnings for effectively addressing cultural conflicts and miscommunications — the “discursive fault lines” (p. 65) that inevitably arise in a multicultural classroom.
Understanding Emotions and Trauma
Students’ life histories are not dry and crystallized, devoid of emotional content; they are alive and evolving. The life experiences from which students’ funds of knowledge flow carry attached emotions. ESOL instructors meet individuals in the midst of transition and transformation; alongside the experience of learning a new language, these can be potent catalysts for feeling new feelings and revisiting old ones. Interfacing with emotions is an inherent part of caring ESOL instruction. For many authors in this review, foremost to this end is establishing a safe learning environment (Dytynyshyn & Collins, 2012; Kleinmuntz, 2011; Larrotta & Serrano, 2011; Wilbur, 2016). In a safe classroom, learners see that speaking aloud and offering their opinions is acceptable (Kleinmuntz, 2011; Larrotta & Serrano, 2011). When they are successful, they give themselves permission to be proud. When they struggle, instructors support them in developing “tolerance for the frustration” (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011, p. 321) that comes with learning. Larrotta and Serrano (2011) used topic selection to increase students’ interest and comfort. Familiar and relevant topics were easier for students to feel motivated to engage with. During a reading on financial freedom, for example, the instructors facilitated a discussion around the question “what is your greatest fear when it comes to money?” (p. 319). In looking after their students’ emotional experiences while learning English, the teacher–researchers “planned for the learners to feel like capable adults able to reach their learning goals” (p. 320). Once learners feel safe and seen in a classroom, other kinds of interactions can take place.
A useful construct in providing for the emotional lives of students is Kleinmuntz’s (2011) “climate of mutual aid” (p. 222), in which individuals’ concerns and difficulties can be shared with one another. Once safety has been established in a classroom, relationships begin to evolve. Kleinmuntz witnessed the developing relationships among his newly arrived students create a classroom norm of warmth and tolerance. The group “began to hear one another’s stories... and see, indeed, that common ground existed” (p. 226). Within this intimacy, Kleinmuntz was able to facilitate role play to help learners address their fears, and group problem-solving took place spontaneously as individuals reached into their own funds of knowledge for skills and resources they knew could help a classmate. Though Kleinmuntz considered establishing this climate one of his biggest challenges, he acknowledged that for many immigrants, “it is a relief in the classroom to experience the positive effects of mutual aid” (p. 220). In addition to language teaching and learning, ESOL classrooms are places where individuals’ immediate social and emotional needs can be met.
When working with immigrant and marginalized populations, an important part of attending to students’ emotional lives is learning to recognize and respond to trauma. ESOL instructors need to remain aware of the “influence that sociopolitical injustices have on the ability of students to engage and be present physically and mentally” (Wilbur, 2016, p. 6). Repercussions of trauma can manifest in a variety of ways and create barriers to language learning. In her experience as a community-level literacy worker, Wilbur (2016) noted that students affected by trauma faced recurrent challenges of “irregular attendance, what seemed to be like flashbacks, cognitive issues, and problems interacting with others” (p. 2). Participants in Wilbur’s study — five women providing English language instruction to newcomers to Canada — found that students’ behavior helped them identify who had experienced trauma. Behavioral cues included avoidance of eye contact, emotional extremes, inappropriateness, withdrawal, “lack of focus, evidence of drug and alcohol abuse, reaction to what might be triggers, and dramatic changes in progress” (Wilbur, 2016, p. 7). In addition to connecting students to outside resources and supports for dealing with trauma, ESOL teachers can make space in class for fun and creativity, use humor, provide ample breaks, and prioritize listening to students, making them feel comfortable, and building trust within the group (Wilbur, 2016). Students affected by trauma often face intersectionalities, such as less formal education and less access to and experience with technology, and they are more likely to be singled out or excluded, both by classroom peers and by instructors (Wilbur, 2016). It is an instructor’s responsibility to make sure this doesn’t happen. Self-monitoring one’s biases and reactions to students and guarding against discrimination within the classroom are necessary to create just, inclusive learning environments.
Tensions in Conversational Practices
Just as promoting learner voice is not without challenges, the highly interactive nature of adult ESOL also presents instructional quandaries. Live, in-the-moment conversation cannot be controlled, and spontaneous contributions by speakers in live exchanges are not entirely within an instructor’s purview. In structuring and conducting any class, instructors must maneuver “a delicate balance between formal classroom talk and more casual conversation” (Waring, 2014, p. 52). During class, they must choose how strictly to adhere to and how far to deviate from planned structure in light of unforeseeable classroom exchanges. Kleinmuntz (2011) suggested “we must trust our preparation enough to allow it to recede, permitting us the freedom to be present” (p. 222). Knowing when to let planning recede to further a moment of connectivity and when to invoke or re-invoke plans and structure to move through vital content is a discernment ESOL instructors must perpetually attempt to make.
Tensions exist between fostering connection and maintaining control in the language classroom (Waring, 2014). In his conversation analysis of student–teacher exchanges in a U.S. community English program, Waring (2014) framed these dichotomous tensions as “forging connection within the institutional constraints of control” (p. 66) and regaining control “in the midst of a more-or-less conversational exchange” (p. 66). To effect the former, the instructor in Waring’s study embedded personal inquiries and conversation topics on students’ lives into his instructional acts of control (i.e., initiating and closing conversation sequences, asking questions, and offering assessments). To effect the latter, he “force[d] a frame shift from conversation to institution” (p. 67) by writing one of a student’s conversational utterances about her weekend activities on the white board, then turning class discussion to its meaning, parts of speech, and usage. However, Waring noted that the instructor’s efforts to “forge connection within the overall structure of control [were not always] ratified by the students” (p. 66), and he concluded that how teachers can actively integrate the ordinary conversation that is such rich fodder for language learning into classroom structure without compromising its order “largely remains a mystery” (p. 69). Whether instructors find this conclusion dispiriting or motivating, navigating tensions of control and connection is an unavoidable, ongoing part of the job.
Supporting Learner Agency
Andragogy recognizes the high degree of responsibility adults are capable of taking for their own learning. Adults can work independently and think critically about what their education means to them and what they want to get out of it. They are accustomed to being the prime movers in their own lives, and an ESOL classroom that requires adults to surrender the agency they enact outside of class would be dramatically out of keeping with their abilities and learning needs. Most authors in this review posed some form of participatory curriculum development as necessary for effective adult language education, given adults’ identities as agents and their agency within their own learning (Cun et al., 2019; Grzega & Stenzenberger, 2011; Kleinmuntz, 2011; Larrotta & Serrano, 2011; Van Viegen & Zappa-Hollman, 2020; Waring & Yu, 2018). Participatory approaches entail students being engaged in curricular decisions “at every stage of the process... in identifying issues, generating content, producing materials, determining outcomes, and evaluating learning” (Auerbach, 1992, p. 21). Through this involvement, students voice skills they want to develop and choose approaches that work best for them. Promoting student input hinges on many of the instructional efforts discussed in this project: prioritizing student ideas, soliciting student contributions, responding to student suggestions, and creating an environment where all members feel comfortable contributing. Instructors must envision students as “adults who bring life experiences, language knowledge, language skills, and learning experiences” (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011, p. 323) to their ESOL education. When these elements are in place, participatory curriculum development can unfold as a vehicle for situating students’ funds of knowledge in the classroom and making learning relevant to their lives.
Student curricular input takes a variety of forms and entails a variety of knowledges. In Larrotta and Serrano’s (2011) class, the storybook project required learners to share experiences from their own lives then brainstorm, outline, and draft together as a group, combining students’ linguistic, literacy, and life knowledges to promote “curriculum ownership and collaboration” (p. 323). The personal glossary project in this class allowed each student to determine for themselves which words would be most beneficial to know in their individual lives. Similarly, creating an individual word stock is a core component of Grzega and Stenzenberger’s (2011) Basic Global English. In this approach, learners identify 250 words they feel will “enable them to speak about themselves and the things they are interested in” (p. 52), drawn from “their work, hobbies, [and] family or cultural customs” (p. 52). Examining cultural contrasts is also a core component of Basic Global English in which students have control. Learners select countries they wish to understand; they then conduct cross-cultural examinations of how humor, respect, politeness, and requests for clarification are conveyed, and they study linguistic hallmarks of various conversational registers in the focal countries. Grzega and Stenzenberger (2011) identify these forms of learner autonomy as ways Basic Global English “explicitly appreciates the heterogeneity of learner groups” (p. 56) and builds on learners’ awareness of what they most need linguistically and what they already know culturally. Because “incorporating learners’ suggestions into the teaching is one of the mainstays” (p. 81) of Basic Global English, the approach remains “a sort of work in progress” (p. 81) in which topics and emphasis shift with shifting groups of learners. Both Larrotta and Serrano’s and Grzega and Stenzenberger’s studies featured instructors who were responsive and flexible; they supported students in setting learning objectives individualized to their own needs, thus positioning students as experts in their own learning.
Knowledge derived from life experience and related to out-of-class events and concerns is especially pertinent in adult ESOL. For Kleinmuntz (2011), recognizing this type of student knowledge and allowing it to inform class direction involved collaboratively setting a group purpose. Kleinmuntz advanced to his students the idea that in addition to learning English, their ESL class “could be a place to discuss various issues of interest and provide ways for one another to grow” (pp. 227–228). Participants were enthusiastic for this possibility and specified concerns they would like to address together, including finding a job, participating in PTA, and understanding various aspects of their children’s schools. Kleinmuntz upheld the group goal by foregrounding these concerns in subsequent classes with targeted language lessons and facilitated discussions; in these, students helped one another based on what they had learned in similar situations. In later stages of the class, “members assumed more responsibility, often taking the lead in directing where they wanted the group to go” (p. 227). Here an instructor made space for students to dictate instructional topics guided by their shared mission to assist one another, and instruction spoke directly to students’ self-stated needs in their larger lives. In the classroom Cun et al. (2019) studied, when a real-life need for child care was voiced by a student during break time, the instructor responded by facilitating a whole-group discussion of the problem once class resumed. Members shared knowledge they had each developed in their own experiences communicating with case workers, and the instructor supported language learning by writing key words and phrases on the whiteboard. This moment resulted in learners mastering the new lexical phrase I need day care and building related vocabulary like voucher and the age of the child. Incorporating funds of knowledge that derive from students making their way in the adult world can be achieved both through planning and by responding in the moment when an immediate need is voiced in class.
Each of these instructional strategies capitalizes on adult learners’ ability to self-direct. Adult ESOL classrooms present the possibility of “language learning — on [one’s] own terms” (Waring & Yu, 2018, p. 665) — that is, motivated and animated by learners’ identities, which necessitate developing the language that will allow them to participate in desired activities and relationships outside of class. Students know how they learn best, as did one learner who “could explain very well what worked for her in order to learn English and was aware of what did not work for her” (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011, p. 321). When instructors solicit this self-reflective information from learners and adopt a responsive instructional stance, they recognize and nurture learners’ ability to direct their own process of English development. When multilingual approaches are implemented, learners are “free to use their linguistic resources as they wish to their own benefit” (Van Viegen & Zappa-Hollman, 2020, p. 172), and their ability to connect new learning with prior understandings is furthered. Supporting adult students in making educational choices by and for themselves helps them take ownership of their language learning and honors the ways of knowing that adult learners bring to their ESOL experience.
Conclusions
This literature review has demonstrated that instructors of adult ESOL can better support diverse learners by recognizing that diverse forms of knowledge exist and can be recruited as aids to language learning. Returning to the community college citizenship class and applying a funds of knowledge lens in the way of many of the authors reviewed here, I recall the older gentlemen both had beautiful penmanship and were able to represent English characters clearly and cleanly. The Arabic speakers, who were also learning a new alphabet, often consulted the men about their own written characters, and the men would deferentially extend the loop of their p or make their capital T a bit taller. The men spoke little and perhaps struggled with oral English, yet they were confident with written English and their graphic acumen was valuable to other students. The student I was paired with was quite rhythmic and musical, and he came up with short, catchy rhymes to help him remember new words and phrases. When the other students heard him chanting to himself, they asked what he was saying, and before long they were using the rhymes too. This student combined words in novel ways to create a supply of mnemonic devices for himself and others. These skills evidence something more profound about these individuals than any label of origin or status could; the skills they had honed deliberately through practice, and which were likely applied in a variety of ways in their outside lives, became resources for language learning within the ESOL classroom. The reviewed literature is unanimous in acknowledging adult English learners as whole people, replete with understandings and abilities that can enhance language learning for the whole class, if instructors are perceptive and humble enough to create opportunities for students to contribute what they know.
The reviewed articles also demonstrate that adult ESOL classrooms are not just for language learning. Every student in ESOL is engaged in some form of cross-cultural living, whether they were born in the United States or elsewhere. Speaking a home language other than English positions them outside the English-speaking mainstream, and the act of learning English constitutes a foray into new cultures. When an instructor is able to create an atmosphere of non-judgment where students feel comfortable sharing and expressing themselves, ESOL classrooms become places where adults pool their resources — their life experience, their know-how, their recent learning — to assist one another in adjusting to and navigating the new cultures they are entering. Instructors can make space for problem-solving intentionally through facilitated discussion and topical lessons, but also on the fly by listening to students and being flexible with lesson plans and willing to respond to a need expressed in the moment. Intercultural connections that take place in adult ESOL settings also live in the in-between spaces of class — in moments of unguarded conversation, in questions asked and answered or emotions processed during a break. Effective ESOL instructors prioritize dialogue among students in all these spaces and view students’ feelings and lives outside the classroom as pertinent and important to the group’s mission as learners. Effective ESOL instructors recognize themselves too as learners and view their classrooms as places where all members are learners and knowers simultaneously.
Coda
I have learned through this project that opportunities exist to foster safe and meaningful experiences with English as an ESOL teacher. My sense that adult English learners possess deeply significant individual funds of knowledge is a good starting point; what remains is to ask them about their knowledge, to notice when it is volunteered and beckon them to say more, to create curricular and conversational opportunities for them to express what they know, as many of the instructors profiled in this literature did with joy, sensitivity, and good humor. I found the classrooms described here inspiring, as they were sites of recognition and inclusion, in which the right of all participants to have and use their own voice was upheld. I view these classrooms as egalitarian spaces of mutual growth and empowerment, and I feel these elements present important pushback against divisive paradigms that would minimize the contributions of individuals who are minoritized. The classrooms in this literature demonstrate the instructional stance and attitude of an ESOL teacher as perhaps the most important aspect of their intentional approach, especially for teachers of majority status. Inquisitiveness toward the experiences and prior understandings of ESOL students can be brought to any activity and any lesson plan, and the willingness to connect new English concepts to concepts and language students already know is an instructional approach that can undergird many others in a diverse ESOL classroom.
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