Sembiante, Sabrina F.

This multiple-case study sought to understand how adult students with disabilities demonstrate grit in the pursuit of higher education. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this study found that adult students with disabilities demonstrate grit through seeking to understand their own disabilities and the impacts of those disabilities on their academics, finding solutions-based approaches in improving their academic skills, persevering through various forms of sacrifice, “pushing through,” and practice, seeking help from their support networks, and maintaining consistent interests in their courses of study while also keeping a greater purpose in mind. These findings are discussed in detail and implications for practice as well as future research are identified.

Full-service community schools (FSCSs) are a holistic, multifaceted reform strategy aimed at improving the educational life experiences and outcomes of underserved student populations (Sanders, 2016; Sanders & Galindo, 2020), designed to provide more equitable educational experiences (Sanders et al., 2018). Black, Native American, and LatinX children represent three-quarters of children living in poverty today, because of systemic inequities and racial disparities that these groups have experienced for decades (Gennetian & Yoshikawa, 2021). The purpose of this study is to document the evolution of a full-service community school, as well as its alignment to the highly effective community school (HECS) model. Richardson’s (2009) HECS model was implemented to identify the relationship between leadership, collaborative partners, and organizational development, and their ability to produce beneficial outcomes and, ultimately, a highly effective FSCS. The research site was the Achievement Centers for Children and Families (ACCF), a long-standing, full-service community school located in Delray Beach, Florida. Data for this qualitative case study were collected using an oral history methodology which included interviews and document analysis.

Emergent bilingual (EB) students enter classrooms with rich, diverse language repertoires. Too often, students’ linguistic assets are not meaningfully integrated to foster or support opportunities of academic languaging in which students can engage their full range of semiotic resources. This is particularly problematic in middle school during which literacy demands increase, academic genres need to be reproduced rather than solely comprehended, and explicit literacy instruction typically decreases (Humphrey, 2017; Rose, 2010). Through a design-based research (DBR) approach, this study showcases how Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (CSSFL), a theoretical and pedagogical approach, can support middle school students’ engagement in explicit and equitable literacy practices within the unique context of an intensive reading English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classroom. Throughout the DBR phases, qualitative data from observations, student artifacts, lesson plans, and researcher notes were collected and analyzed to address the following research questions: (RQ1) What are the cultural, linguistic, and literacy practices of EB students within a culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) intensive reading middle school classroom? (RQ2) What do CSSFL-informed lessons comprise when created in response to the EB middle school students’ needs and practices through a DBR approach? (RQ3) How do the students engage in the practices of the CSSFL-informed lessons? Designing, implementing, and evaluating the CSSFL-informed lessons demonstrated how the use of multimodal resources eased students’ hesitancy and facilitated meaning-making opportunities, how students used translanguaging for multiple purposes, and how students became conscientious about language use while establishing connections to their existing linguistic knowledge. Results of this study offer insights into how theory-practice bridges can be established in middle school classrooms to develop spaces where students have opportunities to expand on their cultural and linguistic assets as they understand, manipulate, and remix for academic purposes (Harman & Khote, 2018). Moreover, the findings illuminate the feasibility of implementing culturally sustaining, language focused practices that can push boundaries of restrictive curricular structures while forefronting students’ language backgrounds in their learning.