| This "critical" case study sought to explore the phenomenon of academic and social failure experienced by a group of West African refugee/immigrant students in a "compensatory" ESOL program in an urban high school located in a major metropolis of the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. As speakers of an "Africanized" English, with school and community literacies that were unique to an African cultural background, these Liberian immigrant students experienced serious challenges in their adaptation to the culture and expectations of the "American" school.;Given the well-documented prevalence of linguistic, ethnic, and cultural prejudice exhibited towards non-Standard English-speaking ethnic groups in American schools, I was especially interested in exploring the particular "meanings" that Liberian students had constructed from their interactions with "American" school culture, and in understanding how specific "discourses of schooling," i.e., "cultural knowledge" had positioned them as academically "at risk" and "socially challenged." Using critical theories of discourse, power, and pedagogy, I argued that language and literacy were vital keys to the Liberian students' academic as well as social success, and that Western-centric "received" notions of "literacy" as limited exclusively to the acquisition of reading, writing, and content knowledge in a culture-neutral context had created the very conditions for undermining these students' literacy development in the urban "American" school.;Consistent with the study's phenomenological orientation, I audio taped and video taped interviews with six Liberian "community experts," five ESOL teachers, one ESOL/support staff, one non-teaching assistant, and a mixed gender group of nine Liberian high school students. Of the nine interviews that I conducted with the students, I successfully transcribed seven, which provided the primary data for analysis and interpretation. Other forms of data included a parental survey instrument, field notes from my formal classroom observations, and my informal observations of the Liberian students in the ESOL Center, cafeteria, and hallways.;The study revealed several important findings, which include (a) the crucial roles of "culture" and "context" in the development of refugee/immigrant students' school literacy; (b) "socio-cultural capital" as an indispensable tool in supporting students' school literacy and in their understanding and negotiation of "American" school culture; (c) the importance of the "relational" to refugee/immigrant students' cognitive and affective development; (d) the consistency of teachers' beliefs and practices with the operation of the "hidden curriculum of ESL"; (e) social inequality between refugee/immigrant and "American" students, especially African Americans, according to the urban "code of the street"; (f) the "invisibility" of race as a major factor inhibiting refugee/immigrant students' academic and social aspirations, and (g) the ESOL Center as a cultural refuge for refugee/immigrant students confronting academic and social challenges in an alien environment.;Considering the outcomes of this study, to address the unique language and literacy needs of West African refugee/immigrant students, I advocate the adoption by American teachers of a "critical pedagogy" as a viable pedagogical method of incorporating students' language and lived experiences into the official curriculum of the urban "American" school. Although limited in scope to a particular ethnic and linguistic group from the West African nation of Liberia, the study's findings can be extended to other groups of English language learners whose cultures differ significantly from the "American" or Eurocentric norm, and whose indigenous literacies need affirmation and support, especially to enable these students to succeed in urban American schools. |
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