Second language (L2) French students' and instructors' experiences of critical literacies pedagogy: A mixed methods program evaluation

Gorham, Julia Anne

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129685 Copy

Description

Title

Second language (L2) French students' and instructors' experiences of critical literacies pedagogy: A mixed methods program evaluation

Author(s)

Gorham, Julia Anne

Issue Date

2025-04-16

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Mroz, Aurore

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Mroz, Aurore

Committee Member(s)

• Maroun, Daniel
• Yan, Xun
• Christianson, Kiel

Department of Study

French and Italian

Discipline

French

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Second/foreign language teaching/learning
• French as a second language
• critical literacies
• critical pedagogy
• program evaluation

Abstract

Critical literacies (CL) education (Lewison et al., 2002) centers four dimensions of social justice-based instruction: disrupting the commonplace, examining multiple viewpoints, exploring sociopolitical topics, and promoting social justice. Despite their importance, CL approaches have remained under-implemented in U.S. university second language (L2) teaching and learning contexts. Additionally, existing research has not yet explored the practicality of implementing CL sequences in L2 courses or the perceptions of L2 CL teaching held by both students and instructors from the same program or institution. The present study addressed these gaps by identifying (a) the extent to which students enrolled in first-fifth semester L2 French courses at a large, public research university in the Midwestern United States reported prioritizing and experiencing CL instruction in their French classes as well as any significant differences or associations between their reported levels of prioritization and experience, (b) relationships between students’ reported degrees of L2 CL prioritization and experience and their demographic or linguistic backgrounds, (c) the type and nature of strategy use by sixth-semester L2 French students while completing an L2 CL-based pedagogical sequence, (d) the extent to which instructors of L2 French at the same institution reported prioritizing and enacting L2 CL instruction in their French classes and any significant differences and associations between their reported levels of prioritization and experience, and (e) obstacles reported by the instructors in implementing CL pedagogy in their French classes. This study adopted a hybrid, convergent parallel mixed methods and action research design consisting of student and instructor versions of a Likert-scale Qualtrics survey completed by 136 students and 13 instructors in the French department of the target institution from Spring 2022 – Fall 2023. In addition, Zoom-recorded semi-structured interviews were conducted with consenting instructors and an L2 CL pedagogical sequence was completed by 14 students in a sixth-semester French course in Spring 2022. Data analysis included descriptive and inferential statistics on survey data, grounded theory-based qualitative coding on student work from the CL pedagogical sequence, and qualitative thematic analysis on instructor interview transcripts. Results indicated that student participants generally reported prioritizing L2 CL instruction but did not report regularly experiencing it in their French courses. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and those with increased personal interest in French reported significantly higher L2 CL prioritization, while students identifying as female, those having learned fewer additional L2s, and those with higher personal French interest reported significantly more L2 CL experience. Additionally, among students who were not French majors/minors, those identifying as Asian reported significantly more L2 CL experience than those identifying as white. Students in the intermediate L2 French course leveraged cognitive, emotional/affect, linguistic/typographical, and organizational/structural strategies while completing the L2 CL pedagogical sequence. Similarly to the students, instructor participants also generally reported prioritizing L2 CL teaching, but did not report regularly enacting it in their French courses. They identified several barriers on the individual, departmental, and institutional/national levels that hindered their use of L2 CL pedagogy. The implications of these results are discussed and concrete implications are provided for L2 pedagogical research and practice, namely through proposing ways to increase all students’ prioritization of CL, regardless of demographic background, teaching strategies used by upper-intermediate students in lower-level classes to make L2 CL instruction more widely accessible, and mitigating obstacles faced by instructors in implementing L2 CL pedagogy.

Graduation Semester

2025-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129685

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2025 Julia Gorham

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