Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5476-8164

Date of Award

8-31-2026

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Linguistics, Applied

First Advisor

Kimberly Urbanski, Associate Professor

Second Advisor

Panayota Gounari, Professor

Third Advisor

Gale Stam, Professor

Abstract

This study proposed a culturally sustaining pedagogy for the holistic literacy development of Vietnamese immigrants in Massachusetts. Informed by Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky, 1978, 2012) and Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 2000), the research expanded Concept-Based Language Instruction (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014) and the commensurate frameworks of the Teaching-Learning Cycle (Rothery, 1994), Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1994), and Translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014). The pedagogy centered the learners’ cultural wealth and knowledge, using storytelling as a cultural practice to promote multilingual literacy and advance multilingual justice in adult literacy education. Three forms of data: verbalization, performance work, and social interactions were collected for 28 weeks and systematically analyzed using microgenesis (Wertsch, 1991), discourse analysis (Blommaert, 2005), conversation analytic conventions (Sidnell & Stivers, 2013), and the McNeillian tradition (McNeill, 2005). The data showed changes over time in the learners’ understanding, practices of multilingual storytelling literacy from word-for-word translation to meaning-making of the text and sense-making of the lived reality. The research documented the learners’ holistic cognitive-emotive, social, and identity development through engagement with various story genres. Findings highlighted social, emotional, and personal meanings of literacy education for the learners’ conceptual development. As a community-based praxis, the work countered market-driven neoliberal implementation of adult literacy education while bridging the gap between the community and the university. It is hoped that this study will inspire future literacy education projects, rooted in, driven by, and led by communities while fostering greater relationality with and within communities and between communities and higher education institutions.

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Additional and Related Files

Dissertation full_final_NMN.pdf (7180 kB)
Dissertation full_final_NMN 3.pdf (7221 kB)

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