EDUCATORS’ PRACTICE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS’ CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: From Marginalized Identities to Active Agents

The purpose of this chapter is to provide middle grade educators with practical suggestions on how to support English language learners’ (ELLs) identities and their development of critical consciousness through critical practice in the classroom. Given that ELLs’ identities are integral parts of their language and literacy learning, middle grade educators’ attention to finding ways to support them is important. We base the practical suggestions on the synthesis of the existing findings of the first author’s qualitative studies conducted in middle schools and an extensive literature review on this topic. This chapter provides insights into how middle grade educators can respond to social and political issues that ELLs encounter in the mainstream context and support the students’ identities as active agents, not as marginalized passive learners.