The researchers used a duo-ethnographic approach to examine mathematics and science teacher-candidates (TCs) experiences with a Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum course during the pandemic and how the shift to online delivery impacted their attitudes. Through one researcher’s course reflections and students’ anonymous course survey comments in 2020, the research revealed that some TCs lack of exposure to literacy-based teaching impacted their literacy identities and initial resistance to the course. However, the shift to online learning, increased course relevance, exposure to diverse online methodologies and multiliterate tools seemed to have positively impacted mathematics and science TCs attitudes toward Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum compared to previous years.

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This dissertation presents findings from a 3-month qualitative study that examined Jamaican Creole's (JC) influence on four adolescent (14-17) working-class Jamaican boys' identities, gendered practices, and evolving attitudes toward English language learning (ELL). It embraced a social constructivist approach anchored in narrative inquiries and case studies to document the complexities of the boys' lived language experiences as dominant JC speakers in an inner-city high school. The data collected from the participants' graphic novels, interviews, video diaries, and my observations revealed that JC significantly influenced the boys' identities, gendered practices, and attitudes toward Standard Jamaican English (SJE) and ELL. First, the data show that the boys used JC extensively to engage their identities as Jamaicans and strong heterosexual boys, which granted them social and linguistic power among working-class men and boys in their communities. Further, it reveals that the boys exhibited positive attitudes toward SJE and ELL when they engaged with supportive teachers who valued their linguistic resources and the reverse was true when they had teachers who demonstrated Anglo-centric ideologies. Lastly, the boys were agentive in their ELL performance and strongly believed they were accountable for their own success. This dissertation concludes that Jamaican schools need to develop more equitable language classrooms that successfully integrate JC-speaking students' linguistic resources and engage them in practices that complement rather than oppress their authentic voices. I hope that this research will invite educators and curriculum developers to cultivate more diverse multiliterate and bilingual ELL practices that offer working-class JC-speaking youths more opportunities for success and facilitate a more critical examination of Anglo-centric language ideologies in schools that are suppressing students' voices.