Understanding English Language Learners' Literacy from a Cultural Lens: An Asian Perspective

Tensions between knowledge transmission and student-focused teaching approaches to assessment purposes: helping students improve through transmission

“…When children enter schools, they learn how to be active memorisers and how to use memorisation as a tool for concept development (DeHaan, 2008). According to Li (2001), rote learning as used in Chinese classrooms is not mere memorisation, but a consolidation of knowledge and a deepening of understanding. In this model, Chinese teachers train students using exam taking or mastery quizzes or knowledge transmission to enhance their memory for examination items, but also to deepen their understanding of conceptual knowledge.…”

Local challenges and opportunities for language and literacy researchers and educators

“…These studies showed indigenous peoples overcoming narratives of shame and deficits, documenting and recognizing indigenous knowledge to connect youth with their elders and community ways of knowing, and encouraging youth to serve as agents of change. Li (2013) showed the complexities of immigration and schooling through discussion of Asian English language learners' identities, literacy practices, and literacy pedagogies. Li proposed culturally-focused pedagogy to help students generate ethnographic data about socio-cultural contexts of learning in and out of school, "valuing students' first language and culture… as funds of knowledge" (p. 148) and developing strategies that help students and teachers construct alternative local spaces where different and/or contested cultural codes and social contexts could be reconciled and coexist.…”