Agency, story, and structure: Designing curriculum for emergent bilinguals through culturally sustaining pedagogy

Abstract

This qualitative study explores narrative writing as a site of agency and contextual language use, drawing on a two-month practitioner inquiry with twelve eighth-grade emergent bilinguals in a suburban New York middle school. Rejecting deficit-based models, the study reframes writing around students’ lived experiences, contributing to critical curriculum theory and culturally sustaining pedagogy. As Pinar (2023) reminds us, a “praxis of presence promises to extricate us from self-enclosure” (p. 3), a notion that informs this study’s commitment to relational and ethically responsive forms of learning. Drawing on student-authored narratives, interviews, and classroom reflections, the study theorizes and pedagogically examines narrative competence and cognitive mapping as a curricular framework that can reshape writing instruction through sustained pedagogical engagement. Findings suggest interventions across theory and practice, including recentering of marginalized voices, promoting intercultural mediation, and embracing plural literacies, thus advancing a holistic approach to writing that recognizes students’ multiple identities and positions them as epistemic agents in the classroom.