Term

Fall 2025

Capstone

Capstone Project

Degree Name

MA-TESOL

Facilitator(s)

Betsy Parrish

Abstract

King, B. (2025)

Culturally Sustaining Practices for Advanced Multilingual Adult ESOL Students

Advanced multilingual ESOL learners need safe and positive learning environments that are responsive to their needs. This project seeks to answer how an adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) curriculum can be adapted using an emergent curriculum approach to be more culturally sustaining. As a white teacher with many privileges, I know the content and language skills I teach will never perfectly match the interests, desires and needs of all my students. Nonetheless, through the process of investigating culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), I have identified four practices that can promote cultural sustenance in ESOL classrooms: translanguaging, arts integration, eco- and place-based education, and mindfulness. These practices are complemented by Auerbach’s (1992) participatory curriculum development (PCD) approach, which allows the curriculum to emerge on both a daily and semesterly basis. Lesson plans that are emblematic of these practices, approaches and stances are the resulting product of this project. By listening deeply to feedback from students, teachers like me can help create conditions for healing, just, liberatory and culturally sustaining language learning among advanced multilingual adult ESOL learners.

Keywords

ESL, ESOL, adult education, adult ESL, adult ESOL, culturally responsive teaching, culturally sustaining pedagogy, participatory curriculum development, critical pedagogy, arts integration, translanguaging, mindfulness, eco-education, place-based education, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Traditional Eco Knowledge

Additional Files
King, Benjamin Project.pdf (4006 kB)

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text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

School of Education Student Capstone Projects

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