Fostering literacy practices in EFL learners through collaborative inquiry

Abstract

This action research attempts to foster literacy practices in a group of third graders by means of collaborative inquiry of socio-cultural knowledge present in the students’ school community. This study was conducted in a private, catholic school in Bogotá, Colombia, as an opportunity to consider another pedagogical proposal that pertains to the process of developing literacy practices from a socio cultural perspective within an inquiry-based learning environment. Throughout the pedagogical implementation, students used multiple modes of language and literacy to explore and make meaning of the historical and human assets within their school community. This qualitative study followed grounded theory, as the framework for data analysis and the instruments for data collection were artifacts, field notes and journals. The results showed how the inquiry-based learning approach provided language learners with opportunities and environments to develop multimodal literacy as a social situated practice to co-construct socio-cultural knowledge. Such experiences positioned students as owners and agents of their own language and literacy learning to make meaning with regard to their previous knowledge and the new information they found through their collaborative inquiry projects.