Viceversas de una sola direccion: Existential phenomenological inquiry of immigrant experience and the ESL classroom

This qualitative study sought understanding of lived immigrant student experience and ESL classroom experience. An understanding of immigrant student experience, of the institutions into which they are socialized, of the cultural texts with which they interact in the new environment, and of the interethnic implications of interactions are imperative precursors to improved student learning and experience. The existential phenomenological design used post-formal analysis to discover the myriad cultural texts informing the context of the experience. Immigrant student identity and experience is lost in the positivist numbers and labels of accountability. Such an approach to learning about students fails to recognize the culturally-bounded concept of understanding and experience. In the study, the researcher introduced a culturally informed and culturally responsive text to students as a step toward gaining understanding through intersubjective experience of an authentic learning community. Students interrogated the text and shared their experiences of schooling as an immigrant student. Student interviews, teacher interviews, reflective journals, and student artifacts were analyzed using a hermeneutic protocol to explain the experience and to gain understanding of the experience. Meta-fictive data presentation was used to represent the ways cultural texts layer to inform experience and meaning.