Doctoral Dissertation Research: Building Bridges: Language Ideology and Mother Tongue Literacy Education in Morocco

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University of Michigan doctoral candidate Jennifer L. Hall, with the guidance of Dr. Judith T. Irvine, will undertake research on the relationship between contemporary programs to promote adult literacy and the historical dynamics of social division and social control. The research will be carried out in Morocco, where there is an innovative approach to adult literacy education called "passerelle." Passerelle aims to teach adult women to first write their mother tongues, Moroccan Arabic or Berber, using Standard Arabic orthography before transitioning them to broader Standard Arabic literacy skills. The research methods to be employed in the study include long-term participation observation, interviews, surveys, and focus group sessions. The researcher will identify pre-existing, locally meaningful notions of literacy and examine how the language ideologies of literacy learners, their teachers, and Moroccan educators influence and are influenced by their experiences with passerelle literacy programs. The researcher will examine women's relationships towards literacy materials before and after participation in the program. By using a multi-sited research design and by interacting both with women currently enrolled in literacy classes as well as women who completed literacy training over four years ago, the researcher will identify the short-term and longer-term social and political consequences of participation in passerelle based literacy programs. This research will contribute to social science theory by investigating how the selective valuation of certain language varieties and literate traditions over others may become entwined with other mechanisms of social control. The research also will help education policy makers and development specialists design more effective adult literacy education courses. This project contributes to the education of a social scientist.