Newcomers’ literacy trajectories: mapping and monitoring literacy learning practices, processes and strategies in formal, non-formal and informal spheres.

This doctoral research forms the basis of a broader research project (C2 - Unlocking newcomers’ literacy development: learning for life in formal, non-formal and informal spheres) that focuses on migrant newcomers’ language and literacy development in their new host environment. It explores how they expand their literacy competencies in different situated socialization processes and ecologies, and tries to gain insight into how newcomers’ literacy learning is being perceived, handled, and valued by newcomers themselves as well as by significant others, in three spheres of learning: formal, non-formal and informal. The overall objective of the research is to ethnographically explore, describe and analyse how migrant newcomers navigate these spheres of learning and socialisation to foster their literacy development. First of all I examine learning practices and events in all three spheres as well as in a range of relevant different social contexts. Within the three spheres, the ethnographic focus integrates four (meta) resource clusters that have special relevance for newcomers: multilingual repertoires, social/’brockerage’ networks, and technological resources as well as awareness of genres or clusters of tasks. Moreover, my research project observes and analyses literacy practices and events ethnographically but also monitors these, i.e. feeds-back to the participating newcomers in order to elicit reflections on the nature, the social meaning and relevance of the identified instances of learning. The broader goal of this research is twofold. It provides critical insights into how the differential institutionalisation of learning in the three spheres and the use of different resources affect the literacy development of the migrant newcomers, while it also forms the basis for stake-holder driven and context-sensitive experimentation with the transfer of learning practices between spheres.