Education Commons^™

“That Felt Weird”: International Graduate Students’ Emerging Critical Awareness Of Their Experiences With Microaggression, Romaisha Rahman

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to uncover and understand international graduate students’ experiences with microaggressions that stem from native speaker fallacy; microaggressions are the subtle discriminatory behaviors executed toward marginalized groups and native speaker fallacy is the false belief that only some “native” English speakers are effective teachers and users of the language. Put simply, this research aimed at unveiling the subtle language-based discriminations that international graduate students experience in their day-to-day lives in U.S. educational settings. To collect data for the study, the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was utilized. CIT is a method that allows the …

Deictic Pointing And Demonstrative Usage In American Sign Language, Paul Twitchell

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

American Sign Language (ASL), like many different signed languages, has a systematic way of using pointing signs for multiple types of nominal reference. Possibly the most basic function of pointing is to indicate, direct and modulate reference to physical objects located in proximal and distal areas called exophoric demonstratives.

This study aims to investigate ASL exophoric demonstratives and how ASL fits within the different typological systems of demonstratives that have been documented (Diessel & Coventry, 2020). Several research questions focus on how signers direct attention to proximal and distal referents in ASL using an elicitation task. The two studies (adult …

Creating Counter-Hegemonic Spaces In A Spanish Language Arts Classroom, Mercedes Valenzuela

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This qualitative case study used practitioner research methods to address the question: How does a Mexican American teacher create counter-hegemonic spaces in a Spanish Language Arts classroom utilizing critical race and borderlands theories? The research focused on how I as a teacher-built trust and respect through place—here, the classroom, classroom activities, and discussions—thereby creating a place for students to express their thoughts and feelings and to build relationships with the teacher and their classmates for learning to occur. This study also analyzed how using critical race and borderlands theories influences and shapes Mexican American students’ educational experiences beyond a …

An Application Of Tajfel’S Social Identity Theory To Understand Gamer As A Social Identity Among Saudi College-Level Students, Mohammad M. Assiri

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Understanding the social identity construction of Saudi college-level students who self-identify as gamers in Saudi Arabia is essential when designing a student-centered education. Although support exists within the literature for exploring what it means to be a gamer from the perspective of gamers, a review of the literature revealed a gap in this regard in the context of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this grounded theory study explored self-identification as a gamer in Saudi Arabia using Tajfel's (1981) three tenets of self-identification with a group. A social identity framework was used to understand the characteristics of Saudi gamers, their positive or negative …

A Corpus-Based Investigation Of Phrasal Complexity In L1, L2 Phd Students, And Expert Writers In Education Field, Hani Albelihi

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This study compared 11 noun modifiers, adopted from Biber et al.’s (2011) index, in the writing of English native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) graduate students in Education field and compare them with the frequencies found in published writings. Also, it investigated how the language background influences NP complexity in academic writing. The findings showed compared to the expert writers, the student writers used different amounts of phrasal modifiers in their dissertations (e.g., premodifying nouns). Then, a Chi-square test and residual analysis were run to explore how language background influences the noun phrases. Four particular noun modifiers were influenced …

My Story To Tell: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of Instructional Coaching For Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Through Multicultural Literature In Elementary Classrooms, Annette Melissa Fiedler

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this qualitative Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices was to explore and tell a personalized account of myself as an instructional coach striving for culturally responsive pedagogical practices through multicultural literature in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. Two research questions were designed to address this autoethnographic exploration. Research Question 1 was: What tensions do I experience as a living contradiction in the work as an instructional coach for elementary teachers of diverse learners who need culturally responsive literacy instruction? Research Question 2 was: How do my personal understandings of these tensions honor my commitment to enlarging teachers’ culturally …

The Effect Of Semantic Neighborhood Density On Vocabulary Learning In Spanish As A Second Language And Spanish As A Heritage Language, Marián Giráldez Elizo

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This dissertation reviews the results from an online survey created to identify and compare how second language (L2) learners and heritage language (HL) learners of Spanish, enrolled in beginning-level coursework at the college level, acquired and built vocabulary. A total of 451 participants completed the survey. The purpose of the online survey was to serve as a baseline for pedagogical purposes, since it provided information about participants’ language profiles and the way they build vocabulary based on sematic relatedness. Overall, the findings from the survey showed that HL and L2 learners differ in the way they build semantic neighborhoods and, …

Indigenous Wisdom, Storytelling, And Language Renewal Ꭰꮒᏸꭺꭹ, Ꭰꮒᏼꮻꮿ Ꭰꭷꮩꭵꭿꮝꮧ Ꭴꮒꭽ, Ꭰꮴꭿꮠꮧᏹ Ꭶꮼꮒꭿꮝꮧ, Arlo Starr

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Abstract ᎧᏃᎮᏍᎩ

Language, cultural immersion, and intergenerational land-based education have shown the potential to vastly improve dire health issues that Indigenous people face. What is the most effective way to produce a large number of second language learners who speak at a basic level in order to improve Indigenous health?

Relationship is a vital part of Indigenous cosmology. Rather than promoting the consumption of words as things, acquisition will be more readily integrated into relationship-based thought when also interacting with them in context through story, and cultural activities that are fun, understandable, and engage community. Many successful language immersion models …

A Dialectical Relational Analysis Of Tesol Quarterly 2006 Special Issue On Race: Discourse, Race, And White Supremacist Ideology, Ginger A. Looney

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Although the field of TESOL is not racially neutral this dialectical relational analysis examined (1) what discourses did the authors use to deploy race in the articles in the 2006 TESOL Quarterly Special Issue on Race (TQSIR)? and (2) how do these discourses work to either conform to, or resist white supremacist ideology? Analysis of the texts identified four key discourse: racialization, whiteness, emotional labor of racism, and sonic and optic negation of racism. These discourses were examined in the domains of scholarship, curriculum, teachers, and students. In 21 instances, these four discourses work to resist white supremacist ideology. …

What Can We Learn From Adult Esl Students’ Responses To Children’S Literature?, Monique C. Stone

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Some teachers face frequently changing populations of students, making it difficult to gain cultural knowledge that is important to support student learning. The aim of this study was to explore how adult language-learner students in intensive English programs (IEPs) respond to children’s picture books portraying their home countries or cultures. Reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1995) and cultural scaffolding (Gay, 2002; i.e., the use of student culture to support student learning) are the initial frameworks upon which the study was developed. The study was qualitative in nature and driven by a desire for the researcher to gain more cultural knowledge about …

Pakistani English Language Teachers’ Preparedness: An Investigation Of Ideological Meaning-Making In Higher Education Institutions In Pakistan, Yasir Hussain

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This research study is an attempt to understand the ideological preparedness of English language teachers at the higher education institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan. The construct of preparedness is unique in this study because the phenomenon of preparedness is simplified for pedagogical methodologies and teaching practices. This study is a journey of understanding ideology, its representations through discourse, and its enactment through discursive practices of the participant-teachers. In this hermeneutical phenomenological study, I used interview texts as the data source and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytical framework. The participants included 15 English language teachers at nine different HEIs in …

Decolonial Gestures Of Andean Bilingual College Students Promoting Quechua: Community-Based Participatory Research With Photovoice, Yuliana H. Kenfield

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Andean college students in Cusco, Peru, struggle to overcome discrimination against bilingualism during their pursuit of higher education. To examine this situation and possibilities for change, I employed a participatory method, photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1994) within a community-based participatory research framework, to facilitate Quechua-Spanish bilingual college students’ exploration of Quechuan practices in their university. Participatory research methodology promoted critical dialogues to challenge ideologies that have obstructed the revitalization, maintenance, development of the Quechua language in higher education. Although university policies in Cusco formally promote inclusion of indigenous knowledge and practices, bilingual Spanish-Quechua practices on campus have remained largely symbolic. …

Diné Epistemology: Sa’Ah Naaghái Bik’Eh Hózhóón Teachings, Vangee Nez

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Sa’ah Naaghái Bik’eh Hózhóón (SNBH) is Diné epistemology, a complex system of knowledge encompassing two paradigms: Beauty Way (Hózhóójii-female) and Protection Way (Naayée’ k’egho-male), with hózhó at its core. The study examines personal narratives of SNBH through lived experiences toward hózhó. The literature review looks at Diné worldview from the perspective of published Diné scholars on SNBH for Diné youth. This qualitative case study approach, using Indigenous epistemology and Indigenous research methodology framework, allowed for intensive descriptions and analysis of SNBH. The interviews explored participants’ lived experiences using narrative inquiry to understand SNBH. The findings …

Video Games And Virtual Reality As Classroom Literature: Thoughts, Experiences, And Learning With 8th Grade Middle School Students, Miles M. Harvey

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This qualitative study utilized video games and virtual reality in an eighth-grade public middle school media literacy elective classroom in which the head researcher was also the official teacher for the students in the study. The nineteen students and their teacher used video games in small groups for five consecutive weeks. The teacher and nineteen students recorded data about their thoughts, experiences, and learning as they played in the classroom. Students responded to open-ended reader-response questions about their experiences after playing video games each day for forty-five minutes. Students reflected about their experiences in a thought journal. The teacher responded …

Teachers’ Professional Identity Construction: A Narrative Inquiry Of Non-Native English Speaking Teachers In Saudi Arabia, Mustafa Abdo Hersi

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This qualitative study examineshow five in-service male non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) constructed and negotiated their professional identity as teachers to make meaning of their lived experiences in an EFL milieu, a Saudi Arabian university. The study also explores the challenges related to NNESTs’ teaching lives and how they negotiated them as they constructed their professional identities. I approached the studied phenomena by employing a narrative inquiry method. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and an autobiography. The study draws on Clandinin and Connelly’s framework of three-dimensional space (temporality, sociality, and place), Bourdieu’s theory of forms of capital,and Gee’s …

Historical Traditions And Critical Perspectives: An Exploration Of The Textual And Pedagogical Choices Of Four Language Arts Teachers In An Urban, Diverse Secondary School, Annmarie L. Sheahan

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Even as current critical research in the teaching of English calls for a widening of traditional secondary texts and curricula choices, the presence of certain district, local, and state policies continue to permeate classrooms in extensive and oppressive ways that have limited the literature, the instructional strategies, and the autonomy that teachers bring into educational spaces. This qualitative study examines the pedagogical choices of four secondary language arts teachers within the framework of both historical and critical perspectives on the teaching of literature and within the realities of a high-stakes, evaluative teaching environment. Utilizing participatory action research (PAR) and collaborative …

A Case Study Of Two Taiwanese Students With Hearing Loss Navigating The English As A Foreign Language Requirement At Their University, Yu Chen

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Many institutions of higher education (IHE) students in Taiwan now need to meet the English proficiency requirement to earn their higher education degrees. In this case study, I intended to a) provide the opportunity for IHE students with hearing loss in Taiwan to share their opinions, thoughts, and experiences of learning English as a foreign language in higher education institutes; and b) understand how English as a foreign language policies and educational practices contribute to create opportunities and barriers for IHE students with hearing loss. The research question I intended to examine was “what are the perceptions of the lived …

Critical Social Justice Theory In Action: A Practitioner Inquiry Into The Service-Learning Capstone Experience, Julie A. Jaynes

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Service-learning pedagogy can be found in K-12 schools and higher education classrooms across the country. Those programs and courses exist on a complex spectrum from charity to social justice; research presented here documents my efforts as a service-learning teacher to better align the program’s senior capstone class to the teachings from critical social justice theory. I used a practitioner inquiry approach to address the problem of an epistemology in the research process that recreated systems of oppression by excluding the knowledge and voices of the minoritized groups who are impacted by the issues being researched. My inquiry centers my students’ …

Indonesian Students' Perceptions Of Written Feedback In Second Language Writing, Rahmah Fithriani

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Grounded in sociocultural theory, written feedback activities in second language (L2) writing provide the social interactions that help learners develop their psychical functions within the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as they co-construct knowledge with teachers and peers through guided learning (De Guerrero & Villamil, 2000). Written feedback can also help student writers improve their writing proficiency, including organization of their texts and awareness of the mechanics of the language necessary for successful communication of the intended message (Chandler, 2003; Ferris, 2006; Jahin, 2012; Kamimura, 2006).

Regarding the eminence of feedback in L2 writing, a large body of research has …

Agency, The Uncanny, And Strangeways: An Autoethnographic Journey Through An International Wunderland., Roberto T. Ollivier

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The African diaspora and postcolonial studies author George Lamming writes in his book “The Pleasures of Exile” that the Caliban character from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” “cannot be revealed in any relation to himself-for he has no self which is not a reaction to circumstances imposed upon his life” (Lamming, 1992, p. 107). One could argue that the only hope this half-human half-monstrous creature, or for that matter, any of us have to find peace, lies in the attempt to find resolution through the metaphorical slaying of our respective pasts. Like Caliban, many of us are never …

Digital Technology, Literacies, And Identity: Experiences Of Historically Marginalized Adolescents, Daniel Olufemi Dr.

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

New media and digital technologies shape the literacy practices and identity development of adolescents (Ellison, 2014, Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Perry, 2012; Lotherington & Jenson, 2011). Research into this phenomenon has largely focused on the general adolescent population. However, this narrative inquiry focuses on the experiences of four adolescents of color in New York City who live in poverty. Participants in this study visit a neighborhood library to access computers and the Internet. The researcher conducted semi-structure interviews in the library to evoke narratives about participants’ use of digital media and observed participants as they used the library computers. Analysis …

Experiences Of Adolescents And Drama: "This Is Bullsh*T. I Can't Do It", Erin K. Hulse Phd

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this practitioner action research (PAR) study was to explore experiences of middle school students enrolled in a basic drama class, creating a performance piece that allowed for the representation of voices and opinions of participants. Seventh and eighth grade students developed work relating their perspectives on issues important to them--friendship, respect, equality, secrets, and moving on. Questions were 1) how are trust, ensemble, and community developed with the participants? 2) how do students respond to drama games, and 3) how do participants express their perspectives regarding issues using the creative drama strategies? Students created a performance of …

From Project To Teacher To Student: A Qualitative Case Study Exploring The Complexities Of Student Writing At A Project-Based Learning High School, Jamie Mae Collins

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

In this qualitative case, I explore the complexities of adolescent student writing within one project over the course of one trimester at a project-based learning (PBL) high school. With this study, I seek to both understand how students write within project work and open-up a conversation between the fields of adolescent literacy development and PBL. From my extensive collection of data—field notes; student writing samples; photographs; teacher artifacts; and audio records of teacher interviews, planning sessions, and implementation of writing activities—I sought to answer my overarching research question: What happens with student writing during one project in a PBL high …

Using The Aesthetic Stance To Achieve Historical Thinking, Heather J. Bassett Dahl

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This research study focuses on how an aesthetic reading stance with dystopian literature can aid teens in the development of historical thinking skills. My research is based on ideas from Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory and Sam Wineburg’s concept and definition for historical thinking along with the UCLA Standards for Historical Thinking. Historical thinking requires students to gain factual information but also experiences. As a social studies teacher, this practitioner inquiry study created an opportunity to explore how I might position students into the intellectual mindsets of historical thinking through fictional reading in the aesthetic stance. This study provided students the …

Towards Becoming Bilingual -- Cognitive And Semantic Considerations On Language Acquisition, Gnaneswaran Thiruraj Perinpanayagam

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Language learning is both culture-bound and individual-skill-bound, structured on an innate, biological capacity to acquire language. While it is a remarkable phenomenon when it occurs in the acquisition of a first language, it is even more remarkable in the acquisition of a second language where the main objective concerning competence is to bring the two languages into equilibrium. This equilibrium does not result in a final co-ordinate bilingual, which is only an abstract ideal. It is, rather, the complex bilingualism - the only bilingualism it is possible to demonstrate - and the equilibrium is judged on the needs and purposes …

The Relationship Between Bilingualism And Verbal Test Performance, Donald Fred Mead

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

It is the principal purpose of the present study to investigate the relationship between bilingualism as measure by an objectively oriented scale, the Hoffman Bilingual Schedule, and test performances with a comparatively new vocabulary instrument which merely requires the subject to point in response to the spoken word. The Latter is the Ammons Full-Range Picture Vocabulary Test. A secondary purpose is to establish tentative Spanish Norms for 17,18, and 19 year-olds for the Ammons test.