Education Commons^™

Teacher Trainees’ Reasoning About Teaching Mathematics To English Learners In An Era Of Core Content State Standards, Sultan Turkan, Megan Schramm-Possinger

Journal of English Learner Education

Research has indicated over the years that English learners (ELs) are not supported to achieve their goals in learning academic content and acquiring English. Despite a growing body of research on the essential teacher knowledge-base for teaching ELs and effective linguistically-responsive teacher education, there is still a dearth of research on candidate content teachers’ reasoning and instructional decision-making especially regarding teaching mathematics to ELs. This paper explored how a group of ten future mathematics teachers reasoned about a handful of scenarios illustrative of teaching mathematics to ELs. Qualitative analyses of the candidates’ discourse revealed that pre-service mathematics teachers’ perceptions of …

Ell Families: Myths, Truths And Strategies For Engagement, Stephanie Knight, Marjaneh Gilpatrick

Journal of English Learner Education

This article is the first in our new category, Teaching Tips. These are practitioner articles designed to enhance existing in-service teacher's classroom strategies with ELs.

Parental involvement may be the strongest predictor of a child receiving a solid education. This means it is vital that teachers and administrators understand the students’ families’ culture and the way they view education. We also must be proactive with them so that we can empower them with literacy strategies to ensure academic success. Also, many English Language Learner (ELL) families are not familiar with the school system in the United States and may …

The Case For Grammar: What Preservice Teachers Need To Know About Metalinguistic Awareness, Aimee Schoonmaker, Kerry L. Purmensky

Journal of English Learner Education

The present study focused on preservice teachers’ grammar knowledge and its importance for their future students’ understanding and use of language, particularly English Learners. This quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest study investigated the grammar knowledge of preservice teachers who were enrolled in an undergraduate applied linguistics course at an urban university in the southern United States. The results confirmed prior research which found that preservice teachers are not knowledgeable enough about English grammar when explaining sentence level errors. This study demonstrated that preservice teachers’ basic understanding of English grammar can be increased in a short time, particularly in the recognition of simple …

Three Ways To Help Esl Content Linger Beyond The “El Course” In Teacher Preparation Programs, Melanie Gonzalez

Journal of English Learner Education

Like many other states, our teacher preparation program arrived at this compartmentalized, “single-experience” ESL-focused course model as a result of local, state, and federal policies in the United States that have increasingly placed ELs into mainstream classrooms rather than into language and literacy development courses (de Jong, 2014). TESOL faculty might have questioned: how can everything related to effective ESL teaching be covered in one semester? The fact of the matter is that the onus on this work largely rests upon teacher candidates’ shoulders after they depart the ESL-focused course. What follows are three practices that largely have arisen …

Identity And Second Language Acquisition: Adult Puerto Rican Migrants Living In The United States, Marcio Rubens Soares Gomes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on the poststructuralist construct of identity and on Norton's (1995) concept of investment, as well as on Bourdieu's (1977) notion of capital, this qualitative research study relies on data gathered through interviews conducted with two adult female participants from Puerto Rico, who migrated to Central Florida approximately ten years ago. It aims at answering the following questions: (i) what identity-related factors facilitate or hinder the acquisition of the target language by Puerto Rican migrants? (ii) what social forces or barriers impact learning ESL in the context of Puerto Rican migration to the United States? The findings indicate that investment …

A Mixed-Method Examination Of The Impact Of Academic, Social, And Personal-Emotional Adjustment On The English Performance Of Arabian Gulf Students Studying In American Intensive English Programs, Mais Flaieh Hasan Al Jabbawi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study identifies and discusses the adjustment challenges facing Arabian Gulf Students (AGSs) that may affect their English performance (EP) in intensive English programs (IEPs) in the United States. The current study uses student departure theory to lead the theoretical framework and incorporates Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ) and Social Integration Questionnaire (SIQ) to lead the methodology of this study. The mixed-method investigation with multi-location sampling examined 160 AGSs, enrolled full-time in different IEPs in the U.S. during the spring semester of 2019. The AGSs participants were from Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, …

An Ethnographic Study Examining The Effect Of Teachers' Socio-Political Bias On Latinx Students And School Culture, Jessica Mcmaster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Academics such as Geneva Gay, Christine Sleeter, Samy Alim, and Django Paris have conducted research that illustrates the importance of educators being not only aware of the culture of their students but implementing curriculum that supports the diverse cultures of their students. A common finding among this research is that a culturally sustaining pedagogy is essential to the inclusion of all students in the classroom and the level of academic success they have in schools. This study aims to investigate the effect of teacher beliefs on the academic performance of Latinx students and on the culture and atmosphere of the …

Using Argument As A Bridge Between Literacy And Science: An Intervention Study In A Science Methods Course For Elementary Preservice Teachers, Rebeca Grysko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of an intervention on teaching science as argument within a science methods course on elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs') (a) understandings of the nature of science (NOS), (b) knowledge about argumentation, (c) complexity of their written explanations, and (d) ability to incorporate components of the framework for teaching science as argument to support students' literacy and science learning. This mixed-methods study utilized an embedded quasi-experimental design with a treatment (n = 20) and control group (n = 25). The treatment group instructor, who completed an eight-week professional development course, implemented the …

Digital Education: The Impact Of Change, Acceleration, And Student Achievement Improvement, Sarah Walsh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim is to understand if the implementation plan in place by the public school system is exceeding the expectations of the stakeholders or if it is falling below what is expected. This quantitative research examines the English Language Arts (ELA), Florida Standard Assessment (FSA) scores for the state of Florida with a closer inspection of Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) with relation to their digital implementation plan. With an increase in digital technology and amplified emphasis on technology-based learning, the objective of this research was to determine what impact students and schools are experiencing in regards to test scores …

A Grounded Theory Survey Study Of Teachers Perception Perpetuating The Deficit Narrative About Marginalized Students Of Color, Cavel Austin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The deficit narrative about marginalized students of color attributes their failure in school to some nature of innate cognitive deficiency, cultural, social, and familial dysfunctions among other schools of thoughts. The purpose of this grounded theory study is to provide a rich description about this phenomenon and to propose theoretical pedagogical adjustments in the classroom as it relates to educating students of color. The study applies Charmaz (2014) Constructivist approach to grounded theory methods to examine the following research questions: (RQ1) How do teachers' narratives about students of color depict their teaching experiences and (RQ2) How do teachers' narratives about …

A Narrative Research Study Of Self-Selected Tracking On Motivation In 10th Grade English Language Arts Classes, Audra Greuel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The practice of tracking has had longstanding negative impacts on students, especially students in lower academic tracks. This research suggests that tracking develops the themes of a narrative of deficit through inequality and exclusion and impedes student motivation due to the negative implications. A common finding of outside research studies was that of disapproval for the current school organizational structure of tracking due to the negative consequences on students. Furthermore, several research studies developed an outline of positive ways to advocate for a unifying system of educational change. Educational leaders should heed the suggestions of researchers to promote changes within …

Willingness To Communicate And International Students' Use Of L2, Michelle Verbitskaya

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in the second language (L2) is the "readiness to enter into discourse" which is considered to be the direct precursor of students' communication in L2 (MacIntyre et al., 1998). Oral language is thought to precede written language which creates an assumption that ongoing refining of oral skills may impact writing fluency. In respect to WTC model, there have been several versions that describe the construct (MacIntyre et al., 1998; Wen & Clement, 2003; Matsuoka, 2006). This study references self-efficacy, a cognitive variable in Matsuoka's (2006) proposed model, when analyzing writing as a phenomenon in relation to …

Cultural Responsiveness And K-12 English Learners: Exploring Policy And Implementation Fidelity, Lauren Raubaugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This critical policy analysis and collective case study, informed by ethnographic techniques, involved reviews of twelve Florida school district ESOL policies (included within the 2016-2019 District English Language Learner Plans, required of all Florida districts to complete) whose English learner (EL) populations met or exceeded ten percent (10%) of their total enrollment. A priori coding of these policy documents was conducted using nine criteria pulled from the literature on culturally responsive practice (CRP), which served as the theoretical framework for the study. Subsequent observations and practitioner interviews within two schools from the same district were conducted in order to ascertain …

A Comparative Study Of Two Models Of Presenting Phrasal Verbs, Nagham Majeed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Learning phrasal verbs (PVs) is of vital importance in both written and spoken English, especially for those English learners who must use English as a second language (ESL) in their daily interactions with proficient speakers. This study focused on two particles (out and in) in exploring a more effective model for presenting PVs in an ESL context. PVs are the focus of this empirical study because they are an essential component of English vocabulary but are typically regarded as very difficult for ESL students to master. This study used a quasi-experimental design to compare the effect of instruction through image-schematic …