Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Engaging Older Immigrants To Learn English: Advocating For Late-In-Life Learning For Everyone, Susan Marie Filous

Master's Projects and Capstones

In the United States, late-in-life and aging-in-place immigrants require basic English language skills to support their ability to independently access economic, medical, housing, legal, and social services. Older immigrants typically rely on family members, potentiating the risks of neglect and dependency. There is an opportunity to expand their agency in society by increasing their English proficiency.

Foreign language geragogy supports differentiated educational strategies for older learners. There is no upper age limit on the ability to learn a new language, and there are new methods and practices to teach foreign languages to older students. It is insufficient to mainstream older …

Navigating Cultural Identity In The Classroom, Caroline V. Phillips

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

As of 2016, ~25% of children in the United States are the children of immigrants (Nibbs & Brettell). Many of these youths struggle with the feeling that they belong neither to their parents’ cultural community nor to the locality in which they have been raised (Brockett, 2018). Furthermore, little academic research exists wherein these students share their experiences and engage in the processes of meaning making. This knowledge is essential for multicultural scholars and also for the (overwhelmingly white) population of K-6 teachers who help these youth construct personal identities. This project accomplishes the following:

1. I interview second-generation immigrants …

Exploring The Experiences Of Underrepresented Students Pursuing Health-Related Graduate Or Professional Programs, Alison Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For many years graduate and professional education programs for the health professions have sought to increase the diversity of their student body to include students from a wider variety of backgrounds. Increasing the diversity of healthcare providers is an essential component of addressing inequities in healthcare. However, despite initiatives to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions, these professions remain largely White and female. Previous researchers have sought to identify the reasons that racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in healthcare, and the barriers to persistence and success. Little research exists explaining why men are underrepresented in the …

Teacher Perceptions Of Advanced Ability English Language Learners (Ell), Dena Redmond

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study explored teacher perceptions of English language learners and giftedness. High school content teachers participated in an interview identifying behaviors that indicate advanced abilities from a series of three vignettes about English language learners. A total of four participants were interviewed. The four emergent themes were (1) critical thinking (2) rate of language acquisition, (3) motivation, and (4) use of language. The themes were behaviors that teachers perceived as demonstrating potential or demonstrating limited potential for advanced learning in English language learners.

Understanding Administrators' Perceptions Of Gifted Ell Students, Abigail Eaton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Students with gifts and talents are identified in school districts across the nation. However, there is severe underrepresentation of minority groups in gifted education programs, specifically students with ELL backgrounds. This issue is important because students from diverse backgrounds are the fastest growing group of the K-12 population. If the issue is not addressed, many talents will be overlooked and underdeveloped (Peters & Engerrand, 2016). The purpose of this study was to analyze administrators’ perceptions of gifted ELL students.

Participants in this study include six administrators from a small, rural district in Southcentral Kentucky. All of the administrators participated in …

A Student Bill Of Rights, Balkhiis Noor, Olivia Monestime, Julia Hines, David Peterson Del Mar

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

This Student Bill of Rights was created by two sections of Immigration, Migration, and Belonging, a year-long Freshman Inquiry class largely composed of students from under-represented backgrounds.

Shared Epiphanies Of My Constantly Challenged Linguistic Membership, Fajer M. Bin Rashed

International Journal for Research in Education

The pluralization of English has enabled the use of its varieties in cultural contexts that are not traditionally associated with the language. Yet, the inequality of Englishes remains a main characteristic of globalizing and localizing the language. The spread of English use in Kuwait was a result of establishing reconfigured imperial relations during the British protectorate era. Mediated by language ideologies, the English language has ‘settled’ Kuwait’s local linguistic ecology, and its spread remains sustained by the imposition of colonial practices and ideologies through contemporary processes of capitalist globalization. I argue that the pluralization of English in Kuwait’s nuanced experience …

‘I Don’T Speak Singlish’ – Linguistic Chutzpah And Denial In The Elt Classroom, Luke Lu

International Journal for Research in Education

In Singapore, dominant narratives of Singlish as ‘bad English’ and an impediment to acquiring the Standard co-exist with discourses about Singlish as a marker of Singaporean identity. One consequence of such competing discourses has been characterised as a polarity between linguistic anxiety about Singaporeans’ proficiency in Standard English on the one hand, and rationalised confidence in using both registers appropriately on the other [that Wee (2014) terms ‘linguistic chutzpah’]. This paper examines a third phenomenon that is neither exclusively anxiety nor chutzpah in a specific site where metapragmatic evaluations of Englishes abound – the ELT classroom. Drawing on data from …

Journal Of Multilingual Education Research, Volume 12

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

No abstract provided.

Trauma-Informed Teaching Of Literature To Multilingual Learner Refugees: In Search For Balance Between Cultural Responsiveness And Curriculum Sensitivity, Ekaterina Midgette, Jordan González

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

The unprecedented refugee crisis since the onset of the pandemic changed the demographics of the student population and recontextualized culturally responsive literacy education. Many Multilingual Learner refugee students entering our classrooms bring with them experiences of mass exodus that have direct implications for teaching and learning. It is imperative to identify culturally responsive pedagogies that balance cultural representation with sensitivity toward multifaceted trauma endured by Multilingual Learner refugees. Using an ecological perspective as a theoretical framework, we examine tensions and critical considerations in choosing culturally responsive children’s and young adult literature as they apply to the context of three contemporary …

Volume 12, 1-4

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

No abstract provided.

Notes On Contributing Authors

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

Biographical notes about the contributing authors of Volume 12 of the Journal of Multilingual Education Research.

Publication Description & Guidelines For Submission

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

No abstract provided.

Beyond Bilingualism: The Education Of Immigrant Children, Elizabeth Ijalba

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

This is a review of the book (M)othering Labeled Children: Bilingualism and Disability in the Lives of Latinx Mothers by María Cioè-Peña published by Multilingual Matters.

Rooted In Strength: Grounded In Research Communities And Building On Pedagogical Leadership, Lorraine T. Falchi

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

This article is a review of the book Rooted in Strength: Using Translanguaging to Grow Mult5ilingtual Readers and Writers by Cecilia Espinosa and Laura Ascenzi-Moreno.

Multilingualism At The Margins, Estrella Olivares-Orellana

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

This article is a book review of The Multilingual Reality: Living with Languages by Ajit Mohanty.

Social Realities And Purposeful Learning In Multilingual Contexts, Patricia Velasco

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

Volume 12 represents a new opportunity for JMER’s book section. We are presenting three very different book reviews that we believe complement one another. Olivares Orellana’s review of Ahit Mohanty’s (2018) The Multilingual Reality: Living with Languages highlights how multilingualism in India is an everyday, complex phenomenon characterized by hierarchical relationships among languages, discrimination, and marginalization. In sharp contrast, Falchi’s review of Espinosa and Ascensi-Moreno’s (2021) Rooted in Strength: Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers is deeply situated in early-childhood bilingual classrooms where translanguaging is at the core for propelling reading and writing success. Ijalba’s review centers …

International Parents Navigating Parental Involvement In A U.S. School: A Call For Intentionally Responsive Schools, Elizabeth Gil, Şerafettin Gedik, Dion Efrijum Ginanto

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

Focusing on a group of international parents who came to the United States as visiting scholars, graduate students, or their partners, this qualitative study delineates the nature of their experiences as they navigated learning about parental involvement in a U.S. school. Despite the parents’ extensive formal schooling in their home countries, they still experienced parental involvement as a process of adaptation to and discovery of expectations and permitted forms of involvement in the United States. They often learned of opportunities informally through contact with other parents. The school personnel with whom they engaged were critical in supporting their adjustment to …

Addressing Tensions In Textual Voice Construction, Marcela Ossa-Parra

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

Guiding historically minoritized students in their textual voice construction entails navigating the tensions between these white-dominant monolingual voices and the diverse voices they bring to the classroom. This conceptual paper presents an ecological voice-construction process model that sheds light on how writers negotiate external and internal expectations in their writing. These expectations are derived from the political, sociocultural, dialogic, and personal contexts in which voice construction is situated. The model establishes four interrelated processes for negotiating textual voice corresponding to each context: negotiating power relations and ideologies, entering the conversation, engaging the reader, and connecting with the self. This model …

Leveraging Innovative Digital Media Technology: Voicing Scholarship On Multilingual Education, Ming Zhu

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

Volume 12 of the Journal of Multilingual Education Research introduces their first two podcast episodes. These provide an insightful look at the editors of the journal. The first features an interview with JMER’s senior editor, Dr. Aída A. Nevárez-La Torre, in which she spoke about how inspiration, passion, and motivation led her to create JMER. The second presents JMER’s associate editors and editorial assistants, as well as their roles within JMER. This episode informs listeners about the journal’s sections, including Theory and Research, Practice, and Book/Multimedia Reviews and what the editors look for when screening submissions. …