Digital Commons Network^™

Serving The Less-Commonly-Trained Teacher: Perspectives From Arabic Instructors, Dustin De Felice, Amanda Lanier, Paula Winke

The Qualitative Report

As proficient speakers of less-commonly-taught languages seek to meet the demand for qualified instructors, they face a range of personal and professional challenges. In an effort to understand the perspectives of these instructors and their particular educational experiences and needs, we conducted a phenomenological case study of two aspiring Arabic teachers. Specifically, we sought insights into their lived experiences, their motivations for pursuing a graduate degree, their attempts to connect coursework with pedagogical practices, and their needs in terms of professional development. Our findings illuminate the intersecting objectives these instructors must achieve. They need to position themselves as qualified candidates …

Linguistic Discrimination Against Native Spanish Speakers In The New Mexico Bar Examination In The 1970s, Marie Chávez

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

In the 1970s, many people from Hispanic backgrounds, whether their first language was Spanish or English, who had graduated from law school took the New Mexico Bar Examination. A disproportionately large percentage of them (compared with their counterparts who did not come from Hispanic backgrounds) did not pass the Bar Examination. They therefore were denied admission to the bar. This dissertation examines how this came to be.

The study centers on the history of identity politics in New Mexico for Spanish-speaking people and their descendants. It examines the relationship between language and ideologies about race and ethnicity, as well as …

Cooperating Teachers' Perceived Preparedness To Support Science Teacher Candidates For Culturally Sustaining Science Teaching, Keelan Purcell Lofaro

Dissertations and Theses

In the United States, many communities face challenges that require science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) solutions. Those communities most affected by these challenges often lack opportunities in school to use their funds of knowledge as they develop STEM literacies that would equip them to address these challenges. With new national science standards and increasingly diverse student demographics in classrooms across the United States, teacher educators must utilize strategies that prepare science teacher candidates, who are predominantly White, with pedagogies that can support diverse learners in expanding their STEM literacies from their funds of knowledge. The problem of practice guiding …

Teacher Attitudes Toward The Principal Of Multilingual Education: Advancing Research On Mother-Tongue Education In Turkey, Hasan Aydin, Fatma Dogan

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of teacher toward heritage (mother tongue) languages based multilingual education and based on these findings to determine how teachers within public school settings perceive multilingual education. The sample comprised 150 teachers employed in public schools in Turkey. The survey method was used in this study, which used a 5-point Likert-type scale based on the multilingual education attitudes. The scale included 25 items and was prepared through the SurveyMonkey database. The survey was designed to determine the attitudes of teachers on heritage-language–based multilingual education and was conducted through the snowball sampling …

Exposing Preservice Teachers To Emergent Bilinguals, Deborah J. Williams Ed.D., Jim Ewing

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

This study followed a case study design and employed qualitative methods to explore monolingual preservice teachers’ (PSTs) attitudes toward learning to teach emergent bilinguals (EBs) in a dual language school. We sought to support and observe PSTs as they applied strategies learned in methodology courses to students in the field. Three overarching themes emerged from PSTs’ videotaped focus group interviews, weekly reflections, and field notes. Responses that supported Theme 1 suggested PSTs desired to teach EBs for a variety of reasons and Theme 2 supporting responses showed that PSTs confidence levels increased as they interacted with EBs. Responses that supported …

White Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions And Their Development Of Culturally Relevant Literacy Practices, Lakia M. Scott, Elena Venegas

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

Existent literature purports that providing White teacher candidates with increased exposure to urban schools in order to create culturally competent educators has failed. These findings reflect the notion that teacher ideologies and overall perspectives about working with diverse student groups must be harnessed in a genuine ethic of care and intentionality for students of color. However, few studies have taken the approach of examining the development of culturally relevant pedagogy through context-specific field experiences using content-specific courses. This study examines the perspectives of twenty-five White pre-service teachers from a predominately White, private university regarding their initial perceptions and gained conceptual …

Revolución De Identidad: An Autoethnography On Spanish Heritage Language & Identity, Cristina Velazquez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This autoethnography narrative examines my journey as a first-generation Mexican immigrant woman from birth, through completion of the doctorate degree at California State University, San Bernardino. The purpose in writing this autoethnography is to present a personalized account of my experiences growing up, in communicating between two languages, the structural and personal motivators behind maintaining a heritage language (Spanish), and to reflect, in my experience, how I have negotiated with multiple social identities, including ethnic, academic, and bilingual identities. In this self-study, I bring the reader closer to Mexican-American identity, language, and culture. Specifically, this qualitative analysis of Spanish Heritage …

Myth And Reality: Reflections On Our Travels Through West Africa, Julius A. Amin

Myth and Reality: Reflections on Our Travels through West Africa

A collection of essays by the University of Dayton faculty who participated in the 2018 and 2019 Global Education Seminars focusing on West Africa.

An Examination Of Francophone African-Born Adult Immigrant Family Members’ Narratives Regarding Their Children’S Early Language And Literacy Development, Kimberly Joyce-Bernard

Educational Studies Dissertations

This narrative study explored the perspectives of six Francophone African-born family members who have pre-school aged children attending early childhood care and education settings in the Little Senegal section of Harlem in New York City. It examined the personal experiences they reported regarding their own early language and literacy development, their descriptions of home factors that mediated their children’s language and literacy acquisition, and their reports of the ways in which they experienced the efforts of educators within early childhood care and education settings. A qualitative narrative method framed the study. Purposeful sampling was utilized to identify research participants, and …

Chapter 3: A Study In Contrasts And Connections, Bobbi Sutherland

Myth and Reality: Reflections on Our Travels through West Africa

A reflection on the 2018-19 Global Education Seminars in West Africa.

Relationship Between Empathy And Language Proficiency In Adult Language Learners, Mika Sakai

Dissertations and Theses

This study reviews concepts and the mechanism of empathy, and the relationship between empathy and language proficiency, focusing on the aspect of cognitive empathy. It also discusses whether empathy levels could be developed by learning language to a highly proficient level. I compared the empathy levels between high and low proficiency second-language learners to determine if there was correlation between empathy and other factors such as gender, studying abroad, education background, and usage of a second language. I found that there was no relationship between empathy level and language proficiency level; however, there was one between empathy and gender. For …

Vocabulary Instruction: Impacts Of Using A Science Notebook In A Dual Language Setting To Teach Science Vocabulary And Content, Manuel Andazola

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Language learners and students in general often struggle to close the achievement gap in monolingual schools because they lose academic content due to lack of vocabulary. To combat this issue, programs such as dual language schools have been introduced and have gained popularity due to their ability to help students keep learning academic content in their native language while becoming literate in the second language and also maintaining literacy in the content areas. Although these programs offer different instruction models and teaching techniques that teachers are implementing to improve science literacy, many teachers still struggle to find creative and effective …

Constructing Language Ideologies In A Multilingual, Second-Grade Classroom: A Case Study Of Two Emergent Bilingual Students’ Language-Use During Ebook Composing, Lindsey Rowe

Publications

Emergent bilingual students in the United States often attend schools that perpetuate English-only language ideologies. This article draws from qualitative data collected in a multilingual, second-grade classroom in the U.S. to explore how students co-constructed language ideologies across a schoolyear as they engaged in a daily eBook composing activity designed to counter the school's English-only policy and instead value the use of multiple languages. Conceptually, this paper draws upon the notion of language and literacy as social and ideological practices to demonstrate the ways students negotiated multiple, situated, and dynamic language ideologies about various heritage languages. Using data from two …

English In France - Linguistic Dominance And Ambivalence, Chloe Kampf

Honors Projects

Whenever English is perceived as a threat to a nation’s language, English proficiency suffers, and France is guilty as charged. Many people know France as a nation with exceptional cuisine, famous artists, and breathtaking countrysides. What many are not aware of, on the other hand, is that France has the least proficient English speakers out of any EU country. Through in-depth research, literature reviews, interviews with French citizens, and analyzations of personal experiences, I attempt to expose the underlining truth behind this intriguing phenomenon.

The Relationship Between English Language Learners’ Mathematics Problem Solving Strategies And The Mathematics Register, Sarah Reeves Frederickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This case study followed three Hispanic and three Marshallese students’ participation in a seventh grade pre-algebra unit over the course of four weeks. Pre-assessment items indicated that the students had difficulty with aspects of the mathematics register. Their teacher employed an interpretation of the gradual release model of instruction in which direct strategies for translating word problems into equations with unknowns were modeled prior to students doing similar problems on their own. In these situations, students showed some success in solving similar problems. However, post-assessment results indicated that none of the six students were able to successfully solve open response …

Communicative And Collective Formative Program Evaluation: A Descriptive Case Study Of Experiences Of Teachers And Students In Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Khawaji

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Saudi students who matriculate in programs of higher education in Saudi Arabia confront major language obstacles that hinder their academic output, due to the transition from high school, which employs Arabic-language instruction, to the English-medium of instruction in post-high school education. Preparatory Year Programs (PYPs) established to aid students’ transition, from Arabic to English, have not produced satisfactory results (Alseweed & Daif-Allah, 2013). Those programs have rarely been submitted to any form of formative evaluation procedures (Barnawi, 2011).

This descriptive case study embarked on evaluating formatively the English Language Teaching (ELT) in a Saudi university through bridging the perspectives or …

An Analysis Of High School Students' Self-Efficacy In Second Language Acquisition Through Digital Language Lab Learning: Exploring New Pathways To Proficiency, Lorna A. Fairess

Theses and Dissertations

Students are often faced with barriers acquiring a second language due to various factors such as language anxiety, learning differences, and a lack of speaking time with the language. The purposes of this qualitative study were to: a) determine students' perceptions of the effectiveness of a digital language lab on their self-efficacy in second language acquisition at the secondary level, and b) discern teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of the lab as well as recommendations for best practices in teacher training and implementation. Twenty-seven Italian and Spanish students and 12 world language teachers from two fairly rural high schools in …

Cruzar Fronteras Em Espaços Acadêmicos: Transgressing “The Limits Of Translanguaging”, Brendan H. O’Connor, Katherine S. Mortimer, Lesley Bartlett, María Teresa De La Piedra, Ana Maria Rabelo Gomes, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Gabriela Novaro, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Char Ullman

Publications and Research

Scholarship on translanguaging and related concepts has challenged traditional assumptions about how people use their multiple languages, urging us to move beyond the boundaries of named linguistic codes and toward conceptualizations of multilingual language use as flexible use of a speaker’s whole linguistic repertoire. Critiques of this theoretical shift have included assertions of translanguaging’s conceptual and practical limits—limits to its transformative potential as well as limits to its practical use. This paper takes up, in particular, the question of why we academics may assert the value of translanguaging in schools and communities while still largely failing to move beyond monoglossic …

New Approach To Chinese Writing: An Exploratory Study Of Writing Performance On Social Q&A Online Community, Lin Zhu

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

Many studies have investigated how the online community has informed language acquisition and teaching. In the scholarship of Computer-Mediated Communication Theory (CMC), while most of the studies have emphasized second language English writing using the CMC framework, evidence is shown to support CMC in foreign language instruction. However, there is a lack of research on how feedback from native speakers of Chinese influences Chinese learners’ writing in a web environment. In response to the research gap, drawing on sociocultural and CMC, the current exploratory study probes the nature of feedback on Zhihu, the largest Chinese social question-and-answer website, and how …

Teaching About Cultural Competence And Health Disparities In An Online Graduate Public Health Course, Anuli Njoku, Drph, Mph, Uchenna Baker, Phd, Med

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

The growing diversity in U.S. society encourages the need for culturally competent healthcare professionals to provide optimal services to a diverse population. This increasing diversity also brings greater awareness to health disparities among distinct subgroups of the U.S. population. Addressing health disparities in the USA will require a multidimensional approach from various sectors, including the field of education. Developing health disparities curricula can help cultivate conscious future health practitioners. Faculty development programs can be integral in equipping faculty to develop curricula on and teach students about health disparities. With a growth in online learning and in the number of adult …

Resaka Kolontsaina Le Raha (It Is About Cultures): Cultures And Foreign Language Teaching In Madagascar, Iarintsambatra Rijasoa Andriamanana Josoa

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

For years, teaching and learning a foreign language (FL) has been equated to exclusively discover and master that target language and its related cultures. There has not been any exploration of other features such as the native language and local cultures in a foreign language classroom. Using a participatory action research, the aim of this study was to tell the story of six Malagasy high school teachers collaborating in a Teacher Learning Community (TLC) to construct and put into practice pedagogical approaches that celebrate and sustain Malagasy students’ identities, cultures, and experiences through classroom activities, and capitalize them for basis …

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. …

The Experience Of Co-Teaching For Emergent Arabic-English Literacy, Anna M. Dillon, Kay Gallagher

The Qualitative Report

In this paper we explore teachers’ experiences of co-teaching within a new bilingual (Arabic/ English) model in public Kindergarten schools in the United Arab Emirates. The main objective was to understand teachers’ experiences with intercultural teaching for biliteracy in this context. We interviewed six pairs of co-teachers. These co-teachers represent six of the nationalities of teachers working in public Kindergartens in Abu Dhabi, thereby representing a cross-section of the cultural context of teaching in the reformed public schools. The data highlight teachers’ varied co-teaching practices and point to aspects such as classroom management and translanguaging as aspects of classroom practice …

Celebrating Linguistic Diversity: Learner Languages As A Resource For Growth, Amy Lightfoot

Teacher India

Many classrooms across the globe have learners coming from different language backgrounds. This article discusses multilingual approaches that teachers can use within the classroom.

English For Speakers Of Other Languages (Esol) Teacher Experiences With Newcomer Students At The Secondary Level: A Phenomenological Study, Lindsey Marie Conrad

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and other staff members who work with newcomer English Language Learners (ELLs) at the secondary level in two Northern Virginia public school systems. Stephen Krashen’s (1982) theory of second language acquisition guided this study as it explains the ways in which students learn and acquire new language skills throughout their schooling and social experiences. The following central research question guided this study: What are the experiences of ESOL teachers and staff members who work with newcomer ELLs at the …

Strengthening Spanish-Speaking English Learners’ Acquisition Of English By Supporting Cross-Language Transfer During Early Childhood, Ashley Golin

Award Winners

In the United States, Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) represent a growing and significant portion of the student population. ELs require targeted instructional strategies and classroom environments in order to fully acquire language and learn content. Studies in bilingual and second language education have demonstrated how students’ native language (i.e., first language, or “L1”), once believed to be a limitation that should be kept separate from students’ use of the target language, can instead serve as an asset benefitting English acquisition. However, educators who are unfamiliar with Spanish and components of language transfer may not be able to fully support students …

Providing Feedback On The Lexical Use Of Esp Students’ Academic Presentations: Teacher Training Considerations, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

This chapter offers a description of a methodology for providing training to pre-service English for Academic and Specific Purposes (EAP/ESP) teacher trainees in giving evidence-based feedback on the lexical composition of ESP students’ academic presentations. It also discusses a study based on the analysis of the mock feedback provided by the EAP/ESP teacher trainees (n=20) to ESP students’ presentations with a focus on the effects of training. The results revealed that the training was successful in areas such as raising the teacher trainees’ awareness of how to evaluate various lexical categories in an ESP presentation, how to incorporate their evaluation …

The Importance Of Foreign Language Education At The Elementary Level, Dennys Canto

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This literature review looks at the benefits of teaching foreign language at the elementary level versus at the secondary level. The review examines the linguistic and cognitive benefits of learning a foreign language at different levels. Young children are slower at learning languages than adolescent learners, in all aspects of language. However, young children gain many cognitive advantages from learning a foreign language and are more likely to become indistinguishable from native speakers. Foreign languages should be taught at the elementary level because it helps with literacy in English, it enhances problem solving, attentional control and the ability to switch …

Bilingualism Narrows Socioeconomic Disparities In Executive Functions And Self-Regulatory Behaviors During Early Childhood: Evidence From The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Andree Hartanto, Wei Xing Toh, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism have been shown to influence executive functioning during early childhood. Less is known, however, about how the two factors interact within an individual. By analyzing a nationally representative sample of approximately 18,200 children who were tracked from ages 5 to 7 across four waves, both higher SES and bilingualism were found to account for greater performance on the inhibition and shifting aspects of executive functions (EF) and self‐regulatory behaviors in classroom. However, only SES reliably predicted verbal working memory. Furthermore, bilingualism moderated the effects of SES by ameliorating the detrimental consequences of low‐SES on EF …

Indexation And Ideologies: Latinx And Nahuatl Terms In Our Identity Journey, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I challenge unreflective linguistic indexation of Latino academia; specifically, the suppression of the inflexion “o” in generic nouns (as in Latinx) and appropriation of Nahuatl nouns. To do so, I analyze these two linguistic features in terms of historical macro- and micro-linguistic levels and, for the case of Latinx, I situate this socio-cultural practice in relation to Spanish morphology and semantics. Finally, I question if these linguistic practices of Latino (Latinx) scholars enhance group identity and social justice or, on the contrary, if this linguistic indexation merely isolates a selective group of U.S.-centered scholars.