Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond Language And Academics: Investigating Teachers’ Preparation To Promote The Social-Emotional Well-Being Of Emergent Bilingual Learners, Amy J. Heineke, Elizabeth Vera

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

In recent years, institutions have responded to changing school populations by preparing teachers for the growing number of emergent bilingual learners (EBLs). But this preparation largely focuses on supporting students’ academic learning and language development, despite enhanced attention to social-emotional well-being in wider educational circles. This comparative case study seeks to understand whether and how teachers are prepared to facilitate this integral component of student learning in five schools with linguistically diverse populations and varied program models to serve EBLs. We first probe how teachers draw from various facets of their preparation to support EBLs’ social-emotional well-being, including teacher education, …

Reading Ability, Study Habits And Students’ Academic Performance In Social Studies, Juliana Uloma Iheakanwa, Sunday Obro, Williams Pius Akpochafo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study investigated reading ability, study habits and students’ academic performance in Social Studies. The study was an expos-facto study. The researcher employed a stratified and multi-sampling technique to sample 1103 students. The questionnaire was the instrument utilised to gather data. The Cronbach Alpha was utilised for the determination of the instrument reliability, and a reliability value coefficient value of 0.78 for Reading Fluency, 0.90 for Passage Recall and 0.92 for question Answering and 0.76 for Study habit was obtained. Data generated were evaluated employing correlation co-efficient of determination for the research questions, while the multiple regression and linear regression …

Process Drama, Play And Popstars: Integrating Expository Writing Rehearsal Opportunities Across The Day In A Fourth Grade Inclusive Classroom, Mary R. Coakley-Fields

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

With increased focus on informational writing and opinion writing in U.S. curriculum, Common Core State Standards, and state standardized tests, upper elementary school teachers need to teach their students to write expository paragraphs and the five-paragraph essay structure. This ethnographic study focused on how one fourth grade teacher of an inclusive classroom integrated playful talk-based activities across each day in support of her students learning to write in the expository genre. Qualitative data were collected, including field notes, interviews, and documents such as lesson plans and student writing. Classroom talk and interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Findings indicate that the …

An Argument For Affective Inquiry, Brian Kelley

New Jersey English Journal

This article presents an argument for integrating affective inquiry into the curriculum. Affective inquiry is envisioned as a methodology through which students a) interrogate their emotional responses to social/textual phenomena and b) analyze emotions as social constructs. Practical examples demonstrating how affective inquiry supports students’ literary reading are provided.

Disrupting Evasion Pedagogies, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Tricia Gray

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As we have researched in schools and reflected on our own teaching, we have come to recognize the lie and our untruthfulness that permeates many of our cultural scripts (Gutierrez et al., 1995) and practices as teachers. It is within these cultural scripts and practices that inequity is perpetuated and humanizing learning evaded. Thus, what we term evasion pedagogies, serve to sustain the status quo and are powerful tools to maintain oppressive projects like white supremacy, heteronormativity, gender binaries, patriarchy, ableism, classism, and linguicism. In this piece, we examine the notion of evasion pedagogies as a powerful lie in practice …

Multilingual Learners In Mainstream Classrooms, Mai Kong Pheng Yang

Innovations and Critical Issues in Teaching and Learning

The United States of America has always been known for its diversity. A country that promises to “The Land of the Free.” Many people migrate in hopes of having a better future for themselves and for their children. Along with the high diversity rates in the United States, the different number of languages are also high and yet English is the main language taught in schools. As English maintains its dominance in the education system, many students fall into the category of an English Language Learner. These students are expected to learn the English language to strive in the education …

Closing The English Language Proficiency Gap In Post-Secondary Education In Canada, Priscilla Lothian-Hendrix

Dissertations

The proposed research employed a mixed-method approach to investigate why the linguistic standards of the Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) (levels 5–8) are deemed satisfactory for English as a second language (ESL) learners at the college level. An examination of the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program (CELPIP) identified why an ESL learner with a CLB level of 5–8 requires English support services in post-secondary education to achieve academic success in Canada. The CLB levels of six female participants were analyzed using a questionnaire in reading, writing, listening, and speaking to explore their English levels in articulating the language, pronouncing words, …

The Effects Of A Mindfulness Curriculum On Mathematics Word Problem Performance In 3rd And 4th Grade Students, Adrianne S. Blackwelder

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine if a 15-week mindfulness curriculum, MindUP, impacted participants’ performance on a standardized mathematics word problem measure. The study was conducted in two elementary schools in a large public school district in North Carolina during the 2020-2021 school year. Participants included 74 third- and fourth-grade students who received a supplemental mindfulness curriculum and 77 students who received only business as usual instruction (N = 151). The research question and null hypothesis were tested using a quantitative, quasi-experimental, pretest posttest, nonequivalent, control group design. The TOMA-3 Word Problems subtest was administered by school personnel …

Rethinking Thinking About Thinking: Against A Pedagogical Imperative To Cultivate Metacognitive Skills, Lauren R. Alpert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In summaries of “best practices” for pedagogy, one typically encounters enthusiastic advocacy for metacognition. Some researchers assert that the body of evidence supplied by decades of education studies indicates a clear pedagogical imperative: that if one wants their students to learn well, one must implement teaching practices that cultivate students’ metacognitive skills.

In this dissertation, I counter that education research does not impose such a mandate upon instructors. We lack sufficient and reliable evidence from studies that use the appropriate research design to validate the efficacy of metacognitive skill-building interventions (not just evaluate their relationship to learning outcomes). I argue …

The Chimera: Multiple Selves, Conflicting Desires, And Fluctuating Power Relations In Qualitative Research, Su Jung Um

The Qualitative Report

In this article, I (re)constructed and (re)presented a dialogic inquiry among my chimeric selves engaged in a study which I conducted from 2013 to 2017 to examine teaching experiences of graduates from a social justice-oriented preservice program. I interrogated the roles of my different, disparate, and discontinuous selves in the research process – as a former teacher, a former instructor of my research participants, a researcher with particular academic and political opinions, and as a foreigner working toward a doctoral degree from/in a U.S. higher education institution. In this article, I demonstrated how my chimeric selves with conflicting desires and …

The Ingenuity Of Everyday Practice: A Framework For Justice-Centered Identity Work In Engineering In The Middle Grades, Angela M. Calabrese Barton, Kathleen Schenkel, Edna Tan

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Inequities in opportunities to learn and become in engineering, especially for minoritized youth, are enduring and systemic. How students experience engineering education, through curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher/student interactions, all shape opportunities for identity development. In this paper we draw upon cultural studies and critical ethnography to explore how and why students engage in engineering for sustainable communities and its relationship to their identity work. We ground our work in a justice-centered asset-based stance that centers how people’s lived lives and community wisdom yield powerful forms of cultural knowledge/practice relevant to learning and engaging in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We …

An Exploration Of Math Trauma Through Ability Grouping And Teacher Language In Elementary Schools, Sarah E. Owen

Honors Projects

This literature review approaches the question of ability grouping and other forms of teacher communication in elementary school math curriculum through the lens of equity and student outcomes. Types of grouping practices in elementary schools are discussed, along with the positives and negatives of each general form of grouping, with special consideration paid to the topic of math trauma and the ways that ability grouping contributes to it. This review concludes that teachers have a profound effect on students and that students have a profound effect on one another, leading to a discussion on the moral and ethical responsibility that …

Elementary Content Teacher Perceptions Regarding Their Ell Instructional Practices, C. Wesley Owens, Steve P. Wells

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the instructional practices of elementary English language learner (ELL) teachers and how those practices are perceived by the teachers to be aligned with improved ELL academic performance. The study is grounded in Ladson-Billings’ theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, which holds that student academic achievement and cultural identity should be affirmed. The research questions focused on exploring instructional practices used by teachers to support ELL learning and the teachers’ perceptions of how their practices are aligned with improved ELL academic performance. The qualitative descriptive study was limited to three elementary schools …

Teaching The English Language Through American Holidays: Halloween And Thanksgiving, Naranchimeg Bat-Yondon

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

Culture remains one of the crucial issues in foreign language education research worldwide, and theories related to linguistics suggest that culture must be emphasized as an important part of language classrooms. Learning any foreign language without learning the focal culture of it is less meaningful, so it is important to include cultural instruction in every language class. Compounding these already tenuous issues in Mongolia, students have little chance to be exposed to real-life situations where they can interact with native speakers from different cultural backgrounds, so the students face great challenges of not being able to become fluent speakers …

A Decolonial Middle School Social Studies Curriculum: 19th Century U.S. Westward Colonization, Leah Chatterji

Master's Projects and Capstones

Social Studies education throughout the United States sustains settler futurity, white supremacy, and coloniality, as it rarely engages with Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) hxstories and structural violence. For middle schoolers, this is especially troublesome as social justice pedagogies are minimal for this demographic. To shift this, this field project offers an 8^th grade decolonial Social Studies curriculum on 19^th century U.S. Westward colonization; this topic was intentionally chosen as it is an opportunity to disrupt settler epistemologies. It centers: Land; relationality; and collective liberation. It complements the California unit 8.8 standards, yet different grades, subjects, …

Seeking Universal Education: From Singapore’S Educational Success, Gulnar Rzayeva

Master's Projects and Capstones

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, education is considered a fundamental human right. However, this right is not accessible for every child. Not all education systems are capable of providing quality education. There are various reasons behind this issue. Based on the OECD and PISA records, Singapore has a successful education system with multiple ethnicities and religions. This study intends to discover some characteristics of Singapore's education system and the feasibility of achieving similar success in other practices. In the methodology part, based on a literature review on the education policy and the education system of Singapore, content …

University Professors’ Perceptions About Patient Safety Teaching In An Interprofessional Education Experience: A Phenomenological Study, Gabriele Vilanova, Andreas Xyrichis, Elena Bohomol, Rosana Aparecida Salvador Rossit

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) and patient safety are recurrent and linked themes within the field of healthcare worldwide. International organizations have repeatedly called for and research has shown the benefits of health and social care professionals learning how to work collaboratively and efficiently to provide safer and better care. This study was undertaken to explore professors’ perceptions and experiences of an IPE curricula project with a view to improving future patient safety teaching in undergraduate health courses.

Methods: This qualitative study utilized phenomenology as a theoretical framework. The participants were 11 professors from a public university in south-eastern Brazil, recruited …

Notes On Contributors To This Volume

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

No abstract provided.

Oral Vocabulary Instruction Practices Of Teachers Of Nonacademic Adult English Language Learners, Carol Cochi

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

The number of non-academic adults who need English as a second language (ESL) classes is ever increasing, yet little is known about the instructional practices used to teach this population of learners. The focus of this article is to describe an exploratory single case study of the instructional practices used by teachers in a nonacademic adult English as a second language (NAESL) program. Specifically, the study looked at vocabulary instruction teachers employed with beginner-level adult ESL students. The data was collected using questionnaires, classroom observations, and post-observation interviews with the teachers. The findings show that teachers used two categories of …

Uncommon And Non-Traditional Urban Relationship Strategies: From Relationship Loss To Relationship Recovery, Lasonya L. Moore

Journal of English Learner Education

With increasing student diversity across our nation, there is a growing need to scale up educational innovations related to building holistic relationships. Many students in K-12 public schools enter educational settings with uncommon and nontraditional ways of building and developing longitudinal relationships that allow students to thrive and not just survive. Specifically, teachers/educators feel ill-equipped and ill-trained to adequately support the increasing number of English learners(ELs) and Exceptional education students (specifically Students of Color (SOC) with emotional and behavioral disorders) identified in inclusive classrooms. Thus, there remains an urgent need to share uncommon and non-traditional strategies to develop and build …

Factors Influencing Intelligibility And Comprehensibility: A Critical Review Of Research On Second Language English Speakers, Venus Chan

Journal of English Learner Education

The varieties of English have led to the paradigm of Global Englishes, which describes the ideologies of English as a lingua franca (ELF) and World Englishes (differential uses of English internationally) in diverse sociolinguistic contexts. Global Englishes literature complicates intelligibility and comprehensibility since it tends to problematize “native norms” as the only benchmarks for successful lingua franca use. Intelligibility and comprehensibility studies have recently been concerned with the interaction between non-native speakers using English as a second language for communication. Thus, this paper critically evaluates research on intelligibility and comprehensibility of second language (L2) English speakers. It is observed that …

Analysis Of Elementary School English Teachers’ Perceptions Of And Design For Differentiated Reading Instruction, Chin-Wen Chien

Journal of English Learner Education

This study explored the influence of a course in an endorsement program on 22 elementary school Taiwanese English teachers’ perceptions of and designs for differentiated reading instruction. Based on the data analysis of the questionnaire, peer- and self-evaluation, and final projects, this study has two major findings. First, participants gained competence in research-based instructional strategies and approaches for differentiated reading instruction through the endorsement program. Tiered assignments were the most popular activities designed by the participants for differentiated reading instruction. Secondly, their self-efficacy gained in terms of improving their learners’ reading performance and solving their reading problems. This study suggested …

Multilingual And Multicultural Education: The Intersectionality Of Culture Mindset And Instructional Practices, Brendon Thiry, James P. Concannon

Journal of English Learner Education

The new mainstream classroom is both multilingual and multicultural. How prepared are teachers to work with English language learners and students with interrupted or informal education? This study aimed to determine if teacher growth mindset and cultural competency significantly predicted teacher’s use of responsive teaching practices with English language learners. Utilizing a multiple regression model, growth mindset and cultural competency did not predict teacher’s use of responsive teaching practices. However, by conducting an itemized analysis of the cultural competency survey, certain items stood out as potential predictors of responsive teaching practices. Results from this study suggest that the cultural competency …

Language Assessment Literacy: Analyzing The Perspectives Of Mainstream Teachers Toward English Learners, Tunde Szecsi, Janka Szilagyi

Journal of English Learner Education

This qualitative phenomenological study explores mainstream classroom teachers’ language assessment literacy as it relates to English learners. In Southwest Florida, Fifty-five teachers were interviewed about their knowledge and use of English language proficiency assessments in mainstream classrooms. We conducted content analysis of the individual interviews and field note data. The findings indicated that teacher’s knowledge of language proficiency assessments includes: (a) awareness of language proficiency assessments, (b) one size fits all: misuse of content assessment, (c) language proficiencies confined solely to reading skills, and (d) preference for formative assessment. Findings also indicated that teachers’ limited use of language assessment results …

Dual Language Effectiveness To Narrow Achievement Gaps: A Quantitative Correlational Study, Belinda Reyes Ed.D.

Journal of English Learner Education

An increase in the English learner (EL) population is evident in public schools throughout the United States. Academic achievement gaps between ELs and non-EL peers persist from early childhood through the post-secondary level (Florida Department of Education, 2019c). The gap in the literature is the lack of studies analyzing the language acquisition of ELs enrolled in dual language programs to narrow the achievement gap of ELs. Transformative Learning Theory and the Dynamic Systems Theory are the foundation of the theoretical framework. Key research questions seek data on the relationship between standardized assessments measuring language acquisition and academic performance of third-grade …

Making Moves: Lateral Reading And Strategic Thinking During Digital Source Evaluation, Elizabeth Walsh-Moorman, Kristine Pytash

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Using screencasting videos as think-alouds, this case study explores the process three high school seniors used when tasked with evaluating digital sources. Drawing from dual level theory of literacy, the study explores the complexities involved when students are asked to conduct informal research of their source (a strategy called lateral reading) in order to improve their ability to uncover potential bias in digital sources. Results indicate that lateral reading encouraged healthy reader skepticism and slowed readers down in the review, but students lacked sophisticated online reading and research strategies.

A Quantitative Evaluation Of A Culturally Relevant Reading Intervention Program On Academic Achievement And Reading Self-Perception In An Urban High School In New Jersey, Jessica Urban

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The purpose of this study was to understand the possible effects that participation in a culturally relevant reading intervention program had on students’ reading growth and reading self-perception, when compared to students who did not participate in the program but demonstrated similar prior academic achievement. To assess the relationship between program participation and reading achievement, students’ scaled score growth and student growth percentile on the STAR Reading Assessment were compared and analyzed across 3 school years. In each sample, there was no evidence to suggest that the program influenced students’ scaled score or SGP. The multiple regression models revealed that …

The Name Curriculum: Exploring Names, Naming, And Identity, Isabel Taswell

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The act of naming, or using and respecting one’s name, is a humanizing act: it is foundational to one’s sense of identity and belonging. Conversely, the act of ‘de-naming,’ or changing, forgetting, or erasing one’s name, is an act of dehumanization: it denies one’s sense of identity and belonging. The Name Curriculum provides an opportunity for third grade students to explore the role of names and naming as they relate to one’s sense of self and community. It draws on the role of developmental psychology, the urgency of historical context, and the power of children’s literature. Specifically, it explores how …

Approaches To Narrative Instruction For Second Language Learners, Mathew Peters

MA TESOL Collection

Narratives have reemerged as a dominant form of rhetoric over the last fifty years. This dominant use of narrative discourse has only increased with the rise of social media. Walther Fisher (1987) proposed the narrative paradigm as a unifying theory of human communication. His major claim is that people are inherently storytellers and that people use a narrative rationality and a logic of good reasons to inform their beliefs, values, and actions. This paper utilizes his theories, along with recent findings in neuroscience, to establish an argument for greater inclusion of narratives into second language teaching. Narratives can have a …

The Impact Of A Cultural Competence Assessment Tool On Teaching Strategies In The Dnp Curriculum At Southern Illinois University Of Edwardsville, Katarina Dobrosavljevic

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Providing culturally competent and culturally congruent care to patients leads to better outcomes and reduction of poor outcomes due to health disparities. Providing care that is not culturally congruent can contribute to communication barriers, resulting in deficient diagnostic testing, miscommunication about etiologies, treatment plans that are not individualized, and discounting of patient's ideas. Individuals from diverse cultures face health disparities which contribute to inadequate care and poor outcomes. The purpose of this project was to survey former graduates of the Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville (SIUE) family nurse practitioner (FNP) program to assess their level of cultural competence and areas …