Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

The Multidimensionality Of Schoolgirl Dropouts In Rural Bangladesh, Tiffany Yancey

Master's Theses

This thesis outlines the underlying causes for girl dropouts in the secondary school system of rural Bangladesh and assesses the barriers that affect adolescent girls and their families. The complex dynamics of the historical context within the patriarchal-dominant structure of society creates a system that hinders girls’ education and forces them into marriage at an early age. Poverty and lack of parental involvement in schools, as well as societal traditions and lack of government infrastructure play an enormous role and are the main structural factors that are linked to schoolgirl dropouts in this study. This thesis also analyzes previous education …

I Learned More From Them Than They Did From Me: Shifting From Deficit To Asset-Based Perspectives In Service-Learning, Sandra Rodriguez-Arroyo

Scholarship of Metropolitan Mission

Research is presented on a Conceptual Model for Cultural Engagement (CMCE) service-learning course for inservice teachers. The teachers worked with tweens from a non-profit youth organization to showcase their Latino community. Research data reveals that the course did implement the CMCE, emphasizing asset-based perspectives of the youth and their communities.

Talking Back, With Reawakened Voices: Analyzing The Potential For Indigenous California Languages Coursework At California Polytechnic State University, Logan Cooper

Ethnic Studies

The legacy of colonialism in the United States, including genocidal practices and cultural assimilation, has left Indigenous languages endangered. Native peoples, scholars, and activists have been working to revive and heal the languages of America’s first peoples, and the cultures those languages speak to, yet more work remains in the field of language revitalization. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo currently does not offer any course specifically teaching or discussing Indigenous languages, even those of the Chumash people who know the San Luis Obispo area as their ancestral homelands.

By synthesizing revitalization and Indigenous activist literature with the narratives …

"100 Years Later, It Is Still So Powerful": Navigating The Effects Of The Armenian Genocide And Its Trauma On Armenian American Youth, Lara S. Kleine

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the effects of the Armenian Genocide on five Armenian American university students ages 18 to 29 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The impact of this event from 100 years ago is passed down generationally and still affects the current descendants of its survivors. Since this genocide is still denied by Turkey, its perpetrators, and by the United States, the impact on Armenians has increased as each generation fights for official recognition.

By conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews, the participants revealed its impact on their identity. This thesis was grounded in intergenerational trauma transmission theory and collective memory …

Gestures As Mimetic Forms Of Identity In Post-Secondary Italian As A Foreign Language Classrooms: A Sociocultural Perspective, Ilaria Nardotto Peltier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study investigates the use of mimetic gestures of identity by foreign language teachers of Italian and their students in college classes as a form of meaning-making. All four of the teachers were found to use a variety of Italian gestures as a regular aspect of their teaching and presentation of self. Students and teachers also were found to mirror each other’s gestures. None of the teachers had been video-recorded before the study and all were surprised to see the degree to which they appeared to be Italian, although at the same time all believed this to be an important …

The Celtic Way: Order, Creativity, And The Holy Spirit In The Celtic Monastic Movement, Fiona Leitch

Senior Honors Theses

The Celtic monastic movement lasted hundreds of years and is responsible for much of the spread of Christianity to the West. Much of the movement’s success can be attributed to the Celtic Christians’ understanding of the importance of the role of creative culture and order as well as an openness and responsiveness to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is these three things working in tandem that influenced the success of the Celtic monastic movement. Although the movement ended a thousand years ago, it can offer guidance and wisdom for carrying out ministry today. A case study of Cuirim …

Fealess Friday: Kelsey Chapman, Christina L. Bassler

SURGE

Kelsey Chapman ’15 fearlessly advocates for human rights, peace, and justice, focusing on the Middle East. An economics major and Middle East and Islamic Studies (MEIS) minor, Kelsey is the house leader for the MEIS House, an Arabic PLA, and the founder of Gettysburg’s chapter of J Street U. [excerpt]

Respiration: Breathing Between The Stacks, Jerome D. Clarke

SURGE

How rare are we, who brandish Black and Male identity, in Academia?

In the past two weeks, I have been reminded of my Black maleness in a multitude of ways. I sat alone, subordinate in number, in a dialogue about Internalized Oppression at Diaspora House. Strong women of color discuss this issue while I work to stay respectful and non-oppressive in this space. I sat alone, subordinate in number, in each of my classes, where I am often the only one of my race and class. My race-gender circumstance is a matter of fact to me. How does this Black …

Notes On How To Rework A Ph.D. Dissertation For Publication As A Book, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Promoting Exploratory Talk With Emergent Bilinguals, Yvonne S. Freeman, Alma D. Rodríguez

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The authors explain their approach to teaching literatura infantil (children’s literature) in Spanish to bilingual teachers pursuing their master’s degree in bilingual education at a university in South Texas. In this Self-Study of Teacher Education Practice (S-STEP) research, the authors investigated how teachers can transform their practice and come to value their students’ abilities to interpret literature. They engaged the teachers in projects using quality children’s literature. The projects were carried out by graduate inservice teachers teaching Spanish/English bilingual students studying at different grade levels. Some teachers taught along the Texas/Mexico border and others taught in a large metropolitan school …

The Effects Of Morpho-Phonemic And Whole Word Instruction On The Literacy Skills Of Adult Struggling Readers, Susan Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated the effects of two kinds of word study on the literacy skills of 34 adult struggling readers. Young adults seeking high school equivalency diplomas were randomly assigned to intensive individual tutoring, two hours once a week for four weeks, in either morpho-phonemic or whole word study to learn academic vocabulary from a civics curriculum. Participants were African American and Latino adults in secondary education who had learned English either as their native language or as their second language in early childhood. Those given morpho-phonemic instruction analyzed Latin and Greek word origins, parsed morpheme and syllable structures, and …

The Quinceañera Event: Pre-Service Teachers Implementing A Culturally Relevant Math Activity In A Hispanic Community, Olga M. Ramirez, Cherie Mccollough, Zulmaris Diaz

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) to work with culturally relevant mathematics and family math learning events (FMLEs) in mutual settings are important goals. This paper promotes these important teacher preparation goals as implemented in an after school program by a university math content faculty along with other FMLE support faculty. To illustrate, this paper focuses on a culturally relevant mathematics activity based on the popular social event known as the Quinceañera (the 15th birthday party for a young lady) presented at FMLEs by PSTs and which explores the customs of the Hispanic culture coupled with linkages to mathematical connections.

The Encoding Of Temporality In Second Language Acquisition: A Study Of Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Esl Learners, Li Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the influences of pragmatic factors, lexical devices, as well as the lexical aspectual properties of verbs on second language learners' encoding of temporality in their target language. The pragmatic factors being investigated include a recency effect and the number of occurrences of a tense in the previous context, and the lexical devices include past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs. The role of the lexical aspectual properties of verbs is checked against the Aspect Hypothesis, which states that learners will initially restrict past or perfective marking to achievement and accomplishment verbs and later gradually extend this usage to …

Academic Achievement Of Esl Learners At A Teaching Hospital Training Programs, Abdul Fattah Rachdan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many students in an allied health program at a Middle Eastern Arab university were experiencing difficulties with courses taught in English, resulting in poor academic achievement, low grade point averages, a high failure rate amongst its first year students, and an adverse impact upon a future skilled and educated work force for the region. Tinto's theory of institutional action for students' success served as the conceptual framework for the inquiry that used a qualitative explanatory case study method to examine the experiences of those students who were facing difficulties with their studies. To address questions about why students were failing …

Walls Have Ears But They Also Speak –A Comparative Study Of Two Playgrounds, Anna Hirson-Sagalyn

Senior Projects Spring 2015

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Attitudinal Perspectives: A Factor To Implementation Of A Dual Language Program, Michael Whitacre

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The central focus of this study was to determine the overall perceptions of school administrators, and the district bilingual coordinator on transferring theory to classroom practice, implementation, as viewed by those involved in the implementation process of the Gómez and Gómez Model of Dual Language Education. Responses were solicited from administrative personnel involved in the implementation of the Gómez and Gómez Model of Dual Language. Results revealed overall administrative attitudes were positive to the theoretical ideology and mixed as related to the actual implementation of the dual language program. The greatest areas of concern were; what to do when students …

Youth Digital Cultural Consumption And Education, Monica Pini, Sandra I. Musanti, Teresa Cerratto Pargma

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Media and technological devices function as socializing agents during children’s leisure and entertainment time. Drawing from the theory of cultural consumption, a socio educational approach to students’ digital practices, and media literacy, this qualitative study seeks to explore and describe students’ cultural consumption profile. The authors explore the representations and meanings of digital practices of public school students of a predominately working class neighborhood situated in the periphery of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Findings highlight different aspects of youth cultural consumption profile. Two themes were identified: a) children use computers for a multiplicity of different activities enacting multitasking practices; and b) …

Dual Language K-2 Latina Teachers: Juxtaposing Linguistic Identities And Pedagogical Practices On The U.S.-Mexico Frontera, Brenda Oriana Fuentes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This ethnographic study explored the linguistic identities and pedagogical practices of Latina bilingual-certified K-2 teachers in a dual language (DL) program in the U.S.-Mexico border area. Drawing on sociocultural theory, methods of data collection and analysis focused on linking DL Latina teachers' identity formation with both their conceptions of teaching and their actual pedagogical practices related to language use. The findings from this study painted a portrait of how DL teachersâ?? languages, literacies, and identities intertwined to shape their pedagogical practice. The linguistic backgrounds of DL teachers on the border were shaped by country of origin and languages, schooling experiences, …

History Of The Blues, Dan Rager

Dan Rager

This all inclusive History of the Blues introduction begins as early as 1400, when the first global trading routes began. Two early maps are enclosed from this period showing the direction and locations from which people, food and supplies were moved.

This research presentation illustrates African tribes such as the Arada, Dahomey and Fulani who sang music in their daily rituals and ceremonies long before they were moved to other continents. Early developmental music elements are introduced including spirituals, worksongs, Scottish ballads, Methodist and Baptist hymns, call and response, guttural effects, interpolated vocality, falsetto and blue notes. All of these …