Education Commons^™

Schools’ Civil Rights Obligations To English Learners: Leadership Perceptions On Key Issues, Pamela R. Schwallier

Dissertations

English Learners (ELs), who now represent nearly 10% of all K-12 public school students, 4.8 million of who speak over 400 different languages and dialects, continue to lack equitable educational opportunities as demonstrated through gaps in achievement outcomes, poor graduation rates, and identified systemic barriers related to the intersectionality of language, culture, race, and racism (Crump, 2014; DeMatthews & Izquierdo, 2017; Menken & Solorza, 2015; Morita-Mullaney, 2018; National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition [NCELA], 2015, 2018). This quantitative study captured over 800 K-12 educational leaders’ perspectives, via an anonymous electronic survey, on key issues regarding equitable programs for ELs that …

The Implementation Of A Two-Way Dual Language Program And The Impact On Teaching And Learning, Annetta Spychalski

Dissertations

Dual language programs satisfy the requirement of mandated bilingual programs for English Language Learners in the state of Illinois. This qualitative program evaluation focused on a school district that entered into an adaptive change process with respect to creating a two-way dual language immersion program that would increase student language acquisition in English and Spanish as well as increase cultural competency and professional development for teachers. The program evaluation provided the opportunity to diagnose the system through an examination of the challenges and the quality of the current state of the district leading to the identification of the 4c’s; context, …

Cuban Immigrants’ Experience With Acculturation And How They Cope In The United States, Lourdes Araujo

Dissertations

Objective: This research examines how Cuban immigrants experience cope and adapt to the United States. Cuban immigration is associated with specific stressors related to the immigration experience and the necessary process of acculturation and assimilation. These major stressors can result in mental health concerns among Cuban immigrants; however, no studies have examined how acculturation may influence Cuban immigrants’ coping skills and resultant mental health concerns. This unique study is the first to examine the coping skills Cuban immigrants use during acculturation and the effects of these skills on Cuban immigrants’ mental health. Methods: Seventeen participants completed a semistructured interview and …

Racial Battle Fatigue And Black Male Higher Education Administrators, Joshua Walehwa

Dissertations

Racial Battle Fatigue was first coined by Dr. William A. Smith as a theory describing the burnout of African Americans in higher education institutions. While much of the current research focuses on the faculty and student experiences, in various formats, this provides an autoethnography capturing the various phases of a Black Male higher education administrators experience with experiencing and coping through Racial Battle Fatigue. The belief behind this approach focuses on the value of storytelling and autoethnography in particular in research, the interconnected nature of life experiences that impact professional life as well as the reverse, and a call to …

Ethnic Identity, Stress, And Anxiety In Latinx University Students At Predominantly White Institutions, Anel Arias

Dissertations

Research indicates that ethnic minority-related stressors contribute to poor mental health outcomes in Latinx university students. There are inconsistent results of the moderating role of ethnic identity in ethnic minority stress and mental health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine whether ethnic identity moderates the relationship between ethnic minority stress and trait anxiety in Latinx university students attending predominantly White institutions (PWI). The secondary purpose of this study was to explore the effects of ethnic minority stress on trait anxiety symptoms.

Participants were 256 Latinx (67.6% women, n = 173; 31.3% men, n = 80) undergraduate and …

Multicultural Competence, White Privilege Attitudes And The Working Alliance In Clinical Supervision, Michelle A. Stahl

Dissertations

Research indicates that White supervisors have difficulty facilitating and integrating multicultural issues in supervision (Fong & Lease, 1997; Hird, Tao, & Gloria, 2004). A factor that interferes with a multicultural focus in supervision is the multicultural competence of the supervisor (Miville, Rosa, & Constantine, 2005). Moreover, as a result of White privilege, White supervisors may also be less aware of their cultural selves and subsequently less inclined to discuss multicultural issues in supervision (Hird et al., 2004). Lack of attention to important multicultural issues, such as White privilege, can interfere with the development of an effective supervisory alliance (Constantine & …

Engaging Middle School Emergent Bilinguals In Language Awareness: A Practitioner Researcher Study, Carol Lickenbrock

Dissertations

This practitioner research study (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) traced the journey toward critical literacy of a group of seven emergent bilinguals and me, their teacher, over the course of a four-month unit on argument as part of our English for Speakers of Other Languages 3 (ESOL3) class. Many of these students, like many emergent bilinguals in the United States, had been disempowered because they had not had access to the academic texts of school. As part of this research, students worked with tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analyze the interpersonal, ideational and textual metafunctions of argumentation in lessons …

Insights Into The Lived Experiences Of English Language Learners, Rina Kassem

Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine how schools can provide special language instruction to meet the increase in the numbers of English language learners (ELLs) and its effect on educators as well as students. This is a descriptive single case study that is focused on a public school, prekindergarten through fifth-grade located in a middle class suburb in a big metropolitan area in the Midwest. This study addresses the commonality problems that face a school system include academic performance, different cultural backgrounds, communication issues, professional development, and funding. To address these issues it is necessary to understand how …

Black Girls Matter: The Impact Of Historical Representation On Contemporary Education, Carolyn Strong

Dissertations

A long history of misogynoir and negative stereotypes about Black
girls and women can be found throughout the literature and popular
culture of the United States. These stereotypes inform the lived
experience of Black girls and women, and in particular interfere with
African American girls’ ability to thrive in a school environment. An
autoethnographic research approach shows that various strategies, in
particular, Black girl-centric spaces, have proven to be helpful in
supporting Black girls who have to negotiate varying degrees of
hostility in general environments. These could be applied more broadly
to improve Black girls’ mental, psychological, physical, and
educational …

Intergenerational Family Learning Programs: Stories Of Latinx, Immigrant Families And Their Journeys To And Through Higher Education, Monica Ramos

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This research presents the stories of three Latinx families who participated in an intergenerational family program. I endeavored to understand their experiences navigating the American system of education and their immigrant stories. Their narratives revealed significant details that can serve as integral elements in the development of an intergenerational learning curriculum based on culture, language, and traditions, and that steps away from the assumptions that perpetrate the deficit-based narratives about Latino families and higher education. Their hopes provide points for further research and advocacy. In this qualitative study, I collected data using semi-structured interviews, including documents and artifacts. The …

Student Perceptions Regarding The Use Of Purposive English In A Spanish As A Foreign Language Classroom, Kacey Booth

Dissertations

In modern American society, diversity is both challenged and celebrated, and inclusion is imperative. This ideology begins in the classroom. Oftentimes, this celebration of diversity, more specifically linguistic diversity, is most visible in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) classes and similar bilingual educational programs. In TESOL programs, students’ international identities are highlighted and students are often instructed using multilingual educational resources to scaffold their acquisition of English. Historically, foreign language teaching also utilized dual-language instructional methodologies. Such archaic teaching methodologies have since been replaced by more modern and immersive sociopsycholinguistic approaches such as Communicative Language Teaching. Such …