Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Analyzing The Linguistic Features Of Standardized Math Items: A Text Mining Approach, Magdalen A. Beiting-Parrish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The following is a five-chapter dissertation surrounding the use of text mining techniques for better understanding the language of mathematics items from standardized tests to improve linguistic equity of these items to support assessment of English Language Learners.

Introduction: The dissertation begins with an overview of the problem that English Language Learners are likely not able to demonstrate their full mathematical ability due to the construct irrelevant variance caused by these items being written in English. This introduction also introduces the idea of text mining as a methodology for use in exploring this test design issue.

Article 1: This article …

“Los Programadores Debieron Pensarse Como Dos Veces”: Exploring The Intersections Of Language, Power And Technology With Bi/Multilingual Students, Sara Vogel

Publications and Research

Critical computing approaches to K-12 Computer Science (CS) education aim to promote justice in computing and the wider world. Despite being intertwined with inequitable power dynamics in computing, issues of linguistic (in)justice have received less attention in critical computing. In this article, I draw on theoretical ideas from sociolinguistics and critical computing to analyze qualitative data collected in computing and technology-integrated language and humanities classes serving emergent bi/multilingual middle school students. Conversations about language, technology, and power were close at hand in focal classrooms, and surfaced in moments when students acted as users and critics of, and tinkerers with digital …

Translanguaging About, With, And Through Code And Computing: Emergent Bi/Multilingual Middle Schoolers Forging Computational Literacies, Sara Vogel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As computing pervades more aspects of life, and as Computer Science for All (CS for All) initiatives roll out across the U.S., the field must understand the experiences and language practices of emergent bi/multilingual K-12 students and use that knowledge to drive equitable pedagogical and programmatic approaches. But little is known about how emergent bi/multilingual students — a growing population that school systems have often viewed with deficit-based lenses and have thus struggled to educate equitably — use language in the context of CS education. This dissertation addresses this gap by (1) qualitatively documenting and using asset-based frames to analyze …

Representing Percents And Personas: Designing Syncretic Curricula For Modeling And Statistical Reasoning, Sarah Radke, Sara Vogel, Christopher Hoadley, Jasmine Ma

Publications and Research

Syncretic literacy can link everyday and scientific concepts in student learning. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a curricular unit in a bilingual middle school science class developed to help students link everyday conceptions, conceptions from math, science, and computer science, and their own broad linguistic repertoires to support syncretic literacy in modeling and statistics in a unit on post-Hurricane Maria outmigration from Puerto Rico. The unit invited students to use printed maps, physical objects, computer code, and simulations to explore concepts such as percentages and scientific models, framed by an approach from translanguaging pedagogy. Qualitative …

Languages, Literacies, And Literate Programming: Can We Use The Latest Theories On How Bilingual People Learn To Help Us Teach Computational Literacies?, Sara Vogel, Christopher Hoadley, Ana Rebeca Castillo, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno

Publications and Research

Background and Context: In this theory paper, we explore the concept of translanguaging from bilingual education, and its implications for teaching and learning programming and computing in especially computer science (CS) for all initiatives.

Objective: We use translanguaging to examine how programming is and isn’t like using human languages. We frame CS as computational literacies. We describe a pedagogical approach for teaching computational literacies.

Method: We review theory from applied linguistics, literacy, and computational literacy. We provide a design narrative of our pedagogical approach by describing activities from bilingual middle school classrooms integrating Scratch into academic subjects.

Findings: Translanguaging pedagogy …

Analysis Of Pro-Drop Errors In L2 English By L1 Spanish Speakers, Marcos R. Ynoa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although educators and linguists have described and studied L2 learner errors, often from the perspective of positive and negative transfer (Krashen, 1981), there is relatively little empirical data on the frequencies of L2 error types. Learner error rankings do exist (Donahue, 2001) (Cambridge learner corpus; (Nicholls, 1999)), but these rankings are often too general and may overlook specifics when it comes to particular language learner groups. The goal of our work is to develop a tool that can be used to explore error patterns, address educator needs, and help answer research questions in L2 language learning. The tool we have …