Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

A Longitudinal Analysis Of The Development Of Mandarin Chinese In Fourth Grade Chinese Immersion, Robin E. Harvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many studies have confirmed the benefits of dual language immersion programs. Research into reading and writing development in these programs, and particularly in Chinese immersion, is less common. In this dissertation, an attempt is made to address this gap in research by exploring the literacy development of fourth grade Chinese immersion students. Participants were 70 students, the entire fourth grade of an urban Chinese immersion school in the northeastern U.S. The school had recently made several curricular changes. They were adopting a practice of freewriting, or independent writing. In freewriting, students are encouraged to write as much as they can …

Equitable Assessment For Elementary Dual-Language Learners, Joliette Mandel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis points out the contradictions between the goals of standardized testing and the goals of dual-language elementary education. I argue that dual-language elementary schools in the New York City Department of Education would be better served by a performance assessment model to measure student and school accountability for several reasons. Performance assessment is more equitable for students who are marginalized by their race, language, or class. Many students who attend dual-language schools in the NYCDOE fall into all these categories. I will discuss in depth why standardized testing is failing students, particularly those in dual-language elementary programs. Next, I …

For Critical Language Awareness And Against The “Exclusive-Use-Of-The-Target-Language” Myth: The Effects Of Sociolinguistic Content In English In An Elementary Spanish Classroom, Beatriz Lado, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

Scholars have advocated for critical approaches to language education (e.g., Del Valle, 2014; Leeman & Serafini, 2016), including those that promote the development of Critical Language Awareness, CLA (e.g., Alim, 2010; Leeman, 2018). The goal is to develop students’ critical knowledge of the cultural, political, and social dimensions of language. To this end, Del Valle (2014) suggests the inclusion of language-related content units taught in the first or shared language from the early stages of language learning. This proposal entails revising strong beliefs such as the use of the non-target language in the new language classroom. The purpose of our …

An Online Hub For Queens Parents, Abe R. Levine

Capstones

I sought to build a common hub for parents across District 28 in Queens to connect with one another. I did this by creating a bilingual newsletter called the Queens Boletín. The goal of the Boletín was for parents to share and find resources, to advance the conversation on equity, and to build community.

Safety And Belonging In Immigrant-Serving Districts: Domains Of Educator Practice In A Charged Political Landscape, Rebecca Lowenhaupt, Dafney Blanca Dabach, Ariana Mangual Figueroa

Publications and Research

Drawing from a context of reception framework, this article asks the following questions: How do educators describe issues of safety and belonging in the context of a charged immigration policy climate? What practices have educators developed to support immigrant-origin youth? And, what are the relationships between educators’ perceptions of safety and belonging and educator practices? We analyze educators’ survey responses administered across six school districts in different contexts across the United States, including the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. We synthesize four domains of educator practice: signaling affirmation, building shared knowledge and capacity, finding and mobilizing resources, and creating space …

Linguistically Diverse Read Aloud Analysis, Ivana Espinet

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 And Racial Justice In Urban Education: Nyc Parents Speak Out, Kelly Brady, Mieasia Edwards, Whitney Hollins, José Luis Jiménez, Wendy Luttrell, William Orellana, David Rosas, Nga Than

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic and global calls for racial justice surfaced tremendous inequities and revitalized the debate about schooling and its purpose. NYC Parents Speak Out is a public engagement project, based on an interactive survey and interviews that records and reflects NYC family educational experiences during the unprecedented school year of 2020-2021. Our research collective, comprised of researchers, parents, advocates, teachers, and school leaders from the Urban Education Ph.D. Program at The Graduate Center (CUNY) identified three key recommendations based on research findings: to improve communication through family and community engagement; give greater attention to social-emotional and mental health; and …

Multilingual/Translanguaging: Narrative Writing Through Authentic Language, Lucia E. Brea

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

P.S. 25, South Bronx: Bilingual Education And Community Control, Laura J. Kaplan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a methodology of oral history interviews with primary subjects and archival research, this dissertation explores the creation and evolution of P.S. 25, The Bilingual School, the first Spanish-English bilingual elementary school in New York City, as well as the entire Northeast. The Bilingual School, founded in 1968, was a product of the civil rights movement in the United States and one key manifestation of that movement in New York City, the struggle for community control of schools.

Latinos in general and Puerto Ricans in particular have been written out of the official narrative of the educational civil rights movement …

“Yo Soy Su Mama”: Latinx Mothers Raising Emergent Bilinguals Labeled As Dis/Abled, Maria Cioe Peña

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parental involvement in the United States has been identified in both academic and mainstream literature as a defining marker in academic achievement. Yet most of the literature regarding parents and schools are written about them without including their voice or their stories. Through the use of ethnographic case studies, this dissertation presents the experiences of immigrant, monolingual Spanish-speaking Latinx women raising emergent bilingual children who are labeled as dis/abled. This research is guided by an intersectional framework and the following questions:

1. What are the mothering experiences of Spanish-speaking Latinx mothers of emergent bilingual children labeled dis/abled?

2. What values, …

Musicking And Literacy Connections In The Third Space: Leveraging The Strengths Of A Latinx Immigrant Community, Angelica Ortega

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music-making classroom is a space were students enact their multi-literacies. This space is especially important for Latinx bilingual students who are often labeled as struggling in school. In the music-making classroom, students reinvent their identities as integral members of a learning community, are accepted as leaders by their peers and are seen as literate in their music making practices. This habitus of success can have a durable, generative and transposable impact on the identity formation for the bilingual student that goes beyond the music classroom. This occurs because the music–making classroom acts as a third space both cognitively and …

It's All Happening At The Zoo: Children's Environmental Learning After School, Jason A. Douglas, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Pairing dynamic out-of-school-time (OST) programs with zoos can encourage young people's relationships with and sense of responsibility for animals and the environment. The project presented in this article, Animal Rescuers, gave the authors the opportunity to examine how such a pairing can work. OST programs enable learning in settings that are generally unavailable during school time (Honig & McDonald, 2005). They provide space for collaboration among students, teachers, and others such as program visitors or outside educators. Taking advantage of the flexibility, location, and educational playfulness of an OST setting, the authors worked intensively with a small number of 10-12-year-old …

Profiles And Perspectives: Learning Through Descriptive Inquiry At The Cypress Hills Community School, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Cecilia M. Espinosa, Sarah Ferholt, Michael Loeb, Berky Lugo-Salcedo, Cecilia Traugh

Publications and Research

This paper describes the work of a collaborative study group on exploring the multiple literacies of students at one school in Brooklyn, NY. Through descriptive review, the group developed knowledge about how to support student language and bilingualism through responsive techniques.

How Much Does Poor Reading Lower Math Scores?, William (Bill) H. Williams, Sandra P. Clarkson Ph.D

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.