Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Black Genius: An Achievement Distortion, Brenda Burgo

Dissertations

Is the achievement gap real? Using a mixed-methods approach, this study reframed standardized testing through a Quantitative Critical and Black Critical lens. It interrogated the deficit framing of Black student achievement by asking the following questions: (1) To what extent do the aggregated standardized test scores for Black students in California correlate with other measures of achievement? Included in this analysis are: (a) To what degree does the ratio of Black students relate to the achievement variables? and (b) To what extent did COVID impact this correlation? (2) What beliefs do Black educators have regarding the standardized test scores of …

Home Of The Brave Book Study Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

Individuals lead storied lives, and everyone has a story to tell. Our stories can be shared orally and documented in print. Often, learners are exposed to stories through novels and other trade books. Teacher educators may benefit from using the stories in novels and trade books as case studies in preservice teacher preparation course. This assignment description outlines how to use the novel, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, as a case study to contextualize and understand the lived story of an individual learning a second language and living in a new country. Through the novel, preservice teachers experience …

Language Learning Simulation Using Duolingo Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

It is likely that preservice teachers will work with students learning English as their second (third, fourth, etc.) language. For preservice teachers to better understand the language learning process, Duolingo was used to simulate the learning experience. The assignment description outlines how preservice teachers can reflection pre-simulation and post-simulation about what they learned about language learning.

Best Practices For English Learners With Disabilities In Us Schools – A Systematic Review, Samiratu Bashiru, Jennifer E. Smith

Journal of English Learner Education

This systematic review investigated best practices for enhancing academic achievement among English Learners with Disabilities (ELDs) in US schools. By examining 17 peer-reviewed articles and comparing them to the CEC 2014 Quality Indicators, the study identifies significant practices, including culturally responsive methods, technology integration, evidence-based strategies, addressing service delivery challenges, and improving assessment tools. This review has limitations related to inconsistent terminology and highlights the need for standardized language and continued research. It recommends integrating culturally responsive practices, leveraging technology, and refining inclusive assessment tools. This review provides educators, policymakers, and researchers insights, emphasizing ongoing teacher development and policy alignment …

Book Review It Takes An Ecosystem: Understanding The People, Places, And Possibilities Of Learning And Development Across Settings, Denise Montgomery

Journal of Youth Development

It Takes an Ecosystem: Understanding the People, Places, and Possibilities of Learning and Development Across Settings, edited by Thomas Akiva and Kimberly H. Robinson, is a call to take a holistic and dynamic ecosystem approach to thinking about, designing, developing, and investing in the allied youth fields to more equitably and effectively support young people’s learning and development. Published in 2022, the volume outlines a vision for out-of-school time programs and systems, schools, community-based organizations, and the public sector to move beyond focusing separately on individual systems to a learning and development ecosystem approach that more accurately and inclusively reflects …

Healing Racial Trauma From Public School Systems, Lisa Y. Collins

Journal of Research Initiatives

Oregon needs Black educators in the K-12 public school system. In 35 school districts throughout the state, the number of students of color has risen by over 40% in recent years (Oregon Chief Education Office, 2019). The number of educators of color in the state is under 10%. The number of Black educators is even lower. Research has shown that Black educators improve all students' academic, cultural, and social aspects, especially Black students. Nationally, Black educators were impacted by the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. At that time in history, Black communities fought for civil rights as they experienced …

Teacher Perceptions Of Advanced Ability English Language Learners (Ell), Dena Redmond

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study explored teacher perceptions of English language learners and giftedness. High school content teachers participated in an interview identifying behaviors that indicate advanced abilities from a series of three vignettes about English language learners. A total of four participants were interviewed. The four emergent themes were (1) critical thinking (2) rate of language acquisition, (3) motivation, and (4) use of language. The themes were behaviors that teachers perceived as demonstrating potential or demonstrating limited potential for advanced learning in English language learners.

Understanding Administrators' Perceptions Of Gifted Ell Students, Abigail Eaton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Students with gifts and talents are identified in school districts across the nation. However, there is severe underrepresentation of minority groups in gifted education programs, specifically students with ELL backgrounds. This issue is important because students from diverse backgrounds are the fastest growing group of the K-12 population. If the issue is not addressed, many talents will be overlooked and underdeveloped (Peters & Engerrand, 2016). The purpose of this study was to analyze administrators’ perceptions of gifted ELL students.

Participants in this study include six administrators from a small, rural district in Southcentral Kentucky. All of the administrators participated in …

The Role Of Cultural Capital In Improving Advanced Placement Outcomes, Kolbe Ricks

Education Theses and Dissertations

This work delves into the potential benefits and criticism of Advanced Placement (AP) courses, with a specific focus on the necessity of cultural capital to address disparities in access and success. The researcher argues that the broad content coverage in AP courses often leads to conventional lecture-based instruction that does not value cultural capital and limits student engagement and outcomes. To rectify this, recommendations are made to incorporate pedagogical approaches like culturally relevant teaching and providing teacher feedback and support that allows for the successful implementation of these practices. Numerous studies indicate that participation in AP courses predicts success in …

Shifting Educational Paradigms To Match Learners: Sustaining Cultures, Languages, And Paradigms Through Educational Sovereignty, Lona R. Running Wolf

The Montana English Journal

The U.S. system of education was developed by visionary forefathers that knew American democracy would be stable only through educated citizens. The system was developed to produce citizens that would carry on the new world's vision and values. The educational system was built within that paradigm. Simultaneously, Indigenous tribes in America were being stripped of their traditional educational systems whose purpose was also to develop productive citizens of their communities and carry on their values. Traditional educational systems among tribes developed children with positive self-identity carrying the pride of their culture, language, and paradigm. That is not the case for …

Finding Our Gifted English Language Learners, Lois Stokes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study explored teacher referrals of English Language Learners (ELL) also called Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students for gifted identification and services in a medium sized school district in the southern United States. Five educators who have successfully referred an ELL/CLD student were interviewed in this qualitative study. Discussion focused on teachers’ recognition of the characteristics of giftedness in these students, understanding teacher perceptions about ELL/CLD potentially gifted students, parent understanding and involvement, and training opportunities for finding gifted ELL/CLD students. Four main themes about how teachers find gifted ELL/CLD students for referral stemmed from the coded interviews: positive …

Examining Teachers' Referral And Placement Decisions Of Hispanic Children For Gifted And Talented Programs, Guillermo I. Mendoza

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative survey design study examined whether children’s ethnicity makes a difference in teachers’ referral and placement decisions in gifted and talented (G/T) programs. A total of 524 teachers from all over the United States who have taught or currently teach pre-kindergarten through 5th grade participated. The participants were randomly given one of six vignettes adapted from a previous similar study (Elhoweris et al., 2005). Participants answered whether the child described should be referred and placed into gifted and talented programs. All six vignettes described gifted and talented characteristics; the only differences were the children's ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Data …

Introduction To A Universal Performance Improvement Method (Chigen-Iku), Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

This brief article introduces a universal performance improvement method called Chigen-iku, which has been developed carefully and extensively over more than 25 years through more than 100 individual and group projects based on the principles that were selected through my doctorial study in the field of Instructional Psychology and Technology.

A Conceptual Exploration Of Anti-Fragility In The Context Of Confucian Heritage Culture Education, Alwyn Lau

Journal of Research Initiatives

It is a common but not unrealistic stereotype of Asian students that educational success is a matter of personal identity and status. As such, achieving distinctions in as many subjects as possible (the popular target of becoming a ‘straight A’ student) is usually a non-negotiable objective nurtured by both parents and educators. Such an obsessive pursuit of academic excellence produces both laudable outcomes (e.g. the tendency of Asian students to outperform their counterparts) as well as dangerous ones (e.g. worrying rates of mental health problems). This theoretical paper hopes to apply the concept of anti-fragility developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, …

The Journey Box: Promoting Language Development While Exploring One’S Identity, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

A Journey Box allows students to explore and share their family’s historical narrative using primary sources like interviews and artifacts. Students explore different facets of their own family’s history and journey to America while engaging in a larger shared experience among classmates to understand different perspectives. The Journey Box develops oral and written language skills while supporting individual’s exploration of their culture and identity.

Trauma-Informed Practices For Test-Taking Anxiety At The Elementary Grade Level, Kate Campbell, Shalini Mathew

Journal of Research Initiatives

Test -Taking Anxiety (TTA) is a challenging experience for children of all ages. Childhood exposure to trauma and adverse experience has been increasing. Fortunately, trauma-informed practices, such as mindfulness activities have become more widespread in schools throughout the last few years. Existing school counseling literature offers limited perspectives on how school counselors can support elementary students for TTA. This conceptual article explores the effects of trauma-informed practices on elementary-age students' test anxiety and overall academic success in schools and offers implications for practice.

English Teachers' Opinions On Challenges Face In Teaching English As Foreign Language: The Case Of Jalalabad Selected Secondary Schools, Fahim Rahimi, Hangama Samadi

Journal of Research Initiatives

One important goal of teaching is to achieve learning outcomes. It has been observed in universities that many students have different levels of English language proficiency. However, they study in the same English courses at the school level. The main objective of this study is to learn the challenges that exist in teaching the English language as a foreign language in secondary schools that affect the English proficiency of students. In addition, ways in which these challenges will be overcome is reviewed. The data collection tools were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data from English language teachers in selected …

The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round: Rethinking The St. Louis Busing Program, Tango Walker, Ketosha Harris

Dissertations

This autoethnography shares our personal experiences and counter-narratives in the St. Louis busing program. Through our mission we expound on experiences and real-life situations as seen through our lens as a student and a mother in the St. Louis busing program. Critical race theory (CRT) was used as an essential framework allowing us to focus on the following four tenets: counter-stories, permanence of racism, whiteness as property, interest convergence. (Anderson, et al., 2017). Critical race theory (CRT) is the framework in social sciences that examines society and culture as it relates to categorization of race, law and power (Lynn & …

A Structured Literacy Approach To Support Striving Readers In Secondary Grades: Meaningful Transactions Through Morphological Awareness And Fluency Building, Samantha Bart-Addison, Robert A. Griffin

Georgia Journal of Literacy

A high school English teacher and a university literacy professor provide secondary teachers with structured literacy strategies to support striving readers in the middle and high school grades. The authors present strategies that can be utilized with diverse texts across learning contexts. As a structured literacy approach, morphological awareness and prosodic fluency are emphasized to foster deeper, more meaningful transactions between students and texts. An example of a full structured literacy lesson is also provided that includes multiple strategies and is based on a gradual release model with guided and independent reading cycles. Applicable strategies for delivery of these skills …

Connecting A Community Through A Family Literacy Project And Virtual Writing Collaboration: University Students Facilitate Access To Literature During The Pandemic, Anne Katz Ph.D., Alexandria Sledge-Tollerson B.A. In Early Childhood Education

Georgia Journal of Literacy

The importance of accessing and sharing children’s literature took on new meaning as educators pivoted to remote and online learning models over the course of the past school year. In light of the pandemic, College of Education pre-service educators enrolled in a Fall 2020 Language and Literacy Development course (which is usually scheduled to meet face-to-face twice a week) was re-structured as hybrid, where a group of students were scheduled to meet partially face-to-face and partially online on a weekly basis. I planned to adapt my family literacy project collaboration with a local community center, an academic service learning assignment …

Acculturation Stress, Covid-19 Outbreak, And Academic Burnout On The Psychological Well-Being Of Asian Students, Georgekutty Kochuchakkalackal Kuriala

Journal of Research Initiatives

The Coronavirus (Covid-19) endemic is growing exponentially in the whole world. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus responsible for causing COVID-19 disease, which is highly infectious and lethal. Acculturation stress originates from attempts by individuals to resolve the differences between their culture of origin and the dominant culture. In addition, the process of acculturation often is accompanied by several stressful psycho-social experiences, personal and institutional discrimination, leaving family and friends behind in the country of origin, and the stressor of learning a new language. Moreover, with the soaring trends in globalization, people ought to seek a highly competitive and world-class education to …

Advances In Global Education And Research: Volume 4, Waynne B. James, Cihan Cobanoglu, Muhittin Cavusoglu

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

This is the fourth volume of the Advances in Global Education and Research Book Series. This volume has the following parts:

• Part 1: Adult Education
• Part 2: Curriculum and Instruction Development
• Part 3: Educational Technology
• Part 4: Education in Other Specialties
• Part 5: English as a Second Language
• Part 6: Global Competence
• Part 7: Higher Education and Educational Leadership
• Part 8: Inclusive Education
• Part 9: International Education
• Part 10: PreK-12
• Part 11: Research Methods in Education

ISBN: 978-1-955833-04-2

Adult Education

• Teaching for knowledge transfer: Best practices from a graduate-level educational psychology distance learning program
  • Bobby Hoffman
• A study on the …

A Case Study Of Four Districts' Procedures For Identifying And Serving Culturally, Linguistically, And Economically Diverse Gifted And Talented Students In One State, Mackenzie Anderson

Curriculum and Instruction Undergraduate Honors Theses

The underrepresentation of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students is a problem historically researched in gifted and talented programs. This problem largely comes from the way districts identify for giftedness as well as the programming for gifted students. Traditional methods of identification often largely exclude students due to racial or ethnic bias and harsh cut-off scores on tests. This study investigated the current identification procedures of four districts in one state. Additionally, the study addressed programming and how these districts specifically targeted underserved populations within their district. Data were collected through interviews with four District Coordinators from school districts with …

¿Dónde Están? Exploring The Identification Process For Gifted English Language Learners, Angelita O. Vasquez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The problem this study addressed was the underrepresentation of ELLs in gifted and talented (GT) programs. The purpose of this case study was to explore teacher, parent, and administrator understandings of the identification process for the gifted and talented program in Gray ISD (pseudonym), in order to gain insights for improving the identification of ELLs for the GT program. The overall research question was: Based on their understandings of the GT identification process, what insights do teachers, parents, and administrators provide to improve the identification of ELLs for the GT program? With LatCrit theory serving as a theoretical framework, this …

Learn, Try, Repeat: Experiential Learning In Adult Second Language Acquisition Of Spanish In Higher Education, Veronica Miller

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to synthesize research of experiential learning for adult Spanish learners in higher education to identify important takeaways and propose draft curriculum to improve acquisition for learners through experience-based and hands-on practices. Hopefully, this will aid in understanding, identify gaps in existing research, and better inform lesson-planning for instructors. My research does not include any comparison to other languages or other levels of education. I approach the issue through exploratory and descriptive research through open-source data retrieval by information obtained from governmental and nongovernmental resources.

Esperanza Rising And Identity: Exploring Literature And Self In Upper Elementary School, Emma Fuller

Honors Theses

Upper elementary students benefit from exposure to windows and mirrors in literature. The term “mirrors” refers to when students can relate to characters and situations, and see their own lives valued in an academic context. Mirrors are important for representation in schools because it allows students to reflect on their own learning. “Windows” allow students to see a perspective into other people’s lives. They are important because they encourage reflection on different ideas and empathy among students. One of many literary works with strong “windows” and “mirrors” is Pam Munoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising. In this Senior Project, I focused on …

Letter From The Editor, Shannon Tovey

Georgia Journal of Literacy

Editorial by Shannon Tovey, Editor-in-Chief

Seeking Calm Among The Chaos: A Letter From The Editor, Shannon Tovey

Georgia Journal of Literacy

A letter from the Editor of the Georgia Journal of Literacy

Leveraging The Science Of Learning To Enhance Student Success: An Application Of Syfr Learning’S Principles Of Practice, Jennifer S. Jones, Christopher L. Thomas

Journal of Research Initiatives

The purpose of the current article is to describe a set of empirically validated principles of practice with the potential to enhance student learning and academic performance. Specifically, we provide an overview of Syfr Learning’s principles of practice – a collection of scalable instructional techniques derived from decades of research in the domain of learning science. Further, we provide an illustrative example of the benefits of Syfr Learning’s principles of practice when incorporated into existing curricula in a K-12 setting.

Letter From The Editor

Georgia Journal of Literacy

A Letter from the Editor