Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

I Don't Want To Save Your Children, Katherine M. Patterson

SURGE

A few weeks ago, the moment that I’ve been dreaming of for almost half of a year finally arrived. I started the Heston Summer Experience as an intern in Gettysburg. An embarrassing amount of my winter break was devoted to writing and rewriting my applications. After receiving an invitation for an interview, I convened my roommates to help me choose an outfit and ask me practice questions, which is not something I do…ever. Getting my acceptance letter in the mail was the ultimate highlight of a long and difficult year. When I was home for the first few weeks of …

Brown Eyes, Brown Mind: What We Learn From What We See, Mauricio E. Novoa

SURGE

My summer days aren’t spent in a house on the beach or travelling to different states or countries with my family or friends, forgetting about the worries of the rest of the year and wondering what could be better than life under the sun. They are spent in a school building, the first place my younger self would have been eager to escape during off time. This is the second summer I am working at the LIU Migrant Education Summer School of Excellence. Unlike normal summer school, which usually consists of remedial classes for students who can’t seem to …

The Effectiveness Of A Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program That Offer Special Benefits For Pregnant And Parenting Teens: A Qualitative Study, Marsha Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Teen pregnancy continues to be a problem for families, educators, health care professionals, and the government. Teenagers are not afforded the opportunity to learn or receive reinforcement on God's laws on abstaining from premarital sex because religious education is not allowed in the public school system. This increase has led to the creation of the Teenage Parenting Center (TAPP), located in southwest Georgia. TAPP is one of 64 schools in a school district that offers special benefits for pregnant and parenting teens. This qualitative case study used a phenomenological approach to explore the experience of eight former attendees of the …

The Race For Honors, Hannah M. Frantz

SURGE

Over graduation weekend, it was pretty common to see people weighed down by massive numbers of honor cords hanging around their necks. This is a mark of respect at Gettysburg College, so students wear them proudly. I had the privilege to attend Spring Honors Day and watch many of my friends receive achievement awards. As we started winding down to the end of the ceremony, something hit me:

The recipients were overwhelmingly white. [excerpt]

What The Unglamorous Side Of Study Abroad Taught Me, Kathryn E. Bucolo

SURGE

I’ve been gallivanting around this beautiful planet posing as a study abroad student taking classes and writing papers for the past academic year, one semester in England and one in Argentina (where I still am) and, just like all the brochures, promotions, and panels of study abroad survivors say, it has been absolutely chock-full of amazing experiences, people, places, foods—I think “transformative” is the proper term.

But transformative can mean many things. It doesn’t just mean that you “find yourself” or “change your life”—it means you see the less glamorous stuff about yourself, too. [excerpt]

English Learning Demotivation Studies In The Efl Contexts: State Of The Art, Yoon-Kyoung Kim, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This paper reviews the studies conducted on English learning demotivation in the EFL contexts. Demotivation research in the EFL contexts is significant given the learners’ less opportunities to use the target language outside school and consequent difficulties in maintaining their interest in learning it. In order to look into how this issue of demotivation has been addressed, the previous EFL demotivation studies are analyzed based on (a) their research methods and (b) perspectives on the definition of demotivation. The research methods adopted by the previous research include quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. In terms of different underlying assumptions on what …

Same Environment, Different Affordances: Ecological Analysis Of Four Different Learners In A University Context, Miso Kim, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This study investigates the subjective realization of objective environmental factors and learners’ agency in constructing their meaning potential. According to van Lier’s (2000, 2002, 2004) ecological perspective, the environment is yet an unrealized set of potential, and affordance is what was felt meaningful to the learner. Also, learners actively construct their terms and conditions of learning with their agency (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001). Based on van Lier’s ecological framework, two pairs of students enrolled in two same English classes were recruited. Life history, semi-structured interview, and task recall data revealed that for some students, affordance of the English classroom was …

Resilience In School, Milka Ndura

Master's Capstone Projects

This study explores the factors that motivate students to perform well in the national examination at their basic primary education level despite the unlikely environment to support this success in Kibera slums, Kenya. In the current situation in Kenya, national examinations are used as a basis of distributing the fewer than students slots in secondary school, despite the different circumstances facing each candidate, passing of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education is still an important factor that determines a child’s eligibility to attend secondary school. Students enrolled in Kenyan primary school system take the same national exams regardless of the …

Relations Of Parenting Quality, Interparental Conflict, And Overnights With Mental Health Problems Of Children In Divorcing Families With High Legal Conflict, Irwin N. Sandler, Lorey A. Wheeler, Sanford L. Braver

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

The current study examined the associations between child mental health problems and the quality of maternal and paternal parenting, and how these associations were moderated by three contextual factors, quality of parenting by the other parent, interparental conflict, and the number of overnights parents had with the child. Data for the current study come from a sample of divorcing families who are in high legal conflict over developing or maintaining a parenting plan following divorce. Analyses revealed that the associations between child mental health problems and positive maternal and paternal parenting were moderated by the quality of parenting provided by …

Mexican-Origin Youths’ Trajectories Of Depressive Symptoms: The Role Of Familism Values, Katharine H. Zeiders, Kimberly A. Updegraff, Adriana J. Umana-Taylor, Lorey A. Wheeler, Norma J. Perez-Brena, Sue A. Rodriguez

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Purpose—To describe Mexican-origin youths’ trajectories of depressive symptoms from early to late adolescence and examine the role of three aspects of familism values: supportive, obligation, and referent familism. Methods—Mexican-origin adolescents (N = 492) participated in home interviews and provided self-reports of depressive symptoms and cultural values at four assessments across an 8-year span. Using a cohort sequential design and accounting for the nesting within the 246 families (2 youth per family), we examined depressive symptoms from ages 12 to 22 years and the within-person, between-sibling, and between-family effects of familism values. Results—Mexican-origin males’ depressive symptoms decreased across …

Examining The Influence Of Parents, Teachers, And Neighborhood Safety On African American Adolescents’ Motivation And Achievement, Clarissa R. Roan-Belle

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Guided by the theoretical frameworks of Baumrind’s parenting style theory, interpersonal expectations, Self Determination Theory, and self-efficacy, this study examines factors that influence African American students’ GPA and motivation, specifically associations between parents’ and teachers’ control, warmth, and educational expectations and African American adolescents’ GPA, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation were examined. The moderating effects of neighborhood safety on the aforementioned associations were also assessed. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study found that parents’ warmth and expectations were positive predictors of all educational variables, while parents control was a negative predictor of GPA and intrinsic motivation. …

Diversity Among Latino/A College Students And Its Impact On Student Organization Involvement, Enmanuel Mercedes

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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The Effect Of Languaging On Korean Students' L2 Learning Motivation: A Classroom-Based Mixed Methods Approach, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This paper focuses on the effect of languaging activity on students' L2 learning motivation. Swain (2006, p. 98) defines languaging as "the process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through language." To date, most of languaging research investigated its impact on L2 learners' cognition. I endeavor to extend its original notion to the domain of motivation. Based on Dörnyei's (2009) L2 Motivational Self-System, the effect of languaging on students' L2 selves and their teachers' reflection will be investigated in this paper.

In Spring 2012, three English teachers implemented four different languaging conditions for their students: 1) written languaging …

An Activity Theory Analysis Of Second Language Motivational Self-System: Two Korean Immigrants' Esl Learning, Tae-Young Kim

Dr. Tae-Young Kim (김태영, 金兌英)

This paper analyzes two recent Korean immigrants’ ESL learning motivation using Dörnyei’s (2009) Second Language (L2) Motivational Self-System, which is synthesized with Engeström’s (1999) Activity Theory (AT) framework. Over a ten month period, the author conducted semi-structured monthly interviews and stimulated recall tasks. The findings of this case study suggest the following: 1) when sociocultural factors are mediated by L2 learners’ beliefs, these factors may directly influence learners’ ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self; 2) learners’ sensitivity with inclusive attitudes can transform the L2 learning environment into meaningful affordances; and 3) if there is no tension among elements in …