Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Reported Literacy, Media Consumption And Social Media Use As Measures Of Relevance Of Spanish As A Heritage Language, Isabel Velázquez

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

Aims and objectives: This paper explores one dimension of language maintenance among college-aged heritage speakers of Spanish (HSS) in three communities of the U.S. Midwest. The aim was to understand whether Spanish was relevant at a point in life in which they were developing their own networks away from their families. Research questions: Were reading and writing in Spanish relevant for the participants? Did they use Spanish when on social media? Did they text in Spanish? Was Spanish relevant for them when consuming content on electronic media?

Methodology: This analysis is part of a larger study on HSS in communities …

Loris Malaguzzi And The Teachers: Dialogues On Collaboration And Conflict Among Children, Reggio Emilia 1990, Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, John Nimmo

Zea E-Books Collection

In 1990, three American scholars participated in an extraordinary research experience with Loris Malaguzzi and the educators of the Diana School in Reggio Emilia, Italy. They were studying “cooperation”— how preschool educators promoted collaboration and community in their classrooms and schools—and they used videotapes of classroom episodes to provoke teachers to reflect on the meanings suggested by the actions of themselves and others. In October 1990 the three traveled to Reggio Emilia and spent several days with the Italian educators.

The Diana School faculty viewed these encounters as powerful opportunities for their own professional development through the documentation process, rather …

Classrooms As Creative Learning Communities: A Lived Curricular Expression, Soon Ye Hwang

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Creativity—the fundamental basis of human experience, expression, and learning in the communal world of the classroom—is the primary concern of this dissertation. While creativity is one of the buzzwords of 21^st century education the world over, its lived understanding as fundamental to being human is understudied. This gap calls attention to the significances for all involved of entering into meaning making as creators. To explore the significances, I draw upon and give expression to my experiences of building such creative learning communities (CLC) in my own Multicultural Education (ME) classrooms as a teacher educator and curriculum theorist. Ways to …

Honoring Diversity In An Online Classroom: Approaches Used By Instructors Engaging Through An Lms, Jacob Petersen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

This is an inquiry into how online instructors embrace the diversity of their student body while facing the inherent differences between a traditional face-to-face class and one that is taught online. Current research suggests that diversity in a traditional classroom is an asset if the instructor is sensitive to students’ backgrounds. This paper examines if such philosophies in traditional classrooms translate well into a distance education environment, where the student body may be even more diverse than a face-to-face class, but possibly unrecognizable because of the lack of physical cues. Research on the topic of multiculturalism in an online classroom …

Partnerships Through Adult Education: Re-Conceptualizing Family Literacy In The New Latino Diaspora, Jennifer Leigh Stacy

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Schools are complex social institutions that mediate the experiences of newcomer families in the US. In recent years, a body of scholarship known as New Latino Diaspora has followed the migration of Latino families as they have moved away from traditional gateway communities and settled into territories that have previously been home to few, if any, Latino families. As a result, both institutionalized and grassroots educational initiatives have emerged as vehicles to support newcomer families as they learn English and adapt to living in a new community. This dissertation looks at the cultural space of a family literacy program that …

One Foot In, One Foot Out: A Qualitative Study Of Frequently Truant Latino High School Graduates Who Nearly Dropped Out, Chandra Diaz-Debose

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Given the continued growth of the Latino population in the United States and the long history of schools not serving Latino students, it would be hazardous for the education community to not address their needs. Under the premise that it can reveal, both obstacles and sources of resilience/perseverance, this research study will examine the schooling experiences of Latino graduates who nearly left high school or did leave but then returned to complete their diploma requirements. The data were collected during the summer of 2014. The purpose of this study was to better understand and acknowledge, from the graduates’ perspectives, what …

Addressing The Literacy Needs Of Marshallese Adolescents, Ingrid L. Naumann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Based on personal experience teaching literacy skills to Marshallese adolescents in the Republic of Palau, I explore literacy challenges and needs particular to these students. The historical and sociocultural context of language use in the Micronesian Islands reveals the imbalance of current biliteracy efforts. Challenges in teaching literacy to adolescents is well documented, as are challenges in teaching literacy through a second or third language, but these students, and many others like them, also face these challenges without the same traditional cultural value in print literacy that they see in school. The literature suggests potential improvement through approaches that demonstrate …

Let Them Learn English: Reader Response To Media Discourse About Dual Language Education, Jia Lu, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Despite the multilingual reality and the effectiveness of dual language education (DLE) being adequately documented by language and literacy researchers, the US is progressing at a slower rate in embracing and implementing DLE compared with other countries. The purpose of this study is to understand why progress in this area has been so slow by examining the public discourse that frequently shapes policy decisions about DL programs. To do this, the authors analyzed reader comments of 16 online news articles that centered on DLE. Findings revealed the intersection of language, national identity, race, and power relationships, which could be categorized …

Moisés Sáenz: Vigencia De Su Legado (English Translation), Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This book mainly offers the biography of Moisés Sáenz (1888-1941), founding architect of Mexico's system of public schooling and former student of John Dewey, describing in particular his roles in creating rural schools, initiating bilingual education (for Mexico's indigenous populations), and experimenting with linkages between schooling and community development. The volume also includes the author's reflection on the relevance of learning about Profr. Sáenz for his own intellectual trajectory (which includes studying the movement of students between Mexico and the US) and reflections by Mexican educators Humberto Leal Martinez and Juan Sánchez García.

The Cultural Integration Experience Of Chinese Immigrant Teachers In The United States: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Andrew W. Hustad

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The focus of this phenomenological study was the cultural integration experience of Chinese immigrant language teachers into US culture in general, and more specifically how they navigated a new educational culture upon entering the classroom. The need to conduct this study emerged from the researcher’s involvement with the multi-year Nebraska Chinese Acquisition Project FLAP grant. A key element of this grant focused on summer residential professional development institutes for teachers of Chinese in an effort to further develop and expand Chinese language programs in Nebraska public schools. Data collected by the researcher identified vast differences between the educational cultures of …

Mexican-Origin Parents’ Work Conditions And Adolescents’ Adjustment, Lorey A. Wheeler, Kimberly A. Updegraff, Ann Crouter

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

Mexican-origin parents’ work experiences are a distal extra-familial context for adolescents’ adjustment. This two-wave multi-informant study examined the prospective mechanisms linking parents’ work conditions (i.e., self-direction, work pressure, workplace discrimination) to adolescents’ adjustment (i.e., educational expectations, depressive symptoms, risky behavior) across the transition to high school drawing on work socialization and spillover models. We examined the indirect effects of parental work conditions on adolescent adjustment through parents’ psychological functioning (i.e., depressive symptoms, role overload) and aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship (i.e., parental solicitation, parent-adolescent conflict), as well as moderation by adolescent gender. Participants were 246 predominantly immigrant, Mexican-origin, two-parent families …

Strategies To Support Parent Engagement During Home Visits In Early Head Start And Head Start, Lisa Knoche, Christine Marvin, Susan M. Sheridan

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

This study explores strategies used by early childhood professionals (ECPs) involved in a school readiness intervention to support parent engagement in young children’s learning. Thirty-two ECPs were recorded during home visits with young children and their families who were enrolled in Early Head Start and Head Start programming. Frequency of strategy use is reported, and strategy use is significantly correlated with rates of parent-ECP interactions during visits but not to parent-child interaction rates nor with overall quality ratings of parent-child engagement. ECPs’ overall success in promoting parent engagement was positively and significantly correlated with ECPs’ efforts to elicit parent observations …

Parent Engagement During Home Visits In Early Head Start And Head Start: Useful Strategies For Practitioners, Lisa Knoche, Christine Marvin, Susan M. Sheridan

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

This study explores strategies used by early childhood professionals (ECPs) involved in a school readiness intervention to support parent engagement in young children’s learning. In this study, we used video recordings to understand the ECP-parent interactions during Early Head Start and Head Start home visits. We coded the videos for the number of parent engagement strategies that were used by ECPs as well as the quality of parent engagement during visits, including the amount of parent-child interaction that took place during the visits. Findings have implications for the implementation of the Head Start Parent, Family and Community Engagement (PFCE) Framework, …

Series Editors' Foreword: The Construction, Negotiation, And Representation Of Immigrant Student Identities In South African Schools (Vandeyar & Vandeyar)., Edmund T. Hamann, Rodney Hopson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

As much as there are reasons for optimism as one thinks about changes in South Africa, Africa, and the United States in relation to the transcendence of racial differentiation and hierarchy, this book is a reminder of how both harrowing and incomplete that journey is. This book, a crucial addition from the Global South to the scholarship on immigrant students' schooling, depicts how salient and fraught racial identity, both asserted and ascribed, continues to be for the negotiation of school in South Africa. Immigrant students are loathed and marginalized for their accents and 'foreign' ways, and yet they are also …

Mexican-American Adolescents’ Gender-Typed Characteristics: The Role Of Sibling And Friend Characteristics, Norma J. Perez-Brena, Lorey A. Wheeler, Kimberly A. Updegraff, David R. Shaefer

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

This study examined the role of sibling and friend characteristics in Mexican-American youth’s gender-typed characteristics (i.e., attitudes, interests, and leisure activities) in early versus middle adolescence using a sibling design. Mexican-American 7th graders (M = 12.51 years; SD = .58) and their older siblings (M = 15.48 years; SD = 1.57) from 246 families participated in home interviews and a series of seven nightly phone calls. Results revealed that younger/early adolescent siblings reported more traditional gender role attitudes than their older/middle adolescent siblings and older brothers were more traditional in their attitudes than older sisters. When comparing siblings’ …

Critical Pedagogy In Classroom Discourse, Loukia K. Sarroub, Sabrina Quadros

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The classroom is a unique discursive space for the enactment of critical pedagogy. In some ways, all classroom discourse is critical because it is inherently political, and at the heart of critical pedagogy is an implicit understanding that power is negotiated daily by teachers and students. Historically, critical pedagogy is rooted in schools of thought that have emphasized the individual and the self in relation and in contrast to society, sociocultural and ideological forces, and economic factors and social progress. In addressing conceptualizations in Orthodox Marxism (with Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim) in the mid-19th century and the …

Foreword To Revisiting Education In The New Latino Diaspora, Amanda Morales

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

I share this short autobiography because I think it ties together so much of this book. In Chapter 1, Hamann and Harklau (reprising their chapter for the 2010 Handbook on Latinos and Education) acknowledge that in emphasizing the “new” of the New Latino Diaspora (NLD) the first edition of Education in the New Latino Diaspora (Wortham, Murillo, & Hamann, 2002) made invisible Latinos like my dad and uncle who, per the construct of the NLD, settled in Kansas earlier than the NLD narrative describes. Yet as the comparison of my northwestern Kansas childhood and my sister’s illuminates, something did …

Leadership And Its Ripple Effect On Research, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Sheri Hurlbut

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this chapter we would like to address the impact visionary leadership can have on a field of research. Through forward-looking ideas and projects, an organizational leader’s influence on those who test, research, and inquire into issues that build and deepen the knowledge base in second language acquisition and foreign language education is illustrated through an innovative professional development program that was developed during Helene Zimmer-Loew’s tenure as executive director of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG). The ripple effect of progressive leadership that inspires others to contribute actively to the well-being of a profession, or an organization, …

Teac 921b: Seminar In Literacy Studies (Special Topics: Schooling And The Multilingual Mind)—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Theresa Catalano

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio will document the creation and implementation of a new doctoral seminar in my department. This introductory course to multilingualism and schooling (TEAC 921B) will cover topics related to teaching and learning in the multilingual classroom. The key goals for creating this portfolio are to aid me in creating this new doctoral seminar that reflects and builds on departmental goals for graduate students. In particular I would like to document and address the implementation of two new activities to my teaching ; a language study/journal, and the creation of a documentary film. I foresee using this course portfolio as …

Critical Cultural Awareness In The Foreign Language Classroom, Kristen Nugent, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Preparing learners to interact appropriately and effectively while participating in intercultural relationships is a key component of foreign language curricula. The notion of critical cultural awareness, which is embedded within the framework of intercultural communicative competence, encourages language educators to craft learning opportunities that guide learners in observing clear connections between classroom lessons and real-world issues while exercising critical thinking skills throughout the process. Although research by Byram (1997, 2012) has demonstrated the importance of critical cultural awareness, few studies have illustrated how critical cultural awareness can be developed in a classroom setting while working to achieve language proficiency. This …

Foreign Language Teaching And Learning, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Foreign language teaching and learning have changed from teacher-centered to learner/learning-centered environments. Relying on language theories, research findings, and experiences, educators developed teaching strategies and learning environments that engaged learners in interactive communicative language tasks. A shift in foreign language pedagogy from a specific foreign language method to the measurement of language performance/competency has resulted in a change in the role of the teacher from one of authority/expert to that of facilitator/guide and agent of change. Current developments point to public pedagogy, social media, and action research as additional ways to foster intercultural competence and language learning.

Foreign Language Teaching And Learning, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Foreign language teaching and learning have changed from teacher-centered to learner/learning-centered environments. Relying on language theories, research findings, and experiences, educators developed teaching strategies and learning environments that engaged learners in interactive communicative language tasks. A shift in foreign language pedagogy from a specific foreign language method to the measurement of language performance/competency has resulted in a change in the role of the teacher from one of authority/expert to that of facilitator/guide and agent of change. Current developments point to public pedagogy, social media, and action research as additional ways to foster intercultural competence and language learning.

Critical Discourse Analysis: Definition, Approaches, Relation To Pragmatics, Critique, And Trends, Linda R. Waugh, Theresa Catalano, Khaled Al Masaeed, Tom Hong Do, Paul G. Renigar

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This chapter introduces the transdisciplinary research movement of critical discourse analysis (CDA) beginning with its definition and recent examples of CDA work. In addition, approaches to CDA such as the dialectical relational (Fairclough), sociocognitive (van Dijk), discourse historical (Wodak), social actors (van Leeuwen), and the Foucauldian dispositive analysis (Jager and Maier) are outlined, as well as the complex relation of CDA to pragmatics. Next, the chapter provides a brief mention of the extensive critique of CDA, the creation of critical discourse studies (CDS), and new trends in CDA, including positive discourse analysis (PDA), CDA with multimodality, CDA and cognitive linguistics, …

Education Policy Implementation In The New Latino Diaspora, Jennifer Stacy, Edmund T. Hamann, Enrique G. Murillo Jr.

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Villages, towns, and cities throughout the United States, including the 41 states of the New Latino Diaspora (NLD), continue to host/receive heterogeneous populations of Latinos who transform the physical and cultural landscape in ways that require social institutions, like schools and universities, to respond. Increasingly, this transformation includes newcomer parents starting families. Thirty-three percent of the U.S. Hispanic population is age 18 or younger, while that age profile is true of slightly below 20% of non-Hispanic Whites (Pew Hispanic Center, 2012). While voter rolls and retirement community residents may remain much Whiter than the U.S. population as a whole for …

Nice White Men Or Social Justice Allies?: Using Critical Race Theory To Examine How White Male Faculty And Administrators Engage In Ally Work, Lori D. Patton, Stephanie Bondi

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Numerous scholars have offered definitions and perspectives for White people to be or become social justice allies. The purpose of this study was to examine the complicated realities that social justice allies in higher education face when working on campus. Using a critical interpretivist approach grounded in critical race theory, the authors interpret participants constructions of allies and ally work and draw larger implications for these constructions and their capacity to disrupt and uphold systems of oppression and injustice. In examining the experiences of White male faculty and administrators who shared how they constructed and made meaning of the complexities …

The Essence Of Participating In A Comprehensive Family Literacy Program, Joshua Robert Cramer

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This is a qualitative inquiry of the phenomenon of participating in a 4-component family literacy program comprised of adult education, child education, parenting classes, and Parent and Child Together Time® (PACT Time). PACT Time was the component of the program where the parent and child learned together. The case selected for this inquiry was the Jefferson County Public Schools Family Literacy Project in Louisville, Kentucky. Informants for this study included 7 immigrant parents, 4 teachers, and 2 principals. The parent participants spoke Spanish as their first language, and 100% were female. The number of informants interviewed for this study totaled …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Undocumented Latino Students To Enroll In And Persist At A Four-Year Public Hispanic-Serving Institution In Texas, Angela C. Stuart-Carruthers

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Undocumented students in the United States are trapped in a myriad of completing federal, state, and local laws that impact their lives daily. While approximately 60,000 undocumented students graduate from high school each year, the college going rate for this population is substantially lower than their documented peers. Since President Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order, undocumented students have gained national attention. Despite this new focus on undocumented students few studies have been conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the live experiences of these students.

Framed by Tinto’s (1993) Theory of Student Departure and Latino …

The Effect Of Morphological Strategies Training For English Language Learners, Qizhen Deng, Guy Trainin

Research and Evaluation in Education, Technology, Art, and Design

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of morphological strategies training for English language learners from an Intensive English Program with different English proficiency levels. A secondary goal was to investigate how the training influences their cognitive load during morphological analysis tasks. Findings from 22 participants revealed that morphological strategies training positively affects the morphological awareness of ELLs and reduces the cognitive load of ELLs for all types of morphological tasks regardless of their English proficiency level: sentence completion, analogy, break down words, and meaning guess.

[Note: Download button links to pdf version; PowerPoint slide version attached …

Boys, Books, And Boredom: A Case Of Three High School Boys And Their Encounters With Literacy, Loukia K. Sarroub, Todd Pernicek

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

We examine the literacy gender gap through the documented experiences of three representative high schools boys and their teacher—how they view themselves as students, their dispositions toward schooling and education, and their engagement with literacy— as a way to further understand how literacy teachers can better work with them. We offer a case study analysis of the boys’ struggles with academic reading in high school reading classes aimed at addressing the needs of young people who read far below grade level in school. We highlight the multifaceted, complex nature of “struggle” or “reluctance” toward academic reading and argue that no …

Laptops And Language Learning: A Mixed Methods Study Of Technology Integration And Student Engagement, Ginger R. Starks-Yoble

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Student engagement and motivation have been a common focus among educational researchers over the last forty years. Self-determination theory and the inclusive definition of self-regulated learning have identified that both cognitive and motivational engagement are paramount for successful language learning. Within this canon of research, few have looked at student engagement as a result of effective technology integration during the language learning process. This mixed methods study explored students’ perceptions of engagement while learning with technology integration in a first-year language class. Qualitative data was collected from a sub-sample of ten students, in the form of semi-structured interviews, journal reflections, …