Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Developing A Collaborative Qualitative Research Project Across Borders: Issues And Dilemmas, Peter Sayer, Troy Crawford

The Qualitative Report

International collaborative research often refers to collaboration among the researchers and the participants. Few studies investigate the collaborative process among the researchers themselves. Assumptions about the qualitative research process, institutional requirements, and even epistemological orientations, are pervasive. Our experience conducting an empirical research study as a collaborative effort amongst a research team in Mexico and the United States challenged and transformed our assumptions about collaborative qualitative research in terms of organizational compatibility: (a) understanding research perspective and themes, (b) interpreting rules and regulations (c) physical travel between countries, and (d) how research products are counted. We address each assumption through …

Predictors Of Behavior Problems In The Context Of Peer Play Interactions: A Sample Of Low-Income Latino Preschoolers, Olivia Hernandez Gonzalez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Latinos are the fastest-growing minority group in the United States and have higher dropout rates compared to other groups. Moreover, problem behaviors are common in preschool classrooms, and the incidence of these problems is higher for children from low-income families. The purpose of this study was to understand Latino children's problem behaviors in the context of peer play interactions and identify those variables that influence such behavior. 265 five and six-year-old Spanish-speaking children (53.6% female) attending Head Start or kindergarten participated in the study. Additionally, 198 mothers and 78 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten lead teachers participated in the study. Child level …

“They Ate Macaroni-And-Cheese Or Tv Dinners; My Mother Made Curry Instead ”: A Narrative Inquiry Of South Asian American Writers’ Identity Negotiation, Su Yin Khor

Theses and Dissertations

As the demographic and linguistic landscape in the United States is shifting—the Asian population has increased significantly in the last decade, particularly the South Asian population—these changes are reflected in the classrooms all over the country. As such, it becomes imperative to investigate who these multilinguals are, and as several scholars have pointed out, the Asian population has not been studied to the same extent as other minorities. In addition, the notion of a homogenous Asian identity persists and hides the internal differences that exist within the Asian population.

Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to challenge the notion …

Special Issue Editor's Introduction: 50 Years Of Model Minority Stereotype Research, Nicholas Daniel Hartlep

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This special issue, intentionally focused on Southeast Asian Americans and the model minority myth, is important because Southeast Asian Americans have been “politically invisible” and because a disproportionate number have found it difficult to succeed academically. Asian Americans are not passive people. The model minority stereotype didn’t develop only because journalists made them out to be models or exemplars. This special issue shares 4 articles.

The Model Minority Stereotype As A Prescribed Guideline Of Empire: Situating The Model Minority Research In The Postcolonial Context, Eun Hee Kim, Kay Ann Taylor

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

It has been 50 years since the term, model minority, first appeared in the United States to describe Asian Americans as an ethnic group that overcame the image of the “yellow peril” and successfully climbed the social ladder. Scholars have tried to debunk the myth and reveal racism behind the notion. However, the “over-education” view has flourished in Asian American Studies as the most popular research direction, serving the socioeconomic self-interest of professors with highly educated Asian Americans as research subjects (Sakamoto, Takei, & Woo, 2012). To refute the “over-education” view and meet the contextual need to generate a new …

Teaching For Social Justice: (Post-) Model Minority Moments, Candace J. Chow

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Much of the literature on model minority discourse focuses on impacts of this stereotype on students. Though the Asian American teacher population is small, it is useful to consider how this stereotype also affects the work of Asian American teachers, their identities, and their pedagogy. This article examines how two Southeast Asian American teachers envision teaching for social justice. Although it appears that these two teachers are products of the model minority stereotype because they have succeeded educationally, a closer examination of their educational pathways reveals that many obstacles, including poverty and a lack of English fluency, could have easily …

Academic Needs And Family Factors In The Education Of Southeast Asian American Students: Dismantling The Model Minority Myth, David M. Lee, Luke Duesbery, Peggy P. Han, Thupten Tashi, Chia S. Her, Valerie Ooka Pang

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

The model minority myth is a powerful force in schools. Many teachers believe that Asian American students do not need academic interventions. The purpose of this study was to examine the student achievement of almost a million seventh-grade students from California. The research compared the performance of Southeast Asian Americans, Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese students, on reading and math on the CAT/6 standardized assessment with African American and White American students. Cambodian American and Laotian American students performed significantly lower than their White American peers and compared similarly to their African American peers. Vietnamese American students also scored lower than …

Accentuate The Positive; Eliminate The Negative: Hegemonic Interest Convergence, Racialization Of Latino Poverty, And The 1968 Bilingual Education Act, Kenzo K. Sung

College of Education Departmental Research

Derrick Bell's interest convergence thesis is a seminal framework to analyze social change within critical race theory. While interest convergence's influence has grown, two foundational questions have been raised: do interest groups act rationally; does interest convergence also offer a change prescription or only an explanation of prior events. By revisiting Bell's early influences, via the concept of hegemony, the article intervenes in these two formative debates by offering a reimagined analytic framing that I term “hegemonic interest convergence.” The article then applies this concept to analyze how broader political economic shifts shaped the struggles within which the 1968 Bilingual …

“The Soccer Field, It Has Dirt”: A Critical Analysis Of Teacher Learners In Contact With Emergent Multilingual Students, Theresa Catalano, Jenelle Reeves, Stephanie Wessels

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

In today’s globalized world, superdiversity and global migration have led to an increased focus on emergent multilingual students and how schools can best serve them. The authors explore how teacher learners in an undergraduate course on emergent multilinguals in a mid-sized university in the Midwest critically reflect on their learning in a practicum experience. Utilizing tools and perspectives from critical discourse studies (CDS), the researchers/teacher educators examine ideologies that surface in teacher learner reflections on their practicum experiences to find out how they renegotiate (or withhold) their beliefs while connecting to critical readings, coursework, and their experiences working with emergent …

Developing Teacher Competencies For Problem-Based Learning Pedagogy And For Supporting Learning In Language-Minority Students, Peter Rillero, Mari Koerner, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, Joi Merritt, Wendy J. Farr

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Teachers need to be able to design and implement problem-based learning (PBL) experiences to help students master the content and the processes in new mathematics and science education standards. Due to the changed population of learners within schools, it is also critically important that teachers in the elementary grades have the abilities to work effectively with English language learners (ELL). This article discusses the implementation of a major initiative by our teachers college to achieve both of these goals through Problem-Based Enhanced Language Learning (PBELL), which combines PBL, enhanced opportunities for language, and ELL methods. The implementation began with a …

Educational Careers Of Hmong American Students, Pao Lor, Ray Hutchison

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Hmong American college students are an underrepresented and understudied college student population. The Hmong are often described as a preliterate, semi-nomadic, and agrarian ethnic hill tribe from Southeast Asia that have had little contact with formal education before coming to the United States some four decades ago. In this descriptive and exploratory study, we analyze the demographic characteristics and educational achievement of one hundred ninetyfour (n=194) Hmong students who were admitted to and attended a four-year state university in the Midwest from 2002–2010. We summarize their demographic data and academic achievement, and we compare their academic achievement to that of …

Book Review: Troubling Borders: An Anthology Of Art And Literature By Southeast Asian Women In The Diaspora By Pelaud, I. T., Duong, L., Lam, M. B., & Nguyen, K. L. (Eds.), Kim Dieu

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Book review of Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora by Pelaud, I. T., Duong, L., Lam, M. B., & Nguyen, K. L. (Eds.)

A Correlational Study Of Teacher Efficacy And Culturally Responsive Teaching Techniques In A Southeastern Urban School District, Roberta F. Callaway

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

This study investigated the level of personal and general teacher efficacy of teachers from three high schools within a southeastern urban school district. Additional research questions focused on correlational relationships between teacher efficacy and culturally responsive teaching, instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management as measured by the Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES), Culturally Responsive Teaching Techniques (CRTT) Scale, and Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES). The CRTT Scale and TSES were combined to create a 29-item instrument to examine culturally responsive teaching, instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management. Significant relationships were found between teacher efficacy and culturally responsive teaching, …

Seeing And Being Seen: A Multimodal Inquiry Of Multilingual High School Newcomers And Their Contributions To Educational Communities, Ivana Espinet

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation research followed the experiences of seven high school newcomers who chose to participate in an internship program, assisting elementary school students, some of whom were also emergent bilinguals. This study used ethnographic and visual methodologies to explore young people’s evolving understanding of teaching, learning, and languaging as members of a community of practice within the internship.

The internship provided a space for the young people to make sense of schooling in their new country. The narratives that the interns shared highlight how the set of linguistic and cultural-historical repertoires of practice that they entered with shaped how they …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

Letter To The President: Longitudinal Critical Discourse Analysis Of Academic And Hip Hop Genres In A Rap Narrative Program, Debangshu Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The objective of this study was to examine an in-school rap narrative workshop through critical discourse theory (Bamberg, 2012; Daiute, 2014). Twelve youth from a public school serving youth in urban Houston, TX were recruited from an in-school and after-school Hip hop/Rap narrative program to participate in a two-year cohort research study. The primary research question guiding the study was “How do young people participating in a school-based Hip hop/Rap program use a wide range of narrative genres for literacy and psycho-social development over two years in the program?”

The data-intensive study involved assessments of literacy and psycho-social development via …

"Resisting From Within": (Re)Imagining A Critical Translingual English Classroom, Kate Anna Seltzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnographic case study of an urban, linguistically diverse English classroom explores what happened when space was made for students both to voice their experiences living amidst ideologies that marginalize their language practices and identities and to resist such ideologies through writing that pushed monoglossic boundaries. Intensive one-on-one work with a high school English teacher led to the creation of a year-long curriculum that emphasized metalinguistic inquiry and discussion, linked language, power, and identity, and modeled the ways that writers and other artists take linguistic risks in order to critique monoglossic language ideologies.

Over the course of the year, students …

Escribiendo Para Desahogarme: Release And Resistance In A Middle School Bilingual Writing Workshop, Carla Espana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a teacher’s language ideologies, their impact on curriculum modifications and bilingual Latinx middle schoolers’ storytelling, to understand how a bilingual pedagogy builds on their cultural and linguistic resources. This qualitative study was conducted in a sixth grade writing workshop class in New York City as the focus teacher taught the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Personal Narrative Unit of Study. The first two findings center on the factors that influence a teacher’s stance on language practices and bilingual pedagogy, and how these contributed to curriculum modifications that included using students’ full linguistic and cultural repertoires, integrating …

Translanguaging Practices For Educational Equity: Moments In A Bilingual Middle School Classroom, Luz Y. Herrera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs in New York City largely follow a 50-50 model: half of the instruction is in English while the other half is in another target language. In NYC, as well as the rest of the country, these programs are typically English-Spanish due to the large Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. Bilingual programs also tend to strictly separate languages and often insist that teachers and students only use the designated language according to the school or district’s particular language allocation policy.

This qualitative case study challenges the strict separatist language model of some dual language bilingual …

Language Ideologies And The Schooling Of Caribbean Creole English-Speaking Youth In New York City, Dale M. Britton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to illuminate the ways in which Anglocentric ideologies operate to marginalize and exclude the linguistic and cultural resources of Caribbean Creole English (CCE)-speaking in New York City’s education system. Data was gathered from youths and teachers, and then analyzed to identify the language practices and ideologies relating to both Standard English (SE)and Creole varieties and how they shape teaching and learning for these two groups.

Several broad themes were identified. First, CCE-speaking youths are homogenized as simply black students and as a result, their specific cultural and linguistic resources are rendered invisible and are not included in …

Investigating Linguistic, Literary, And Social Affordances Of L2 Collaborative Reading, Joshua Thoms, Frederick J. Poole

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This exploratory study analyzes learner–learner interactions within a virtual environment when collaboratively reading Spanish poetry in a Hispanic literature course at the college level via an ecological theoretical perspective (van Lier, 2004). The goals of the study are (a) to present empirical data that illustrate the theoretical construct of affordance in a virtual, collaborative reading environment, and (b) to investigate the pedagogical ramifications of using a digital annotation tool to involve learners in collaborative reading. Three distinct types of affordances emerged in the data: linguistic, literary, and social affordances. Our findings indicate that the number of literary and social affordances …

Gifted Culturally Linguistically Diverse Learners: A School-Based Exploration, Robin M. Greene

Teaching and Learning Sciences: Doctoral Research Projects

The purpose of this case study was to explore educators’ perceptions of characteristics, needs, and practices relating to gifted culturally linguistically diverse learners. The research questions guiding the study included the following: What are educators’ perceptions of the characteristics, needs, and practices related to gifted culturally linguistically diverse learners? How do educators describe gifted culturally linguistically diverse learners? How do educators describe their understanding of culturally responsive teaching as it relates to diverse gifted learners? What are school-based practices for gifted culturally linguistically diverse learners that support or hinder learning?

This study focused on an elementary school within Colorado. Seventeen …

Professional Friction: Racialized Discourse And The Practice Of Teaching Art, Jessica Kirker

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Language is crucial in situating our selves and others. Discursive patterns create alliances or factions, establish hierarchies, and subjugate individuals or groups. In this autoethnographic study, I consider how I, as a White woman teaching art, participate in, maneuver, and manipulate spoken and unspoken racialized discourses within the context of a high school with a diverse population of students. Through the data collection process of journaling over one school year, I recorded reflections on conversations, speeches, and written communication with, between, and regarding teachers, students, parents, and school administrators.

I employed discourse analysis on these texts and draw upon Critical …

Teacher Evaluation In An Urban Setting: A View From The Trenches, Fabiola Fadda-Ginski

Dissertations

This study utilizes a mixed-methods methodology to examine how a teacher evaluation system is influencing the instructional practices of bilingual teachers in a large urban district. An on-line survey was administered to examine the bilingual teachers’ perceptions of the evaluation system. A focus group of bilingual teachers was later conducted to further investigate the data gathered through the survey. The combined results of this study’s findings show that the bilingual teachers believe that the evaluation system is making a positive difference in improving their instructional practices, particularly in the areas of Planning and Preparation and Questioning. The study also …

Ise Annual Report 2016-2017, Intercultural Student Engagement Office, Barbara Baker

Intercultural Student Engagement (ISE) Annual Reports

The ISE Annual Report 2016-2017 is a year in review containing a message from the director, staff updates, community programs, statistics and general report of the work of this office. Our Mission: The office of Intercultural Student Engagement (ISE) promotes cultural awareness, dialogue, and interaction while serving as a hands-on resource for specific RISD communities. Primary target communities include: students of color, international students, students identifying within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning (LGBTQ) spectrum, religious and/or spiritual students; and those dedicated to inclusive community.

This office provides leadership in the areas of student success, retention programs, campus education and …

Haitian Linguistic And Cultural Practices: Critical Meaning-Making Spaces For Haitian Learners, Marie L. Cerat

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is concerned with the effects of the exclusion of Haitian linguistic and cultural practices in the education of Haitian learners. Through qualitative data collection and analysis, a set of texts and narratives in the Haitian Creole language, Rara and Vèvè practices were inventoried, reviewed and described. Moreover, a series of focus groups and ethnographic interviews were conducted with Haitian adolescents and Haitian parents with school age children living in New York. These interviews revealed that Haitians deeply value their cultural knowledge, and view them as resources for knowledge preservation and knowledge production. Textual analysis also shows that Haitians …

Current Perspectives On The Role Of Gender In Second Language Acquisition (Sla) Research, Karen Feery

The ITB Journal

This paper outlines current perspectives on the role of gender in second language acquisition (SLA) research. Neither a singular field of research relating specifically to gender and SLA nor a theory of gender and SLA exist as yet. However, the distinct and well-established fields of language and gender studies and the field of SLA strongly underpin this topic area and a gradual emergence of research relating specifically to the role of gender in SLA is evident.

The World Watches: How Media Coverage Of American Police Violence Influences The Perspectives Of South Louisiana's Community Members, Jahi J. Mackey

Capstone Collection

Police violence towards African Americans in the United States have gained greater international attention in this decade due to social media and increased media coverage. Alton Sterling’s death in Baton Rouge in the summer of 2016 resulted in local pushes for criminal and racial justice reform. However, international community members were largely absent from both community dialogue and action. Keeping this in mind, my research question is as follows: To what extent does media coverage of American police violence impact the perspectives of south Louisiana’s international community members with regards to African Americans and American society. Through qualitative research methodology, …

Enhancing Global Education In China - A Global Citizen Language Program, Wen Amy Luo

Capstone Collection

The acceleration of globalization calls for education with an aim of creating global citizens who are able to learn, live and function in an increasingly interconnected world. Educators should remember that they are creating future leaders who need to understand how to perform and interact in a global arena. For global citizens to effectively function in such an environment, they are required to have competencies such as: intercultural understanding, curiosity for discovery, cultural self-awareness, sociolinguistic awareness, and ability to listen, observe, interpret and analyze etc.

Chinese students who live in second and third-tier cities receive significantly less global education due …

Towards Soulful And Sustainable Service: The Role Of Ethics In Global Service-Learning Programs Within Faith-Based Tertiary Institutions, Corrie Johnson

Capstone Collection

This research evaluates the practices of specified faith-based institutions within the field of undergraduate global service learning through the lens of each of the major themes in the Fair Trade Learning framework. These themes include equal partnership, mutual learning, cooperative and positive social change, economic equity, transparency, and sustainability. Initial survey outcomes present an overall picture of where these particular universities are at in regards to balancing student and community outcomes. Interview outcomes provide a more in-depth perspective of how mutual benefit for student participants and host communities is being considered within the global service-learning programs these programs facilitate. Some …