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Thesis advisor: Jon Wargo / This research study investigates how young Brazilian immigrant students (ages 5-9) experience their education in a Two-Way Immersion (TWI) program (Portuguese-English) at one elementary school in the U.S. Northeast. TWI is a bilingual education model that has become popular in recent years but has also come under scrutiny with growing concerns for equity. This multi-year ethnographic study examined students’ roles as thinkers and knowers who contribute to the social world of schooling in a bilingual program that was originally envisioned to serve their needs. Data sources are: participant observations in classrooms and schoolwide and program-specific meetings; interviews with school staff members, children, and caregivers; and a collection of in-class assignments.Findings from this study point to the paradoxical relationship that the focal school had with young immigrant children. First, children of Brazilian descent contributed to the successful implementation and survival of the new bilingual strand in their school through daily language practices and by leveraging their lived experiences and memories during instruction. Second, Brazilian immigrant students carved out spaces in their TWI classrooms to deploy and co-construct subalternized knowledges based on their transborder experiences. At the same time, they faced conflicting orientations concerning their role and participation in the TWI program as well as dynamics of in/visibility. Third, following these students at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, during fully remote learning, revealed how the children negotiated compounded constraints. I show how young students humanized their virtual TWI classrooms, made space for playfulness, and centered their care-full lives in their formal schooling during remote learning. Investigating the educational realities of Brazilians, a rapidly growing but understudied segment of the U.S. Latinx population, not only sheds light on unique facets of their experience, but also generates insights as to how to (re)think educational models, programs, and responses to minoritized populations in the U.S. Precisely, together, the findings advocate for a holistic focus on childhoods, as opposed to the current emphasis on language-as-subject, in TWI education. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Charles P. Proctor / This dissertation develops, theorizes, and investigates the notion of metalinguistic engagement (ME). Within the context of reading research for upper elementary bi/multilingual students, which is relatively sparse and particularly lacking in qualitative detail, there are some emerging and promising findings related to the impacts of ME on students’ overall literacy development (Proctor et al,. 2012; Silverman et al., 2014). These outcomes specifically suggest that the development of component language (semantic, morphology, syntax) knowledge, skills, and strategies through ME provides substantial support to bi/multilingual students (Proctor et al., 2015; Silverman et al., 2015). CLAVES, a quasi-experimental language-based reading intervention and curriculum project (Proctor et al., 2020), highlighted the instructional malleability of ME, demonstrating positive effects for both language proficiency and reading comprehension among the participating fourth and fifth grade Spanish/English and Portuguese/English bi/multilingual students. However, the nature of the students’ ME and the extent to which their naturally dynamic linguistic repertoires emerged and were capitalized on during learning is currently unknown. In order to address gaps in research, this dissertation theorizes and investigates ME and contributes a qualitative analysis to the larger quasi-experimental intervention from Proctor et al (2020). This dissertation presents three case studies of teachers and their fourth-grade, Spanish/English bi/multilingual student working groups. A theoretical framework of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) (Greeno & Engström, 2014; Roth & Lee, 2007) informed by heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981) was employed to attend to the tensions between the centripetal forces of classrooms’ goal-oriented activity and the centrifugal aspects of multiple voices and repertoires during ME (Wertsch, 2009). Findings highlight the various actions and resources through which students and teachers participate in ME. The ‘multivoicedness’ of students’ practices were shown to mediate ME goals, while also moving alongside and against the pressures from both the curriculum structure and teachers’ facilitation. Furthermore, dialectics between the curriculum and teachers within ME activities emphasize overarching tensions related to the goals of ME and the students’ opportunities and outcomes within ME. Findings accentuate the flexibility and constraints on bi/multilingual students’ practice and participation during ME and have implications for curriculum, instruction, and teacher preparation. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Dominant conceptualizations for family-school relations across U.S. educational research, policy, and practice continue to privilege the behaviors, experiences, and practices of white, upper- and middle-class families, while failing to address the race and class power-relations that permeate educational institutions and their neighborhoods. In the field of bilingual education, there is an emergent body of research that examines issues of language, race, and class within the experiences of families in two-way dual language bilingual education, where children from multiple racial, cultural, and economic groups are educated together with the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy. However, this scholarship has not related the experiences and relations in bilingual programs to the broader issue regarding the dominant and deficit discourse of family-school relations in the U.S. In response, this dissertation situates families’ experiences in a two-way dual language bilingual program within the broader ideological, political, and historical dimensions of U.S. family-school relations. A theoretical orientation informed by Critical Race Theory, Critical Poststructuralist Sociolinguistics, and Feminist Poststructuralist frameworks was used to highlight how racialized positionalities of families in schools reverberate beyond individuals’ identity construction, connecting to discourses about families at other societal scales. This study utilized participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifact generation. Data was analyzed using discursive and textual analytical approaches. Findings include (a) an investigation of how the legal and institutional contexts related to family-bilingual school relations contribute to the racialization of people and their languaging; (b) an analysis of how raciolinguistic ideologies are deployed to naturalize the designation of linguistic and ethnoracial labels upon families; and (c) a generation of portraits highlighting how families ruptured deficit positionings by reporting on systems of oppression, their dynamic language practices, and their expansive relations across groups of people, places, and temporal scales. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that despite individual efforts of stakeholders in bilingual programs to foster the wellbeing and development of families, the racist and classist foundations of schooling will ensure the reification of oppressive educational experiences for multiply minoritized families. At the same time, these families will continue to find ways to survive, resist their subjugation, and reimagine more liberatory worlds. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

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The relevance of the topic of the master's thesis is that bilingual education helps students to learn better not only a foreign language, but also the countries in which it is spoken, and also contributes to the development of cognitive and communicative skills of students and helps them better adapt to a multicultural society. The purpose of the work is to develop and test an experimentally proven methodological model for creating a bilingual environment that ensures the formation of communicative and intercultural abilities of primary school students. The master's thesis contains two chapters. The first chapter reveals the essence, principles and expediency of using the considered learning model, analyzes the domestic and foreign experience of using this model, identifies a number of problems that arise when implementing the method. The second chapter describes the psychological and pedagogical features of the process of teaching a foreign language to primary school children, presents the results of the methodological development of a set of tasks for the study of general education subjects using bilingual German language teaching. The list of sources used includes 166 titles of works by domestic and foreign authors, as well as dictionary and reference publications. The application contains a set of tasks developed by the author of the study for the implementation of a bilingual learning model. The materials of the dissertation research can be used in the development of teaching aids, author's programs, additional education programs, elective courses in foreign languages. / Актуальность темы магистерской диссертации состоит в том, что билингвальное обучение помогает учащимся лучше узнать не только иностранный язык, но и страны, в которых на нем говорят, а также способствует развитию когнитивных и коммуникативных навыков учащихся и помогает им лучше адаптироваться в мультикультурном обществе. Цель работы – разработка и апробация экспериментально - проверенной методической модели создания билингвальной среды, обеспечивающей формирование коммуникативных и межкультурных способностей учащихся начальной школы. Магистерская диссертация содержит две главы. В первой главе раскрывается сущность, принципы и целесообразность применения рассматриваемой модели обучения, анализируется отечественный и зарубежный опыт использования данной модели, выявляется ряд проблем, возникающих при реализации метода. Во второй главе описываются психолого-педагогические особенности процесса обучения иностранному языку детей начальной школы, представляются результаты методической разработки комплекса заданий по изучению общеобразовательных предметов с использованием билингвального обучения немецкому языку. Список использованных источников включает 166 наименования работ отечественных и зарубежных авторов, а также словарно-справочные издания. Приложение содержит разработанный автором исследования комплекс заданий для реализации модели билингвального обучения. Материалы диссертационного исследования могут быть использованы при разработке учебно-методических пособий, авторских программ, программ дополнительного образования, элективных курсов по иностранным языкам.

The study of self-efficacy in pre-service bilingual education teachers is not a thoroughly researched topic. This dissertation provides qualitative research about the inception of Spanish language self-efficacy of pre-service bilingual education teachers from a large university in Texas. By juxtaposing the experiences of two students with high levels of Spanish self-efficacy with two students who have low levels of Spanish self-efficacy, data gives insight to what influenced varying perceptions of self-efficacy amongst students who are in their last semester of coursework prior to student teaching. An extensive literature review provided the foundation for the conceptual framework. The framework includes individual backgrounds, societal influences, personal interactions, and modeling by others to note the evolution of each individuals' perception of self-efficacy in the Spanish language. Explicit instances of what experiences have had an impact on participants' Spanish language self-efficacy are highlighted. The resulting impacts to bilingual education and self-efficacy are discussed. Finally, the conclusion focuses on how this research can assist in promoting language equity for bilingual and multilingual students at varying academic levels.

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Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas K. Benson / The primary aim of this thesis is to examine the appropriate procedures needed to implement a Two Way Bilingual Immersion (TWBI) Program designed for an elementary school from grades K-4 and to make recommendations related to that process. Section I begins with an introduction to bilingual education and the different types of BE programs in the United States. It also examines the growth of these programs throughout the United States in recent years. Section II presents a general introduction to the characteristics and advantages of a TWBI program over other types of BE. The advantages and strategies presented here are intended to help teachers better understand the importance of using daily repetition of routine phrases, songs, and poems in their instruction, and the benefits to students in their overall academic progress as well. It also discusses the importance of language variation. Section III explores the implementation of a TWBI program in public schools. It highlights the importance of the selection of students, parental and community involvement, staff development and curriculum development. All of these factors are essential to having an effective program. Section IV presents a description of a specific TWBI program implemented in an elementary school in southwest Kansas. This section highlights many of the same components mentioned in Sections I-III as they apply to those being implemented in this specific school. This process can serve as a model for other schools interested in the implementation of a TWBI Program. Section V presents an explanation of second language acquisition and some of the advantages of learning a second language in a communicative classroom. Section VI presents my evaluation of five math and five reading activities used in a kindergarten class based on second-language acquisition theory. I also make some recommendations for pre and post activities, which can be used to activate the students’ schemata and check for comprehension.