abstract: This research investigates the experiences of Chinese heritage language learners (CHLLs) in a federally funded program of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in the United States. Most pertinent studies on Chinese heritage language education focus on stakeholders such as teachers and parents. Instead, this study explores the agency of heritage language learners in their efforts toward heritage language maintenance. Adopting a three-pronged conceptual framework of language planning and policy as a sociocultural process, language ideology, and language identity, this study applies an ethnographically-informed qualitative approach to understanding how CHLLs develop and exercise implicit language policies—taken-for-granted norms about language that guide their language choices and practices—their language ideologies that undergird these policies and the relationship of these informal policies to these learners’ language identities. This study suggests CHLLs participate in Chinese learning activities to reconnect to their family and culture. Their language maintenance efforts, however, do not necessarily change their language use dramatically. In CHLLs’ everyday social interactions, their language choices depend on the interlocutors, locations and topics of the conversation and are impacted by the dominant language ideologies toward Chinese and English. CHLLs’ Chinese language maintenance practices strengthen learners’ relationship with both the language and culture. But Chinese language can be absent from learners’ pursuit of their cultural heritage. Furthermore, the multilayered identities of CHLLs are constructed and negotiated in the heteroglossic and multicultural environments. This is an endeavor in connecting the initiatives of increasing foreign language capacity at the national level with the efforts of maintaining heritage language at the individual level. This study can contribute to a holistic picture for teachers and parents to understand CHLLs’ language learning experience. It also offers strategies that can benefit heritage language education. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2016

abstract: ABSTRACT This study of the policies of the U.S. public school system focuses on state and federal funding to examine how budget cuts, the teacher shortage crisis, and large classroom sizes are interrelated. A qualitative method of approaching these issues and a meta-analysis of the findings, combined with my personal experience as a high school English teacher in the public school system points to a ripple effect where one problem is the result of the one before it. Solutions suggested in this study are made with the intention to support all U.S. public school students with an emphasis on students with special needs, English language learners, and students from low-income families. My findings show that marginalized students in U.S. public schools are experiencing a form of education injustice. This study highlights the burden placed upon the states to fund education and asserts that qualified professionals are increasingly difficult to recruit while teacher attrition rates continue to grow. The changing teacher-to-student ratio means students enjoy one-on-on time with teachers less often due to overcrowded classrooms. The interrelationship of these issues requires a multifaceted approach to solving them, beginning with a demand for more federal funding which will allow previously cut programs to be reinstated, incentives to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers which will reduce classroom sizes, and implementation of new programs targeted to ensure the success of students with special needs, English language learners, and students from low-income families. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2018

<p> In international schools, a range (75&ndash;80%) of students is non-native English speakers. However, many of these schools do not offer mother tongue (MT) programs to these students. These globally mobile students&rsquo; MT proficiency levels depend on whether or not their school offers an MT program. As a result, MT teachers must teach students who possess a wide range of proficiency levels in their MT. This study applied the lens of sociocultural theory to provide more complete description of the Japanese MT program in an international school including the school&rsquo;s organization, language policy, and MT curriculum development. Rather than just describe instructional MT practices, this single case study examined the educational context of the school and the Japanese MT program by conducting semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and documents in this international school offering an International Baccalaureate Diplomat Program (IBDP). The findings of this study were (a) a lack of written language policy, (b) a lack of common curriculum, (c) a lack of curriculum cohesion, (d) the Japanese MT language program offering combination of the day- school curriculum in grades 7&ndash;10 and the after-school curriculum in grades K-6, and (e) differentiated instruction implemented by the three Japanese teachers to the students who have different MT proficiency levels. Although international schools have a commitment to rich language development, they still need to reflect on how to improve the language curriculum including strengthening the organization structure of MT instruction and enhancing the curriculum cohesion of MT instruction across grade levels.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation emerged at the intersection of collaboration, immigration issues, and language practices. Third-grade students started the school year with much difficulty to engage in academic content and language learning, mainly due to a lack of self-regulation which greatly affected the classroom dynamics. Drawing from Freire (1970, 1993), I believe in the importance of the process of conscientization, which is the critical understanding of the context around us and growing in awareness through reflection and transformative action, and the notion of critical literacy as the "reading of the word and the world" (Freire &amp; Macedo, 1987). The purpose of the study was to set conditions for students to engage in language learning in a collaborative participatory democracy classroom environment. The following general question guided but did not limit my study: How can I, as a teacher-researcher, and my third-grade students work so students become biliterate through collaboration and translanguaging practices? Participatory Action Research (PAR)/Research As Praxis (RAP) philosophy was both the methodology of the study and a fundamental part of my pedagogy. Two transformations: responsibility `<i>conciencia </i>' (consciousness) and language events progressed in three stages: the beginning-of-the-year stage; the settling-in-and-soaking-in stage; and the common-motto-and-`<i>mismo-barco</i>' (in the same boat) stage. As a result, both students and I were transformed. Students advanced in behavioral and emotional self-awareness, guiding dialogue, making group decisions, and solving conflicts. In their process of becoming biliterate, students stopped making translations and overcame the fear of speaking in English. They started using English and translanguaging practices as an authentic type of communication using their whole linguistic repertoire. I stood up for a symmetrical students-teacher relationship by democratically promoting participation without guiding and consciously balancing power relations permitting a more student-led classroom assembly time and conflicts solved by students. Some lessons I learned were: overcoming an initial na&iuml;ve thinking about participation, transforming to create the conditions for student participation in conflict resolution and decision-making, how I released myself from being the power figure and educated to make a good use of the power to participate democratically in conflict resolution and decision-making, the process of civic education, and biliteracy and translanguaging.</p><p>

<p> Seventeen years after the passage of Arizona&rsquo;s English-only education mandate, a growing number of schools in the state have implemented dual-language programs. Although Arizona&rsquo;s English Learners lack access to public education in their heritage languages, the emergence of these programs signals hope for an expansion of these students&rsquo; options. This mixed-method study assessed the perceptions of &ldquo;dual-immersion&rdquo; teachers&mdash;who are members of a professional development consortium in Maricopa County, Arizona&mdash;towards their program and its overall role in serving all students in their classrooms. Using Bronfenbrenner&rsquo;s Ecological systems model as an interpretive framework, this study examined interview and survey data in order to develop an understanding of how the systems&rsquo; environment affects teacher&rsquo; beliefs and perceptions. Key findings included dual-immersion teachers&rsquo; lack of agency in affecting language policy, the need for instructional materials, the positive impact of team learning facilitated by leaders, an economic or practical rationale for programs&rsquo; existence, and teachers&rsquo; beliefs in the abilities of English Learners to succeed in the dual-immersion classroom. Understanding how dual-immersion teachers position themselves towards their programs and students offers educational leaders insight into promoting an expansion of program options to underserved students in the state. Future research directed at teachers in Mandarin and French schools in the state could provide new information or reinforce existing themes uncovered during the research.</p><p>

This is a report of an ethnographic study of a graduate-level Methods course for ESL/Bilingual teachers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The course is organized around task-based, small group, collaborative learning. One of the intriguing aspects of the course is the opportunities it provides for students to learn about Whole Language teaching and collaborative learning both by studying about these topics as part of the course content and by experiencing them as students within the class. This study researched the enactment of collaborative learning by investigating the discourse of one of the course's small groups. My research questions revolved issues of voice--the conditions in which students are both able to speak and to be heard--in the small group. The structure and distribution of voice among group members was a primary research focus. A theoretical framework was developed which allows the concept of voice to be operationalized for purposes of discourse analysis. Voice emerges out of the social interactions of participants engaged in an institutionally situated activity and cannot be reduced solely to the characteristics or performance of an individual (cf. McDermott, 1986). The structure of the group's collaborative dialogue, a set of communal norms operating within the group, and the social context created within the course are investigated through a micro-analysis of the group discourse. The findings reveal a set of norms operating within the small group: active participation, students viewing one another as "resources," and the privileging of members' personal knowledge. These norms, among others, created the social conditions necessary for a truly collaborative dialogue. However, these norms also proved problematic as they fostered a set of communal tensions related to the educational ramifications of muting the instructor's voice and the ways that the discourse structure positioned a Japanese member of the group. Her minimal participation in the group's early meetings, the negotiations which took place to ensure that she would have a voice, and her own revealing views of collaborative dialogue provide rich insights into the complex nature of multicultural, collaborative learning.

Multicultural education focuses on the educational experience of diverse children who attend the nation's public schools. Statistics show that the majority of teachers in American schools are White, middle class women. Previous research has raised the question of whether this population of teachers can be trained to effectively teach students of color, or can utilize strategies that engage non-traditional learners, children of the poor, special needs and linguistic minority students. The purpose of this qualitative study of ten White, middle-class public school teachers was to discover how members of the dominant culture understand the concept of multicultural education, where they learned this interpretation of the concept and how they apply their insights to their pedagogy. The study looked for significant connections between teachers' personal and professional lives, and their understanding of diverse populations. By viewing teachers as people involved in a lifelong process of becoming multicultural, this research looks for insight from classroom teachers themselves. Recent studies demonstrate positive connections when participants are not only involved in the research question, but locate the source of information and interpretation among the teachers themselves. The methodology was phenomenological interviewing: three ninety-minute interviews with each participant. The first interview asked participants to reconstruct their personal background, issues related to diversity as well as events affecting their decision to become a teacher. The second interview focused on the details of curriculum, daily schedule, goals and pedagogy. The third interview included reflections on individual understanding of multicultural education, connecting methodological decisions with diversity in their classrooms. The major finding is that teachers have individual socially-constructed ideas about what multicultural education is, based on both professional and personal exposure to people and perspectives from different cultural backgrounds. Other findings include the importance of experiential education, particularly extended immersion in communities requiring participants adapt to different cultural and linguistic norms. Friendships with people of different cultural backgrounds, and experience standing up to issues of injustice also were important. Community and professional education factors are discussed. The final chapter summarizes participant ideas about support and training teachers in the process of becoming multicultural.

The purpose of this study was to explore and assess creative avenues that challenge racism in urban high schools. A project study was established at one racially and ethnically diverse high school through the development of an anti-racist peer education curriculum model that used perspectives from multicultural education, the arts and media. The school system, with a student population of 25,000, had been experiencing racial problems and welcomed the study. The project study approach was used in order to analyze student responses to creating an anti-racist/multicultural arts and media curriculum. The participants of the project created a problem-solving play entitled "Let's Stop Racism in Our Schools," and performed it three times during the course of the study. The major goal of this research was to discover, through the eyes of students, if their learning, attitudes and behavior were affected by racism. Another goal was to demonstrate the significance of using multicultural arts to address racism in schools. Data collection methods included student interviews, field notes, audience surveys, and production videotapes. In addition, quantitative surveys on race relations and multicultural arts were used as support data. As a result of this study, students were able to identify creative ways of addressing racism in school and share their perceptions of how racism has affected their learning. All of the participants agreed that utilizing their "voice" throughout the project made them feel empowered to reach out to others. The study found that students experienced feelings of discouragement, guilt, anger, and pressure to over-achieve because of racism. The implications of this study are relevant for grades K-12 and beyond because it brings the issue out in the open, thereby enabling a greater chance for reduction. It is important for educators nationwide to take a look at students' points of views and ability to take a stand and make a difference in school curricula. Administrators should consider allowing students to become more involved with curricular development. In addition, this study should encourage all school personnel to consider the arts and multicultural education as integral aspects of education in all basic subject areas.

This dissertation presents a rich, detailed account of lived experiences of Koreans, Americans, and Korean-Americans in a multicultural Korean business organization. Guided by the coordinated management of meaning theory as the theoretical and methodological framework, this study looks at the organization as a co-created, co-evolving interactive system. Thus, it closely examines communication among the participants as everyday practices in which to explore "goings-on" in the organization. The main focus of this study is on the extent to which cultural differences afford or constrain coordination among people, and create problems such as tensions and conflict in the organization. Six episodes were reconstructed based on various stories "told" and "lived" by the participants, and presented as major "goings-on" in the organization. The main findings centered around the issues of cultural adaptation, differentiation/division/discrimination, harmony, biculturalism, and language. These issues were manifested in various instances of situated interaction. They constrained coordination and coherence, and thus contributed to the creation, sustenance and transformation of tensions and conflict within the organization. The comparative analysis of different episodes, especially revealed the intricate ways in which various patterns of interactive relationships not only emerge and sustain, but also transform over time. The dissertation has two major theoretical implications for intercultural studies. First, it supports and extends literature on general cultural patterns by illustrating detailed ways in which this general knowledge is manifested in situated moments of intercultural interaction. It shows us, in detail, the process in which a particular intercultural situation is constructed in a unique and complex way. The second implication is that this study is capable of accounting for the process of transformation. In other words, this study provides the elaborate ways in which cultural patterns not only emerge and sustain but also transform in practice. This ever changing, rather than fixed, role of cultural differences is unconvered by the comparative analysis of different episodes that occured in different time. The study also introduces the problems of bi-cultural persons in multicultural organizations.

The purpose of this study was to (1) investigate teachers' perceptions of their own ability to embrace diversity, and (2) to explore how their personal, professional and academic preparation influenced their perceptions. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What type of personal and professional experiences affect the perceptions and behaviors of practicing teachers toward embracing diversity? (2) How do practicing teachers perceive that their teacher preparation program has prepared them to teach from a multicultural perspective? (3) What recommendations do practicing teachers have for enhancing the preparation of teachers to educate a diverse population? This study consists of four components: (1) a pilot study of three in-depth phenomenological interviews each with two participants that served as a basis for the current study. (2) one additional study of a novice teacher, using three classrooms observations and three in-depth phenomenological interviews. (3) a qualitative questionnaire, used with practicing teachers who had recently graduated from a teacher preparation program, designed to determine if there was a need for investigation into the research questions. (4) a quantitative questionnaire, used with beginning teachers, which examined how they felt they were prepared to teach a diverse student body. The findings reveal that graduates from one teacher preparation program feel that they were exposed to little or no multicultural education in their course work, and had been inadequately prepared to teach a diverse population. Many of the graduates are employed in school districts which incorporate superficial approaches to multicultural education. Teachers expressed a desire to become a part of a network where they could learn how to incorporate multicultural education into the curriculum. It seemed that what prepared teachers best to work with diverse populations was actually living in the community among diverse people; it was there that people started to understand issues, events and people from a variety of perspectives.* ftn*Originally published in DAI Vol. 58, No. 9. Reprinted here with corrected title.