This study was undertaken as a means of describing the language of high school students as they responded to a Cultural Identity course. The purpose of this course was to increase cultural sensitivity and understanding among high school freshmen, and therefore, to reduce violence and cultural misunderstandings on campus. This course made use of the published curriculum, Building Cultural Bridges, in part, and the remaining course design was developed by the teacher-researcher. Specific aspects of the problem studied are included in the following questions that guided the methodology: (1) In what ways are students' attitudes reflected in their written language in response to specific assignments in the course, Cultural Identity? (2) In what ways are perceptions of conflict and conflict resolution reflected in students' written language? (3) In what ways does students' written language indicate an awareness of cultural sensitivity? (4) What language is used in students' oral language during classroom interactions that indicates an awareness of cultural sensitivity? These questions were answered while taking into consideration: (a) the context of the classroom activities, and (b) the social context that students carried with them into the classroom which, therefore, became a presence in the classroom. This study involved a theoretical and pragmatic view of teaching multicultural, anti-racist, and conflict resolution curricula. After a review of the literature and the establishment of the problem, a descriptive design was employed for guiding data collection and analysis. Participants' written language was analyzed which included: (a) students' journal writing in response to teacher prompts, (b) student-generated multicultural conflict and resolution plays, (c) conflict resolution questionnaires, and (d) student-generated informational brochures on relevant topics. Participants' oral language was also analyzed and recorded in field notes. This was taken from conversation and behavior demonstrated by participants during classroom activities. Participants' written language in the prompted response journals indicated a developing awareness of cultural sensitivity. The written language in the multicultural conflict and resolution plays indicated a developing sense of cultural sensitivity and the usefulness of conflict resolution strategies. Written language found in the conflict resolution questionnaires over time indicated an increased awareness of the usefulness of conflict resolution strategies and indicated their understanding of how conflicts are resolved, rather than avoided. The informational brochures demonstrated students' awareness of the effects of stereotyping, shifts in their stereotypical behavior, and demonstrated their use of conflict resolution strategies in classroom interactions.

This study provides an analysis of the historical events that shaped the public school education of Mexican American children in Arizona in the first half of the twentieth century. This study also examines how segregation was established in two cities in northern Arizona and how schooling affected the feelings and emotions of former students. From about 1900 to 1950 Mexican American children were required to attend segregated schools or were segregated in different classrooms even though there were no laws that mandated segregation. Segregation was established under the guise of providing special accommodations for Spanish-speakers. However, it was clear that the education policies of Arizona in the 1930s and 1940s were to prepare Mexican children for "Mexican" occupations. These educational programs had their roots in Americanization policies implemented earlier in the twentieth century. At the root of the Americanization policies in the Southwest was the notion that the Mexican immigrant was culturally inferior and could not be assimilated into the American mainstream until the Mexican culture and language were eradicated. Included in these policies were Mexican Americans, although they were United States citizens. Mexican children in school were publicly humiliated, physically and verbally abused for speaking Spanish on school grounds. The high school dropout rates for Mexican Americans in those years were very high. Mexican students were not encouraged to go to college by educators because they felt that the students did not have the mental skills to achieve academic success and because they did not need a higher education for the "Mexican" jobs they would be working. Most people are unaware of the extent of public school segregation of Mexican Americans in the state of Arizona. The public is generally aware of the segregation of African Americans in public schools and to some degree of the segregation of Native Americans in boarding schools. Segregation of Mexican Americans in the public schools is an important chapter in Arizona history that must be told to illustrate the struggle in the daily lives of past generations of Mexican Americans to overcome the numerous racial and discriminatory practices they experienced.

The Functional Head Constraint (Belazi, Rubin and Toribio, 1994) states that codeswitching is not allowed between a functional head and its complement. This predicts that switches between determiners and noun phrase complements, complementizers and inflected clausal (IP) complements, and auxiliaries and verb phrase complements should be ungrammatical. Conversely, the proposed constraint predicts that verb-complement and preposition-complement switches should be grammatical. This study tested four of these five predictions, using codeswitched Spanish/English sentences which met or violated the Functional Head Constraint. The subjects were Spanish-English bilinguals who had learned both languages before the age of six and who use both languages in their daily lives. Data were collected using the Response-Contingent Matching Task (Stevenson, 1992). Subjects read a sentence displayed on a computer screen and press a button when the reading is completed. They then read a second sentence aligned below the first one and press one of two buttons to indicate whether the two sentences on the screen are the SAME or DIFFERENT. Grammaticality of the codeswitch was established by comparing reading times on all SAME sentences. The sentences that violated the Functional Head Constraint were expected to receive significantly longer reading times than the sentences which comply with the constraint. The results obtained do not support the predictions made by the Functional Head Constraint, but do confirm the validity of the task procedure. The findings are compared with naturalistic data and are interpreted using the Minimalist Theory of Chomsky (1991 and 1992).

A significant number of American Indian women have taught and still teach children in both public and government Indian schools. Yet there is very little written about these Native American women teachers, how they view themselves, and their relationship to their professional teaching careers throughout history. In addition, historical accounts on Native education are often inaccurate, disrespectful, and biased. To address issues about Native American women teachers, a qualitative study was conducted to determine the elements in their lives that influenced them to select elementary school teaching as a career choice, and to identify and examine the common patterns and similarities within those elements. The research documented the key elements for success of Native American female teacher including (a) a supportive family, (b) mentoring and positive role models for young Native American girls in elementary and secondary school is vital to their continuing onto higher education, and (c) a strong sense of cultural identity. Five Native American women elementary public school teachers in a large southwestern city, representing four different tribes, participated in individual in-depth interviews to gather information regarding what elements in their lives lead them to educational success. Two had taught in the public school system for more then 20 years, the other three had been in the classroom for less then five years. The research revealed that Native American mothers today are the most influential family members in terms of their daughters educational success in elementary and secondary school, along with being the primary factor in providing moral support during their college years. Mentors and positive role models for young Native American girls in elementary and secondary school are vital to their continuing on the road to higher education. All participants felt that their strong sense of cultural identity helped them as adults to deal with cultural conflict in the workplace. Recommendations for further study, based on participant comments include: increase the number of teachers involved in the study, and interview these same teachers five years from now to see if their reflections changed.

This ethnographic study illuminates the connections between race, class, and academic engagement and the role that schools and educators exert in shaping them. The critical events portrayed demonstrate the power of social stereotyping and racism in relationship to academic engagement and the aspirations of culturally diverse high school students. At the same time, the study shows that human relationships are at the heart of schooling, and that the power relations of the broader society are often enacted in the interactions that occur between students and teachers in the classroom. Two Latino high school students, one foreign born and one U.S. born, shared candidly their points of view and perceptions about students' attrition and academic disengagement. Their perspectives were later compared to the views of thirty-three educators employed at the same urban educational institutions these students attended. A survey of these educators expanded our understanding of the forces that influence teachers' views of Latino students and their communities. The present study also examined Ogbu's influential theory of differential school success, and the connections between opposition, identity, and academic engagement. However, this study corroborated Jim Cummins' recent work, suggesting that students' behavior and motivation is influenced not only from historically or politically derived structures, but most importantly from day-to-day interactions with members of the institutional setting. During the study, the students spoke at length about school practices and policies that serve to separate students along ethnic and class lines, and that favor certain dominant ideologies over others. Issues of selective enforcement of strict disciplinary school rules, marginalization of Latino students in the curriculum, and a deteriorated school climate characterized by the absence of a true "community" among the diverse ethnic groups represented in the schools were some of the issues that emerged. The study concluded with a summary of the main recommendations for change and reform based on suggestions of the students themselves. These recommendations emanate from the sincere and genuine voices of Latino youth, representing much needed insights if we are to reverse the ongoing pattern of failure among Latino populations.

This study examines the role of community-based, minority language resources in dual language schooling. A rapidly growing form of bilingual education, dual language programs involve the co-instruction of children from language majority and language minority backgrounds via the languages of both groups. In contrast to studies of English language development, this study is concerned with Spanish language development by children from English-speaking and Spanish-speaking homes. Using a case study design, the study draws on theoretical frameworks from the fields of language planning, language revitalization, and funds of knowledge to propose that dual language programs may support minority language acquisition by incorporating local language resources--linguistic funds of knowledge--to counter the hegemony of English that undermines additive bilingual efforts in many schools. By showing how historical conditions associated with English-only schooling and punitive approaches to use of Spanish in barrio schools and the legacy of local bilingual education pioneers have contributed to the development of a dual language program, it demonstrates the continued importance of past practices in present dual language planning. The study triangulates ethnographic data from participant observation in classrooms, literacy instruction, and other school domains, teacher, parent, and community interviews, and document and archival analysis. These data, along with findings of changing patterns of language dominance in the case study community, indicate that the minority language resources most immediately available--in the form of fluent bilingual elders and recent immigrants from Mexico--are less likely to be incorporated into planned curriculum than the knowledge and experiences of language majority parents. This pattern is a consequence of the social distance between educators and barrio families, the ambivalence of Mexican American parents and school staff toward the use of non-standard varieties of Spanish in schooling, and the need for greater awareness of language shift. Based on these findings, the study proposes that dual language programs move beyond efforts to increase use of the minority language as language of instruction. Instead, the study suggests, programs should consider practices that tap the linguistic funds of knowledge residing in the vital language minority communities in which schools are embedded.

El presente estudio examina el papel de la escuela en el mantenimiento de la lengua y la cultura Arhuaco. Un creciente interes en los procesos de educacion indigena ha llevado a la comunidad Ika a replantear la educacion impartida desde el Estado para hacer una aproximacion al diseno de una educacion propia. Esto ha conllevado un analisis profundo por parte de las autoridades indigenas y los maestros sobre nuevos procesos educativos que contribuyan a la preservacion de la cultura autoctona. Utilizando un diseno etnografico, este estudio tomo como orientacion teorica analisis sobre planificacion linguistica, reproduccion cultural y economica a traves de la escuela y revitalizacion cultural y linguistica. Partiendo de una descripcion historica sobre el contacto con la cultura europea que propicio el desplazamiento cultural en las comunidades indigenas de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, esta investigacion demuestra la importancia de las luchas lideradas por los Arhuacos con las cuales se logro la expulsion de la mision Capuchina, para tomar control sobre sus escuelas. Posterior a esto se inicia el diseno de una educacion mas acorde con la cultura que toma como parte fundamental la lengua Ika. Este estudio articula datos etnograficos obtenidos mediante observacion participante en la escuela, las familias y las actividades comunitarias con la revision de documentos y archivos historicos que los indigenas poseen sobre sus procesos de resistencia. Los datos analizados demuestran que el Ika es una lengua cuya vitalidad se debe no solo a la transmision de esta en los ambitos familiar y comunitario, sino tambien a los procesos de revitalizacion linguistica y cultural que los indigenas vienen promoviendo para tratar de contener los procesos de aculturacion occidental que todavia se presentan con fuerza dentro del espacio escolar. Basado en los anteriores hallazgos este estudio propone el diseno de un programa de educacion bilingue dentro de la escuela que contribuya tanto al mantenimiento de la lengua Ika como al desarrollo de competencias en espanol por parte de los ninos. Igualmente recomienda un mayor acercamiento entre comunidad y escuela de tal manera que incremente la participacion comunitaria en el fortalecimiento y apropiacion del espacio escolar.

The syntax of intrasentential codeswitching has been the main focus of research on codeswitching in the last two decades, and several constraints on its occurrence have been proposed. Belazi et al.'s (1994) Functional Head Constraint is one of the most recent among these constraints. It states that codeswitching is not allowed between functional heads and their complements. This study tests the predictions of this constraint, as well as Poplack's (1980) Equivalence Constraint, using Saudi Arabic-English codeswitching data from ten graduate students studying at U.S. universities. A total of ten hours of naturalistic telephone conversational data was tape-recorded, and transcribed for analysis. Selected portions of the conversations containing fairly frequent codeswitching are included in an appendix, which may be a source for further research. Codeswitches were classified according to the category of syntactic unit in which they occurred, and their frequency was tabulated. Illustrative examples of each category are given, and the applicability of major proposed constraints to the examples is discussed, with particular attention to the Functional Head Constraint. Analysis shows that Saudi Arabic-English codeswitching poses an apparent challenge to the Functional Head Constraint, as the database contains frequent counterexamples, consisting primarily of a switch between the bound Arabic definite article el- and an English Noun or modifier + Noun. Analyzed in terms of Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program, this switch is seen as occurring between the head of the DP and its complement, with the /l/ of the Arabic head assimilating to the first [+ Coronal] consonant of the English word, following regular phonological rules. It is proposed that the definite article has weak features, and does not have to check its language feature, so that it does not block codeswitching. The Functional Head Constraint can thus be maintained if it is restricted to apply to heads with strong features, such as demonstratives, which block codeswitching. However, the phenomenon remains a clear violation of the Free Morpheme Constraint (Poplack 1980).

This investigation examined the beliefs and practices of four Latina bilingual educators. The participants were part of a federal grant program to allow personnel from local school districts to earn a bachelor's degree in bilingual education. The researcher analyzed the language ideologies that were articulated and practiced by the participants as they worked with English language learners in local elementary schools. In particular, this investigation addressed the participants' understanding of how to use native language instruction (in this case, Spanish) in bilingual education to improve writing and other aspects of academic success in the second language (in this case, English). Using questionnaire data, interviews, and observations, the researcher concluded that the way the participants used Spanish in instruction depended significantly on their own language learning ideologies and on the assimilationist context of the larger society.

Cross cultural communication is difficult because of the different cultural parameters. The cultural experiences define your perspective. Behavior in culture, moreover, is dependent on many factors as historical, sociological and psychological experiences. These experiences further define your worldview and determine your reactions.