Magister Educationis - MEd / In South Africa's educational system, many learners' academic literacy is substantially affected by the multi-language background and its inconsiderate language policies. From time to time, South African Education board have formulated, amended and re- implemented language policies to guide the use of language in learning and teaching in schools, in order to enhance the notion of academic bi literacy. However in different areas, some of these language policies had their successes and failures. Amongst the educational language policy for each university in South Africa, the University of the Western Cape (UWC) began its language policy implementation in 2003. Despite the aim and objective of this policy over a decade ago, students are still struggling to effectively learn in the language of instruction. And the fact remains that problem of students' language proficiency leads to poor academic literacy and performance during their undergraduate study period. In this study, I seek to investigate the effective translanguaging strategies of some undergraduate bilingual students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). It will focus on how the two closely intertwined sociolinguistic aspects: translanguaging and bilingualism impact on students' academic collaboration. The theoretical framework will draw on Weiner's attribution theory of motivation (1974, 1986). The conceptual framework that will be used will cover: language proficiency, additive and subtractive bilingualism, translanguaging and learning strategies. The main aim of this proposed project is to examine how effective translanguaging is as coping learning strategies by some bilingual students at University of the Western Cape (UWC). I propose the following research objectives: (i) to determine the forms of challenge(s) faced by bilingual students learning in a less proficient language at UWC (ii.) to investigate and analyze the translanguaging strategies that might assist bilingual students cope with learning in a less proficient language at UWC (iii.) to examine the patterns of use of translanguaging strategies on academic collaboration of bilingual students’ at UWC (iv.) to find out areas in which the practice of translanguaging strategies differs to the stipulations of the UWC language policy. I plan to use a qualitative method to achieve my research objectives. I adopted interpretive/ constructive approach in my study. The research techniques that I use includes: questionnaires, interviews, observations and document analysis. A semi structured questionnaire is given to thirty (30) first year bilingual undergraduates from three (3) tutorials groups in the Faculty of Education. The interviews were face to face and semi-structured. The interviews conducted with each of the 12 students are intended to know their linguistic background and how it plays a role during their first year of undergraduate study. Two out of the three groups are randomly selected and closely observed. The classroom observation helps me to identify the types of translanguaging strategies used by bilingual students and also see the various patterns in which the translanguaging strategies are used during their academic collaboration. The three documents use for analysis are the UWC language policy (2003) and two different academic tasks of my participants. All ethics for my study was strictly adhere to. I categorize my findings according to the research questions and the four questions serve as main themes during data analysis. The data findings of my study indicate that during the first term, most first year bilingual student had difficulty in the use of English medium of instruction. Some of the language related challenges include English academic writing, inadequate vocabulary in English and accent and pronunciation of other bilingual speakers in English. This shows that there is the need for the struggling bilingual students to adopt learning strategies. Translanguaging strategies were minimally used during in class activities. This suggests that bilingual students did not see the justification to adopt translanguaging in the classroom. However, it was used outside of the tutorial space and other academic collaboration amongst students for various purposes. My research shows that majority of the first year bilingual undergraduate students’ benefit from the use of translanguaging as coping learning strategies. Data findings also reveal that the first year bilingual undergraduate students are more motivated to add to their translanguaging strategies, other metacognitive learning strategies that they consider as helpful and related to their specific language challenges. The conclusion of my thesis is that as much as the adoption of translanguaging strategies is a useful language support for bilingual students, there are contributory factors that can make its use a success or failure in educational context. The most pertinent of these factors are translanguaging space and the complement of translanguaging in schools' language policy. I recommend that translanguaging using speaking skills of bilingual students should be put to use during teaching and learning in a recognized learning space.

Because several challenges exist when providing English as a Second Language (ESL) services to culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), such services may be overlooked in deference to other educational needs. Therefore, this study used a survey to obtain information from 121 special education teachers in the state of Utah to explore the types of ESL services offered to CLD students with ASD. Results indicated that only 30% of the special educators participating in the study provide second language services in their classrooms. Results also show that language services provided by speech language pathologists are typically provided in English only and do not address second language needs. Almost 80% of participants agree that it is important to provide ESL/Bilingual services to CLD students with ASD. Lack of training, lack of use of second-language materials and difficulty ensuring appropriate placement are cited as challenges faced by participants when working with CLD students with ASD. This study suggests that CLD students with ASD in Utah are not receiving appropriate language services. Results show the need for improvement in teacher training and provision of second language materials and resources for special education teachers.

Given the increase of Spanish- and English-speaking bilingual students in US schools, identifying the predictors of reading in this group of students is of significant importance to developing appropriate screening measures and intervention strategies. Thus, the current study evaluated the pattern of language preference in an elementary school bilingual (Spanish-English) population and its relationship with expressive and receptive vocabulary, and broad reading ability in English and Spanish. Participants were 58 Latino students ranging in age from 7 years, 5 months to 11 years, 1 month (M = 8.98, SD = .98) with 48% born in the United States. Results indicated that English expressive vocabulary partially mediated the relationship between outside language preference and English broad reading ability. In contrast, neither Spanish expressive nor receptive vocabulary mediated the relationship between outside language preference and Spanish broad reading ability.

I used a sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky, 1978) to examine teachers’ epistemological and efficacy beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics with multilingual students. Specifically, I use the work of Negueruela-Azarola (2011) who suggests that teachers’ beliefs are conceptualizing tools for thinking about activity. Beliefs, which are social and dynamic, arise from teachers’ lived experiences. What teachers believe is relevant because beliefs inform pedagogical practices and once established are hard to change (Brownlee, Boulton-Lewis & Purdie, 2002; Cross, 2009; Pajares, 1992). Established beliefs with regards to mathematics hold that it is the easiest subject for multilingual students since there is little language involved. On the other hand, established beliefs are that increased English vocabulary is mainly what students need to be successful in mathematics. Barwell (2009) and Moschkovich (2002), using sociocultural perspectives, argue that language is important in mathematics and that multilingual students can participate in mathematical discussions when using resources such as their own mathematical knowledge, objects, and codeswitching. I interviewed five teachers who had experience teaching mathematics to students whose first language was other than English. I found that some teachers had beliefs which contrasted with the philosophies of their training institutions and with their schools. Teachers were found to hold contradictory beliefs. The study showed the importance of terminology in that how teachers referred to their multilingual students reflected their beliefs. Multilingual students were welcomed in the classroom for their contribution to cultural diversity but teachers acknowledged increased workload, and periods of frustration when supporting their multilingual students in mathematics.

I used a sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky, 1978) to examine teachers’ epistemological and efficacy beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics with multilingual students. Specifically, I use the work of Negueruela-Azarola (2011) who suggests that teachers’ beliefs are conceptualizing tools for thinking about activity. Beliefs, which are social and dynamic, arise from teachers’ lived experiences. What teachers believe is relevant because beliefs inform pedagogical practices and once established are hard to change (Brownlee, Boulton-Lewis & Purdie, 2002; Cross, 2009; Pajares, 1992). Established beliefs with regards to mathematics hold that it is the easiest subject for multilingual students since there is little language involved. On the other hand, established beliefs are that increased English vocabulary is mainly what students need to be successful in mathematics. Barwell (2009) and Moschkovich (2002), using sociocultural perspectives, argue that language is important in mathematics and that multilingual students can participate in mathematical discussions when using resources such as their own mathematical knowledge, objects, and codeswitching. I interviewed five teachers who had experience teaching mathematics to students whose first language was other than English. I found that some teachers had beliefs which contrasted with the philosophies of their training institutions and with their schools. Teachers were found to hold contradictory beliefs. The study showed the importance of terminology in that how teachers referred to their multilingual students reflected their beliefs. Multilingual students were welcomed in the classroom for their contribution to cultural diversity but teachers acknowledged increased workload, and periods of frustration when supporting their multilingual students in mathematics.

The aim of this study is to explore the patterns of emotion recognition in Mexican bilin-guals using the JACFEE (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988). Previous cross cultural research has documented high agreement in judgments of facial expressions of emotion, however, none of the previous studies has included data from Mexican culture. Participants were 229 Mexican college students (mean age 21.79). Results indicate that each of the seven universal emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise was recognized by the participants above chance levels (p < .001), regardless of the gender or ethnicity of the posers. These findings replicate reported data on the high cross cultural agreement in emotion recognition (Ekman, 1994) and contribute to the increasing body of evidence regardingthe universality of emotions. / Este estudio explora el reconocimiento de la expresión facial de las emociones en bilingües mexicanos mediante el JACFEE (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988). Investigaciones previas evidencian el alto nivel de acuerdo transcultural en el reconocimiento emocional, sin embargo no se reportan estudios en la cultura mexicana. Participaron 229 estudiantes universitarios, edad promedio 21.79 años. Los resultados indican que las emociones universales: enojo, desprecio, disgusto, temor, felicidad, tristeza y sorpresa fueron reconocidas más allá del azar (p < .01), independientemente del sexo o nacionalidad del modelo. Estos hallazgos coincidencompletamente con los datos transculturales que se tienen sobre el alto nivel de acuerdo en el reconocimiento emocional (Ekman, 1994), contribuyendo así al creciente cuerpo de evidencia sobre la universalidad de las emociones.

With the growth of the Latino population in the United States on the rise and the limited number of bilingual Spanish social workers, it is critical to explore the Master of Social Work student’s self-perceived competency in Spanish skills and the support they receive. These are the emerging professionals that will be interacting and providing services for Latinos in our communities. Exploring and understanding the challenges students encounter, their self-perceived competency, and how students can be supported, will be beneficial not only to them but also to Latino clients seeking services in Spanish. Providing appropriate services in Spanish may alleviate the language barrier that many Latinos are concerned about when seeking services. This research utilized a mixed methods design with self-administered surveys and interviews conducted and analyzed with SPSS and transcriptions. The study findings suggest that bilingual Spanish-speaking Masters of Social Work students are not provided with adequate training, resources, and support from their MSW program or their field placements in order to provide high quality services to the Latino population. The study findings also suggest that not all bilingual individuals are comfortable with working with monolingual Spanish-speaking clients.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Traditionally strict language separation policies in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs reflect parallel monolingualism and have been criticized as failing to recognize the sociolinguistic realities of bilingual students (García & Lin, 2017). To leverage bilingual learners’ full linguistic repertoires as resources, this study explored how Sánchez, García, and Solorza’s (2018) translanguaging allocation policy could be strategically and purposefully designed in a third grade Mandarin/English DLBE classroom where the majority of the students were English-dominant speakers. Taking the form of participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), I (as a researcher) and a Mandarin teacher worked together to co-design translanguaging documentation, translanguaging rings, and translanguaging transformation spaces across different content areas – Chinese Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. During the process, we also engaged in equitable forms of dialogue and listening to openly discuss, negotiate, and develop our translanguaging co-stance in iterative ways. Data collection included classroom and design meeting recordings, observational field notes, and teacher and students’ artifacts and interviews throughout the school year of 2018-19. Inductive and deductive coding were adopted for data analysis. Findings revealed that translanguaging pedagogies took many shapes based on contextual factors, such as the different pedagogical purposes and curricular demands across content areas. Students were able to develop deeper content understandings, build cross-linguistic connections, and develop their bi/multilingual identities and critical consciousness in those flexible bilingual spaces. Findings also demonstrated that the ideological (re)negotiation between the researcher and the teacher was a bumpy and discursive journey, replete with tensions, confusions, and difficult conversations. Overall, it was a balancing act to create translanguaging spaces while maintaining the language-minoritized (Mandarin) space and privileging students’ use of Mandarin given the societal dominance of English. This study provides implications for new theoretical and pedagogical understandings of translanguaging, and suggests that researcher-teacher collaboration provides a promising way to generate evidence-based, practitioner-informed, and context-appropriate knowledge for DLBE curricular and pedagogical improvements. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

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Two-Way Immersion (TWI) programs offer settings and goals that foster multilingual and multicultural communities; however, communities are complex and fluid, and have aspects that may or may not promote equitable education and learning. This research analyzes the actions and interactions of a group of first grade students to address how community develops during the first semester of implementation of a TWI program. Theoretical notions of figured worlds and communities of practice frame the analysis of ethnographic data to provide insight into the complex social and pedagogical dynamics of this setting 1) through conversations with teachers, 2) through observations of teacher-student interactions during teacher-centered activities, and 3) through observations of students interacting with less teacher presence. Findings describe the teachers’ discourses about their students, which centered on issues of equity and dismantling language status hierarchies. The findings also describe practices that the teachers themselves frame as promoting unified, equitable communities; however, analysis was mixed in finding that certain practices appeared to promote unity within the classroom and others appeared to reinforce divisions among students. Key findings also confirm the results of other researchers regarding the positioning of initially bilingual students in TWI as “dual language experts.” This study notes some ramifications of teaching practices and aspects of the specific 50-50 TWI model for the entire community of learners, which, while elevating balanced bilinguals may marginalize English learners and Spanish learners. / text