This study explored the application of theatre as an educational tool with bilingual children using theatre techniques based on the work of the theatre theorist Augusto Boal. This documentation is important because there are few studies demonstrating how children are affected by drama. Boal developed theatre as a tool for social/political change to transform educational monologue into a dialogue. The objective of this exploratory study was to applied the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques in a Bilingual elementary setting. No hypothesis was tested and the study was exploratory and descriptive by nature. The following tasks were accomplished: (1) Assessment of the use of the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques with Bilingual children. (2) Observation made during the implementation of these theatre techniques. Eighteen children were chosen to participate in the study. The research revealed that Theatre of the Oppressed games and exercises can be use with bilingual children to create a sense of self, sense of the other, sense of community, communication and to empower them. All the previous themes evolved in the study.

This dissertation analyzes a study which focused on the problem of interpersonal relationship development between Japanese hosts and visiting North American exchange students during their one year of studying abroad at a Japanese university. The study identified and analyzed factors that contributed to, or inhibited social interaction which led to effective interpersonal relations. The research described and explained the interpersonal relationship development experience of the research participants. A qualitative interpretive case study, participants included both North American exchange students and Japanese people with whom they developed relationships. Data collection was accomplished over a one-year period utilizing in-depth interviewing and direct behavior observation methods. Results included identification of cross-cultural social-psychological factors which contributed to and inhibited effective interpersonal relationship development. An analysis of cultural value-orientation differences led to the explanation of problems in relationship development. The North American exchange students established cordial relationships with Japanese people and were overall very satisfied with the exchange program and their one-year experience. However, the study concluded that North American students were disappointed with the perceived shallowness of relationship development. This negatively impacted their cultural and language learning. Recommendations were made to study abroad administrators in Japan and North America, as well as to prospective North American exchange students and researchers. These recommendations were in the areas of cross-cultural understanding and orientation, programming, advising and recruitment, and future research efforts. These recommendations are designed to assist in enhancing relationship development effectiveness. The dissertation includes a review of study abroad research literature that focused on social interaction and interpersonal relations.

This dissertation critically examines the autobiographies of ten teachers identified using the community nomination method (Foster, 1991) as exemplary teachers of Latino students to make recommendations for teacher preparation programs preparing educators to work in urban schools. The study is informed by postmodern understandings of culture and identity and draws heavily from Hip-Hop/Urban culture---a site from which, I argue, many urban students draw to create their identities. A review of the literature regarding culturally responsive pedagogies demonstrates the need for teachers to affirm students' cultural identities but also highlights the focus much of the research in this area places on race, thus, possibly contributing to a reification of singular aspects of students' identities. This study seeks to expand the discourse by forwarding cultural connectedness as a framework for practicing culturally responsive pedagogies in ways that do not essentialize culture and are informed by the multiple sites from which students draw to create hybrid cultural identities. It also stresses the potential for teachers who are not members of the same racial or ethnic group as their students to become "culturally connected" and improve their practice. Postmodernism and Hip/Hop-Urban culture informed the creation of Represent(ations), a hybrid methodology I created to employ in this dissertation. The findings suggest that teacher preparation programs need to be reconceptualized to include, in addition to content knowledge, a specific focus on teacher identity development and restructured by making changes to the curriculum, recruiting and retaining more pre-service candidates of color, and diversifying teacher preparation faculty to include teacher educators of color and those with teaching experiences in urban settings. Transforming urban teacher preparation based on this research has the potential to cultivate more teachers who "represent" for Latino students.

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / W. Franklin Spikes / Educators teaching English as a second language to adult students must keep course materials relevant, up-to-date and low cost. This research examines the possibility of using television commercials to supplement existing teaching materials, making lessons more culturally relevant. Often direct translations reveal that the translator, while knowing the rules of the language, did not fully understand the nuances of that language's culture. The idea that language and culture are interwoven is well established. While some understanding of one without the other is possible, finding ways to blend language and culture in the classroom can give non-native speakers an aid to understanding implied and literal meanings. This dissertation describes research on how American culture is intertwined in the ubiquitous television commercial and how these 30-second "slices of life" could benefit ESL education. It examines American concepts depicted in television advertisements on the four largest networks and then investigates the relative merits of using TV commercials as a teaching tool. This study uses the Map of Culture, developed by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1959, for content analysis of ten primary message systems that can categorize cultural descriptions. A sample of nearly 2,000 national television commercials was recorded from four major networks—ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC—during primetime in November 2001. Only national commercials aired more than six times that month were analyzed for trends in illustrating both manifest and latent cultural meanings, and even cultural taboos. Random examples were then selected to create a suite of ESL classroom materials. Television advertising was chosen for this study because of its accessibility and its ability to provide both visual and auditory content. Materials created for use in the classroom included a discussion model with pretest component, a video of selected commercials, a Q&A format follow-up discussion guide, and a post-test measurement instrument. ESL teachers and students who tested the materials and were surveyed on feasibility, logistics, students' interest level, content, and cultural relevance. Television commercials were found to include cultural content useful in ESL lessons and in class testing showed favorable outcomes. The study results could positively impact ESL pedagogy.

The main objective of this ethnographic study is to examine the processes by which minority students, Koreans Born in Japan (KBJs), are able to find their own voices within Japanese educational settings. I also explore how minority, KBJ students, and majority, Japanese students, learn to understand each other and their identities in two educational settings: university and high school, and how educators' knowledge and theories contribute to the process. One setting is a sociology class taught by a Japanese professor. The other setting is a Japanese public high school. For this ethnographic study, my data consist of transcriptions of interview sessions, reflection essays and reaction papers written by students. The data also include daily field notes on my classroom observations, my interactions with the participants and email messages from the participants. I analyze and interpret the data by looking at the data sources inclusively in order to answer my research questions. The results show that the KBJ students explore their identities reflectively and describe and revalue themselves as active participants of society within humanistic and liberatory educational settings. Originally, my research questions focused on only KBJ learners. However, in the process of collecting data, I realized that I had obtained important data from my Japanese participants. This helped to refine my research questions to incorporate the process of how majority students, describe, demystify, and redefine their perceptions of their KBJ peers as well as their own identities. This study highlights the ways in which educators, knowledge and theories influence the processes by which both minority and majority students describe, demystify and redefine their own identities self reflectively. My findings indicate that humanistic and liberatory education offer opportunities for minority students to describe and revalue themselves as learners and active participants in society. In addition, humanistic and liberatory education also offers opportunities for majority students to describe, demystify and redefine their KBJ peers as well as their own identities.

This study is based on participant observation and ethnographic fieldwork in Tlaxcala, Mexico and looks at language use and linguistic ideology in several Mexicano speaking communities undergoing language shift in the Malintsi (Malinche) region of Central Mexico. Many Tlaxcalans expressed conflicting feelings about teaching Mexicano to their children, while some actively avoid transmitting the indigenous language. I suggest that there is ideological multiplicity that surfaces in discourses of language, identity and progress. This multiplicity is organized through three discourses that have local, regional, and national expressions, these are: the pro-development meta-discourse of salir adelante, or forging ahead, and improving one's socioeconomic position; menosprecio , the denigration of indigenous identity; and third, the pro-indigena or pro-indigenous discourse that promotes a positive attitude towards indigenous-ness. The analysis of discourse offers a productive means for understanding the semiotic resources speakers employ as they orient towards and against particular identities through discourses they create and tap into. Using recorded data collected during field research, I analyze "naturally occurring" and elicited speech, and interviews conducted with local people on language use, ideology, shift, and bilingual schooling. The study of bilingual schooling offers an important site for the study of ideological multiplicity. Bilingual-indigenous schools in Tlaxcala as both community and nation-state institutions are a nexus for the discursive emergence and local reformulation of ideologies of language, identity, modernity, and the nation. I consider the politics and possibilities of language revitalization through the school system, focusing on the dialectics between agency and structure, as local communities and teachers interact with the national system. Despite the tremendous structural and ideological constraints on bilingual teachers, several are dedicated "language promoters." In this dissertation I suggest that focusing on ideological multiplicity, surfacing in and through discourse, can begin to address the question of how and why speakers shift their ideologies and their languages.

The purpose of this study was to identity whether the following variables are related to a sense of alienation among international students: age, sex, marital status, length of time in the United States and in Tucson, the place of residence, the participation in campus activities, and their perception of language ability. Alienation is viewed as a sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness, and social estrangement. The instrument for collecting demographic information and measuring the level of participation and alienation were administered to randomly selected international students at a southwestern university. Responses (185) were analyzed to find out the relationship among variables. The analysis identified that the more international students participated in campus activities, the less they felt alienated. Asian students had higher alienation scores than non-Asian students. The results suggest that the needs of different groups among international students should be evaluated separately, especially when designing the language programs. The international students should take the initiative to utilize the resources on campus which could help them adjust to the environment easier.

This descriptive socio-linguistic study examines second grade children's biliteracy development in a private school in Buenos Aires, where English is taught as a foreign language. It describes a bilingual setting in Argentina and determines how these second graders are becoming biliterate. The major findings of the study are: (1) Students are learning English as a foreign language, not as a second language. (2) The model of language learning influenced the children's perceptions of themselves as language learners, readers and writers. (3) Students frequently transferred and applied literacy in the first language (Spanish) to foreign language literacy (English). (4) In order to read and write in a language, a person doesn't have to be orally fluent in it. (5) Learning is a socially constructed process.

This naturalistic study examined the kinds of decisions prospective teachers and their instructor made in constructing and using reflective portfolios in a 13-week multicultural education course. In addition, I also examined the role reflective portfolio construction and discourse played in relation to classroom interaction with peers, instructor, pedagogy and self. The reflective portfolio model, adapted from the literacy portfolio model (Hansen, 1992), was a tool that asked students to develop a portrait of themselves as reader/writer/learner/teacher, in the context of a multicultural education course. Participants in this study included three prospective teachers and one instructor purposefully sampled from a class of eight. Data were constructed from nine data sources. The theoretical framework of this study drew from related research in the domains of portfolios, narrative and autobiography, and pedagogy. / Through reflective portfolio discourse, prospective teachers examined personal experience as it related to their emerging beliefs about teaching and learning. The primary focus of the study was to examine the process of prospective teachers and their instructor and using reflective portfolios in a 13-week course. In doing so, I explored the decisions prospective teachers and their instructor made throughout the process and the role the portfolio played in relation to classroom interaction, pedagogy, self, and the multicultural course curriculum. A secondary focus emerged during data collection. This secondary purpose examined the function/role of the reflective portfolio as a tool for examining intrapersonal context, the way in which prospective teachers view themselves, and personal experiences as they relate to multicultural course content. Seven research assertions emerged. These research assertions were presented in three categories: (a) managing portfolio pedagogy; (b) portfolio construction; and (c) curricular dimensions. These findings contribute to a new dimension in portfolio research by examining the possibilities of portfolios as reflective and discourse tools in teacher education to explore how personal experience relates to practical knowledge. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2798. / Major Professor: Kathryn Scott. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.