This narrative study focuses on the stories of two bilingual elementary teachers. The teachers participated in a series of in-depth phenomenological interviews examining the relationship between their stories of becoming bilingual teachers and their current bilingual teaching practices. The stories were analyzed and represented in two ways, first in terms of story structure and second for themal coherence. The analysis of story structure was based on the work of William Labov (1972, 1982) and revealed ways in which these story tellers crafted complex narratives using specific, general, and hypothetical stories, as well as embedding stories Within stories. In addition, the stories were analyzed for themes that created threads of themal coherence (Agar & Hobbs, 1982, 1985) woven through all three interviews. The analysis of themal coherence revealed that issues that emerge in teachers' life stories also appear in their narratives of classroom practice. In addition, the study underscores the complexity of narrative research in terms of issues such as ownership, authority and representation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an intervention program, Reading Recovery, on the literacy achievement of black and white students. Through a battery of assessment, interviews, and analysis procedures, the researcher addressed the following questions: (1) Do black and white students, who were students in the intervention program, Reading Recovery, have similar levels of literacy achievement and share similar literacy characteristics? (2) Do black and white students who successfully complete the intervention program, Reading Recovery, maintain average scores for at least two years post intervention? (3) Do teachers of black and white students accurately evaluate their literacy ability two years post intervention? Twenty-seven third grade students were selected to participate in the study, based upon their successfully completing the Reading Recovery Program. Procedures included the students reading Three Narrative Passages written at different difficulty levels. One passage was written at a first grade level, the second passage was written at a third grade level, and the third passage was written at a fifth grade level. In addition to the Three Narrative Passages The San Diego Oral Reading Paragraph for grade three was administered. An interview with the students' teachers included the teachers completing a questionnaire, The Teacher Evaluation of Students' Literacy Ability. The students were given The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey to measure their attitude about reading. Finally a written sample of the students' writing was obtained. Results showed no significant differences between the black and the white students on any of the assessments. There was no significance difference found in the teachers' evaluation of the black and white students' literacy ability. Both black and white students maintained average literacy scores two years post intervention.

This dissertation is about the first ever federal bilingual education policy. The research for the project comes from three major resources; lay and professional literature, archival documents, and structured personal interviews with over forty analysts and architects of the policy. The presentation of the dissertation follows a case study format. The purpose of the dissertation was to review the historical and immediate precedents that gave rise to the policy, narrate the story of how and why the policy was passed, and tell what those who supported and crafted the policy intended to promulgate. Although called a Bilingual Education Act, the major conclusion drawn from this research points in another direction. The concerns and problems that spawned Title VII of 1968 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) had less to do with language or bilingual education and more to do with providing support for experimental programs designed to increase school completion by Latino students in the Southwest. This dissertation examines policymaking through several prisms, some specific to language planning analysis. The touchstone for this analysis is Ruiz' Language Planning Orientations (1984a). The conclusions drawn in this dissertation with regard to the original Title VII and to subsequent government policies and school practices is that both emanate from a Language-as-Problem orientation. The recommendations are that bilingual education programs and practices follow a Language-as-Resource orientation. In this way, children can develop and enrich both of the languages they learn in school and the result will be balanced bilingual proficiencies in language use and literacy.

Literacy as a critical tool for understanding the relationship among text, self, and world (Freire, 1987, p. 30) is vital in order for students to relate their own reality with that of the characters'; for students to read their world while they read the word, as Freire and Macedo (1987) would put it. For over three years, I have met with a group of women (Las Senoras1 to explore their views of themselves and how they relate to the school and society around them. Las Senoras are all Spanish-Speakers, some of them Spanish/English Bilinguals. The vehicle for our discussions was El Club de Literatura (the Literature Club) wherein we read such novels as Hasta no Verte Jesus Mio, Arrancame la Vida, Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchu, y asi me Nacio la Conciencia and short stories, for example, Detras de la Reja, Out of the Mirrored Garden) to explore our own lives as women, within our families, communities, and society at large. A goal of this phenomenological orientation is the rediscovery of self-knowledge through literature discussions infused with personal experience, through extensive dialogical conversations, interviews, letters, journals, and observations, facilitated by a researcher as "friend" role. These are among the methodological tools used to provide a panoramic of women's lives. This work analyzes the process of Las Senoras' personal transformation through the rediscovery of their own knowledge in El Club de Literatura. Why this focus on Las Senoras? Because as an educator of working-class, language minority students, I am aware of how mothers are generally the ones most intimately involved in the education of their children and how they serve as the primary connection to the schools, yet at the same time they are held at bay with respect to their rights as women, mothers and wives. Further, an important finding of this work has had to do with my own evolution from teacher to pedagogue. This evolution has encompassed my breaking from my earlier training as a teacher which strictly dictated the curriculum and prescribed my role as a teacher, to the joint creation of curriculum with my students and their families. The process has led me from reflecting upon my practice to understanding the implications of my actions in communion with my students. A communion where I am not always the teacher, but a lifelong learner. For those who ask, "Can I do this work?" The answer is, "If you are willing to learn and change, then you can be the teacher." Further, as commented by Patricia, one of Las Senoras, "It depends on what you are going to teach us." (1)Las Senoras: in Spanish one refers to a woman as a Senora as a gesture of respect, be it out of age, experiences, or legal status. In this study, Las Senoras, are women who are treated respectfully by me and others who know them through me. Age and legal status are not important in our group, life experiences are what give them the status of Senoras.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of learning and rehearsal on verbal and visual memory in 15 Native American students ranging in age from 9 to 16 years. Subjects were administered the Verbal Learning (VL) and Visual Learning (VIL) subtests of the WRAML. These subtests assess the ability to retain verbal (list of words) and visual (location of designs) information presented over 4 trials. A 5th trial assesses retention after a short delay. The study additionally aimed to relate scores on these tasks with overall scores on the WRAML, the WISC-III and the DAS. A description of mean standard/scaled scores for each of these measures is provided. Concurrent with previous research, mean Verbal IQ on the WISC-III was significantly below the normative mean while the Performance IQ was in the average range. Mean Verbal and Visual Memory Indexes on the WRAML reflected this pattern. Performance on all three subtests of the DAS (Arithmetic, Spelling, Word Reading) were significantly below average. Results of one-way repeated measures ANOVAs based on z scores indicate no significant difference from the norm in overall performance on both learning subtests. However, z scores on the VL subtest showed a significant difference across trials. While performance on the VL subtest was slightly below the normative average on trial 1, this difference appears to have been erased by trial 2. Performance on delayed recall trials for both subtests were comparable to the norm group. Correlation coefficients show a significant relation between the learning subtests and the Visual, Learning and General-Memory Index scores on the WRAML. They also show a significant relation between the VL subtest and the Verbal and Full Scale IQs on the WISC-III. Neither of the learning subtests shows a significant correlation with subtests on the DAS. Results argue against a verbal learning "weakness" in Native American children. Findings also suggest that instead of focusing on teaching to the Native Americans' "visual strength," the use of a multi-trial approach when presenting Native American children with verbal material in English would enhance learning and retention.

Research in the area of bilingual education language policy has focused generally on: (1) its relation to curriculum development and instructional design, (2) its relation to the legislative process, and (3) its relation to issues of power. Past research, however, failed to concentrate on the meanings of policy assigned by students and the relationship between the letter of policy and the spirit of its enactment at school. The purpose of this humanistic, cultural study was to examine school language policy from both historical and student-centered points of view. By addressing what they have to say in a historical context, I gleaned new insights into the possibilities for future design and evaluation of language policy. I focused on the historical relationship between the lived experiences of students regarding language choice and use at one elementary school and the central language policy statements initiated by the respective state's legislature, issued by the school district's administration and governing body, and interpreted by classroom teachers. The various policy statements and oral histories--by three generations of students--in addition to U.S. census data for the respective historical period were analyzed to understand the relationship among history, social context, policy, and language experience at school in new ways. The findings were interpreted and presented in terms of continuities and discontinuities in the relationship between students' lived experiences and policy over time. In terms of the continuous aspects of this relationship, I found the following: teachers persist in standardizing children's oral and written language expressions; children are indoctrinated by the culture of the school to abide by "American" values; and English is regarded as the language of privilege and accomplishment. In terms of discontinuities, I found the following: indigenous languages and Spanish spoken by children were no longer prohibited but sanctioned in the classroom; teachers began speaking languages other than English for instructional purposes; and faculty demographics changed from predominantly monolingual, white women to largely bilingual Hispanic women. In sum, my study is important because I offered a critical interpretation of the prevailing historical realities that have governed language policies and their ensuing practices in a South Tucson neighborhood school for the past sixty-one years. Also, in this study, I revealed the importance of opening a forum for students to voice an evaluation of language policies that regulate the course or methods of action in bilingual elementary education programs.

This dissertation presents three case studies of collaborative interaction in a third-grade dual-language classroom during writing instruction over the course of a school year. The study addresses the notion of developing student voice, and how instruction can be seated so that students' narratives will assume central stage in the classroom, creating the opportunity for dialog between students' texts and the texts of the school. This study is situated between a progressive perspective that emphasizes growth through self reflection, organically driven texts, and above all individual meaning, and a post-progressive perspective that challenges educators to provide explicit instruction in the privileged discourses of the dominant ideology. A significant feature of the study is the evolution of the Writing Workshop into a Writer's Workshop, as the focus of activity became the students and their intentions for their texts. The Writer's Workshop was characterized by active and varied peer collaborations as students interacted in a community of writers. The study describes the varied expressions of critical literacy as the case study children interacted with peers to create texts that were shared daily. Critical literacy is defined as the ability to use print as a tool for developing critical consciousness. This was demonstrated in the increasingly sophisticated intentions students established for their texts, as they wrote to shock, entertain influence and reflect. The study underscores the damage to children whose language and literacy development is assessed to be deficient, particularly in the case of bilingual or bidialectic children, and how remedial instruction disrupts not only the child's own incremental progress, but their membership in a supportive learning community.

This study examines the discourse of second grade bilingual students participating in small group literature discussions over one academic year. The main research question is "What is the nature of the talk in which second-grade bilingual Spanish/English students engage as they discuss children's literature in small groups?" The study is based on a qualitative research design, using methods and techniques from ethnography and case study research, and was conducted in a collaboration with a teacher researcher. It describes the conversations of 21 Latino students, Mexican American children from working-class families, during 19 literature discussions. Each literature discussion consisted of four small groups of students for a total of 75 literature circles. Ten students were English dominant, and 11 were Spanish dominant. The students were sometimes grouped by language dominance, but most of the time they were heterogeneous groups where both English and Spanish dominant students talked with each other about the same self-selected book. Nine students and 11 literature circles were chosen as case studies to examine in depth the range of the students' responses to literature. Data gathering methods included field notes from participant observation, audiotapes, transcripts, videotapes of 75 literature circles, and samples of the students' written responses to literature. Through a detailed description and analysis of the children's responses to literature, this study documents how young bilingual children can have sophisticated literary responses and meaningful discussions of texts given opportunity and an appropriate context. Small group literature discussions, informed by Rosenblatt's reader-response theory, are proposed to be a crucial component of an intellectually challenging curriculum, especially in facilitating various forms of talk about text. This study shows that the small groups created a collective zone of proximal development for students' meaningful discussions. The findings of this research illustrate that there is no need for delaying children's development of critical thinking until they first learn to decode, emphasizing skills at the expense of content and thoughtfulness. A collaborative approach to research where the classroom teacher participates in the study is also proposed as an effective research model aimed toward educational change.

This comparative ethnographic study examined factors hypothesized to be relevant to the success or failure to graduate from high school. Student participants were male Mexicans with learning disabilities (LD), enrolled in U.S. middle schools, who were nominated by two of their teachers as either "Likely to Graduate from High School," (LGHS) or "Unlikely to Graduate from High School," (UGHS). The theoretical perspective was that students' life circumstances are all intricately related and academic outcomes are mediated by the overall evaluation students have of their contextual events (Alva & Padilla, 1989). The objectives for the in-depth interviews with students and their parents, were developed from an ecological perspective of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). Through interviews and archival reviews, an understanding was sought of the personal, social, and familial resources these students access to survive and eventually academically succeed. Among the findings were that students nominated as LGHS and their parents were comparatively more receptive to the exigencies of U.S. culture than their counterparts, the UGHS students and their parents. This greater receptivity contributed to the LGHS' greater progress in overcoming initial language limitations and effectively utilizing available resources. Also, parents of the LGHS group of students had attained a substantially higher average level of education than the parents of the UGHS students. The perceptions of the parents of the LGHS students had of themselves in terms of capacity to assist their children in their learning, differed markedly from the self-perceptions of the parents of the UGHS students who believed they were unable to support their children's learning-related experiences. Whereas LGHS students displayed social competence, problem-solving skills, autonomy, and orientation towards goals, UGHS students were commonly off-task, impulsive, and unable to self-regulate behaviors. Their maladaptive behaviors also negatively affected their acquisition of academic knowledge and development of skills. Among the recommendations are the implementation of intervention programs to enculturate parents into the social and literacy practices of the classroom and the school, and the promotion of cooperative linkages between school and families. Parents are the precursors of improvement in special education programs for minority students.

This dissertation contributes to the area of Applied Linguistics and foreign language teaching and learning by investigating whether formal instruction, as opposed to no specific instruction, plays a significant role in the acquisition of Spanish spatial prepositions: "en", "sobre", "de," and "a." The study investigates the effect of formal instruction for spatial concepts for which English native speakers could use the L1 to generate correct responses in the L2 and for spatial concepts that created confusion between the L1 and the L2. It also investigates the effect of formal instruction when prepositions are taught by rules. The study introduces a visual/spatial/kinesthetic methodology based on the Davis Symbol MasteryRTM program, originally designed to be used with juvenile and adult dyslexics. The study investigates whether 3-D clay modeling can create new mental representations of spatial concepts not existent in the L1 or resolve overlapping spatial concepts between the L1 and the L2. Advanced university learners of Spanish as a Second Language participated in this study. Results show that (a) formal instruction has a significant general effect for the mixed spatial concepts chosen for this study; (b) formal instruction has no significant effect over no specific instruction for concepts for which English native speakers could use the L1 to generate correct responses in the L2; (c) formal instruction, specifically 3-D clay intervention, can either help resolve the confusion in case of overlapping of spatial concepts between the L1 and L2 or create new mental representations not existent in the L1; and (d) formal instruction has no significant effect in the case of instruction by rules. The dissertation offers a novel theoretical explanation for why 3-D clay modeling may help resolve confusion in the case of overlapping of spatial concepts between the L1 and L2 or create new mental representations not existent in the L1. Vygotsky's Tools for Cognitive Development are extended: 3-D clay modeling provides a tool that is both concretely grounded and consciously systematically accessible. The dissertation also discusses motivation in learning based on Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow Theory".