Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 10, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2852. Adviser: Enid Zimmerman.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2486. Adviser: Yoon Pak. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 272-285) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2423. Adviser: Steven Aragon. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-189) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Language Education, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1257. Adviser: Martha Nyikos. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 18, 2007)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Language Education, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1257. Advisers: Larry Mikulecky; Curtis J. Bonk. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 19, 2007)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Language Education, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 26, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2085. Adviser: Martha Nyikos.

The purpose of this thesis is to reflect upon the complex process of educating the sons and daughters of immigrant parents from diverse cultural communities. The study stresses the importance of valuing the language and culture of students in Aotearoa-New Zealand for whom English is another language. It is argued that the discourse of what shall be called ‘technocratic pedagogy’ falls short of meeting this goal. What is needed is more expansive and inclusive programmes that apprehend the social, economic, and political contexts of learning. This is necessary if the students are to continue their education not simply to absorb prescribed information and ideas but to actively understand, question, challenge, and change the school and the classroom. The thesis is written from the perspective of an indigenous Maori teacher trained in technocratic approaches of practice looking to aspects of her intimate culture, Tongan and Samoan ways of representing the world, and Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy to transform contemporary education that tends to exclude the adolescents from learning in school. This thesis is not simply another contribution to the ways in which teachers of school English in general think about methodologies and approaches to learning; rather, it is addressed more specifically to those Maori, Tongan, and Samoan teachers in this country who work with and alongside communities who are from the Kingdom of Tonga and the islands of Samoa. Thus, there is great value placed on educational experience with indigenous Tongan and Samoan teachers and students in an educational project referred to in the thesis as a ‘School-within-a-school’. The School-within-a-school refers to a site of education for teaching school English to immigrant adolescents within a large, state, secondary school in the city of Auckland. Particular attention is also paid to educational experience with indigenous teachers in a Curriculum Committee and Maori and Tongan grassroots organisations located within the same school. A fresh approach to teaching English accepts culture as the ground on which to begin to reflect on a practice within a specific context. The teachers who have a dynamic relationship with students argue that culture is a primary site for contradictions and that a revolutionary challenge to technocratic pedagogy is necessary, but not sufficient, to value and actively include the students in school. Since the English language and its attendant practices, values, traditions, and aspirations are the grounds for the students' marginalisation, immediate, consciously organised changes in the teaching beliefs, contents of education, and society at large in Aotearoa are necessary parts of any reintegrative pedagogy. On this account, the belief is that pedagogy is vitally important since it can enable the students to understand the technocratic discourse and draw upon the personal and collective experiences to counter the tendency that denies them full participation in school and the classroom. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Secondary Education / Jacqueline D. Spears / This study explored the benefits of one instructional strategy on the development of English skills and on the achievement in academic school areas by linguistically different high school students. The specific strategy chosen was the use of printed instructional materials with native language support in subject matter areas. The academic performance of adolescent immigrant students having printed instructional materials with native language support in one subject area was compared to their academic performance in the same subject without using native language support. In addition, the study explored qualitatively the perceptions of the use of printed instructional materials with native language support in subject matter areas among learners, their parents, and ESL as well as subject area teachers. The statistical analysis of linguistically different high school students’ test performance in geometry showed that instructional materials with native language support contributed significantly to the improvement of students’ performance. The comparison of ESL students’ performance with the performance of non-ESL students demonstrated that, on average, ESL students who were lagging behind the non-ESL students before the treatment was applied, outperformed the non-ESL students when native language support was available and then closed the gap between ESL and non-ESL students on subsequent material without native language support. The student survey demonstrated the ESL students’ preference for having regular subject area textbooks in English containing page by page glossaries and explanations in their native language. Parents’ responses to questionnaires showed that the instructional materials with native language support enabled parents to understand what their children study in school and to help their children with their school work. Both ESL and the majority of geometry teachers noticed the positive changes in their ESL students when ESL students were provided with materials containing native language support. All parties participating in the research supported the idea of providing adolescent immigrant students with printed instructional materials containing native language support in all academic subject areas, which would require a collective effort of educators in the fields of science, mathematics, social studies, language arts as well as special education teachers.

In this thesis, two types of non-native speakers are examined to advance our understanding of the language faculty. Filling a gap in literature, a production study of heritage language speakers of Korean and a comprehension study of heritage and non-heritage language speakers of Korean and of English for phenomena at the syntax-phonology interface are conducted. In the production study, narrative data collected from American heritage language speakers of Korean from the lower end to the higher end of the proficiency spectrum are examined for error analysis. Various tactics are used in dealing with unfamiliar vocabulary (extending their morphological knowledge of Korean and/or English, circumlocution, asking for the corresponding vocabulary in English, code-switching between Korean and English, and literal translations from English); sentence connections are less than fluent; sentence-level errors are observed with honorifics and with inanimate subjects, along with morpho-syntactic errors concerning misuse of particles (locatives and passives/causatives). Even at the lower-proficiency level, few difficulties in the realm of syntax-phonology interface, or prosody, are observed, motivating the next study. The comprehension study investigates the issues in the context of prosody and information structure. Information structure in Korean is surveyed, with a proposal laying out the environment in which the otherwise optional case and information-structural particles are mandatory, based on recoverability. A series of listening experiments with seven-point acceptability rating scores as the dependent variable are conducted to answer the following questions about language spoken by non-native speakers: (i) Do non-heritage and heritage learners acquire prosodic information conveying information structure? (ans heritage: yes, non-heritage: no), (ii) Does Sorace & Filiaci's (2006) Interface Hypothesis, which proposes that phenomena involving the interface of syntax and other areas (pragmatics) are less likely to be learned for very advanced learners, extend to the syntax-phonology interface? (ans no). The current study demonstrates how heritage language study may contribute to our understanding of the language faculty that other types of acquisition studies cannot. / Linguistics

Head Start is the largest and longest-standing publicly-funded preschool program, serving close to 1 million low-income children and their families, with an annual budget of over $10 billion. While early childhood programs such as Head Start have the potential to address the racial disparities and the income-based opportunity gap, the field still lacks sophisticated understanding of what works for whom and why. Most research on early childhood education has focused greater attention on evaluating programs than on identifying the particular ingredients in these programs that produce significant improvements in children’s learning. While it is important to find out whether the program worked, I am more interested in why Head Start worked. In 2002, the Congress mandated the national Head Start Impact Study (HSIS)—an experimental study of a nationally representative sample of 4,440 preschoolers, with participating children being randomized to an offer of attendance in Head Start versus assignment to a control condition, under which no offer was made. The HSIS found that an offer had small impacts on children’s language and literacy. While Head Start’s two-generation approach has emphasized engaging parents in their children’s early learning from its inception in 1965, we do not know to date whether an offer of Head Start improves parental investments, and whether this, in turn, augments the positive effects of the offer on children’s outcomes. Additionally, the HSIS reported that an offer of program attendance produced larger impacts among Spanish-speaking Dual Language Learners (DLL), but the question remains why these particular children benefitted from the program more than did their English-speaking peers. To unpack the mechanisms that mediated these detected effects—through parenting practices—I employed two complementary analytic strategies: [1] multilevel structural-equation modeling and [2] average causal mediation effect estimation, by reanalyzing the original study data. A central aim of my research was to: (a) investigate whether ITT effects on early child language and literacy were mediated through parenting practices, and (b) conducting multi-group comparisons to test whether the impact of these mediational pathways differed by the child’s language status. I found that, on average, assignment increased children’s vocabulary and reading scores (e.s. =+.13; e.s.=+.17, respectively). The randomized offer also increased the frequency of parent-child language-and-literacy activities (e.s.= +.25). In addition to the causal impacts of the program, I observed causal mediation effects, and these mediational effects of program impact on both vocabulary and reading scores differed by DLL status. / Human Development and Education