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Literacy Practices of Student-Athletes: The Ethics of Repetition, Surveillance and Breakdown examines how a group of male basketball players as a small Division II university in the southeast United States used and were affected by literacy in their academic, athletic and social lives. The driving question that guided data collection was How do the physical learning and material conditions of high level basketball players at Richardson University influence their literacy practices? The impetus for this question was a desire to understand the relationship between the literate activity and moving bodies of these players. In school settings academic training is often conducted in ways that isolate the body from the mind. This ethnography sought to uncover if or how a bifurcation of mind/body occurred amid the training practices of these subjects. To accomplish this task, the study was designed to look at what bodies were doing during "literacy events." "Literacy events," which is borrowed from Barton and Hamilton, functioned as the core unit of analysis of the database. The method for pursuing the primary research question was ethnography. For one academic year I observed, interviewed, took fieldnotes, collected artifacts and supervised photographic literacy logs. Observations were conducted across the campus of Richardson University in three domains of the players' lives - academic, athletic and social domains. Interviews were conducted with individual players and were based off of fieldnotes, observations and the players' photo literacy logs that the players made as a way of documenting samples of their literacy practices. There were four core findings that this study of these student-athletes allows me to state with certainty: (1) these student-athletes' training methods influenced their literacy, (2) these student-athletes have highly sophisticated literacy that reflects their highly sophisticated cognition, and (3) these student-athletes liked their training regimens. The fourth finding can be split into thirds based on the three themes organizing the data of the study - Repetition, Surveillance and Breakdown. And, each of these attests to the highly physical nature of these student-athletes' academic and athletic training; they also indicate the extent to which reading-writing was infused in this training. Repetition was essential to habituating motor-movements as the foundation for being able to move beyond the basic physicality of a literacy event to more critical, higher order engagement. Repetition is not a mindless, rote activity. Repetition is thinking. Surveillance was an effective educational technology for instilling positive literacy habits through a system of control and observation. Breakdown was another educational technology that demonstrated a powerful connection between body and mind, similar to repetition. These three concepts and the conversations that support them illustrate that literacy is not simply a cognitive act; it is not just a way of thinking, but a socially embedded way of acting. / English

This study investigates how translation self-efficacy and metacognitive regulation may predict performance in the emerging translation practice of machine translation post-editing (MTPE) by determining the existence and degree of relationships between self-efficacy, metacognitive regulation strategies, and MTPE performance among translation learners in EFL contexts (Chinese speakers who learn English as a foreign language), as well as how they contextualize the condition and state of mind of student translators completing MTPE tasks. Examining these key variables provides theoretical insights into the cognitive processes involved in MTPE and practical implications for developing skilled translation post-editors. This study's conceptual framework is grounded in Bandura's social cognitive theory (SCT), a causal model where self-efficacy directly and indirectly impacts human behavior through mediating processes like outcome expectations, social support, and self-regulation. Multi-item scales consisting of translation self-efficacy and metacognitive regulation as well as an MTPE test were employed to examine the relationships between the predictor variables and the criterion variable. Multiple linear regression was adopted for data analysis to assess the fit of adapted scales and determine how much variance in MTPE performance was accounted for by individual and combination of predictor variables. Results indicated that metacognitive regulation plays a statistically significant role in MTPE performance, even though the overall predictive power of the model remains moderate. The findings provide implications for improving student performance in MTPE training and contribute to the relatively new body of emerging literature regarding translator self-efficacy, metacognitive abilities, and their development.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore and describe how bilingual programmes are organized and implemented within the unique linguistic and socio-economic case of Qatar. Specifically the thesis explored bilingual programs offered by two types of primary schools in Qatar: international schools and independent schools. Qatar launched a new initiative for educational development in 2001 but with hardly any research linked to these changes. The study was positioned within a qualitative interpretive tradition drawing on elements of ethnography and grounded theory as tools of methodology. However, quantitative methods were also incorporated within the design. The research design is structured within two main phases: phase one included statistical analysis of secondary data investigating three variables: average teaching time in the first and the second language, students’ and teachers’ nationality. Phase two utilized a multi-case study design. One school from each type was examined in depth over a period of nine weeks. Data were collected by means of school documents, interviews, and non-participant observation of English and Arabic classes. The first phase made an initial impression of the model of bilingual education followed by international and independent schools compared to bilingual typologies found in the literature. The analysis of the two cases examined revealed various differences across the two types. Findings reveal that the international school followed a partial immersion type of programme while the independent school followed a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) type of programme. The study reveals that the Qatari bilingual schools context was one of heteroglossia, with three codes in operation: Modern Standard Arabic, Colloquial Arabic dialects and English. Findings reveal that teachers and students in the international school adopt a strict separation policy between the two languages following a monoglossic belief. Language teachers and students in the independent school were found to apply a flexible language policy inside English and Arabic classes. The study revealed a gap between claimed programme features and implementation of these features. An absence of a clear language policy in the schools was also a main finding relating to the practice of these schools. In light of these findings, adopting a clear and explicit language-in-education policy should be a priority for policy makers in Qatar. The study revealed how the diglossia situation in Qatari schools is unique and therefore schools must be aware of the languages at the disposal of students and teachers. Schools must also concentrate on developing academic language skills needed for success in L2 schooling.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Socorro G. Herrera / This quasi-experimental study was designed to measure the effects of a research-based intervention on fourth and fifth grade culturally and linguistically diverse students' vocabulary development. Through the extensive review of literature on vocabulary instruction and second language acquisition, a substantive theoretical framework titled the IBA Framework was developed. The IBA Framework incorporates characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction by accessing students' background knowledge, connecting unknown vocabulary words to known knowledge, ensuring opportunities for meaningful use of the vocabulary words, providing multiple exposures, and focusing on higher-level word knowledge. The IBA Framework also addresses second language acquisition by incorporating the linguistic, academic, cognitive, and sociocultural processes of the prism model. The IBA Intervention, derived from the IBA Framework, examined the affect of targeted vocabulary strategies on the overall vocabulary development of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were utilized for data collection and analysis. Quantitatively, the affect of the IBA Intervention was measured by the Measurement of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment and the Ecobehavioral System for the Contextual Recording of Interactional Bilingual Environments (ESCRIBE). MAP assessment scores were used to measure the overall literacy achievement of CLD students. Analysis of the data indicated that the treatment group made greater gains than the control group. ESCRIBE was used to measure students' overall engagement. The affect of the IBA Intervention was measured by combining the results of three student variables: language initiating/responding behaviors, oral responses, and activity-related responses. The overall engagement scores indicated that CLD students who received the IBA Intervention had higher levels of engagement than the control group. Qualitatively, the affect of the IBA Intervention on students' vocabulary retention was investigated using student documents, participant observation, and informal interviews. The emic perspective that emerged from the data suggested that students in the intervention group demonstrated their vocabulary retention by building vocabulary knowledge, clarifying vocabulary knowledge, extending vocabulary knowledge, and using vocabulary knowledge across settings. Exemplars from each of these categories were provided as evidence of the CLD students' attainment of a deeper level of permanent vocabulary knowledge.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Secondary Education / Jacqueline D. Spears / BeEtta L. Stoney / An ethnographic content analysis was conducted to explore the African American cultural content contained in the text of picture books portraying African Americans published 2001 through 2005. The picture books were limited to beginning readers, stories in rhyme and poetry, historical fiction, fictional biography, and contemporary fiction portraying African Americans and set in the U.S. The books were categorized based on the genre to which they belong and classified as generic books or books with African American cultural content. The African American cultural content in the books in the study was compared to the cultural content contained in picture books in a survey conducted by Rudine Sims Bishop in 1982. Differences between the work of African Americans and non African Americans are discussed. A data collection instrument was constructed and used by several additional raters to test the reliability of the instrument. Each additional rater was given an operational definition for generic books and books with cultural content. The raters were each given one book to evaluate. The research revealed (1) that more than half of the picture books published during the period of this study were classified as generic, (2) in most cases, only the books written by African Americans contained cultural content and (3) more than half of the picture books with cultural content are classified as historical fiction. (4) Although it is possible for a non African American to write an authentic picture book with cultural content, such books are usually the result of in depth research. (5) During the period of this study, not all generic picture books were written by non African Americans; some African American authors choose to write generic books portraying African Americans with minimal content specific to African American culture.