Texas has one of the highest populations of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the U.S., with a complex system for their placement, education, and assessment. Spanish speaking, Hispanic ELLs represent a large proportion of this population. The long-term academic achievement of these ELLs identified in elementary is not well known, especially under the policy changes of No Child Left Behind. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, this study compares student achievement, as measured by high-stakes testing, of Hispanic ELLs enrolled in Bilingual Education, English as a Second Language, and their non-ELL, demographically similar peers. Data will be examined at four time points spanning 3rd-9th grade, to suggest implications of Texas educational policy on student achievement. / text

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated that school districts and schools ensure that English Language Learners (ELLs) are provided with equitable opportunities and experiences that support student success academically. However, many ELL students have faced challenges at school, have not been academically successful, and struggle to read on grade level. NCLB has also mandated that elementary schools give parents the tools needed to support their children's learning in the home. Researchers have supported the importance of parental involvement in the academic success of children. The purpose of this study was to determine whether parents' knowledge of reading strategies and interventions increase after participating in a series of workshops specifically designed for the parents of English Language Learners. The professional development activities were delivered in a series of three workshops from March 26 to April 16 of 2011 for three hours each Saturday. Results indicated that pare

No description available.

Using a qualitative bricolage approach (Kincheloe, n.d., 2008), this study explores the everyday school life of immigrant students enrolled in an Advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom in a high school in southwest Virginia. The overarching objective of this study is to examine how these students"five from Mexico, three from Honduras, and one from China" experience school. I present my research in two manuscripts: "Just Like Me: How Immigrant English Language Learners Experience a Rural High School and "I'm NOT Stupid!" The Trouble with JanCarlos. In Just Like Me, I use figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998) and positioning theory (Davies, 2000; Harre & van Langenhove, 1999) as analytical frameworks to present how the students rely on their positions as English language learners in an ESL program, on the ESL faculty, and on one another to co-construct a variety of practices that create opportunities for agency in the school space. I describe how they co-construct a world, vis-a-vis their everyday practices, in and through which, they navigate the institution, meet academic needs, and establish networks of care. I also examine the "dissonant threads""elements of data that resist perfect codification"to deepen analysis and to portray a complex portrait of ESL II (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). In I'm NOT Stupid, I trouble the school experiences of JanCarlos, a student in the advanced ESL class. Using dialogue and reflexive internal dialogue, I story two events that altered the trajectory of his school life"an emotional argument with the ESL teacher and punishment for drawing graffiti on a bathroom wall. I present how each of these events represented "critical incidents" (Tripp, 1998; Webster & John, 2010) in my research as they interrupted my objective stance and altered my interpretations (Poulos, 2009). As I "connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political" (Ellis, 2004, xix), I use autoethnography to critically examine each event. As I watched events unfold, I routinely asked the relational ethical question""What should I do now?" (Ellis, 2007, p. 4). In so doing, I make transparent my position and power in creating knowledge (Kincheloe, McLaren, & Steinberg, 2012). / Ph. D.

Estima-se que cerca de 12% dos corantes sintéticos têxteis se perdem entre os processos de produção e utilização, sendo dificil a avaliação do impacto gerado pela industria de manufatura ao meio ambiente. A benzidina, um composto reconhecidamente cancerígeno e mutagênico está presente em algumas centenas de composições de tintas listadas no color index. Apesar de muitos paises proibirem o uso da benzidina, como é o caso dos EUA que desde 1973 só permitem a sua produção para consumo próprio das empresas produtoras, países como o Brasil não possuem um controle tão eficiente da produção e uso de corantes a base de benzidina, sendo encontrada até mesmo em medicamentos de uso pediátrico. Optou-se por verificar a presença de benzidina nos córregos do Tijuco Preto e do Gregório porque em São Carlos existem duas industrias têxteis que dispõe os seus efluentes nos mesmos. Neste trabalho foi empregado o método de extração líquido-líquido em pH 9,5 para a determinação da benzidina em amostras de água. Foi utilizada a cromatografia gasosa acoplada a espectrometria de massas para detectar e quantificar a benzidina nas amostras de água dos córregos do Tijuco Preto e do Gregório. Foi verificada a presença de benzidina nas amostras de água do córrego do Tijuco Preto e do córrego do Gregório nas concentrações da ordem de 0,0007 e 0,0006 mg L-1 respectivamente. / It is estimated that approximately 12% of synthetic textile dyes are lost between production and use, which makes the evaluation of the environmental impact of the textile industry difficult. Benzidine is a recognized carcinogen and mutagen, which can be found in a wide variety of dyes listed in the Color Index. A number of countries have banned the use of benzidines. This is true for USA (1973), which only permits production of benzidine for a companys own consumption. However, countries like Brazil do not have such an efficient control over the production and use of benzidine-based dyes, which can even be found in pediatric medicines. In this study, the presence of benzidines in the Tijuco Preto and Gregório streams (São Carlos city) was verified. These waterways were chosen due to the fact that two textile industries discharge their wastewater into these watercourses. In this study the liquid-liquid extraction method at pH 5 was employed for sample preparation and gas chromatography coupled with a mass spectrometer (GC-MS) was used to detect and quantify benzidines in the collected water samples. The presence of benzidines was verified in both the Tijuco Preto and Gregório streams at concentrations of 0.0006 and 0.0007 mg L-1, respectively.

Estima-se que cerca de 12% dos corantes sintéticos têxteis se perdem entre os processos de produção e utilização, sendo dificil a avaliação do impacto gerado pela industria de manufatura ao meio ambiente. A benzidina, um composto reconhecidamente cancerígeno e mutagênico está presente em algumas centenas de composições de tintas listadas no color index. Apesar de muitos paises proibirem o uso da benzidina, como é o caso dos EUA que desde 1973 só permitem a sua produção para consumo próprio das empresas produtoras, países como o Brasil não possuem um controle tão eficiente da produção e uso de corantes a base de benzidina, sendo encontrada até mesmo em medicamentos de uso pediátrico. Optou-se por verificar a presença de benzidina nos córregos do Tijuco Preto e do Gregório porque em São Carlos existem duas industrias têxteis que dispõe os seus efluentes nos mesmos. Neste trabalho foi empregado o método de extração líquido-líquido em pH 9,5 para a determinação da benzidina em amostras de água. Foi utilizada a cromatografia gasosa acoplada a espectrometria de massas para detectar e quantificar a benzidina nas amostras de água dos córregos do Tijuco Preto e do Gregório. Foi verificada a presença de benzidina nas amostras de água do córrego do Tijuco Preto e do córrego do Gregório nas concentrações da ordem de 0,0007 e 0,0006 mg L-1 respectivamente. / It is estimated that approximately 12% of synthetic textile dyes are lost between production and use, which makes the evaluation of the environmental impact of the textile industry difficult. Benzidine is a recognized carcinogen and mutagen, which can be found in a wide variety of dyes listed in the Color Index. A number of countries have banned the use of benzidines. This is true for USA (1973), which only permits production of benzidine for a companys own consumption. However, countries like Brazil do not have such an efficient control over the production and use of benzidine-based dyes, which can even be found in pediatric medicines. In this study, the presence of benzidines in the Tijuco Preto and Gregório streams (São Carlos city) was verified. These waterways were chosen due to the fact that two textile industries discharge their wastewater into these watercourses. In this study the liquid-liquid extraction method at pH 5 was employed for sample preparation and gas chromatography coupled with a mass spectrometer (GC-MS) was used to detect and quantify benzidines in the collected water samples. The presence of benzidines was verified in both the Tijuco Preto and Gregório streams at concentrations of 0.0006 and 0.0007 mg L-1, respectively.

This study investigated the effect of one semester of ESOL education on preservice teachers by examining their perceived knowledge and skill in working with English Language Learner (ELL) students, their attitude toward having ELL students in their mainstream classrooms, and what classroom methods they perceive as effective in their ESOL preservice education courses. Data for this study were collected from pre- and post-course attitudinal surveys during one semester of course work, from participants at two specific points in their educational experience; participants in the (1) introductory and (2) final TESOL course. There were 293 participants who took the pre-, and 273 who took the post-course survey, from a total of 513 preservice teachers. This represents approximately a 57% participation rate on the pre- and 53% on the post-course survey. Little is known about the effect that ESOL preservice education has on preservice teachers' attitudes toward ELL students, and no studies known to the investigator have examined the methods of an ESOL preservice program to see preservice teachers' perceptions of the effect of these methods. The effect of the following independent variables were used: (a) course (initial and final ESOL course), and (b) time (pre- and post-course). A new survey instrument was developed that identified the following factors which were used as dependent variables: (a) perception of ESOL knowledge and skill (PEKS), (b) attitude toward inclusion (ATI), and (c) perceived effectiveness of instructional methods (PEIM). Significant differences were found regarding: (1) PEKS by course and time, and (2) PEIM by course. No differences were found for the variable ATI.

This study examined the unique contributions of morphological awareness and phonological recoding to word decoding, reading comprehension, and reading vocabulary for 197 Spanish-speaking English language learners enrolled in the fifth grade. The study also explored the contribution of phonological recoding, measured by accuracy on a pseudo-word decoding task, to the prediction of the same components of reading achievement. Specifically the study explored whether the contribution of phonological recoding changed when morphological awareness and oral vocabulary (a mediator of reading achievement) were added as predictors. To examine unique contributions, morphological awareness was separated from phonological and orthographic confounds present in opaque morphological relationships by using structural equation modeling to construct a latent variable stemming from the shared variance of four morphological tasks with different levels of morphological transparency, and therefore different phonological and orthographic processing demands. A latent variable of phonological recoding was also created. Findings indicated that when controlling for phonological recoding, morphological awareness made a significant and meaningful contribution to passage comprehension and reading vocabulary, but not word decoding with oral vocabulary acting as a significant mediator of this relationship. The study also found that phonological recoding was a significant predictor of each reading outcome when morphological awareness was not included as a predictor, but only significantly predicted word reading when controlling for morphological awareness. Significance of these findings to research and the need for additional morphological instruction within educational settings are discussed.

The purpose of this research was to examine the ways in which Korean families of English Language Learners (ELLs) and teachers supported literacy in young children, as well as the kinds of interactions between families and teachers that supported ELL children's literacy development. The sample for this study consisted of four Korean ELL students attending public early childhood programs in Texas, their teachers and families. A constructivist grounded theory-based approach to data generation was employed, utilizing a wide variety of data collection methods such as questionnaires, interviews, observations, photography, field notes, and video recording. Grounded analysis, content analysis, and narrative analysis were then used in order to analyze the data. The case analysis showed that the parents and teachers did their best using their own resources within their own contexts. However, their educational goals and practices were not noticed or shared by each other. The families' and teacher's challenges and limited resources resulted in the creation of invisible expectations of the other parties. However, by watching video clips about literacy practices and reading handouts about each person's literacy values, goals, experiences, and photo projects, the families and teachers recognized each other's literacy resources, negotiated different expectations, and mediated communication channels to facilitate ELL children's literacy development. In the cross-case analysis, one major theme emerged: the search for understanding two different social and cultural contexts to find an overlapping resource to support ELL children's literacy learning. In detail, the more sophisticated emergent description of literacy support of the Korean family participants was provided through the lenses of the sociocultural approach, bidirectionality, and intergenerational trajectories. With regard to the construction of literacy by the teacher participants, I found that behind their support is their own perception of a bilingual child: monolingual viewpoint vs. bilingual viewpoint. Furthermore, the teachers' bilingualism was related to parental involvement in the school curriculum. The analysis then found an overlapping resource to use to enhance ELL students' learning: the practice of classroom book reading. Finally, recommendations for future applications of the Intergenerational Literacy Connection (ILC) model and some future directions for research are also discussed.

This qualitative study centered on science instruction and learning that occurred in a Title I elementary school in a suburban district in southeast Texas. Twelve teachers were interviewed in order to understand their perceptions of their classroom practices in terms of science instruction and learning for English Language Learners (ELL). This study also analyzed information gathered from teacher lesson plan and classroom observations. The participants' awareness of the instructional practices necessary for ELL student achievement in science was evident through analysis of interview transcripts. However, after observation of actual classroom instruction, it became apparent that the teaching and learning in most classrooms was not reflective of this awareness. This study proposes that this disconnect may be a result of a lack of quality professional development available to the teachers. The study also outlines and describes the characteristics of quality professional development and its relationship to focused instruction and continuous student improvement.