<p> The development and the implementation of teaching practices remain among the most important challenges for higher education programs; the growing population of international students in U.S. colleges and universities has made this challenge more pressing. Considerable research has addressed the challenges that international students in U.S. colleges and universities encounter but has not addressed the effects of constructivist learning environments on their learning and social outcomes. This dissertation aimed to address the effects of constructivist learning environments on the academic achievement and sense of belonging of international students in U.S. colleges and universities. Path analysis was conducted to test specific hypotheses and sub-hypotheses related to the effects of learning styles preferences, constructivist learning environments, English language skills, students&rsquo; academic level (undergraduate vs. graduate), major geographic region of origin (as a surrogate for ethnicity), age, and gender on actual and perceived learning achievement and also on sense of belonging. The study examined data from 80 international undergraduate and graduate students in a large private university in down state New York. Three scales were developed: (a) Wahba Constructivist Learning Environment Spectrum Scale, (b) Wahba International Students Sense of Belonging Scale, and (c) Wahba International Students Learning Style Inventory. Findings indicated that constructivist learning environments have positive effects on international students&rsquo; perceived learning achievement and sense of belonging. Future research recommended to extend the study&rsquo;s findings to consider the perspective of teaching faculty and higher education administrators.</p><p></p>

<p> This study focused on how lesson planning takes place at the college level in contrast to how the process takes place in grades K through 12. The study was conducted through a survey and interviews to English professors at the College of General Studies at the University of Puerto Rico in R&iacute;o Piedras. In order to conduct the research, factors such as academic background, teaching experience, context, age, teaching practices, motivation, and syllabus design were considered.</p><p> Data collected showed that planning does take place at the college level, first in the form of a semester-long syllabus and then in daily/weekly lesson plans that include varying degrees of detail. Lesson planning helps improve teacher performance by providing confidence. It improves student learning outcomes by helping them better understand the materials. Both, teachers and students, benefit from the focus and guidance planning provides.</p><p> Recommendations include creating teacher training programs in institutions of higher educations to provide the support teachers need to perform at their best and conducting further research in other departments, colleges, or campuses to see how planning takes places outside English courses.</p>

The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether the setting of the verb movement parameter in L2 is dependent on agreement acquisition. The Optionality hypothesis (Eubank, 1994) is tested by examining the L2 grammar of Chinese learners of English. To test this hypothesis, the sentence matching procedure originally described in Freedman and Forster (1985) is used. It is found that no current theory truly accounts for the results that are obtained.

<p> Given that reading at the third-grade level by the end of third grade is a predictor of future academic success, the purpose of this study was to determine if receiving or revoking English Language (EL) services had an impact on students&rsquo; ability to read at a third-grade level by the end of third grade. In this quantitative study, the scores of students (N= 258) from a suburban school district were examined to determine if EL service status, gender, ethnicity, and family income significantly impacted students&rsquo; reading fluency scores.</p><p> Results of the study indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in reading achievement scores between students who accepted and who revoked EL services. The study also found that gender, ethnicity, and family income did not affect the relationship between EL service status and students&rsquo; ability to read at third-grade level by the end of third grade. </p><p> Results of this study indicated that the use of pull-out EL instruction did not have a statistically significant impact on students&rsquo; ability to read at a third-grade level by the end of third grade. Although the results were not statistically significant, there was a pattern wherein proportionally more students who accepted EL services met the third-grade target (81 %) in comparison to those students who revoked EL services (76%), suggesting that EL services do have some impact on students&rsquo; ability to meet reading achievement goals.</p><p> Results of this study indicated that pull-out EL instruction, which is one of the many types of instruction commonly used for EL instruction, should be examined more closely in order to determine its effectiveness in helping EL students reach reading achievement goals.</p>

No description available.

<p> Given the disproportionate numbers of English Language Learners (ELLs) in Special Education, the method by which students are being assessed for Special Education must be examined further. Because these practices have real consequences for students&rsquo; educational placements in schools, it is necessary to understand what factors are important in conduction a non-discriminatory assessment.</p><p> Currently, there is literature on how to conduct a non-discriminatory assessment; however, there is very little information known about how these practices are or are not being implemented in the schools. As such, the purpose of this study is to utilize a survey study to gain an understanding of what is the school psychologist&rsquo;s role in the evaluation of Spanish speaking English Language Learners for Special Education in the schools.</p><p> Based on the findings of this study, there is a need for a formal training for school psychologist once they are out in the field. Currently, the majority of the training received was through their graduate program. Furthermore, there is a need for a formal training or certification for bilingual school psychologists. Due to the limited number of bilingual school psychologist in the field, formal training must also be developed for interpreters working with monolingual school psychologists on non-discriminatory assessments.</p>

<p> This study examined the effectiveness of an evidenced-based reading intervention, Word Sort, with bilingual students receiving dual immersion education. This study expands upon the existing research on Word Sort by examining its impact on bilingual students&rsquo; reading fluency. The following research questions was proposed: Is Word Sort an effective intervention with bilingual (dual immersion) students who are struggling early readers? A visual analysis and effect size of participants&rsquo; data across baseline and treatment conditions found that all three participants&rsquo; Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) improved. This suggests that Word Sort is a promising intervention for bilingual, dual immersion students with reading delays.</p>

This dissertation presents the development of the Kachruvian paradigm of world Englishes and sheds light on keynotions in each developmental stage of Braj Kachru’s research. It intends to answer the question: how was the Kachruvian paradigm of world Englishes formed? Thiswas not the initial aim of the project. Instead, its significance has two phases, a pre-project and post-project phase. The pre-project goal was an attempt to clarify various misunderstandings or misrepresentations of world Englishes as a field of study as well as a sociolinguistic phenomenon. However, when approaching the completion of this dissertation, the actual significance (the post-project) gradually shifted. It evolved into a working answer to the research question, that is what events and influences reveal the process of the development of what has come to be known as the Kachruvian paradigm of world Englishes. The beginning of the process can be dated back to Braj Kachru’s graduate school years, when he hesitated to affirm the linguistic and sociolinguistic existence of Indian English; his death marked the end of his development of the paradigm, but the field of world Englishes, which had reached global interest long before then, has continued to cultivate scholars of English varieties around the world. The description of the development of the paradigm undertaken in this dissertation is a close review of Kachru’s work over five decades (the 1960s to the 2000s).

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Jeffrey T. Zacharakis / This quantitative study surveyed both the faculty and international undergraduate non-native English speaking (NNES) undergraduate students to see what they perceived as being useful to the students’ learning. This research was done at Kansas State University (K-State), which is Midwestern land grant university. The research consisted of two surveys, one for faculty teaching undergraduate students and one for international undergraduate NNES students. The survey instruments were created by the researcher based on literature about teaching NNES students, first year college students, and student-centered teaching practices. The survey asked the participants to choose how useful they perceived different activities to be on a scale ranging from one (extremely useful) to five (not at all useful). The survey items on the two surveys mirrored one another, so that the results could be compared. The researcher collected and analyzed the data from the surveys. The data was first analyzed to find the descriptive statistics for each data set. The mean for each of the six variables (the need for explicit instruction, the prevention of plagiarism, the use of visual aids, the usefulness of in-class activities, the usefulness of out-of-class activities, and the use of linguistic modifications) was calculated, as well as the mean for each item. For all the variables, the student mean scores were lower than faculty mean scores, indicating that the student participants perceived the survey items as more useful than faculty did. Each item pair was analyzed using a t-tests to see if any item had a statistically significance difference, using p < .05. There were 36 pairs and 24 pairs were found to be statistically significant.

<p>Applying Kramsch?s (2012) notion of the multilingual learner as a subjective being, this study explores how South Korean elementary students construct their investment (Norton Peirce, 1995) in EFL learning in relation to their economic, social, and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) as these emerge in their interactional patterns in their EFL classroom. Also, it explores how students perceive the introduction of student-centered instructional strategies and how they construct their investment in EFL learning before and after the introduction of these strategies. The setting for the study was a sixth-grade classroom in a public elementary school located in the central district of a major South Korean metropolitan area. Of the twenty-two EFL learners in the class, ten were selected as participants in the study, and of these, three were chosen as focal students on the basis of their status as low-achieving learners. Data collection methods included ethnographic classroom observations, non-structured interviews with the learners, and their writing and drawing artifacts. For data analysis, thematic coding was employed to generate codes based on two interviews with each learner, which were then categorized to generate themes (Salda?a, 2016). Three principal findings emerged: 1) learners? EFL proficiency, peer relations, parental linguistic support, and linguistic support outside of the school provided significant forms of economic, social, and cultural capital in the EFL classroom; 2) the learners? economic, social, and cultural capital played important roles in their linguistic achievement, but were not as relevant to their perceptions of and attitudes toward their EFL learning; and 3) the students reported that student-centered instructional strategies helped them to acquire self-confidence, strong resolve to learn English, and positive attitudes towards EFL learning. The instructional strategies appeared to be particularly effective in promoting the construction of investment by students with relatively low levels of social, economic and cultural capital. The study concludes that short-term applications of student-centered instructional strategies appear to provide some benefits to students who struggle with EFL learning. Implications include recommendations for further research into short-term and long-term applications of student-centered instructional strategies and their relationship to elementary students? construction of investment.