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This paper examines how the attitudes are towards the English education, in a school, among pupils in ninth, eighth, and sixth grade, and if monolingual and bilingual pupils feel that they have any advantages or disadvantages when learning English. This study also describes how teachers influence and establish attitudes among their pupils towards the English education.Both questionnaires and interviews were used in order to collect data valuable for the research questions. The results are thereafter discussed in relation to relevant background information, for example Gardner's (1991) theory about attitudes towards language learning and Ladberg's (1994) theory about second language learning and bilingualism.The results show that pupils' attitudes influence on the English education, that teachers' attitudes influence and establish pupils' attitudes towards the language learning, and that many of the bilingual pupils feel that they have advantages when learning English.

This critical multi-case study involves a group of migrant eikaiwa (English conversation) school teachers in Japan. The purpose of the study was to investigate the teachers’ positions and treatment in the commercial English language teaching (ELT) sector and their adaptation to their work environment and the host country, through applying the concepts of capital, habitus, and field. The issues of who should be employed as teachers, to whom learners should be exposed to as model language users, and whose English should be taught that are problematized in this study have implications beyond the commercial ELT industry. This study also sheds light on the eikaiwa industry’s practices, in particular regarding teacher recruitment and marketing. The study is timely because the impact of this industry has grown significantly as the formal educational sector has increased the outsourcing of ELT courses to the commercial sector in recent years. Teachers from private language academies have been dispatched to high schools and universities, which has blurred the line between the commercial sector and formal educational institutions. The core cases investigated in the study were six multilingual native and nonnative English-speaking migrant teachers from diverse national, ethnic, and socio-cultural backgrounds. For triangulation purposes, data were collected not only in individual interviews and emails exchanged with the six core participants, but also from interviews and emails with 10 managers and private language academy owners, 13 teachers who were noncore participants, and from eikaiwa job postings. Managers and school owners, mainly male native English speakers, were included for their perspectives and insights into the sector, in particular, staffing decisions and marketing, to which most teachers were not privy. Data analysis draws on Bourdieusian “thinking tools” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 160), with the focus on gains, losses, and conversions of different types of capital and manifestations and transformations of teachers’ habitus in new fields. Capital here refers to convertible resources that people have access to, such as educational degrees and social connections. Habitus is one’s “feel for the game” (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 25) that influences an individual’s perceptions and behavior (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 86-87). The participants’ habitus was a driving force that strongly affected their adaptation to the eikaiwa industry and Japan. However, habitus did not operate independently on its own. It functioned in interplay with capital and the field that rejected some but embraced other teachers. Participants’ English as a first language, Western cultural background, and White race, which were positively evaluated in their ELT contexts in Japan, influenced the way the participants were treated in the industry and resulted in different outcomes for them. The native English-speaking teachers of Asian descent were racially discriminated, but they relatively easily found ELT work because of their nationalities and native English-speaking status. The nonnative English-speaking participants who were also people of color were discriminated against not only based on their race and nationality. They were also discriminated against because of their nonnative English-speaking status. In contrast, White nonnative English-speaking participants were frequently rejected because of their first language and nationality. Due to the insecure nature of contract work and few opportunities for career development in the commercial sector, most participants were unable to build stable careers in ELT. Whereas some had limited success in finding an administrative position within the commercial sector, most participants felt trapped in it, unable to gain substantial convertible capital during their teaching years. The participants’ choices regarding their employment and further migration were partly determined by the stakeholders in the field, and outcomes widely varied for the participants. By the end of the study, two nonnative English-speaking participants left ELT and Japan. Two native English speakers found non-teaching work in Japan. One native and one nonnative English-speaking participant, both female, continued teaching even though their ELT jobs were not their ultimate professional goals. / Teaching & Learning

The purpose of this qualitative study was to employ a sociocultural, anti-deficit, and dialogic rural theoretical framework to examine the ways teachers seek to support the lived experiences of rural adolescent students in the secondary English language arts classroom as students make meaning with the content of the curriculum. This study worked with the social constructs of rurality (Azano, 2011; Azano and Biddle, 2019; Corbett, 2007; Gruenewald, 2008), critical literacy (Freire, 1990, 2018; Gee, 1990), and learning-centered pedagogy (Fecho et al., 2021) to develop insights into ways that teachers navigate opportunities and challenges in contemporary rural schools. The study focused on secondary English language arts teachers teaching in rural school districts. The participant selection criteria included being employed fulltime as an English language arts teacher at a secondary rural high school, having taught for at least three years, and identifying as teaching from a learning-centered pedagogical stance. All three participants taught at rural North Carolina high schools. The method used was adapted from the three-phase interview approach (Seidman, 1990), with an intake interview, a midpoint interview, and a final interview. The midpoint interview was adapted to consist of three separate post-classroom observation interviews. The post-classroom observation interviews were preceded each round by a co-planning lesson and a classroom observation. There were three stages of data generation, spanning from February 2021 to May 2021. To learn about participants' experiences supporting rural student voices, triangulation (Guba and Lincoln, 1981) was used through multiple data sources: teacher interviews, collaborative lesson planning, classroom observations, post-observation conferences, field notes, memos, and email correspondences. Thematic analysis (Maxwell, 2013) was used to analyze and code the data. From the data analysis, three understandings were generated about the ways in which rural English language arts teachers support students in the classroom. Participants were (1) supporting student voice through instructional design, (2) attending to biases and seeking to dialogue within the classroom, and (3) utilizing lived experiences and literacies. The implications of the study include that rural students can face stereotypes due to the deficit mindset of rurality (Azano et al., 2021a, 2021b, Azano and Biddle, 2019; Theobald and Wood, 2010) and that the utilization of bringing their lived experiences into the classroom can serve as a means to help them make meaning with the content of the classroom. The English language arts classroom can be a space for students to be supported through the use of a learning-centered stance that seeks to collapse traditional hierarchies in the classroom (Fecho et al., 2021). / Doctor of Philosophy / The purpose of this study was to use a sociocultural, anti-deficit, and dialogic rural theoretical framework to examine ways teachers can draw on the lived experiences of rural adolescent students in secondary English language arts classrooms as students make meaning with curriculum content. This study worked with the social constructs of rurality (Azano, 2011; Azano and Biddle, 2019; Corbett, 2007; Gruenewald, 2008), critical literacy (Freire, 1990, 2018; Gee, 1990), and learning-centered pedagogy (Fecho et al., 2021) to develop insights into ways that teachers navigate opportunities and challenges in contemporary rural schools. Participant criteria included being employed fulltime as an English language arts teacher at a rural secondary school, having taught for at least three years, and The study's three participants were rural North Carolina secondary English language arts teachers. Utilizing an adapted three-phase interview process, the study had three stages for each participant: (1) an intake interview, (2) three rounds per participant of co-planning, classroom observations, and post-observation conferences, and (3) a final interview. Thematic analysis (Maxwell, 2013) was used to analyze and code the data. Understandings were that participants, in their success and challenges of supporting rural student voices (1) supported student voice through instructional design, (2) attended to biases and seeking to dialogue within the classroom, and (3) utilized the lived experiences and literacies.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第25359号 / 人博第1101号 / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)教授 STEWARTTimothy William, 教授 柳瀬 陽介, 准教授 笹尾 洋介, 准教授 DALSKYDavid Jerome, 教授 Lori Zenuk-Nishide / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

Thesis advisor: Jon M. Wargo / Thesis advisor: Patrick Proctor / Book banning has exploded in recent years. Conflicts over what texts belong in schools have caused rifts in communities around the nation. Within English language arts (ELA) classrooms specifically, many teachers have been under scrutiny with local groups and national organizations demanding that some teachers be monitored, fired, or even arrested. Backdropped by this socio-historical moment wherein calls for book censorship and attacks against school teachers are commonplace, this three-article dissertation joins the growing scholarship that explores the challenges that arise when teachers and students dare to address topics of race, racism, gender, and sexuality in the ELA classroom. Designed as an ethnographic case study, this dissertation explores how one White ELA teacher and her sixth-grade students engaged with two regularly banned novels in a racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse classroom. The first paper employs critical Whiteness theory to examine the challenges, opportunities, and contextual factors that one White novice teacher encountered as she employed an antiracist approach to literature instruction. It offers a structural understanding of why so many White teachers attempt but fall short of delivering antiracist pedagogy effectively. The second paper traces how three students of Color in the class negotiated their emotions during conversations about race as it emerged within a literature unit. Using critical discourse analysis, I examine how language was mobilized to invite some emotions (e.g., surprise) and inhibit others (e.g., anger), manifesting as “emotional rules” that regulated students' responses to texts. The third paper examines how two LGBTQ+ youths engaged in literacy not only as a medium for identity work, but as a way to speak back to the social, political, and institutional contexts of their schooling. Placing the theatrical performances that queer youth wrote and directed at the center of my analysis, I submit that these literacy activities are a means of understanding how youth see themselves in the world. Taken together, these articles extend the scholarship on how teachers engage their students on issues of difference through literature, raising important questions about how sociopolitical tensions take shape through moments of silence and cheer in the ELA classroom. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teaching, Curriculum, and Society.

The influence of reading ability on cross-language transfer in Mandarin-speaking ninth graders was explored. Each participant's native language (L1-Mandarin Chinese) and second language (L2-English) were assessed. Although the relationship between L1 and L2 reading ability has been discussed in many previous studies, few studies have examined this relationship among L2 readers whose L1 is sharply different from their L2, who are at the junior-high-school age range, and who are learning English in a setting where English is not used in daily communication (e.g., English as a foreign language). To investigate the role of L1 reading competence in the language reading ability transfer, a reformed public examination, called the Basic Competency Test (BCT), was applied in this study. The 30,000 Taiwanese ninth grade participants, randomly selected from the pool of the national examination involved in a consecutive six-year period, were considered as a whole and then disaggregated into six groups based on the year they took the BCT. A preliminary analysis was about reliability coefficients of twelve examinations (six in Mandarin Chinese reading, and six in English reading) used in the present study. Scores from both Mandarin Chinese and English reading comprehension tests were subjected to descriptive, correlational, and regressional analyses. Both correlation and regression analyses revealed congruent results that provided support for the positive influence of Mandarin Chinese reading competence on English reading ability, that is, L2 reading ability is dependent on L1 reading competence. The finding supported the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis. In addition, participants' gender and school district also played statistically significant roles to affect the cross-language transfer of reading ability, whereas the length of time in English exposure had no statistically significant effect on the language reading ability transfer. Thus, cross-language transfer in reading ability was influenced by learners' L1 reading competence, gender, and school district. This suggested educational policy makers in Taiwan that boost native-Chinese speaking students' Mandarin knowledge help support the development of English reading ability. Apparently, if students' L1 reading abilities can be built up more soundly, their L2 reading ability should be easier to acquire.

This embedded case study of an eighth-grade English language arts reading classroom employed an ecological perspective based on Ecological Systems Theory (EST) to examine the ways in which a myriad influences, often conflicting and originating in a variety of settings external to the classroom, intersected in that classroom. The findings from this research point toward the reality of literacy classrooms buffeted by conflicting Discourses around writing that originate in official school structures, as well as the difficulty students and teachers have navigating the tensions created by those conflicts. The focal teacher for this study, a master teacher, navigated these conflicting discourses by being thoughtfully adaptive and balancing policy mandates with her own knowledge of and beliefs about literacy instruction, though she often made instructional decisions at odds with her knowledge and beliefs because she feared lack of compliance with administrative or district mandates risked her job. In this contested atmosphere, the teacher supported students in navigating the myriad literacy practices within the classroom, and the literacy practices from their lives outside of school, using writer's notebooks. These notebooks served as boundary objects because they incorporated a variety of influences and Discourses in a single tool. Even in creating a robust literacy ecology in her classroom through the use of writer's notebooks, thoughtfully adapting to the myriad policy mandates, and having departmental and professional support for her work, she left the school at the end of the year because she could not be the type of teacher she wanted to be in that school. The broader implication of her decision, and the research more generally, is that classrooms are not isolated from the settings within which they are embedded, and those settings often influence the classroom in ways that conflict and create tensions. Teachers and students, then, must make decisions about how to navigate those tensions, often at odds with their knowledge or beliefs. These conflicts and tensions within a classroom can be reduced, or mitigated through communicating, building trust, working toward consensus, and avoiding exercises of power. / text

In Korea, English education in kindergartens has dramatically increased in the last 15 years. As a result, almost all Korean kindergarten students are learning English today. The present study aims to understand Korean parents’, kindergarten teachers’, and kindergarten students’ perceptions of early English-language education (EEE). This study is particularly significant because thus far little research has investigated the perceptions of EEE held by the young learners themselves. Ninety-five participants - 30 kindergarten teachers, 33 parents, and 32 five- and six-year old kindergarten students - were recruited from five kindergartens in four cities in Chung-Nam province, Korea. The parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of EEE were examined through questionnaires, whereas the students’ perceptions of learning English were investigated through multiple data collection methods: a questionnaire, an interview session, and a drawing activity. Questionnaire data gathered from the parents and teachers were quantitatively analyzed, and the data gathered from the kindergarten students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings revealed that the parent and student groups shared more positive attitudes towards EEE than the teacher group. In addition, many more parents and students believed that English education is necessary at the kindergarten level than the teachers did. Concerning kindergarten students’ perceptions, the three data collection methods in this study showed that many kindergarten children consistently held positive attitudes towards learning English. The students were not only interested in learning English, but they also showed high self-confidence in learning English. / Graduate