Most of the studies conducted on bilingual education emphasize current educational problems. Instructional, administrative, fiscal, and political issues have highlighted the development of serious attempts to produce research accounts of the history of bilingual education in the United States. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to find an accurate and global account of the legal struggle that allowed bilingual education to survive years of obstacles, intolerance, and success. Without utilization of recollected information on the legal process across the nation dealing with bilingual educational issues, it is rather difficult to make an objective assessment on the legal status of bilingual education within the educational and legal boundaries. This study focuses on the historical repercussions of the laws, consent decrees, and enactments favoring bilingual education across the country, specifically, the impact of those legislations that, according to the researcher's estimation, went beyond the notion of responding to political pressure. The notion of responding to the educational needs of linguistic minority students and the responsibility to a large constituency that would not understand the bilingual education concept produces the middle-road solution called "bilingual education" to pamper an everlasting educational problem. To explain the present situation of bilingual education, in general, and in Massachusetts, in particular, an historical sequence of the most important events affecting education is covered. An historical legal framework is included to provide a better understanding of the nation's educational view through the law and how cultural diversity has affected the development of education nationally. Major legal cases, as well as other legislation in favor of bilingual education, is explored in detail. After reviewing the history of laws, enactments, and consent decrees, and observing the present situation of bilingual education in this country, one has to conclude that bilingual programs have been programmed for failure. This study will enhance the information base of educators, parents, community activists, and others who need to work with linguistic minority students coming from educational systems that have denied them the right to learn. Furthermore, the intent of this dissertation is to put forth information central to the development of initiatives to aid parents, students, and educators in overcoming obstacles created by unclear bilingual laws and biased to bilingualism politicians or school administrators.

This dissertation describes a qualitative case study which examined the process through which one Quaker elementary school, Brinton Friends School (BFS), is becoming a multicultural, anti-racist institution. The research was conducted over a four-month period in 1990 to explore how a school founded on spiritual principles integrates a multicultural change process. Through interviews, observations, and document analysis three aspects of the school's experience were investigated to provide a glimpse at an on-going change process. The first was a description of the concrete steps the school is taking to achieve its goals. These include participation in a multicultural self-assessment program created by the National Association of Independent Schools, racism awareness workshops for all staff, and an analysis of institutional policies and practices to ensure equity. Emphasis has been placed on creating a racially and culturally heterogeneous community. The second aspect explored in this research was the way staff, particularly White staff, feel about this process. Although some forms of resistance were observed, staff at the school are generally supportive of the multicultural change effort. The third area of research was an examination of the specific ways in which a multicultural, anti-racist focus is woven into the Quaker spiritual values of the school. Some tensions were reported between these values and the multicultural, anti-racist process. This research examined whether intrinsic conflicts exist between these two value systems. The key themes of community, conflict, and spirituality emerged during the research at BFS. These three themes form individual yet interrelated perspectives on the environment of the school and its change process. The feeling of community at BFS was cited as important to participants in this study. This sense of community has been nurtured in part by the Quaker spiritual principles at the heart of the school. Yet as in any community of people there are conflicts. At BFS these include how to solve problems, how to be inclusive, and how to define what spirituality means for the school. This research utilizes these themes to provide a picture of one Quaker school in the process of change.

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to develop an enriched understanding of the visions that guide a select group of organizational and social change practitioners, and (2) to develop an enriched understanding of the strategies they employ to enact those visions. The following cases were explored in this study: Case #1: Bailey W. Jackson and Rita Hardiman--Multicultural Organizational Development. Case #2: Frederick A. Miller, Judith H. Katz and Catherine S. Buntaine--Creating High Performing Inclusive Organizations$\sp{\rm SM}$. Case #3: Elsie Y. Cross--Managing Diversity. The six participants in this study are pioneers in their field. Their work consists of the synthesis of a specific organizational change methodology--a total systems change approach--with a social change agenda. Their intent is to challenge institutionalized oppression and to create healthy socially diverse and non-oppressive organizations. Their efforts are helping to advance the production of theory and the development of a practice for utilizing a total systems change approach to address social diversity and social justice issues in organizations. The data collected for this study was drawn from qualitative methodologies. The source of data collection included elite, open-ended, in-depth interviews, observation of the participants and review of pertinent documents. An interview guide was utilized to outline topic areas that were covered in each interview. The basis for data analysis was a thematic approach. The outcomes of this study reflect the four themes that emerged during data analysis: (1) A profile of this select group of practitioners, (2) Their perceptions of the emerging practice of working with social diversity and social justice issues in organizations, (3) The shared qualities of the visions that guide their work, and (4) Descriptions of the total systems change strategies that they employ to create organizational and social change.

Participation in community development work has been emphasized since the late 1960's; Participatory Evaluation (PE), however, was not introduced until the mid-1970's. At about that same time, Participatory Research (PR) was seeking to help shift the ownership and control of community development work and social research back into the hands of the local community. One important contribution of PR, has been the recognition of the importance of indigenous knowledge. As indigenous knowledge and indigenous practices were being recovered by communities during PR, it soon became evident that the Western model of development--and its emphasis on the transfer of Western technological knowledge--was often insufficient, inappropriate, or culturally unacceptable. Although evaluation practitioners increased the participation of the local community in the evaluation of its own development work, PE was often limited to "participation-in-evaluation" (PiE). The ownership and control of the evaluation process often stayed within the hands of the evaluation "experts" often using Western evaluation methods. The first part of the study examines the emergence and evolution of PE in community development work during the past three decades. The study then explores the indigenous evaluation practices of the Gbaya people of western Central African Republic, where the researcher has lived and worked with health and community development since 1982. Ethnographic interviewing of key informants explored the following questions: What are the indigenous evaluation practices of the Gbaya? How is information gathered and used? Who can be involved in decision-making, in what contexts? The study further investigates Gbaya forms of evaluation through the participant observation of the participatory evaluation of a Lutheran church-sponsored development program in western Central African Republic. A framework for better understanding PE, including the factors of "power", "facilitation methods", and "previous training and experience", are also presented. Using criteria from the framework, the following sub-categories of PE are offered: Participation-in-Evaluation (PiE), Less Participatory Evaluation (LPE), and Highly Participatory Evaluation (HiPE). Finally, a "Gbaya Way of Decision-making" is presented as one model of indigenous evaluation. This is followed by recommendations to practitioners of PE, as well as recommendations for the further research of Indigenous Evaluation.

The silence and invisibility of gay and lesbian educators has perpetuated the oppression of heterosexism in our schools. Some affected areas are educational policy, curriculum, and the school environment itself. Gay and lesbian students and educators are at risk in most schools because safe working and learning environments do not always exist for those who are not heterosexual. In 1992, Massachusetts Governor William Weld created the nation's first Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth to investigate the epidemic of suicides by gay and lesbian adolescents. School environments, with regard to homophobia, were outlined. Students and teachers testified of verbal and physical abuse of gay and lesbian students. The Safe Schools Program was created to address these issues and to promote safe and supportive school environments to assist gay and lesbian students in realizing their full learning potential. Through in-depth interviewing, data was gathered from "explicitly out" (Griffin, 1992) gay and lesbian educators who work at Massachusetts schools participating in the Safe Schools Program. From the interview data, portraits of each participant were shaped and common themes identified, to answer the question, "What is it like to be a gay or lesbian educator working in a Massachusetts school participating in the Safe Schools Program?" Data was viewed through the lenses of oppression theory, heterosexism and identity theory. Participants stated their negative experiences were tied to homophobia, mostly internalized, which paralleled past studies. Their positive experiences were related to being "out." They described reaching a level of self-acceptance to be "out" at school and in their daily lives. For the participants, working in the Safe Schools Program was a positive experience. For the schools they work in, there has been forward motion toward a safer environment. Gay and lesbian educators make the Safe Schools Program a success and the Safe Schools Program gives them the social and legal permission to do the work. Future research could study experiences of gay or lesbian educators who are closeted and work in participating schools, who are "publicly out" (Griffin, 1992) and working in Safe Schools Programs, or who reside in other states.

Using phenomenological interviewing as a methodology, this study reconstructs the urban high school experiences of sixteen language minority students through the participants' words. Three sixty-minute interviews were conducted with each of the participants. The study explores the social, cultural, and educational experiences of the participants before they entered high school, their experiences in ESL classrooms, the transition from ESL to the mainstream, and the mainstream English classroom. The study finds that participants learned English in a variety of ways, both inside and outside the classroom. In both the ESL and mainstream classrooms, talking, reading, and vocabulary study were considered the most important of all literacy activities, writing less so, and grammar the least. Participants considered reading aloud as vital to their learning English and they cited the short story and the plays of Shakespeare among the most compelling literary genres. In addition to how and what they were taught, participants wanted teachers who listened to, cared for, and respected them. The study suggests that secondary English teachers, within a social construction of literacy perspective, need to contextualize language learning more in accord with students' sociocultural and ethnolinguistic backgrounds and experiences. They also need to integrate an instructional skills and a whole language approach to language learning, not one or the other; to sound out, enact, and present language with a range of instructional strategies and methods; and to listen to, care for, and respect students. Generally, teachers and administrators should communicate continually to ensure the social and academic success of this growing population. Further, preservice and inservice English teacher education programs should make curricular changes to address the academic and affective needs of an increasing language minority student population. Finally, future research should focus on more in-depth studies of specific cultures or ethnicities, such as the Vietnamese who come from an Eastern to a Western culture, to gain a deeper understanding of their lives and their particular needs and goals. Educational researchers need to continue to interview students to bring their voices, concerns, and knowledge into educational dialogue and debate.

This thesis is an ethnographic case study of a graduate language teacher education classroom which privileges constructivist perspectives and pedagogies. It is an account of how learning and interaction work in such classrooms, based on a close study of a particular group of students who were collaboratively engaged in a semester-long project in which they conducted an analysis of a high school ESL classroom. The conceptual framework describes a complex environment, in which students must negotiate new language, concepts, and ways of learning. They are asked not only to espouse new theories, but to take them on in practice. My contention is that the single most challenging aspect in this new workspace is that of coming to define roles, hierarchies, and even learning in new ways. A good part of the analysis is tracking exactly how participants go about doing this. One major finding is that much of the negotiating that occurred centered on issues of "authority" and "expertise," as students attempted to locate these within this new environment. Group members came to take on specific public identities within the group, and it was from these that they made contributions and knowledge claims. The identities from which they spoke, the forms of language they used, and the sorts of evidence they provided for their claims determined whether or not their contributions were incorporated into the group discourse. Participants who were more closely aligned with academic practices and values held more authority; those who could not and/or did not engage in ways that had recognizable allegiance to academic discourses were marginalized. And, despite the fact that the participant structure would seem to mute the professor's voice, the ultimate authority was in fact granted to texts that the group identified as representative of her. This study is a close look at the workings of power and status within a pedagogy that promotes equity and inclusion. It points to a need for deeper understandings in areas where languages, cultures, and identities converge and are represented (and embedded) in social interaction.

In this dissertation I will depend on Likert-scale questionnaires, open-ended interviews and my observation journals to investigate the effectiveness of semi-interactive video (as opposed to (semi)-communicative methods) as a teaching tool in second/foreign language acquisition/learning. The participants in this study will comprise of an experimental group (traditional and non-traditional college students) whose attitudes will be measured by means of Likert-scale questionnaires, once at the beginning (before they undergo (semi)-communicative methods of teaching), once after they undergo the above method, and once at the end of undergoing teaching methods based entirely on the use of semi-interactive video In order to have a more accurate picture of the participants' attitudes and opinions regarding the above pedagogical methods, and to cover any missing and/or misinterpreted information, the learners will be also interviewed at the end of the research project. In addition, observational journals will be kept to maximize precision. In order to account for any outside (i.e., out of classroom) variables affecting the project, research will be also conducted on a control group, i.e., a comparable group residing (working or staying home) in the U.S. but not undergoing any language training. This group will be asked to fill out questionnaires once at the beginning of the project, once two months later, and finally four months later. Just as with the experimental group, the control group will be interviewed at the end of the project in order to cover any missing information and/or for data confirmation purposes. My hope is that the results of this scientific endeavor would shed light on the following: (1) the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the interactive video in language pedagogy, (2) the application of communicative theories of second language acquisition, and theories of situated learning to semi-interactive video software design, and (3) the effectiveness of the semi-interactive video as opposed to other (semi)-interactive methods in second/foreign language education.

Since the United States has become an ethnically and culturally diverse country and has become a microcosm of the world, multicultural children's literature has attracted more and more attention and raised questions about its quality. The purpose of this study was to determine what images of Chinese people, Chinese-Americans, and Chinese culture were attributed in children's and adolescents' fiction. The study was achieved by examining 57 fictional books written by Chinese-American authors and other-American authors for readers from kindergarten through junior high school published in the United States from 1980 to 1997. This study was an example of the descriptive method of research using content analysis, a technique for evaluating the descriptions and information from the selected books in a systematic and objective manner, to achieve "systematic examination" by analyzing the information identified in the books under the study. The content of the books was analyzed to discover the ways Chinese people were portrayed and the ways Chinese cultures were represented, and to examine whether or not they were stereotyped. This study used two instruments, including a total of thirteen categories, to examine the images and representations from different perspectives. The results of the study indicated that the images of Chinese people were attributed both realistically and in a stereotypic manner, and the representations of Chinese culture in many books were inaccurate and unauthentic. It was also found that most of the inaccurate information and misrepresentations were made by non-Chinese-American authors and illustrators, though a few inaccurate pieces of information were made by Chinese-American authors and illustrators. The present study may be helpful to authors, illustrators, book reviewers, curriculum specialists, and others working with written materials about China, Chinese and Chinese-Americans, and also to scholars of children's literature who wish to analyze other cultures well. Directed toward the elimination of the stereotypes of Chinese and Chinese-Americans in Children's and adolescents' literature, the study promotes the realization of intercultural understanding, a necessary concomitant to the further development of cultural pluralism in this country.

A significant number of studies focusing on Latino students describe a myriad of challenges that seem to affect their educational opportunities. In the case of Puerto Rican female students, they seem to enter U.S. schools with about the same ability as others to become active learners and successful students, but a significant number of them confront challenges that threaten their academic progress or they drop out before achieving high school graduation. The purpose of this qualitative in-depth phenomenological interview study was to explore the educational experiences of ten Puerto Rican female students in U.S. public secondary schools in order to examine the elements that contributed to their success and frustration in school. The study particularly looked for common experiences and factors affecting their academic achievements, inquired about common problems faced in schools by them, and considered their insights into how to improve the learning conditions for all students. Phenomenological interviewing was the methodology used to gather the data. The first interview centered around participants' life experiences in the United States until secondary school. The second interview concentrated on their present experiences in secondary school. The third interview focused on the meaning of their experiences as students. A thematic analysis of the interviews identified three influential components in the academic achievements of the participants in this study. These are: the significant role parents played in supporting and guiding their daughters; effective teachers affirm participants' culture and language in school; and a college education as the participants' utmost educational goal provided a perspective of achievement for all of them. The study also identified four common problems faced by either most participants or their peers. Moving from one place to another affected their academic progress. The ESL and TBE programs were found to provide effective services for their academic needs, but participants identified limitations of the programs that needed improvement. Dropping out and discrimination were found to be pervasive in participants' academic life. The implications of these findings, recommendations for schools, and gender specific findings are explored in the last chapter.