The composition of classrooms in higher education is rapidly becoming more diverse, presenting new challenges to faculty regarding their teaching and curricular practices. One response in higher education has been the emergence of development programs aimed at helping faculty provide successful, quality education to diverse students. This study describes how faculty who participated in the Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom (TLDC) Faculty and TA Partnership Project (1994–2000) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, reflected on their experiences and pedagogical practices as instructors in diverse classrooms. Participants were faculty members who exhibited variety across academic disciplines, levels of faculty rank, gender, race, and ethnicity. The procedure for this investigation employed quantitative and qualitative research methods. There were 29 responses to the mailed surveys and 10 interviews with participants, some of whom also responded to the mailed survey. The surveys were analyzed for possible correlations between gender and race in participants' responses; the interviews were analyzed for the possible relationships of gender in participants' responses. Whereas participants provided many different accounts of what diversity meant to them as instructors, they unanimously agreed that considerations of diversity were important to their teaching in diverse classrooms. This study's surveys and interviews generated strategies for improving faculty teaching and curricular practices—including the use of student-focused methods, multiple methods, course readings, and considerations of the teaching self—identified by faculty as components central to their perceptions of their experiences and teaching practices with diverse students. Additional strategies, such as fostering community in the diverse classroom and student-focused assessment, emerged from the interview data. Survey responses focused on a personal approach to faculty's sense of their growth as educators in diverse classrooms, whereas interview findings highlighted the need for further institutional support. This research may help development programs, such as the TLDC Project, provide continuing support for faculty to offer successful, quality education to multicultural classrooms.

Over the last two decades, international development organizations and agencies have adopted "people's participation" as an imperative of the development process. Viewed as a prescription for redressing the imbalance of power between different cultures and systems of knowledge, its purpose has been a compensation for the "developed" world's mind/colonialization of "developing" countries. I have discovered, through my own work as a Western academic engaged in participatory educational projects in the refugee camp setting, how it is possible to use "participation" as a "smoke screen": masking how we manage and control the lives of the disenfranchised in carrying out our quest for democracy, modernization, market economies and even women's rights as human rights. This dissertation examines a research process in context. Using aspects of participatory action research, I spent two months with two groups of Cambodian women who had returned to their country after spending a decade or more in refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border. The main intention of this collaborative research relationship was to examine issues of reintegration. The feedback from the refugee women in my previous work in the camps and in this study with women returnees, coupled with the examination of case studies and other qualitative studies from the literature, has led to questions concerning the epistemological, philosophical and political motivations underlying "participatory" policy, education, and research. The dissertation examines the what, where, why and how of these considerations. Positioning myself among post-structural and post-modern as well as third world feminists, but with a sense of openness, I combine these world views in deconstructing the methods of negotiation in knowledge production and the dialogic process required in crossing cultural horizons with this particular group of women returnees to Cambodia. The purpose of the study is to explore ways of carrying out "the cause for social justice", without destroying it in the process.

Using critical discourse analysis, seven "problematic moments" that occurred during a two week educational event in the conversations of a multinational group of fourteen students at an international development education institution are analyzed. Each moment illustrates some aspect of "silence" which I define as an consequence of ideology. A relationship is established between the micro meanings of those interpersonal and group silences with the macro level meanings of changes occurring at the international level. Contradictions in the discourse of international development education are revealed through this analysis and the dilemmas these contradictions pose for an international institution embedded in that discourse are explored. Changes which are having an impact on international development education programs include U.S. foreign policy since the end of the cold war, the increased integration and dependence of less developed countries on the international market economy, and the reduction in the amount of "public space" in which non-governmental organizations can operate. As the institution is drawn into the new international market economy, it is changing to become more academic and expert based. Its program is being developed to train graduates to manage the non-governmental and private organizations that work for an agenda of globalization. One result of these changes is confusion about the concept of identity as old theories of the self are no longer meaningful in the new-world (i.e. USA led) order. Current international changes, rather than creating order, are creating a disorder that is painful and difficult to articulate in "normal" group interactions in the context of unquestioned institutional practices. It is suggested that by paying attention to the meaning of silences in its discourse, the institution can discover ways of using language to counteract the silencing of alternative worlds, and can learn how to design participatory peer learning events that allow for a medley of voices and silences in international and intercultural contexts.

This study is an inquiry into the second language learning process of non-native English speaking adults who are preparing to enter graduate business programs in the U.S. or other English speaking countries. Specifically, I examine the process of negotiation of authenticity in communication by learners and the instructor. I begin with an initial understanding that authenticity does not reside in materials or tasks, but in how learners and instructors negotiate it (Gee, 1990). I explore and develop a broad definition of authenticity as being a perception structured and influenced by learner's needs, the instructor's perception of the target skills and needs of the participants, and the learners' own construction or negotiation of what they perceive to be appropriate in the target discourse. The site of this study was the ESL Business Case Discussion Class offered at Harvard Summer School. Using ethnography of communication research as a guide for research methodology, I used participant observation, note-taking, videotaping, and interviewing as sources of gathering data over three years (1990–1992). There were seven conclusions of this study: Authenticity manifests itself and is negotiated over phases, there is a gradual process or development of communication skills, development of language skills seems to reach a plateau, reflection time enhances learning and acquisition, learners construct and accept multiple identities, tensions stimulate negotiation of learning and conceptualization of authenticity, and scaffolding generally facilitates, but can hinder the carrying out of authentic communication. Implications of the conclusions are that understanding the process of negotiating authenticity will allow teacher educators to inform teachers on ways to improve teaching and increase learning and acquisition by structuring the learning environment to facilitate it. The ‘preparation’ case study class gives students the opportunity to create an authentic learning environment in which they explore all of the things that might assist them or get in the way of their success in the ‘real event’. This kind of scaffolded or sheltered content class is important, but it does not take away the responsibility of the ‘real case study instructors’ to scaffold second language learners.

This study aims at building dialogue among culturally diverse groups by examining people's perceptions of social reality through the application of projective techniques. In this study the projective techniques consist of a set of original pictures drawn by the author based on participants' accounts of their living situations. The set of pictures combined with the process of inquiry applied in this study comprise the FotoDialogo Method. This study conforms to the following objectives: (1) developing and testing an original model of inquiry and education which promotes dialogue and self-discovery; (2) fostering dialogue skills and reflective thinking among disadvantaged Latino women; (3) promoting effective intergroup communication between health and human service providers and their client population; and (4) developing guidelines for the production of research and training materials that encourage effective intergroup communication, and empowerment of traditionally disadvantaged groups. The research methodology is grounded in qualitative and participatory research principles. The research design stems from Paulo Freire's Thematic Investigation Model, and Henry Murray's Thematic Apperception Test. This study was carried out within a community-based organization serving the Latino population in Massachusetts. The author took a leadership role in all phases of the study, as moderator of the Latina Women's Dialog Group (LWDG), and of a series of FotoDialogo Workshops addressed to health and human service providers. The LWDG sessions were conducted entirely in Spanish—the participants' native language—and recorded by audio tape. These sessions were later transcribed and translated by the author. Throughout this study pseudonyms for actual persons are used to protect participants identities and to maintain confidentiality. Accounts are based on actual interviews, and transcriptions of dialogue sessions. The results of this study revealed that the FotoDialogo Method can be a powerful strategy for Latinas to break silence about their particular experiences of oppression. The LWDG participants began a process of self-discovery which enabled them to analyze and value their experiences, and to fully participate in their community's social change. The FotoDialogo Workshops were also effective in raising awareness among practitioners regarding intercultural communication, and in reflecting upon the sociocultural context in which the Latino community is immersed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate comparatively the discourse patterns in written English between native English and Chinese-English speakers. Two main perspectives related to the roots of different discourse patterns were examined. One perspective, proposed by Young and others, suggests that the native Chinese speakers may transfer their culturally valued discourse patterns from Chinese into English. The other perspective, proposed by Tyler and others, suggests that the ‘unexpected’ Chinese-English discourse patterns may be due to accumulated linguistic miscues, such as grammar, syntax and lexicon errors. In this study, it is proposed that a discourse pattern may be guided by the cognitive strategies that developed from early socialization and such cognitive strategies may be independent of one's language proficiency. To test this proposal, a Native Chinese sample with advanced English proficiency was compared with a comparable highly educated Native English sample, to see if discourse pattern differences emerged despite advanced linguistic proficiency. Nine subjects, in each group, were selected from native English and Chinese-English speaking, advanced graduated students, all of whom displayed advanced English proficiency. Subjects responded in written English paragraphs to a common projective set of six ordered pictures. The written samples were analyzed in three ways: grammar and spelling check, comparison on four formal linguistic aspects, and the examination and comparison of six discourse features within and between the two groups. The results indicate no significant differences on grammar and spelling and similar linguistic competence between the two groups. All six discourse features showed a significantly consistent pattern within the Chinese-English group, while four of the six were significant within the Native-English group. The pattern of the six features, as a whole, showed a significantly consistent pattern within each group and a significant difference between the two groups. It was concluded that discourse patterns emerge independent of one's language proficiency. These contrasting discourse patterns were discussed with respect to the influence of divergent cultural values and early socialization. Further studies are needed to further identify the roots and stability of these cross cultural discourse patterns.

Student academic growth is one of the most heated issues surfacing in the frequent debates revolving around school reforms, particularly since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind mandate. Often missing in such debates is a clear articulation of what available resources students have drawn on to grow academically. Informed by socio-cultural theoretical and systemic functional linguistic frameworks and drawing on data collected in a three-year ethnographic case study, this study explores what contributed to the academic growth of Pablo, a middle school English language learner, who was institutionally recognized as an "achiever." Specifically, this study examines in what ways and to what extent school resources, such as teaching practices, enabled Pablo to grow academically. This study also explores how and to what degree outside resources, such as parental involvement and support from the community, led to his growth. In addition, this study examines to what degree Pablo's level of motivation contributed to his growth in academic writing. To determine whether or not Pablo's writing changed over time and whether Pablo made progress with his academic writing, I performed a textual analysis of a selective set of essays Pablo wrote over the course of one academic year. Findings suggest that Pablo's institutional status as an achiever stems from his ability to find ways to produce essays that were institutionally valued, recognized, and defined as "good essays." Findings also suggest that while such a status helped Pablo maintain his institutional identity as a "good student," it may at the same time have slowed down his learning process, prevented the school personnel from exploiting his full potential as a student and, worse yet, led to the over-generalization of student achievement.

Throughout American history, people have come to the United States to escape intolerable conditions elsewhere and to seek a better life. After the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, hundreds of thousands of persons fled to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Eventually, by the late 1980's and early 1990's most of them made their way to the United States (U.S. Department of State). There were three waves of Vietnamese immigration. The third wave, coming after 1982, was the most complicated as it included different types of refugees. A significant number of studies focus on the challenges of Vietnamese refugees in adapting to a new society. However, research on Vietnamese women is still very limited. The purpose of this study was to explore the educational experiences and life stories of sixteen Vietnamese young women who came to Welltown, Massachusetts during the third wave of immigration, and who were successful in pursuing higher education. The study looked for factors that influenced their academic achievements and the construction of their self-identities. The methodology used to collect the data was in-depth interviewing. The first interview concentrated on the participants' life experiences in Viet Nam until the day they came to the United States, and the challenges they faced to achieve academically. The second interview provided details and stories of their current living experiences. The last interview focused on the meaning of their experiences as Vietnamese female refugees in American society. Informal conversations with parents and teachers, a survey on parents' attitude on second language learning, and classroom observations were included as a means of triangulation to confirm and expand my interpretations based on the interviews' data. There were three main conclusions of this study: (1) according to their own accounts, all women saw education and the learning of English as important to their success. They also saw family playing an important role in their lives, (2) as a group, they made diverse career choices based on language proficiency in English not on their ability, and (3) each group faced particular challenges and based on their refugee experiences, other issues that affected their identity construction were discrimination inside Vietnamese community and at the workplace in the dominant culture, inappropriate curriculum and assessment in their schooling, and lack of career orientation. Implications of the findings of this study provide researchers and educators possible direction for supporting environment for female Vietnamese refugees in a multicultural society.

This dissertation examines current multicultural art teacher practices and their student perspectives, to make implications for art teacher preparation in the postmodern era. The study addresses four interrelated challenges in art education: the postmodern framework on knowledge and learning, disagreements in higher education about future directions, the construction of the theory-practice gap, and the absence of teacher and student voices, especially from urban and marginalized communities. A review of the literature of modern and postmodern art historical contexts points to a web of tensions in the multiple worlds of art and art education. Those tensions guide a theoretical framework rooted in the dynamic intersection of postmodernism and multicultural education which is explored in a review of the literature regarding visual culture art education (Duncum, 2001, 2002). These frameworks led the Arts-Based Educational Research (Barone & Eisner, in press) to be presented in a series of "collages" (Bode, 2005) with an a/r/tographer's perspective (Irwin, 2004) into how teachers' roles and student participation might reinscribe (Derrida, 1994; Lather, 2003) the direction of art education programs. From four art classrooms, in settings where the participants indexed race, ethnicity, language and poverty in discourses of multiple identities, the voices of art teachers and their students highlight the role of visual culture in resistance to hegemony and in pursuit of academic achievement. Art teacher preparation may include such studies as a vehicle for in change art education communities that reconsider the role of art and art teachers.

It seems a paradox that the United States, a country with a highly diverse population and a long history of immigration, has one of the poorest records of sustained public foreign language programs when compared to similar post industrial countries. In an educational system such as the one in United States that is not centralized, foreign language instruction appears not to be a real, tangible necessity. In this situation are engulfed many school districts that are left with state and/or national guidelines and an ever-changing budget, to decide who should learn what languages, if any. By framing and understanding the foreign language education in this context, this ethnographic study examines through a post-structuralist perspective, a current program in the United States and looks specifically at how issues of motivation and power get constructed by students in the foreign language classroom of an urban middle school setting. This study also examines how language policies enacted through class instruction impact student endorsement of foreign language education during the formative years in U.S. public schools that may influence learning, and may generate resistance, or lack of motivation to learn a foreign language. Critical discourse analysis is employed in this study as a tool to: (1) review and analyze specific recent legislation that is interpreted and enacted in the foreign language program of a local school system, (2) examine data collected through interviews with students and administrators, and (3) understand classroom interactions within the local political context of a school system. In examining the social, textual and discursive levels of these policies, it is possible to challenge how traditional education defines the roles of teachers and students and to envision new relations of power that could condition the existence of new learners' identities and new possibilities for teachers. This study will contribute towards the understanding of classroom practices in foreign language programs as they influence and are influenced by language planning and policy decisions, and so point to areas where change can be made. In terms of stating the practical implications for the foreign language field, the concept of student endorsement, as it is employed in this study, is examined for its potential as a viable replacement for the traditional notion of student motivation. Understanding endorsement issues in relation to the current language policies on learning situates learning not as an individual psychological factor but rather as a socially shaped response that can be changed. Furthermore, teachers' and administrators' understanding of endorsement could challenge current policies and practices that contribute to the devaluing and reduction of benefits of foreign language instruction.