This thesis reports a study of a group of Iranian young learners, their parents and language teachers on their perceptions of the characteristics of effective language teachers in public schools. The research methodology adopted was a mixed method and therefore, the first part of the study was conducted through a questionnaire survey of 190 students studying in the 8th grade of public schools in Iran. This was followed by interviews with a sample of these learners, their parents and their teachers. The data emerging from the study demonstrates that the stakeholders involved in this study hold perceptions across a wide range of areas concerning language teacher effectiveness including teachers’ language proficiency, class management and affective factors. There was some general agreement within and among the stakeholders’ views; however, at times the dimensions slightly varied. On the whole, the main concerns were related to teachers’ knowledge and ability to speak English and teachers’ willingness to insert activities beyond the prescribed syllabus in particular activities related to speaking skill, and also additional activities that would prepare the students for their exams. Teachers’ ability to build the right rapport with the students was also very much in demand. An unanticipated finding of this study was the perceived connection between teachers’ appearance and in particular the way they dressed and their effectiveness. Some discrepancies relating to how these should be actually practised in the class do exist. Finally, this thesis goes on to discuss some of the implications of these findings both for English language teaching in Iran and for future research. Although the findings of this study are not conclusive and not prescriptive, they reveal the importance of exploring the views of stakeholders to make language teaching a more pleasant experience for all, which can in turn lead to a more effective teaching and learning.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisor: Diane L. Schallert. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Windsor, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-93)

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-214). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=1240682891&SrchMode=1&sid=6&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1195583704&clientId=5220

<p> An estimated 44% of secondary school English Learners (ELs) are immigrants. Some arrive in the United States with a rigorous academic education and often excel beyond most native-born students while others arrive without any formal education or having missed years of schooling. This second subpopulation of ELs is called students with interrupted or limited formal education or SLIFE. These learners have to work harder than their native English-speaking peers and even harder than their more literate EL peers to meet the same accountability goals because these students need learn a new language, develop literacy skills in the new language, and also master content area standards simultaneously. The problem that was addressed was that teachers&rsquo; low expectations and subsequent differential treatment of SLIFE may contribute to the lower graduation rates and achievement gap and between SLIFE, other ELs, and mainstream English-speaking students. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine high school content teachers&rsquo; perceptions of and expectations for their students who are classified as SLIFE. Participants are high school teachers in one school district in the Southeastern United States. Data were gathered through face-to-face interviews. The findings showed the difficulties faced by teachers trying to support SLIFE students in mainstream content area courses, but also revealed the willingness these teachers demonstrate to do whatever it takes to help all of their students. The data expressed a deep desire these teachers feel to be better equipped. Research is needed to determine what supports, research, and training experiences and efficacy are needed for planning and delivering instruction to their SLIFE students with the goal of both academic success and a positive acculturation experience. Further research is also needed to determine what, if any, institutional barriers exist and what can be done to remove them so that the teachers&rsquo; efforts will be facilitated, not hindered.</p><p>

In July of 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) determined that Massachusetts had violated the civil rights of its English Language Learners (ELLs) by placing them in classes with inadequately prepared teachers. Massachusetts is the contextual background for this study but it also serves as an example of the challenges across the U.S. in preparing teachers to meet the diverse needs of the growing population of ELLs within a national context of increasingly standardized curriculum and testing. The U.S. Secretary of Education, the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, policy makers, teacher educators, and academics are all looking to educational research for answers to the current challenges. There are many answers or approaches coming from multiple discourses of educational research. However, as has been demonstrated in Massachusetts, research-based approaches to educational challenges are not always successful. More needs to be understood about how these approaches are actually taken up in classrooms. Unfortunately, there is limited research about teachers’ understandings and uses of different discourses of research. In this dissertation I have explored how two urban ESL teachers engaged with research at different stages of their professional development. The questions that guide this study focused on how the teachers made meaning of research and enacted research during the three stages of the study: their master’s program, their ESL practicum and a site visit two years after graduation. I conducted two longitudinal case studies drawing on constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). Building on the findings from my literature review of ESL teachers’ engagement with research I collected and analyzed data from the three stages mentioned above over a five-year period. Multiple phases of analysis included critical incident analysis (Angelides, 2001), and text analysis (Fairclough, 1992; 2003; Janks, 2005). The findings of this study show that while the teachers engaged in multiple ways with research, certain types and discourses of research discouraged teachers from meeting the needs of their students. The teachers’ engagement with research as praxis (Lather, 1986) was complex but entailed change-enhancing engagement with theory, practice, and action that not only met students’ needs, but promoted socially just teaching.

This study focuses on the education of students who have been adopted internationally and are now learning English in school. Teachers typically have little training for—or experience with—working with these learners. Largely an unstudied area, this dissertation aims to shed light on how teachers develop teaching practices for this population. The present study takes as its theoretical framework a sociocultural perspective on second language acquisition (Lantolf 2000), a social semiotic approach to language (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004), and a critical discourse analysis perspective (Fairclough 1992). I specifically examine the literacy practices (Barton 2001, Gee 2008, Street 1995) of adopted Ethiopian students' teachers with attention to student identity, agency, and literacy development (Dyson 1993, Ibrahim 1999, Luke and Freebody 2000, New London Group 2000, Peirce 1995). During an eight-month period of ethnographic fieldwork (Emihovich 1989) I researched how white, English-speaking teachers and other school staff in three Vermont schools discursively constructed their Ethiopian students. I endeavored to examine how faculty assumptions about students shaped classroom literacy practices, implicating student identity and learning (Harklau 2000, Hawkins 2005, McKay and Wong 1996, Norton 1997, Thesen 1997, Toohey 1998, Willett 1995). Analysis reveals that teachers and other faculty drew on culturally dominant discourses about language, ethnicity, race, class, and health in developing understandings about their adopted students. While articulating the best of intentions toward their Ethiopian learners, teachers unknowingly took up assimilationist, colonialist, “model minority,” classist, and medicalized perspectives about their students that, in turn, informed their educational decision-making. In other words, faculty members positioned adopted Ethiopian learners in ways that constructed them as certain kinds of students (Gee 2008), and, based on those representations, teachers structured literacy activities that afforded them differential learning opportunities. I discuss at length the implications of this study for public education and research. There is a need for teachers and other school professionals to assume perspectives on learning grounded in theories of power, identity, and a contextual understanding of language. Education reform that fosters professional collaboration within schools is necessary. Finally, future education research from sociocultural and critical perspectives focusing on internationally adopted students is warranted.

In this current era of postmodernity, globalization, and new technological and social conditions, new approaches to literacy teaching are being introduced and examined. Studies that explore complexities of language teaching and learning in discourses of postmodernity as they relate to college contexts are significant for educators, researchers, and policy makers. This study employs a critical ethnographic lens to examine Arabic teaching and learning practices in one college campus in the United States post 9/11. It explores the dialogic construction of critical literacy events in the Arabic classroom where modern and postmodern discourses collide. Three questions guide the research: who are the students of Arabic and what are their investments in learning Arabic, how do uses of the Arabic language textbook shape curriculum instruction in the Arabic foreign language classroom in contexts of late modernity, and how can teachers of Arabic instantiate critical dialogues and allow a space for negotiated interpretations of modern textbooks in late modern classrooms. To address these issues, the study draws on post structural and sociocultural theories of language. To analyze ethnographic classroom data, the study adopts broad analytic strategies from interdisciplinary critical language approaches (Dyson, 1993; Fairclough, 2001; Janks, 2010; Rampton, 2006). Analysis of the data shows that the Arabic language learners relate to the social world through a mosaic of identities and investments influenced by contexts of postmodernity. The data also points to the role of the teacher in opening a space for the construction of plural voices of language learners that disrupts traditional perspectives of schooling. Implications of the study point towards a need for a new pedagogy that embraces new literacy practices informed by contexts of postmodernity. With new channels of multimodal communications, heterogeneous multicultural societies, and contexts of globalization, foreign language teaching and learning at the college level is in need for vital update that meets the new challenges (Byrnes, 2010; Kramsch, 2009; New London Group, 1996).