<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).

There have been profound changes within German culture and society in recent decades including the social reality and legal equality of same-sex couples and parents and an increased visibility of non-heterosexual individuals. Through my many years of formal education and as a teacher of English as a Second or Other language (TESOL) in Germany, I have not seen this reality represented in TESOL education in target language samples, textbooks, images or critical discussions. The aim of this thesis was to explore whether teachers and students on a TESOL language teacher education (LTE) programme at a Bavarian university are aware of issues of gender, sexual diversity and heteronormativity on their programme and in their classrooms. This fits well with the many other studies carried out internationally in this field over the past few years but looks specifically at a politically and culturally homogeneous part of Germany. By adopting a feminist poststructuralist and queer-theoretical approach to create, deliver and reflect on a course geared specifically towards troubling the silence and exclusion of sexual diversity in (language) teacher education, it investigates if and how social change has manifested itself in a Bavarian LTE programme. Through the use of multiple data collection methods, a background questionnaire to situate the students in this Bavarian context, interviews with non-heterosexual staff and students, a troubling course-construction, delivery and recording, a researcher reflective journal, and participant exit interviews and reflective written assessments, this case study examines staff and students' experiences of and attitudes towards heteronormativity in LTE and que(e)ries the potential for change. The findings reveal that there is initially little conscious awareness of the pervasiveness of heteronormative discourses in LTE TESOL classrooms or in language use, but that through que(e)rying materials, critical dialogue, reflection in interviews and classes, practice and active explicit analysis of taken-for-granted exclusions and silences, a heightened and critical awareness can be achieved.

<p> Research indicates a need for teacher education programs which include embedded computer assisted language learning (CALL) to support teachers&rsquo; technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) of how to employ technology in classroom settings. Researchers also indicate a need to better understand the knowledge-base of language teacher education (LTE), including a teacher&rsquo;s possible 40 year career through ever changing technology. </p><p> This mixed-method case study examines the use of iPads by four teachers, who represent maximum variation in their teaching and technology experience, in two mostly homogenous schools. The study looks specifically at how teachers&rsquo; perceptions of 1) teaching, 2) technology, 3) using technology and 4) their students shape the way they use iPads with English language learners. It also examines what supports facilitate the use of iPads for instructional purposes in second language classrooms. </p><p> I focus on the use of iPads in a one-to-one implementation in a technologically embedded context because iPads are a relatively new innovation in classrooms, with the potential of changing instruction. Such changes may contribute to the challenges and benefits of being an effective teacher in the English language teaching (ELT) classroom. Research on the use of iPads in classrooms has been previously limited to mostly suggestions for use and has given little guidance in how this disruption will assist and challenge teachers. </p><p> TPACK is used as a powerful construct based in a reconceptualization of the language teacher education (LTE) knowledge-base, indicating influences of context, teachers and their perceptions, identity and agency and activities in the classroom. These factors suggest ways which classroom technology and teacher, student, administrative and contextual influences may mediate the activities of teaching and learning in the classroom. </p><p> The data show a correlation between teachers&rsquo; practices with iPads and their previous experiences using technology in the classroom. Teacher groupings demonstrated differences in teaching based on their experience using technology and teaching. Schools showed differences only in terms of some choices made by the administration. Students&rsquo; effects on the use of iPads is minimal, except for instances of how student behavior affected the classroom.</p><p>

The purpose of this study was to investigate: (1) the extent to which world instructors report using specific communicative instructional strategies; (2) the difference between instructional strategies used by ESL only instructors, versus instructors of ESL and foreign languages, or instructors of only foreign languages; (3) the relationship between instructors* academic preparation and target language use in class; and (4) the relationship between instructors* pedagogical beliefs about second language learning and their reported target language use in class. The World Language Communicative Instructional Strategies Survey was administered to world language instructors from three academic institutions. Upon sending two requests, 48 instructors returned usable instruments (55%). Descriptive statistics revealed extensive use of communicative instructional strategies, yet a difference in application of these strategies exists. A comparison of means revealed that assuring that students learn collaboratively in 85% to 100% in target language, integration of all four language skills, and assuring students* independent target language practice were applied less than other strategies. ESL instructors reported a higher use of communicative instructional strategies than instructors of ESL and foreign languages, or foreign languages only. A comparison of means indicated the differences in communicative instructional strategies use are in integration of all four language skills and in assuring 85% to 100% in-target-language collaborative learning. Findings also revealed a discrepancy between the reported use of communicative instructional strategies and the academic preparation received in order to do so. This study provides implications for the preparation of world language instructors. Specifically, the findings focused on mastery of language taught, on specific instructional methodology courses, and the practicum experience.

Distance education is being used increasingly for both pre and in-service teacher education in both developed and developing countries (Robinson & Latchem, 2003; Kwapong, 2007; Perraton, 2010). In Rwanda, the Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) introduced its first distance education programme in 2001 with the aim of upgrading the qualifications of under-qualified high school teachers, including those who teach English, using printed materials as the main teaching/learning resource. This study has aimed to investigate the role of the 2010 version of these materials in addressing the professional needs of high school English teachers. It was centrally informed by theories of the sociologist of education, Basil Bernstein (1996, 1999), about curriculum and of the sociocultural psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (1978), on mediation, by Shulman’s (1986, 1987) work on pedagogic content knowledge and by literature on English language teaching, on language teacher education and on distance education materials design. The investigation involved textual analysis of a selection of KIE’s distance education materials for English teaching and focused on the content selected for these materials and on the mediation of this content on the page. After this analysis, one section of these was re-designed by the researcher. Nine teacher-learners enrolled in the programme for English teaching were interviewed to determine their responses to both the KIE materials and to the redesigned section. The findings suggest that Kigali Institute of Education’s distance education materials for English do not adequately address the academic and professional needs of high school English teachers for four main reasons. Firstly, the content selected for the materials does not respond sufficiently to the interests and needs of foreign language teachers of English. Secondly, it is not externally aligned to the curriculum at the level that these teachers are supposed to teach. Thirdly, the mediation of this content does not adequately support the development of subject and pedagogic content knowledge and skills of teacher-learners and encourages surface rather than deep learning (Biggs, 1987). Lastly, with the exception of sections on some literary genres, the materials list useful ideas and language teaching approaches and methods but consistently fail to explain to the teacher-learners how to teach different aspects of language. These findings suggest that these materials do not adequately assist teacher-learners to develop pedagogic content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) for the teaching of English. The limitations identified may result from a lack of knowledge, skills and experience in distance education materials and graphic design among the KIE materials designing team and from inadequate resource provision (including time) by the institution and suggest that there is a need for changes to the KIE distance education materials designing process.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to understand and describe the sources of Nicaraguan EFL teacher educators’ knowledge base, the types of knowledge and skills that constructed their knowledge base, and the relationship of this knowledge base and classroom practices in a teacher education program at a Nicaraguan University. This study presents a literature review on the sources of knowledge and knowledge base of EFL teacher educators in the field of language teacher education. I used a purposeful sampling technique to select both the research site and the six EFL teacher educators who participated as research participants in this study. Data were collected from three sources: a curriculum analysis, six one-shot semi-structured interviews, and a document analysis to lesson plans, syllabi, and assessment instruments used by the research participants. To analyze the data collected, I used the qualitative data analysis model proposed by Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014). As a mode of findings, I describe the sources of knowledge, a categorization of knowledge base and skills that Nicaraguan EFL teacher educators possess as well as the relationship they identified between their knowledge base and their teaching practices in EFL teacher education classrooms. Findings revealed that Nicaraguan EFL teacher educators possess sixteen types of knowledge and fourteen types of skills that resulted from eight sources of knowledge, among which English proficiency, own experiences as language learners, subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, teaching experience in EFL teacher education programs, assessment knowledge of language student teachers, and knowledge of students’ L1 seem to be the most important when it has to do with actual teaching in language teacher education classrooms. In addition, according to the findings, the process of becoming an EFL teacher educator may take many years. It begins with the professional coursework teacher educators take in their language teacher education programs where they first become English teachers. It continues with teaching experiences either in high schools, English teaching centers, or universities. Their professional knowledge as teacher educators is completed through the interaction with EFL preservice student teachers in teacher education classrooms, in which their previous pedagogical, linguistic, and teaching experiences as EFL teachers is transformed. In other words, their professional identity as EFL teacher educators is developed as they begin teaching in EFL teacher education programs. Pursuing this further, this study presents some pedagogical implications based on the findings that can help improve the quality and preparation of EFL teacher educators in Nicaragua. Finally, it offers some avenues for more research regarding the knowledge base of EFL teacher educators in Nicaraguan teacher education programs.

The continual decline of Chinese proficiency has caused serious concerns in Hong Kong. Although most Hong Kong people speak Chinese as their first language, they have not been strongly motivated to learn it in part because of the socio- economic status of English, and in part because of the discrepancies between the spoken and the written forms of Chinese. The absence of a link between the spoken dialect (Cantonese) and the written Modem Standard Chinese language (based mainly on the syntax of Mandarin) makes the learning of Chinese in the 'trilingual' (Cantonese, Mandarin and English) and 'biliterate' (Chinese and English) society laborious. The perception that Chinese proficiency is waning has led to criticisms of the quality of language teachers and language teacher education in the community. Hence, a study of the problems in Chinese language teacher education in Hong Kong is an indispensable step in improving the quality of Chinese language education in Hong Kong. This study takes pre-service teachers' (PST) perceptions as the predomhant factor in understanding how they learn to become a teacher of Chinese. As both students and teachers, the PSTs in this study provide insights into learning, teaching, and learning to teach, the Chinese language. Famous for its cultural tradition, Chinese teaching is typically transmissive. In particular, teachers of Chinese are expected to teach with a missionary zeal for 'educating' students by acting as exemplars. As a result, how a teacher teaches is often determined by how he or she was taught to interpret the nature of Chinese Language. The use of texts written by distinguished authors as teaching materials further encourages language teachers to give higher priority to literature, culture and moral education than language use. Inheriting such a tradition, modem Chinese language teacher education is faced with multiple challenges: to promote cognitive developments in teachers and cognitive teaching approaches to meet the needs of rapidly developing society, and to prepare teachers to maintain a proper balance between moral education and appreciation of culture and literature on the one hand, and teaching language use on the other. This study draws on the literature on Chinese language education, TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages), learning to teach, teacher knowledge, beliefs and perceptions, and develops a conceptual framework to interpret the relationships between perceptions and practices as a reciprocal cycle. Perceptions of self as a teacher, the subject matter, and teaching and learning of the subject matter are inseparable from the beliefs and knowledge of the PSTs, which affect how they prepare lesson plans to teach and actually teach in the classrooms. Planning and classroom practices are realised in teaching objectives, instructional strategies and evaluation of teaching effectiveness, which then reinforce knowledge, beliefs and perceptions. The cycle goes on as the PSTs learn more about teaching and accumulate teaching experiences. From this recurring cycle, the PSTs generate personal theories of teaching a specific subject. This study is longitudinal in design, which follows a logical procedure of inquiry. It first examines the PSTs' perceptions of teaching and learning Chinese on entry to, during and on exit from a.two-year teacher education program. Then it turns to the perceptual development and the sources of perceptions and perceptual changes, and how they impact on the PSTs. Finally, the complex relationship between perceptions, lesson planning and classroom practices are elaborated. In particular, data collected in some stages were dependent on the findings of the preceding stage. This adds complexity to the overall research desip of the study. This study uses a multimethod approach with two research populations -the questionnaire surveys of the entire cohort and qualitative data collection from twelve sub-sample participants. Because of the lack of well-established research instruments in the Chinese research context, all methods of inquiry have been revised according to the results of pilot studies. The multimethod approach in this study demonstrates how questionnaire surveys, repertory grids, individual interviews, focus groups, classroom observations and the analyses of lesson plans and reflective journals can be used in a complementary manner to assure the validity of the research. Questionnaire surveys yield the overall perceptions of the cohort on entry to and exit from the teacher education program. The perceptual development of the entire cohort is understood by the findings of the two surveys. Against the backdrop of the overall perceptions of the cohort, the qualitative methods are used to study the sub-sample. Repertory grids reveal the participants' views of teachers of Chinese from different perspectives, whereas individual interviews and focus group discussions tap more deeply into the participants' thinking about how they have learned to teach Chinese. Other qualitative methods such as classroom observation and the analyses of lesson plans and reflective journals provide compelling evidence for indicating the extent that the participants have grasped the craft of teaching. This study suggests from the persistent perceptions and perceptual development of the PSTs that Chinese language education in Hong Kong has been ineffective. Ineffective Chinese language education has a long-lasting negative impact on students including the PSTs. The strong emphasis on literature, culture and moral education, and the knowledge telling and teacher-led traditions have led to a low level of cognitive demand in Chinese teaching. The procedures recommended for teaching a text in Chinese and the assessment criteria of the teacher education program have encouraged the,PSTs to become more didactic in teaching, although they themselves are aware that they should pay more attention to the needs of students. This study argues that student teachers' perspectives form a critical element in reforming Chinese language teacher education in Hong Kong, and that language teacher education should first be ameliorated before language education can be effectively improved. Not only should PSTs of Chinese Language be equipped with better subject matter knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, but Chinese language teacher educators should also be cognisant of the necessity for change. Because learning to teach is often discipline-based, it is more cost-effective and consistent if the teacher educators' Chinese language classes also emphasise cognitive development in the PSTs. To be real exemplars for the PSTs, the Chinese language teacher educators should be involved in continuing critical evaluation of their own practices.