Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 77-78). Also available in print.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-111).

<p> The purpose of this study was to determine what instructional strategies expert teachers of English language learners (ELLs) in the primary grades perceive as most effective for teaching reading to ELLs. Another purpose of this study was to determine what expert teachers of ELLs in the primary grades perceive as the barriers to the reading achievement of English learners. The final purpose of this study was to determine what strategies expert teachers of ELLs in the primary grades recommend to overcome perceived barriers. Quantitative data were collected from effective teachers who taught primary grades in Riverside County, California, using an electronic format. The effective teachers were identified based on teaching at a school with an API of 800 or more with an ELL population of 40% or more and based on data criteria. Effective teachers in the primary grades were chosen based on student achievement, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessments, and site principal recommendations. A Likert scale was used for the survey. The effective teachers ranked effective instructional strategies in the five components of reading and had the ability to insert additional instructional strategies, barriers, and ways they overcame barriers in an open-ended question on the survey. The findings indicated the participants found the instructional strategies for teaching the five components of reading to be effective to teach ELLs in the primary grades to read. Based on the data analyzed, all teachers in the primary grades should be knowledgeable in the five components of reading as well as the effective instructional strategies for implementation. In addition to ensuring that teacher preparation programs and all current teachers in Grades K-3 are prepared for teaching reading to ELLs in the primary grades, this researcher also recommends that the leaders at the sites be well-versed in the five components of reading and effective instructional strategies. Additional research is recommended to identify leadership trends at the successful schools, such as accountability, data used to guide instruction, staff development planning, and student intervention programs.</p>

<p> The increased number of English language learners (ELLs) presents a difficult task for middle school building principals. The challenge of ensuring the success of ELLs in future years will force schools to rethink educational practices. This study focused on how middle school building principals strategically planned, organized, and managed their schools to meet the needs of ELLs. The phenomenological study was based on the growing student population of English as a second language (ESL) in school districts in Eastern New York. Ten principals were interviewed and a triangulation of data was achieved through observation and collection of documents. The researcher found through bridging that middle school principals engaged in relationship building with parents, students, teachers, and community to create a sense of belonging in the school. As a result, principals are encouraged to provide professional opportunities for the faculty to become certified ESL teachers, accessible to community members, bilingual, and engaged in community building.</p>

<p> A disproportionate number of high school dropouts are Latino immigrant students with emergent English language skills. Statistically, students that meet these demographic characteristics are more likely to drop out of high school before receiving their diploma. Thus, these same students will then enter the workforce ill equipped for job advancement or the requirements of postsecondary education. </p><p> A set of negative experiences, referred to as the process of marginalization, may occur in high school, leaving these students alienated and less confident of success than their English-speaking peers. This study used a qualitative research method approach to investigate the factors that lead some high school students to drop out and others to persevere and to become academically successful. This situation was explored by trying to understand Mexican and Central American immigrant students' perceptions of and reactions to possible high school marginalization processes and how this process effects their academic success in 11th and 12th grades. </p><p> More specifically, this dissertation study employed a qualitative design to develop a case study of students and a school and community profile. Several instruments used in the study included a sampling and eligibility questionnaire, a semistructured questionnaire, and an open-ended Interview with high school Latino immigrant youth to examine their perceptions of the process of marginalization and the resiliency factors that they used to overcome them. Based on the study's results, several recommendations are made for schools to reform the negative impact of marginalization and increase feelings of empowerment and inclusion for this group</p>

<p> Providing students at risk of becoming long-term English learners (LTELs) with the instruction and support they need to reclassify as fluent English proficient before entering high school increases their access to grade-level or advanced placement curriculum that will satisfy college entrance requirements and, presumably, postsecondary academic success. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the support provided through College Success Path by the Students First Unified School District (a pseudonym) to its seventhand eighthgradersat risk of becoming LTELs has the potential to lead to university matriculation.</p><p> Descriptive (mean, median, mode, and standard deviation) and inferential (independent measure <i>t</i>-test) statistical analyses of student learning outcomes revealed nonsignificant results at the .05 level.</p><p> Notable findings emerged after looking at score distributions and frequencies (cross-tabulations) for the District Writing Assessments and California Standardized Tests, English Language Arts learning outcomes. The treatment group experienced greater numbers of students moving from lower proficiency levels to higher proficiency levels in terms of the posttests than the control group did. </p><p> Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses of identified student learning outcomes did not yield significant results at the .05 level. Cross-tabulations conducted to analyze score distributions on the same student learning outcomes revealed results in favor of the treatment group. However, A-G completion rates and academic GPA data revealed results in favor of the control group. </p><p> The reality regarding the English learner (EL) population in California is changing as the number of LTELs increases in our public schools. In light of current state legislation, providing equal educational opportunities for ELs, especially LTELs, is vital to their success. This relates to the theoretical foundation of this study because it hearkens back to Paulo Freire's idea of actively participating in one's current reality and working to transform rather than conform to the world around them.</p>

<p> Instead of accepting the adage that adolescent motherhood had a negative effect in young women's lives, this researcher used a portraiture methodology to illuminate the goodness of adolescent motherhood for two <i>Mexicana </i> women in a southern New Mexico mountain town (Lawrence-Lightfoot &amp; Davis, 1997; Pillow, 2004). I examined how the ideological conditions of the hierarchy of gender that femininity and motherhood contextualize the conditions in which two first-generation Mexican American women became pregnant while still in high school. I framed that result within the historical structuring of the education of adolescent mothers to understand how the participants were able to experience a campus-based daycare, parenting program, and health center when they most needed it in order to graduate from high school. This research followed how the participants contended over the years with issues of legal work status, culture, healthcare, romance, language, resiliency, agency, discipline, contraceptives, and sexuality. From 24 hours of audio transcriptions, the experiences of the two participants were presented chronologically from 2004-2013 in order to show how context informed the decisions the women made at the intersection of woman, mother, worker, and student identities. Through a feminist standpoint, I examined the portraits to reveal important insight into the experience of adolescent motherhood to illuminate possibilities for social justice (Bowman, 2011). My findings are based upon the themes that emerged from the data and the critical consciousness I gained from researching their experiences.</p>

<p> This research study was situated in the policy context of the internationalization of higher education, motivated by the increased presence of culturally and linguistically diverse students in U.S. educational settings and elevated discourses related to student global engagement. It explored the lived experience of 10 second-language (L2) speaking international students enrolled in a mainstream required writing course at a private, urban university in Washington, DC. This study investigated how participants experienced and understood being a part of this required writing course, and more specifically how the thematic nature of the course mediated their experience. This research conceived of a classroom as a socioacademic space, a shared environment where course content and formal academic tasks are combined with mediated social interactions among members of the classroom community. It engaged a hermeneutic phenomenological research approach to tap into both the details of the lived experience and how it was made sense of by the participants who experienced it. Through a series of three interviews, at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, participants revealed their sociocultural histories, the arc of the lived experience over time, and their reflection on the experience at the end of the semester. </p><p> Findings for this study were organized along four major themes: The context for mobility; Entering the first-year writing course: Hopeful but unsure; The negotiation of the FYW experience: Interactions; Reflection on the lived experience: You get what you put in. Findings highlighted the significance of interactions in socioacademic settings, as well as the strategic ways L2 students responded to both the classroom environment and the tasks it required. The course topic was also found to have a strong influence over participants' experiences, though writing clearly occupied more of their attention during the second half of the semester. The findings of this study add dimension to our understanding of this phenomenon; further develop the literature bases of the internationalization of higher education, second-language writing, and first-year writing; and have implications for future research, institutional arrangements and attitudes, and curricular and pedagogical approaches. </p>

<p> This project explored aspects of English-related out-of-class time use by Japanese university students. The aim was to identify the salient temporal and motivational features of the episodes.</p><p> Two sets of time use and interview data were collected longitudinally (one semester per dataset) through Longitudinal Study 1 (<i>n_initial</i> = 66, <i>n_final</i> = 15), which included participants from three universities in Western Japan, followed by Longitudinal Study 2 (<i>n_initial</i> = 59, <i>n_final</i> = 25), which included participants from two universities in Western Japan. Interviews were with participants from these studies. Participants maintained a record of their out-of-class English-related time use during the semester. These data provide an overview of the out-of-class time use of Japanese university students during a full Japanese academic year. Longitudinal Study 1 data were collected during the fall semester, the second term at Japanese universities. Longitudinal Study 2 data were collected during the spring term, the initial term. Longitudinal Study 1 participants reported 2,529 episodes and Longitudinal Study 2 participants reported 3,322 episodes of out-of-class English access during the study period. One interview was held with the Longitudinal Study 1 participants (<i>n</i> = 15), at the end of fall semester. Two interviews were held with Longitudinal Study 2 participants (<i>n</i> = 25), one during the term and one following summer holiday. Data were examined for their temporal patterns and the contextual and affective features of the time use episodes. The cross-sectional component collected data from participants (<i>n</i> = 1,399) at 11 universities in Western Japan. These participants provided data for the motivational survey (<i>n</i> = 1,399) and at least one week of out-of-class English time use (<i>n</i> = 642) data. The participants in the cross-sectional study reported 2,987 out-of-class English access episodes.</p><p> Episode data for all three components (<i>K</i> = 8,838) and the motivational survey data (<i>n</i> = 1,399) were analyzed at the person, group, and amalgamated episode levels for the patterns of participants' time use using ANOVA and nonparametric procedures. The data were also examined using nonparametric procedures to exam the affective variables by the contextual variables of that time use. The episode data regarding participants' (<i> n</i> = 1,399) time use and motivational survey data were analyzed using ANOVA, factor, Rasch, multiple regression analyses, and structural equation modeling. The analyses of the time use data considered the temporal features of the episodes, the contextual features of the episodes, and the affective features of the time use. The analyses of the motivational data considered two models of the L2 motivational self system, an intention to learn model (ILM) and a time use model (TUM).</p><p> Time use results from all three components of this study indicated most out-of-class episodes occur when the participant is alone at home either studying or listening to English music. The most typical episode was listening to music, either alone at home or while commuting. A similar pattern of out-of-class English access was found for participants in all three components of this study. Study-related episodes were not considered enjoyable but also were not seen as causing anxiety. The amount of out-of-class time varied widely between participants, with one longitudinal study participant devoting 40 hours per week to English outside of class.</p><p> For longitudinal study participants, the time use episode data, along with interviews, indicated that habit was a primary driver of out-of-class English access, with participants showing stable patterns of time use, whether for enjoyment or study, during the term. For the most part, once participants in the longitudinal components for this project had established a routine it remained fairly consistent during the term.</p><p> Moreover, results from the three components showed that none of the participants met the time requirements of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sports, Technology and Culture (MEXT, 2002, 2009b) for out-of-class time allocated to study for their English courses, a 2:1 ration, for every week that they participated in the study. Only a few of the participants met this requirement for out-of-class English access during any week of the study and only if all purposes, including enjoyment, were considered.</p><p> This study also addresses the call that D&ouml;rnyei (2000) made for research examining the links between motivation and behavior in L2 learning. One unique aspect of this study is the use of a behavioral variable, Time Use, in addition to the survey-assessed latent trait, Intention to Learn, to explore the links between motivational profile and actual behavior. </p><p> Participants who rated highly on their Ideal L2 Self rated highly on the Intention to Learn, but not nearly as highly on actual time use on English. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

<p> This study researched the preparedness of English as a Second Language directors in school corporations in Indiana to determine their background experiences, awareness of second language acquisition research, levels of qualification, attitudes towards English learners (ELs), efficacy for leading ESL programs, and to gain an understanding of how to provide guidance and support to this group of individuals. Furthermore, the study investigated relationships between these factors to gain insight into how they impact each other and program implementation. The study endeavored to provide useful information towards policy making and support of ESL leaders. The research was quantitative and utilized a tailored design Internet survey to collect data. Descriptive data was analyzed using analysis of frequency (distribution, central tendency and dispersion of individual variables), while relationships between elements were analyzed using a combination of ANOVA, and Pearson's Product Moment correlational analysis, followed by post hoc analysis and regression analysis. Findings indicated that having experience with English learners and teaching certification for working with English learners were significant factors in the areas of knowledge, attitude, and efficacy. An exploratory model of ESL program leadership, developed by the researcher, concluded that when EL directors are certified and bring experience of working with ELs to their positions, it is more likely that their programs will be successfully implemented. Finally, the interplay of variables showed that these directors' levels of knowledge of second language acquisition principles and efficacy for leading the ESL program had highly significant effects on attitude, program implementation and each other. The implications of this study include directions for policy, training programs, and further research.</p>