Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

A growing amount of empirical research and theory on educational development in multilingual contexts emphasises that mother tongue based education will benefit disadvantaged children. For most of the research and literature, led by UNESCO, it is argued that educational success in multilingual nations can only be achieved based on early learning and schooling in the mother tongue. Effective language policy based on mother tongue is crucial to the implementation of the educational system of any multilingual country, including Nigeria the case study, where the home and school languages are mainly uncoordinated. It also confirms that fluency and literacy in the mother tongue establish a cognitive and linguistic foundation for learning additional languages. Both the theoretical and empirical research agree that in order to drastically challenge the educational disadvantages and to be fair to various multi-ethnic groups, national education policy must promote multilingualism in the education system. This PhD thesis explores attitudes of Nigerian young people towards their mother tongue and English, in the context of Nigerian language and education policies. It describes the sociolinguistic realities of Nigeria and its language policy and planning situation, relating them to language use and attitudes among young people. It also aims to identify the role language plays in the widespread phenomenon of pupils who drop out of secondary education and pupils' attitudes towards the medium of instruction. These aims were supported by a language attitudes survey and fieldwork; where data were collected to study the attitudes of different young people, both secondary school pupils and school dropouts towards mother tongue and English, and to investigate differences in their language choice and use patterns. Findings from this research substantiate that mother tongue language policy within education can foster positive attitudes; they also confirm that there are attitudinal differences between certain groups of young people.

To determine learner attitudes toward an alternative assessment, additional washback effects, and possible relationships between cultures of learning and learner attitudes, a mixed methods study was conducted in an advanced multicultural EAP (English for Academic Purposes) class in the USA, where a poster project was implemented as a summative assessment. Qualitative and quantitative data from a pre- and post-test questionnaire as well as classroom observations and an interview with the instructor were used to investigate learners' attitudes towards the assessment. The twenty-four participants representing five cultures of learning from the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia expressed largely positive attitudes prior to completing the poster project. After the project presentations, there was minimal change in their attitudes. The researcher identified six positive and three negative washback effects of the poster project: positive attitudes toward the poster project, self-confidence, accurate identification of the learning goal, awareness of learning, community building and cultural exchange, deeming the assessment useful, negative attitudes toward the poster project, misidentification of the learning goal, and deeming the assessment not useful. Although there was no relationship between participants' cultures of learning and their attitudes toward the poster project, their prior experience with alternative assessments may be related to their attitudes.

This case study is a phenomenology to explore the experiences of African American men in the Call Me MISTER program at one university. The purpose of the study is to understand the program components and experiences of these men in the program to identify the neutral, positive, and negative phenomena. These are categorized into the program design, deciding to become a MISTER, experiences within the program, and reactions to the program design. Qualitative interviews were conducted individually with eight men currently enrolled in the Call Me MISTER program. A qualitative focus group interview was then held for seven of the eight interviewees. The emergent themes from these interviews were that 1) the admissions design provides motivation for men to join the program 2) the program’s financial aid offerings are an incentive to join/stay in the program 3) the cohesion of the group is a dynamic that attracts and retains MISTERs 4) the faculty support contributes to the MISTERs’ program satisfaction 5) the coursework design contributes to the MISTERs’ program success and 6) the MISTERs credit the Call Me MISTER program with their career path choice. The mission of the Call Me MISTER program is to increase the number of minority men entering the field of education. This goal is accomplished with each Call Me MISTER graduate that enters the field of education.

This study aims to address the need to support the improvement of teaching practices of South African mathematics teachers. Both international and South African literature suggest that orchestrating whole class discussion by using the practice of revoicing, can support learner appropriation of mathematical discourse, and that it is particularly suited to multilingual environments. Given the staying power of traditional style teaching, this study explores revoicing as a feedback practice within this style of Initiate, Respond, Evaluate/ Feedback (IRE/F) format. Two grade 6 mathematics teachers in Johannesburg were interviewed and their lessons were observed, filmed and analysed using a detailed coding instrument. The teachers were found to be giving as much revoicing as non-revoicing feedback to their learners and that revoicing was used in limited ways, mostly different to those suggested in the literature and not always productively. Key categories of revoicing seen in this study were repeating to affirm learners as well as rephrasing into mathematical language and funnelling learners towards correct answers. The contribution of this research to the field has been to expose the different ways in which two South African teachers are already using the practice of revoicing, in order to see the potential for further research and improved practice.

No description available.

This study investigated public school administrator perception of the extent to which federal civil rights, equal employment opportunity, and affirmative action legislation have affected the personnel policies and practices of Virginia public schools since 1972. Another purpose of this study was to determine if there is a correlation between administrator perceptions of EED/AA impact and the characteristics of school divisions.;It was hypothesized that school officials would perceive that the imposition of EED/AA regulations has greatly altered the personnel function in Virginia public school divisions. It was also hypothesized that school officials would perceive that (1) EED/AA regulations caused an increase in both costs and staff requirements; (2) EED/AA necessitated the codification of selection, promotion and transfer criteria and procedure as well as strict adherence to them; (3) EED/AA necessitated modification of causes and procedures for non-selection and dismissal of personnel. Finally, it was hypothesized that the perceived degree of impact would be related to the type of division--that officials of high black concentration divisions, urban divisions and large divisions would perceive greater impact than those of low black concentration, non-urban or small divisions.;A survey instrument was designed, tested and sent to school personnel officials in all 135 Virginia Public School Divisions. Ninety-four responded.;Analysis was accomplished by comparison of responses to questions through analysis of variance using division size, ethnic concentration level and urban, suburban, non-urban nature of the division as the independent variable and response category as the dependent variable.;It was concluded that there was no significant relationship between the three background variables and school officials' responses. It was further concluded that school officials viewed the impact of EED/AA uniformly and that these officials perceived little or no change in staff workload cost or effort due to EED/AA compliance over the period of most vigorous enforcement.

No description available.

This study reviews concepts and the mechanism of empathy, and the relationship between empathy and language proficiency, focusing on the aspect of cognitive empathy. It also discusses whether empathy levels could be developed by learning language to a highly proficient level. I compared the empathy levels between high and low proficiency second-language learners to determine if there was correlation between empathy and other factors such as gender, studying abroad, education background, and usage of a second language. I found that there was no relationship between empathy level and language proficiency level; however, there was one between empathy and gender. For further research, I suggest continuing studies in executive function in adults, especially adult bilinguals (including highly proficient second language learners), and to investigate how executive function in adults influences behavior and empathy development.

<p> Nations sharing similar historical, linguistic, and social backgrounds tend to cluster around the same cultural values systems. However, changing socioenvironmental conditions drive cultural values systems to change over time. This study compared changing cultural values in Poland in the postcommunist era with values in the Czech Republic and Slovenia, using factorial ANOVA of published data from the European Values Survey and World Values Survey. The hypotheses were: (a) cultural values in Poland have moved from traditionalist values toward secularism; (b) Poland's rate of cultural values movement was more moderate than either the Czech Republic or Slovenia; and (c) the higher degree of religiousness in Poland mirrored the slower rate of movement toward secularism. The study participants were 20,038 adults from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia. Findings showed 10 of 19 cultural values in Poland showed moderate movement toward secularism, confirming that traditional cultural values in Poland had decreased. However, the findings also showed cultural migration in Poland preserved strong traditional family and religious values despite the influence of far reaching social, economic, and political changes. This study revealed two important points: (a) as cultural values within groups of nations change, cultural values in similar clusters of nations tend to move in the same direction, and (b) deeply held traditional values tend to preserve the differentiation between nations, even as process of cultural values change continues.</p>