Raising scholastic achievement of diverse and struggling students as well as narrowing the academic achievement gap between students from mainstream and diverse backgrounds seems to be essentially dependent on educators’ personal knowledge, perspectives, and definitions regarding the terms multicultural education and equity pedagogy. Research studies confirm that addressing student’s culture, language, and social status with appreciation, inclusion, and sensitivity increases their academic successes. In classrooms, negative perceptions often maintained by educators about students perpetuate the false belief that diverse learners are unable to or struggle to grasp new learning. This ten-week qualitative study examined teachers’ perceptions as well as implementations of multicultural education and culturally responsive instructional practices as a means of addressing the literacy learning needs of diverse and struggling students in two primary classrooms in an urban Southeastern elementary school. Reading instruction observations provided insight into teachers’ self-descriptive beliefs and attitudes of multicultural education, how their perceptions of multicultural education differ from observed culturally responsive instructional practices, and how observed culturally responsive pedagogy align with multicultural education theories outlined by prominent researchers. All teachers and students come to school with personal backgrounds, languages, and attitudes concerning cultures and ethnicities. Their perceptions are formed by family members, prior experiences, and mainstream society. Frequently, teachers do not realize that personal and institutionalized perceptions, expectations, pedagogies, learning environments, curriculum and materials, grouping strategies, and assessment methods are at odds with learning needs of many students from diverse backgrounds. Findings of this study suggest that educators’ academic goals are often at odds with instructional policies and practices, as demonstrated by the persistent academic achievement gap. Tragically, many students perceive that learning struggles and failures are their fault. They may experience marginalization and develop feelings of inadequacy. Consequently, many students from diverse backgrounds express feelings of anger and frustration that may be exhibited by undesirable behavior. They may give up, drop out, abandon opportunities for citizenship participation and responsibility, or surrender to jobs in adulthood that are less than those they dreamt of. Finally, study findings suggest that teachers’ lack of cultural awareness, understanding of multicultural education, and knowledge of equity pedagogy prevent them from recognizing several negative personal perceptions and biases. As a result, they implement self-selected, school, and district policies and practices completely unaware that they are unintentionally posing learning obstructions and academic success limitations as well as fostering students’ frustrations. Demographics indicate that the predominantly Caucasian middle-class teaching population requires high levels of cultural awareness and extensive knowledge concerning multicultural education, equity pedagogy, and cultural awareness in order to address the literacy-learning needs of the increasingly diverse student population effectively.

The purpose of this paper was to examine multicultural education, and clarify misconceptions about it. Particularly, those misconceptions that have resulted in House Bill 2281 ( i.e. multicultural education “promotes the overthrow of the United States government”), and the misconception that multicultural education solely involves content integration. In addition, this paper examines the possible benefits of having a multicultural education. These benefits include combating the negative effects of acculturation and assimilation, reducing prejudice and the effects of stereotypes, enhancing other-group orientation, and promoting critical analysis and empowerment.

This study explored the underlying factors involved in the Language and Culture Questionnaire (LCQ), a measure of lead pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers' (n = 119) beliefs and best practices for working with dual language learners (DLLs). The LCQ was found to have suboptimal reliability and all results herein should be interpreted with caution. The exploratory factor analyses suggested the LCQ weakly captures two factors, beliefs and practices. Frequencies of teachers holding the appropriate beliefs and implementing best practices were reviewed. The beliefs and practices scores exhibited a degree of relationship between each other. Finally, multiple regression designs were utilized to reveal what teachers demographic characteristics (e.g., years teaching DLLs, level of education) were related to greater scores on the LCQ.

Bilingual children represent a large population of preschool and school-aged children in the United States. Challenges may arise when the verbal community in which a child spends most of his or her time does not reinforce his or her primary language. Previous research has shown that children adjust their language to match the language of their listener (Genesee, Boivin, & Nicoladis, 1996). It is possible that having a native-language communication partner at school would improve child engagement, as measured by child mean length of utterance and quantity of child initiations. The purpose of this study is to examine whether listener language has an effect on number of child initiations and mean length of utterance. A secondary purpose is to replicate and extend previous research on children matching their language to that of their listener in Spanish-speaking preschoolers. Four preschoolers who were exposed to Spanish at home and English in their instructional setting were recruited. Their language proficiency was assessed with the preLAS and they were exposed to Spanish-speaking communication partners and English-speaking communication partners in a multielement design. Results suggest that the language of the listener had implications for amount of child initiations and mean length of utterance. This was not always predicted by the language proficiency assessment. Also, children were more likely to use their dominant language in the non-dominant language context than use the non-dominant language in the dominant language context. These results may have implications for best practices in educational settings for Spanish-speaking preschoolers.

The purpose of this qualitative research was to better understand the multilingual and multimodal composition resources appropriated by students during a study of Latino children’s picturebooks within a predominantly Latino, third grade classroom. A conceptual framework guided by socio-cultural perspectives, a social semiotic theory of communication, and Composition 2.0 studies was employed to investigate the ways in which students remixed multilingual and multimodal composition resources and manifested identities in texts. This research was guided by both design-based and case study methods and drew upon constant-comparative, discourse, and visual discourse analytic methods to examine the data. Analysis was also located in the literature on identity and texts so as to better understand the socio-cultural histories and identities attached to the children's picturebooks. Data collection was focused on both the multilingual and multimodal resources students appropriated to compose and the ways students orchestrated those resources during the classroom picturebook study. Analysis was structured by two interrelated strands. The first strand explores more broadly the composition resources in use during the classroom picturebook study, and the second analyzes explicitly the ways two focal students remixed composition resources within their picturebook productions and sedimented identities in texts. Three findings generated from the two related strands of analysis provided insights into the potential of a picturebook study as a viable multilingual and multimodal composition curriculum. First, in the context of the teacher and researcher co-designed curriculum and instruction, students appropriated literary, illustrated, material, and picturebook form resources from Latino children’s picturebooks in diverse ways. Second, in the act of picturebook making, students invoked other socio-cultural texts as mentors and remixed composition resources from diverse sources to craft their own picturebooks. Finally, students manifested aspects of their identities within the material worlds and languages reflected within their picturebooks. Together, these findings situate picturebook study and picturebook making as creative and intellectual acts for students. Moreover, this study features Latino children’s picturebooks as culturally responsive mentor texts. Several pedagogical implications related to composition instruction for young writers and diverse population are also discussed. / text

This thesis presents the extension of WebCrow into the English language. WebCrow is an automatic crossword solver developed at the University of Siena, and makes use of the vast quantity of information on the world wide web to find answers to crossword puzzle clues. It has been demonstrated to be competitive against human opponents in solving Italian crossword puzzles, and new improvements are being actively developed. This thesis focuses on the development of the English-language extension of WebCrow, as well as some issues with multilingual crossword solving in general. This extension will help WebCrow to become a competitive crossword solver for English language (specifically American) crosswords and demonstrate that the use of web-based information can help effectively solve natural language problems in various languages. / text

During 24 silent and oral readings of Guy de Maupassant and Arthur C. Clarke short stories (1294 and 1516 words) by proficient multilinguals, movement of the left eye was tracked and utterances were recorded. Three hypotheses investigate universality in the reading process: reading in English is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in French (chapter 4); reading in a first, or native language (L1), is similar in reading speed, miscues, and eye movements to reading in a second, or later acquired, language (L2) (chapter 5); silent reading is similar to oral reading in reading speed and eye movements (chapter 6). Hypothesis are partially confirmed; implications are drawn for teaching and research.Silent reading is consistently faster than oral reading, with a mean difference of 28.7%. Reading speed is similar in English and French, but interacts differently with language experience: L2 readers of English read 50% slower than L1 readers, while in French, L2 readers read 13% faster.Retelling scores demonstrate a slight comprehension advantage for oral reading over silent, a wider range after oral than after silent, L1 readers having a slight advantage over L2 readers, and improved scores after second readings. Proscribing rereading to increase oral accuracy may disadvantage some readers: Second oral readings in English (but not in French) produced more miscues than first oral readings. This requires further study with tightly controlled groups. Overall, English readings produced 36% more miscues than French readings.Mean fixation durations are slightly longer during silent than oral reading, and show little variation between English and French reading. Wide variation in reading speed (L1/L2, silent/oral) is not reflected in mean eye fixation durations, although language dominance show an effect in French, where fixations during L1 readings are 18.6% shorter than during L2 readings.Individual variation is a factor. Emotional affect, poetic style, construction of syntax, and attention to metaphor are all observed in this EMMA data. Future analysis of this database may look at anaphoric relations, metaphor, how texts teach; and how readers develop narrative, verb phases, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations in complete textual discourse.

The aim of this study was to investigate, illuminate and discuss teacher’s and multilingual student’s view on the connection between their mother tongue and their learning of other languages. This qualitative study is based on interviews with eight students in the 8th grade and two language-teachers from the same school, as well as ethnographic observations during English and Swedish lessons. With the help of some relevant theories, the empirical study is compared, analyzed and interpreted. The results show that the theories and informant’s view on the connection between the mother tongue and other languages are similar, which is that the mother tongue must be fully established before a new language can be taken in.

<p>My study suggests by adding cultural relevant material to a curriculum does not alter the way a teacher teaches, it changes the "why." By selecting material that connects students in regards to their social, cultural or historical experience a teacher adds to the creditability of the lesson. The selection of a culturally relevant subject changes the detached "Why I am drawing this" to a subject that has a deeper meaning. The study of culturally relevant material provides students with cultural "depth" that becomes a part of their visual experience. Cultural depth is a necessary component in developing critical thinking skills and becomes a foundation for a student's creative expression. </p><p> A necessary goal of art education is visual literacy. Visually literacy requires no tactile skill, it is the critical thinking component of art. The tactile skill component of art used to express ideas in a creative way varies from those with talent (the ability to draw well) to those with very little or none. Visually literacy transcends talent. Little talent is need to develop the ability to put in context and frame visual and written information allowing one to discern the fiction from the non-fiction. </p><p> African-American art and artist were selected for my case study but the subjects studied do not need to be limited to demographics or ethnicity. There are many social and political issues within and outside the students' community that would have relevance. The key to improving visual literacy is connecting subject relevance to the students, in order to develop critical thinking skills and to have students think about what they see. The goal is always is to improve students' learning and achievement. </p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the perceived experience of Chinese students during their first year attending a Catholic co-educational boarding and day school in the United States. Data collection included semi-structured interviews of five current students, a faculty and staff questionnaire, and an analysis of the schedule of events for the new boarding student orientation. The data was analyzed using the inductive method for data analysis. The data showed that Chinese students face challenges in four key areas: 1) academic adjustment; 2) social adjustment; 3) emotional support; and 4) developing autonomy. Differences between Chinese culture and American culture provide challenges across the four key areas, leading culture to be best suited as a lens for analyzing the challenges faced by Chinese students transitioning to life at an American boarding school. There should be continuing research to identify the challenges faced by other ethnic and cultural groups in adjusting to life at boarding schools.</p>