This study examines the representations of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis geographies within a contemporary grade-nine Canadian geography textbook. Although First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples have lived on the territory now known as Canada for thousands of years, in the past two hundred years, with the exception of some place names, colonialism has worked to largely remove evidence of their presence from the landscape and to exclude them from the dominant narratives of Canadian geography. In this study, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of a textbook currently approved by the Ontario Ministry of Education's Trillium List for the compulsory grade-nine applied-level Canadian geography course: Canadian Geography: A Sense of Place. First, I consider how the textbook creates knowledge of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples and their geographies. Next, I examine how this creation compares to the textbook's representation of Canadians. Finally, I explore what an Aboriginal geography might look like and how Aboriginal perspectives could be incorporated into the text. The grade-nine Canadian geography course is the only mandatory geography course for students in the applied stream. If students do not continue with geography, the text they use in this course or used by the teacher to organize this course will be their last exposure to geography texts and formal discussions of Aboriginal geographies. This textbook is important because for many students, it will be the only time in their lives that they are systematically exposed to knowledge about First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples. While there are attempts at inclusion, old misrepresentations appear again in new forms within this textbook. A major task of this textbook is constructing the nation and presenting a nationalized geography.

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This project concerns instructors' perceived communicator style in the college classroom with African American and European American students.

This study was designed to investigate preservice teachers' beliefs and attitudes about teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. The investigation was designed to analyze the effects on this population of acquiring professional knowledge in a teacher education program and gaining experience in a school with a culturally and linguistically diverse student population. The design selected for this investigation was a cross sectional design. Because the study proposed to investigate the effects of preservice teacher education on teachers beliefs and attitudes about teaching culturally and linguistically diverse learners, comparing groups was necessary to document the changes in beliefs and attitudes. All elementary education preservice teachers who had completed the multicultural strand of their program of study (third semester) and all preservice teachers who had not completed the multicultural strand of their program of study (first semester) were sampled. In order to create a ground for comparison, all first semester and third semester preservice teachers from early childhood education program, which did not require multicultural preparation, were sampled. Data were collected using three instruments: Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey (TMAS), analysis of three multicultural vignettes, and an open-ended questionnaire with three questions for each participant and a fourth question for the treatment group (third semester elementary education). Data were collected during Fall 2002 semester. Data obtained from the TMAS were analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance to assess the significance of differences between groups. Data obtained from the analysis of three multicultural vignettes and the first and the third questions of the open-ended questionnaire were scored holistically by two outside raters based on the rubric developed by the researcher inductively from a sample of responses. Scores obtained from outside raters were analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance to assess the level of mean differences between sampled groups. The second and fourth questions of the open-ended questionnaire were analyzed qualitatively by the researcher and debriefed by a peer. Analysis of the data obtained from the TMAS indicated that there were no significant differences among the groups sampled. Vignette analysis indicated that there were significant differenced between third semester elementary education preservice teachers and first semester elementary and early childhood education preservice teachers. The analysis of the first and the third questions of the open-ended questionnaire resulted in significant difference between third semester elementary education preservice teachers and all other groups. The qualitative data indicated that third semester elementary education preservice teachers relied more on academic coursework and field experience and less on personal experienced than all other groups in defining multicultural education. The analysis of the fourth questions indicated preservice teachers learning in four main areas: cultural awareness, ESOL, teaching and teaching strategies, and child perspective. In light of the existing literature and the overall picture that study depicted, it was concluded that the multicultural preparation that was combined fieldwork and coursework preservice teachers had received impacted their beliefs and attitudes positively. According to the findings of the study, it was recommended that the issues of equality and social justice be more fully integrated into the curriculum. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2003. / October 27, 2003. / Preservice Teacher Education, Multicultural Education / Includes bibliographical references. / Vivian Fueyo, Professor Directing Dissertation; Sande Milton, Outside Committee Member; Charles Wolfgang, Committee Member; John Hansen, Committee Member.

This dissertation investigates preservice teachers’ perspectives towards dual language education (DLE) through a mixed methods approach. This study investigates preservice teachers enrolled in an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) certification course concerning the following research questions: 1. What impact does taking an ESOL course have on preservice teachers’ attitudes and perspectives towards DLE? 2. Is there a significant difference in change in attitude between students taking the course online versus face to face (F2F)? 3. How are preservice teachers informed about what schools have dual language programs in their area? 4.What relationship may exist between attitudes, perspectives, and preservice teachers own personal experiences with bilingualism and experiences with diversity, and/or place of origin? The study follows a sequential explanatory research design which included a pre and post survey at the beginning and end of the semester, and interviews with participants in between the two surveys. The participants included 24 preservice teachers enrolled in an online and F2F section of an ESOL course. Findings from the research encompassed discovering an overall positive shift in preservice teachers’ perspectives towards DLE and English learner (EL) students, a difference between the F2F and online groups’ survey responses, and relationships between preservice teachers’ attitudes and perspectives towards DLE and their past experiences and place of origin. Participants showed positive increases in perspective from the total mean scores increasing from the pre to post survey, and in interviews. Participants in the F2F group showed higher increases from the pre to post survey than the online group, however neither group yielded statistically significant findings. Interviews provided a wealth of detailed examples of how these groups of preservice teachers reflected throughout the ESOL course and developed more positive attitudes towards ELs and DLE, and optimistic mindsets towards working with ELs and/or in a DLE setting in the future. Overall, this research seeks to underscore that the more knowledge, awareness, and empathy that preservice teachers are able to gain from courses that prepare them to work with linguistically diverse populations of students, the better equipped they will be to guide future generations of EL learners into educational success and beyond.

While there is a growing body of research regarding which instructional strategies are beneficial for English Learners (ELs) in mathematics classes (e.g., Chval & Chávez, 2012; Khisty & Chval, 2002; Moll 1988; Moschkovich, 2002), there are few detailed descriptions of what resources ELs draw on to enable their mathematical discourse. Therefore, this dissertation offers a detailed description of how EL students leverage resources contributed by themselves, their teacher, and the mathematical task in order to enable mathematical discourse. At its core, it strives to be an existence proof of how a linguistically diverse classroom with EL students can be a place of rich, meaningful discourse that supports the learning of mathematics. Using data from a teaching experiment designed to create an ideal classroom environment that supports rich mathematical discourse for EL students, I performed an exploratory case study (Yin, 2017) to investigate the following research question: In a specially-designed setting, how can different resources enable discourse for 9th-grade English Learners during mathematics lessons? In particular, I sought to describe the resources contributed by the students, teacher, and task that worked to enable discourse. In Chapter One, I present a statement of the problem, as well as an overview of statistical data regarding English Learners in the United States. Chapter Two is a review of relevant literature. Chapters Three, Four, and Five are each a stand-alone article intended to be submitted for publication. Chapter Three is an article which theorizes resources for enabling discourse. Chapter Four presents results of an empirical study that describes how resources from the student, the teacher, and the task are leveraged by students to enable their discourse. Chapter Five is intended for a practitioner journal and focuses on how the temporizing (intentional delay) of vocabulary can enable discourse for English Learners. Finally, Chapter 6 ties all chapters together and discusses implications and ideas for future research. The benefits of discourse in mathematics classes have been widely studied and accepted. However, there are few studies around how resources are leveraged in order to enable discourse specifically for English Learners studying mathematics in high school classrooms. In addition, there is a pervasive, misguided deficit view of English Learners which may serve as an obstacle for teachers to notice student resources or implement tasks which have the potential for discourse. Small changes in a task or instruction can lead to more opportunities for English Learners to communicate mathematically. Perhaps more important, however, is the need to recognize the abundance of resources that EL students themselves bring into the classroom. By purposefully honoring the multitude of ways students leverage resources to talk about mathematics, access to meaningful mathematics in the classroom can be improved. This can have a lasting impact for students during their time in high school and beyond. / 2023-01-27T00:00:00Z

Fill-in-the-blank multiple choice questions (MCQs) play an important role in the educational field, but the manual generation of them is quite resource-consuming, so it has gradually turned into an attractive NLP task. Thereinto, question creation itself has become a mainstream NLP research topic, while distractor (wrong alternative) generation (DG) still remains out of the spotlight. Although several studies on distractor generation have been conducted in recent years, there is little previous work on languages other than English. The goal of this thesis is to generate multilingual distractors in Chinese, Arabic, German, and English across domains. The initial step is to construct small-sized multilingual scientific datasets (En, Zh, Ar, and De) and general datasets (Zh and Ar) from scratch. Considering that there are limited multilingual labelled datasets, unsupervised experiments based on WordNet, Word Embedding, transformer-based models, translation methods, and domain adaptation are conducted to generate their corresponding candidate distractors. Finally, the performance of methods is evaluated against our newly-created datasets, where three metrics are applied. Lastly, statistical results show that monolingual transformer-based together with translation-based methods outperform the rest of the approaches for multilingual datasets, except for German, which reaches its highest score only through the translation-based means, and distractor generation in English datasets is the simplest to implement, whereas it is the most difficult in Arabic datasets.

There is a need to move away from the negative perceptions of African languages, and towards accepting the first language as an asset. Literature confirms the issues of language policies and practices in South African schools, as well as the predominant socio-economic challenges as contributing factors affecting learners and teachers in multilingual classrooms. Over the last decade, a concrete theoretical foundation of translanguaging as a pedagogy has expanded and gained momentum. Accepting the use of multiple languages to co-exist in multilingual classrooms, translanguaging has been recognised worldwide. The purpose of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how teachers manage translanguaging and how learners in multilingual classrooms learn by using home languages, to facilitate the learning and teaching process. From a qualitative mode of enquiry influenced by the interpretive philosophy and a conceptual framework grounded in the socio-cultural theory and asset-based approach; translanguaging practices were introduced in two schools to potentially understand how it affects learning and teaching practices in multilingual classrooms. Participants included the English teachers and Grade 5 and Grade 6 learners using their first languages alongside English. Data was collected qualitatively through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, worksheets and storyboards. Thematic data analysis was applied to the gathered data. The study established that the inclusion of first languages mediated the process of learning and teaching and provided guided support to accommodate academic development in multilingual classrooms. Findings revealed the positive attitude and emotions of the learners towards translanguaging, and the consequent appeal for more translanguaging lessons since the strategy informed better understanding. Moreover recommendations included that policy should incorporate teacher training to facilitate translanguaging practices in multilingual classrooms. As solutions to support translanguaging, policy ought to recognise strategies that value the importance of first language as a resource to be implemented in multilingual classrooms. Furthermore, educational psychologists understanding of the systemic needs of all parties involved, and developing proactive support strategies to be initiated in schools as potential learning and teaching methods is recommended. Further studies should include expanding on a comparative and longitudinal research to gain a profound understanding of the effects of translanguaging as pedagogy. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Educational Psychology / PhD / Unrestricted

Den kulturella mångfalden ökar i Sverige. I skolan finns det cirka 150 olika språk av de ungefärliga 200 som fastställts i det svenska samhället. Flerspråkighet har varit aktuellt under en längre tid i Sverige. Förr var de vanliga orsakerna immigration på grund av fattigdom eller flyktingar som flytt krig. Idag är globaliseringen en vanligare orsak. Trots att flerspråkighet varit aktuellt en längre tid finns negativa attityder och okunskap. För att sätta flerspråkighet i en större kontext är Afrika angeläget. Där finns individer som talar tre till fyra språk. Trots att flerspråkighet inte är något främmande, visar PISA-resultaten att flerspråkiga elever i ämnet matematik får fortsatt sämre resultat. Studiens syfte är att undersöka vad som kännetecknar forskningen inom flerspråkighet i ämnet matematik. Detta gjordes genom sökningar i olika databaser där artiklar och avhandlingar noggrant undersökts. Syftesfrågorna som sedan skulle besvaras var: - Hur belyses flerspråkiga elevers undervisningssituation med fokus på ämnet matematik? - Hur framställs modersmålets betydelse i relation till sociala, kulturella och identitetsaspekter? I resultatet framträder det att undervisningen vanligast planeras utifrån läroböcker. Konsekvenser av detta är att elever får arbete självständigt och kan gå miste om att kommunicera och socialisera sina matematikkunskaper. Det råder även negativa attityder gällande flerspråkiga elever som främst uppkommit genom okunskap och omedvetenhet. Språk utvecklas i sociala sammanhang. Modersmålet spelar roll vad det gäller kulturella aspekter. Flerspråkiga elever kan ha svårigheter för att tillgodo göra sig uppgifter om de saknar referensramar. Får eleverna använda sig av sitt modersmål kan de bli drivna i sitt matematiklärande och sedan identifiera sig som detta.