Matching Items (8)
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- All Subjects: English language
- Creators: James, Mark
- Creators: Artiles, Alfredo
- Status: Published
Description
This study investigates the relationships between ESL teachers' beliefs about writing instruction and their use of computer technology in the first-year composition classroom. Utilizing a sociocultural approach, the study analyzes the connections between ESL teachers' instructional beliefs and the technological practices that emerge as a result of these beliefs and decisions. Qualitative research was conducted, and data was collected through classroom observations, teacher interviews, and course materials. Data analysis reveals that regardless of teachers' differing beliefs about writing instruction, they use computer technology when it enhances their teaching and students' learning. It also reveals that factors such as teacher attitude toward technology and adequate training affect the extent to which they incorporate technology into class.
ContributorsErdem, Ebru (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Nilsen, Don (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
ABSTRACT Early career science teachers are often assigned to classrooms with high numbers of English language learners (ELL students). As these teachers learn to become effective practitioners, the circumstances surrounding them merit a thorough examination. This study examines the longitudinal changes in Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and practices of six early career science teachers who taught in urban schools. The teachers participated in the Alternative Support for Induction Science Teachers (ASIST) program during their initial two years of teaching. Our research team followed the participants over a five-year period. This study focuses on data from Years 1, 3, and 5. The data collected included classroom observations and interviews. In addition, classroom artifacts were collected periodically for the purpose of triangulation. The analysis of the data revealed that with the support of the ASIST program, the teachers implemented inquiry lessons and utilized instructional materials that promoted academic language skills and science competencies among their ELL students. Conversely, standardized testing, teaching assignment, and school culture played a role in constraining the implementation of inquiry-based practices. The results of this study call for collaborative efforts among university science educators and school administrators to provide professional development opportunities and support for the implementation of inquiry and language practices among early career science teachers of ELL students.
ContributorsOrtega, Irasema (Author) / Luft, Julie A (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Baker, Dale R. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This yearlong project examines how multilingual undergraduate writers--including international visa students and U.S. permanent residents or citizens who are non-native English speakers--exercise agency in their first-year composition placement decisions. Agency is defined as the capacity to act or not to act contingent upon various conditions. The goal of the project is to demonstrate how student agency can inform the overall programmatic placement decisions, which can lead to more effective placement practices for multilingual writers. To explore the role of agency in students' placement decisions, I conducted a series of four in-depth interviews with eleven multilingual writers between Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 in the Writing Programs at Arizona State University. To triangulate these placement decisions, I interviewed some of the multilingual student participants' academic advisors and writing teachers as well as writing program administrators. Findings showed that when conditions for agency were appropriate, the multilingual student participants were able to negotiate placement, choose to accept or deny their original placement, self-assess their proficiency level as deciding to choose a writing course, plan on their placement, question about placement, and finally make decisions about a writing course they wanted to take. In the context of this study, conditions for agency include the freedom to choose writing courses and information about placement that is distributed by the following sources: advisors' recommendations, other students' past experience in taking first-year composition, the new student orientation, and other sources that provide placement related information such as an online freshman orientation and a major map. Other findings suggested that the academic advisor participants did not provide the multilingual students with complete placement information; and this affected the way the multilingual students chose which section of first-year composition to enroll in. Meanwhile, there was no formal communication about placement options and placement procedures between the Writing Programs and writing teachers. Building on these findings, I argue for improving conditions for agency by providing placement options, making placement information more readily available, and communicating placement information and options with academic advisors, writing teachers, and multilingual students.
ContributorsSaenkhum, Tanita, 1976- (Author) / Matsuda, Paul Kei (Thesis advisor) / Rose, Shirley (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
A bilingual, bicultural interpreter and researcher navigates blurry boundaries and intersectionality
Description
A researcher reflects using a close reading of interview transcripts and description to share what happened while participating in multiple roles in a larger ethnographic study of the acculturation process of deaf students in kindergarten classrooms in three countries. The course of this paper will focus on three instances that took place in Japan and America. The analysis of these examples will bring to light the concept of taking on multiple roles, including graduate research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant within a research project serving to uncover challenging personal and professional dilemmas and crossing boundaries; the dual roles, interpreter and researcher being the primary focus. This analysis results in a brief look at a thought provoking, yet evolving task of the researcher/interpreter. Maintaining multiple roles in the study the researcher is able to potentially identify and contribute "hidden" knowledge that may have been overlooked by other members of the research team. Balancing these different roles become key implications when interpreting practice, ethical boundaries, and participant research at times the lines of separation are blurred.
ContributorsHensley, Jennifer Scarboro (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Horejes, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Increasing numbers of courses are offered online and increasing numbers of students are pursuing post-secondary studies. At broad-access institutions, such as land grant universities and community colleges, this presents a particular concern around student persistence--that is, the number of students who complete diploma, certificate, or degree requirements from an institution. Such increased access and increased enrollment also present unique challenges to first-year writing instructors, who are often the first professionals with whom first-year students are in contact. Here I explore the many reasons why student persistence should interest first-year writing instructors, in particular, those who are teaching online. Student persistence has important civic, economic, ethical, institutional, and disciplinary implications that first-year instructors cannot ignore. I propose a persistence-based pedagogy that involves six essential elements: designing learner-centered online writing courses, demonstrating mattering by valuing student writing, fostering self-efficacy by making assignments relevant, fostering student connections through collaboration and community, engaging virtual learners by fostering a sense of place and presence, and recognizing the challenges and minimizing the risks of teaching online. Such an undertaking is necessarily transdisciplinary and draws on scholarship in rhetoric and composition, instructional design, educational psychology, applied linguistics, and higher education administration. It connects pedagogical principles advanced nearly fifty years ago with digital pedagogies that are in their infancy and attempts to balance the social epistemic nature of writing instruction with the real-world demands of diverse student populations, increasing course sizes, and ever-changing technologies. Perhaps most importantly, this dissertation focuses on strategies that online writing instructors can adopt regardless of their theoretical leanings, academic training, or institutional requirements. While persistence-based instruction does not change the purpose or outcomes of first-year composition and does not replace proper placement measures or address early-term drop rates, it does provide a framework for facilitating online courses that is rooted in rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy and promotes informed teaching and lifelong learning.
ContributorsBergin, Jeffrey R (Author) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Situated in the influx of Chinese students entering U.S. higher education and the L2 writing research growing interests in investigating learners’ experience to gain further insights into their emic perspectives on English literacy development, this dissertation argues that the identifying the beliefs as the underlying principle shaping and being shaped by our experience. In this dissertation, I propose a theoretical framework of beliefs and validates the framework by using it to examine multilingual writers’ learning experience in the context of First Year Composition. The framework advances a definition of beliefs and a framework demonstrating the relationship among three constructs—perception, attitude, and behavior. In order to develop the framework, I first synthesized existing literature on language learning beliefs and argue the scarcity of L2 writing researchers’ discussing belief when exploring learners’ experience. I define beliefs as an individual’s generalizations from the mental construction of the experience, based on evaluation and judgment, thus are predisposed to actions. I proposed a framework of belief, consisting three mental constructs—perception, attitude and action—to identify and examine factors contributing the formation and change of beliefs. I drew on drawing on Dewey's theory of experience and Rokeach's (1968) belief theory, and contextual approach to beliefs in the field of second language acquisition. I analyzed the interview data of twenty-two Chinses students accounting their English learning experiences across four different contexts, including English class in China, TOEFL training courses, intensive English program, and FYC classroom. The findings show that their beliefs were formed and transformed in the contexts before FYC. They perceived all the writing learning in those courses as similar content and curriculum, but the attitudes vary regarding the immediate contexts and long-term goal of using the knowledge. They believe grammar and vocabulary is the “king’s way,” the most effective and economic approach, which was emphasized in the test-oriented culture. Moreover, the repetitive course content and various pedagogies, including multiple revisions and the requirement of visiting writing center, have been perceived as requiring demonstration more efforts, which in turn prompted them to develop their own negotiation strategies, the actions, to gain more credits for the class. This dissertation concludes that the beliefs can be inferred from these all three constructs, but to change beliefs of learners, we need to make them explicit and incorporate them into writing instruction or curriculum design. Implications on how to further the research of beliefs as well as translating these findings into classroom pedagogies are also discussed. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of how the framework can be used to inform future research and classroom practices informed by writing beliefs identified in this study.
ContributorsYang, Yuching (Author) / Matsuda, Paul Kei (Thesis advisor) / Matsuda, Aya (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This multilevel, institutional case study used ethnographic methods to explore the intersections of local language policies and emergent bilingual students’ identities in dual language and structured English immersion (SEI) classrooms at one urban elementary school. Using a sociocultural policy approach as means to explore the ways that educational language policies are appropriated and practiced in schools and classrooms and an intersectional literacy identity framework, I engaged in a multilevel qualitative analysis of one school, two fifth-grade classrooms, and four focal emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, I sought to understand the ways educators practiced and enacted language policies as well as how they conceptualized (bi)literacy for emergent bilingual students. At the student level, I engaged in identity-text writing sessions designed around student interests yet aligned with the opinion/argumentation writing style the students were working on in class at the time of data collection. Additionally, I conducted one-on-one interviews with the participants at each level of analysis (i.e. school-level, classroom-level, and student-level). The primary data analysis sources included participant interviews, classroom observations, and student identity-text artifacts.
Findings highlight the dynamic in-school and classroom-level realities of emergent bilingual students in an Arizona educational-language policy context. Specifically, at the school level, there was an ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies for emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, there were distinct differences in the ways students across the two classrooms were positioned within the larger school environment as well as variation surrounding how language and culture were positioned as a resource in each classroom context. The role of teachers as language policymakers is also explored through the findings. Analysis of student texts revealed the centrality of intersectional student identities throughout the writing processes. The discussion and conclusions more broadly address implications for educational practice, policy, and future research directions.
Findings highlight the dynamic in-school and classroom-level realities of emergent bilingual students in an Arizona educational-language policy context. Specifically, at the school level, there was an ongoing tension between compliance and resistance to state-mandated policies for emergent bilingual students. At the school and classroom levels, there were distinct differences in the ways students across the two classrooms were positioned within the larger school environment as well as variation surrounding how language and culture were positioned as a resource in each classroom context. The role of teachers as language policymakers is also explored through the findings. Analysis of student texts revealed the centrality of intersectional student identities throughout the writing processes. The discussion and conclusions more broadly address implications for educational practice, policy, and future research directions.
ContributorsBaca, Evelyn Concepción (Author) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Beardsley, Audrey (Committee member) / Casanova, Saskias (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This study investigates how the teaching English as an international language (TEIL) framework can be integrated into the English curriculum of the Korea Military Academy (KMA). Addressing the research gap on TEIL and military settings, this study first critically reviews issues around the varieties of English (i.e., world Englishes), the international functions of English, and the pedagogical implications of TEIL in today’s globalizing world. The study then examines current challenges and objectives of ELT and suggests practical strategies for incorporating TEIL into the English curriculum of the KMA.
The study suggests the following four strategies to apply TEIL into the English curriculum of the KMA: (a) introduce WE/EIL activities into the English Conversation course; (b) establish a WE/EIL course; (c) provide extracurricular WE/EIL activities; and (d) incorporate intercultural content into the Military English course. The study argues that implementing these suggestions would help cadets develop both their linguistic proficiency in English and intercultural communicative competence that are essential for them to become professional military communicators who can effectively communicate with interlocutors from diverse linguistic, cultural, and national backgrounds in international military contexts.
While the study contributes to the literature by bridging the gap between TEIL and military contexts, it demonstrates the following implications: (a) a meaningful case of applying TEIL into the military context in Korea; (b) the importance of both linguistic proficiency in English and intercultural competence for ELT in the KMA; and (c) the possibility of influencing the Korea Air Force and Naval Academy to reexamine their English curricula. The study concludes that the English curriculum of the KMA should be revised based on the recognition of the symbiotic relationship among linguistic proficiency in English, exposure to diverse varieties of English, and intercultural competence in order to produce cadets who can effectively communicate in English as a military lingua franca for the success of their designated military objectives in the future.
The study suggests the following four strategies to apply TEIL into the English curriculum of the KMA: (a) introduce WE/EIL activities into the English Conversation course; (b) establish a WE/EIL course; (c) provide extracurricular WE/EIL activities; and (d) incorporate intercultural content into the Military English course. The study argues that implementing these suggestions would help cadets develop both their linguistic proficiency in English and intercultural communicative competence that are essential for them to become professional military communicators who can effectively communicate with interlocutors from diverse linguistic, cultural, and national backgrounds in international military contexts.
While the study contributes to the literature by bridging the gap between TEIL and military contexts, it demonstrates the following implications: (a) a meaningful case of applying TEIL into the military context in Korea; (b) the importance of both linguistic proficiency in English and intercultural competence for ELT in the KMA; and (c) the possibility of influencing the Korea Air Force and Naval Academy to reexamine their English curricula. The study concludes that the English curriculum of the KMA should be revised based on the recognition of the symbiotic relationship among linguistic proficiency in English, exposure to diverse varieties of English, and intercultural competence in order to produce cadets who can effectively communicate in English as a military lingua franca for the success of their designated military objectives in the future.
ContributorsJin, Seonghan (Author) / Matsuda, Aya (Thesis advisor) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019