Teaching pronunciation using computer and mobile-assisted technology has steadily increased over the past two decades (Olson, 2014; Galazci, 2016, Kochem, 2022; Tseng et al., 2002, Lan, 2022). Furthering our understanding of the impact that teaching pronunciation using technology has on students is vital to continue developing tools to support student-oriented pronunciation goals, especially since prior research elucidates the critical role that pronunciation has in maintaining the flow of interactions in communication, increasing student’s confidence, and even in the process of identity-construction in a second language (Jenkins, 2004; Chapelle, 2003; Foot et al., 2017; Almusharraf, 2022). While several studies have investigated the efficacy of pronunciation training remotely or via distance CALL (Engwall et al., 2004; Rogerson-Revell, 2021), little is known about how students feel about using these tools to practice pronunciation training during class time. Since pronunciation instruction is slowly becoming a staple in foreign/second language curricula (Derwin et al., 2017), research evaluating students’ attitudes and reactions to in-class pronunciation activities has the potential to provide valuable insights into students’ willingness to participate in pronunciation training and the overall efficacy of pronunciation interventions in the classroom which harness technological advances for teaching.

There is a pressing need for language instructors and programs to develop a critical consciousness of how teaching and institutional practices may perpetuate harmful language ideologies and an urgency to promote structural changes (e.g., at the curricular level, via teaching training and equitable pedagogies) to meet the needs of both L2 and Heritage Language Learners (HLL) within higher education (Holgun Mendoza, 2018; Valdés and Parra, 2018; Beaudrie, 2020). Similarly, scholars have recently emphasized a call for more research investigating the "emotional dimensions" of ideologies and how they interact with language (Cavanaugh, 2020). Therefore, this dissertation evaluates instructors’ and students’ emotions and perceptions surrounding bi-/multilingual speech and pedagogical practices, which serve as sources of insight that allow us to rethink the ways in which language ideologies and affective states continue to shape the language classroom experiences. By asking language learners and instructors to report on how they view and feel when engaging in fluid bi-/multilingual linguistic practices (e.g., spontaneous translanguaging), the first investigation (Study 1) revealed that language learners experienced vast and nuanced states of being, such as feeling “normal,” “connected,” and “enthusiastic about language growth” when utilizing their language(s). Further, their responses also alluded to a wide range of monoglossic standard language discourses, suggesting a potential link between emotions and broader belief systems about language, which has previously been overlooked. Further, this research proposes a workshop to have graduate teaching assistants engage with critical pedagogies like translanguaging pedagogy and Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in the context of L2 acquisition and within a university language department. An in-depth case study identified many structural and ideological factors that contribute to implementing these pedagogies (Study 2). Lastly, the proposed workshop (Study 3) highlighted the benefits and limitations of providing graduate teaching assistants with focused training on critical pedagogies to combat harmful language ideologies that continue to linger in classes for emergent bilinguals within higher education.

The protection of ecosystems is one of the most effective strategies to address multiple environmental issues, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Moreover, these territories provide fundamental ecological services and represent the livelihoods for millions around the world. Hence, their conservation is fundamental to realize key development goals.

Scholars in the social sciences have long studied the economic and societal drivers of environmental degradation, particularly deforestation. According to an influential strand of research, led by the work of Elinor Ostrom, local users of common-pool resources are sometimes able to effectively steward their natural resources without the intervention of states or markets. The presence of adequate mechanisms of governance, for example norms of resource use, devices to monitor and sanction behavior, and autonomy in local decision-making, are essential to explain why some of these groups are more successful than others.

In my dissertation, I study the case of Mexico to shed light on the relevance of different institutional and environmental factors in the ability of local communities to steward their natural resources. Mexico offers an ideal setting to study these questions for two reasons. First, rural communities own most of the country’s land, including the majority of its ecosystems. Moreover, over the last three decades, the rural areas of Mexico have experienced a series of political and economic transformations that have impacted these communities.

In the first chapter, I find that rural communities with long-standing indigenous political institutions experience lower levels of environmental degradation—measured with the average rate of tree cover loss—than those without them; the presence of higher levels of collective action is a possible mechanism for this relationship. However, in the second part of the chapter, I show, leveraging a natural experiment in Mexico, that political reforms aiming to politically recognize these institutions may not be effective at improving communities’ ability to steward their natural resources, particularly forests.

In the second chapter, I explore the role of reforms to increase the territorial autonomy of rural communities through the provision of certified land titles. I show that a policy that provided both public and private land rights to these communities in the 1990s and early 2000s (the PROCEDE) was associated with higher rates of tree cover loss in the years leading to it, mostly among communities without long-standing indigenous institutions and with scarcity of arable land for agriculture. These findings suggest that land reforms that offer private goods in communal settings may affect intra-community political dynamics and, therefore, have mixed impacts on the protection of the forested commons.

Finally, in the last chapter I study how external actors impact communities’ livelihoods. Specifically, I analyze the impacts of exposure to mining concessions on a wide array of community-based outcomes. The mining industry has expanded considerably in Mexico since the early 1990s, affecting hundreds of communities in the process. The results of this chapter show that exposure to these concessions is associated, in the short-run, with a decrease in the levels of economic activity; in the long-run, extractive industries lead to a higher demand for private goods (individual land titles) in affected communities; moreover, by depressing some of the key drivers of deforestation, these projects are also associated with a small decrease in the annual rate of tree cover change in the medium-term.

In terms of data, in my dissertation I employ high resolution satellite imagery to measure with precision the deforestation trajectories of thousands of resource systems in Mexico, as well as other ecological variables at the community-level. In addition, I use previously untapped administrative data to explore different types of communal political behaviors. I also leverage different sources of variation in the independent variables, using staggered differences in differences and a geographic regression discontinuity.