Although it is common to assess the language proficiencies of nonnative speaker students using standardized tests in educational contexts where language proficiency tends to be considered a determiner of academic success, some studies have argued that language proficiency should instead be considered a concept of communicative competence (e.g., Bachman, 1990; Canale & Swain, 1980; Celce-Murcia et al., 1995). As these studies have noted, however, most Two-Way Immersion (TWI) research regarding students’ language proficiencies has been based on standardized tests (e.g., Lindholm-Leary, 2001; Oller & Eilers, 2002; Thomas & Collier, 2002). Although various studies have found that students in TWI programs demonstrated progress toward the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy development (e.g., Alanis, 2000; de Jong, 2004), the outcomes in terms of the non-English language development are not consistent (e.g., Ha, 2001; Kanagy, 2001; Kovelman et al., 2008). Therefore, this study attempts to explore an alternative way of assessing students’ language proficiencies beyond using standardized tests in order to better understand their bilingual development.

Based upon sociocultural theories of learning, this study adopts the concept of perceived proficiency, i.e., that language proficiency is perceived by participants who constitute learning through interaction. In particular, this study focuses on two bilingual teachers’ perceived proficiencies of students in a Korean/English TWI program. In addition, it works toward assessing students’ bilingual language proficiency by analyzing FLOSEM scores and students’ use of referential choices in order to examine the relationship with teachers’ perceived proficiencies. Last, this study investigates how teachers’ perceived proficiencies influence classroom practices using positioning theory.

The data used in this study were collected through video and audio recordings of classroom interactions (24 hours); four interviews (two with each teacher); and students’ narratives in both English and Korean (eight narratives; two narratives per student). For the investigation of teachers’ perceived proficiencies of students, 46 interview excerpts were selected based on the researchers’ questions about students’ language ability. Clancy’s (1995) categorization of lexical forms was used for the analysis of referential choice.

The findings revealed that the two teachers’ perceived language proficiencies of students were constructed according to the specific context, a Korean/English TWI classroom. Mainly, both teachers considered the acquisition of ‘content vocabulary’ or ‘content knowledge’ to be the main essential competence for a high level of proficiency in both languages. Along with the perceived proficiencies of students, the teachers’ self-perception about their own Korean proficiencies, particularly their lack of discipline-specific vocabulary, influenced turn-taking processes that may have afforded or constrained students the opportunity to participate during the Korean instructional time. However, a detailed analysis of students’ use of referential choices in both languages and the results of the FLOSEM test suggested student proficiencies that differed from the teachers’ perceived proficiencies. Referential choice involves distinctive language-specific characteristics for each language; yet the teachers did not observe the skillful use of referential choice in the narrative of a student who had not been recognized by the teachers as possessing content vocabulary and knowledge. Throughout the classroom observation video data recorded during the Korean instructional time, teachers’ perceived student language proficiencies played an important role in their designating more proficient students who could model for less proficient students, despite the fact that the more proficient student may not have been consistently proficient according to different ways of measuring proficiency.

On the basis of these findings, I discuss implications for theory and practice. Overall, I argue for various approaches to assessing bilingual students’ language proficiencies, particularly in educational contexts such as TWI programs, emphasizing the development of tools that enable teachers to expand the scope of their perceptions about students’ bilingual language proficiency to enhance students’ bilingual language development.

Abstract

Introduction: Depression is prevalent among U.S. immigrants, including Korean immigrants. However, little is known about factors that may contribute to their depression. Preliminary evidence suggests that less acculturated individuals are at greater risk for depression but that social support may buffer any negative effects of less acculturation. The aims of this study were to examine the relationship between acculturation and depressive symptoms among Korean immigrants and the moderating role of social support.

Methods: A convenience sample of 132 adult Korean immigrants completed 6 self-report measures: the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, a Korean version of the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II, the Multi-Dimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, the Perceived Stress Scale, the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, and a demographic questionnaire. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the aims, controlling for covariates.

Results: 31% of the sample met the criteria for being depressed. Greater acculturation was associated with more depressive symptoms while greater social support was a significant predictor of fewer symptoms. Social support was more strongly related to less depression among immigrants who were less acculturated than among immigrants who were more acculturated, but this difference was not significant. Perceived stress was the most significant predictor of depression. Older age at immigration and less education were also related to greater depression. Variables in the regression model accounted for 65% of the variance in predicting depression.

Conclusions: Findings indicate a high prevalence of depressive symptoms in this Korean immigrant sample. Results also suggest that acculturation per se may not play a major role in depressive symptoms but rather more specific factors associated with acculturation such as age at immigration and educational levels. These factors should be studied in future research, along with efforts to better understand the causes of stress and impaired social networks in this population. Findings point to a need for regular assessment of depression by health care providers as well as the stress and social support available in a Korean immigrant’s life. Results also suggest that community-based prevention programs to address these problems may be warranted.

This ethnographic study was performed in three online communities populated by English-speaking transnational settler mothers in Israel. The purpose of this study was to engage with the languacultures (Agar, 1994) (co)created by mothers of the three communities in order to uncover and reconstruct the processes by which Family Language Policy (FLP) decisions are made as shown through the telling case informant’s story (Mitchell, 1984). This was the first study that examined online communications related to FLP on Facebook that were unsolicited, naturalistic and longitudinal, spanning approximately 7 years. Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky, 1962,1978; Vásquez, 2006) and Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) served as lenses to first focus on the Online Community context and then (re)turn to the communities for evidence of FLP (re)formulations as recorded by the platform, Facebook.

Hence the two overarching research questions in this study dealt with:

a) The online communal living examined through analysis of all communication by the telling case and two additional participants or tracer units (Cole cited in Evertson & Green, 1983), and

b) the FLP processes as communicated in the blog by the Telling Case (Mitchell, 1984).

The findings of this study showed that methodologically speaking, carrying out online ethnographies and ‘flowing ’ (Markham & Gammelby, 2017) with the telling case uncovered thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) of the different social processes that were found to be meaningful by those of the examined communities. Transnational mothers (co)created online communities and oscillated between utilizing them as tools and as places (Markham, 1998), based on, as this study will show, complex interplay between life and transnational trajectories; that is, between the stage of motherhood and stage of the transnational-immigrant experience. New mothers and new transnational settlers particularly depended on this connected presence (Licoppe, 2004) for information and social outlets. FLP (re)formulations by Daniella, the primary tracer unit were largely dependent on family-internal experiences rooted in the complex relationship between the life and transnational trajectories such as growth of family and mother’s own multilingual development.

The one domain that caused most uncertainty and anxiety amongst the transnational mothers and Daniella (the tracer unit for the telling case) specifically was found to be the education domain. Transnational mothers struggled with widely circulating misconceptions and misinformation regarding multilingual development and academic achievement. With a global increase in transnational living patterns and digitally mediated and networked living, this study began the work of turning to the Internet of/for People (Io/fP): internet that is shaped by and for people. Internet that is populated, (co)created, (re)used, shared by people in different corners of the Io/fP depending on their stable and/or fleeting interests, needs, desires, hopes and every other noun (person/people, place, or thing) one chooses, needs, desires to be with(in), interact with(in), challenge and/or identify with(in) and through which permeating effects ensue within the Io/fP and outside of its boundaries. By turning to the Io/fP this study began the work of meeting individuals and communities where they are as they grapple with the unique pressures and stresses of navigating multilingual needs of transnational living.

ABSTRACT

Driven by a monoglossic ideology, bilingual speakers are often treated and seen as “two monolinguals in one” (Grosjean, 1985). Accordingly, the “two solitudes” approach is commonly adopted in Dual Language Education (DLE) programs, which fosters a strict separation of the two instructional languages by time, teacher, and content. In the two-teacher-two-language model, when partner teachers are assigned different subject matters, there are two layers of separation, language and academic content. Oftentimes accustomed to working in their separate realms of language or content teaching, the English teacher and the partner language teacher are largely unaware of each other’s curriculum. Students’ learning is cut into two separate processes in two classrooms, and it is very difficult for teachers to get a whole picture of students’ linguistic and academic development. This dissertation examines a unique case of teachers in a one-way Chinese English DLE program involved in creating a curriculum bridging process to enable continuity and reinforcement of content and language learning across two linguistic spaces.

Guided by principles of Sociocultural Theory, Communities of Practice Framework, and standards of interdisciplinary curriculum, this study explores the processes of curriculum bridging including its benefits and challenges as well as the ways in which curriculum bridging influences students’ learning. Through an ethnographic research design, data were collected by observing classroom interactions, interviewing teachers, and attending curriculum planning meetings over a 16-month period.

By coding and analyzing teacher discourses, classroom interactions, and teacher interview responses, the study found that teachers’ curriculum bridging group constitutes a community of practice as a localized response to the sociocultural realities of siloed teaching in the two-teacher-two-language model. As a community of practice, they constructed their own repertoire for the bridging process and collaboratively moved towards a more continuous bridging model where the two hands of the classroom are talking to each other more, and there is continuous learning across the English and Chinese instructional time. One prominent benefit is the increased accountability in Ms. Liu’s, a novice Chinese teacher, instructional design. Her collaboration with the other three teachers enabled her to revise her views towards teaching and learning and engage in the process of learning by becoming through the interactions with more capable peers.

However, despite teachers’ positive attitudes towards this joint enterprise, there are challenges involved in the curriculum bridging process, which includes 1) the lack of theoretical consideration for the design of the bridging point, and 2) limited linguistic bridging due to typological differences between Chinese and English and teachers’ lack of linguistic knowledge in these two languages. Other issues include 1) unidirectional bridging from English to Chinese, but not vice versa, 2) untranslatable concepts between the two languages, with the linguistic subtleties and cultural nuances unattended, and 3) power dynamics between the teachers that are not conducive to the construction of a safe and balanced relationship of collaboration.

In the actual implementation of the bridged curricula in class, mixed results were found. There is evidence showing that students took what they acquired in English as a base, acquired additional information in Chinese, and utilized both knowledge sources to make their own analysis and complete their ideas. However, due to the lack of detailed coordination between the two teachers’ curricula, there were instances that students misaligned the concepts and expressions that were instructed across the two linguistic spaces. Also, there were missed teachable moments to retain the relatedness recognized by students due to Ms. Liu’s unfamiliarity with the expressions and materials used in the English classroom. In addition, the teaching team all held an assumption that students would not be able to learn at a desired level of academic rigor in an emergent language; thus there was an imbalanced allocation of the cognitive demands across the English and Chinese instructional time.

Despite needing more refinement, the curriculum bridging model constructed by the teachers presents another way to approach the issues of teacher separation and content separation in today’s educational context and offers the possibility to reconcile the arbitrary divide between languages and content found in dual language immersion programs. Based on the findings, effective bridging requires theoretical guidance, authentic collaboration and detailed coordination to support the continuity of content and skills development for all students. There is a need to broaden the community of practice for curriculum bridging to include multiple perspectives from researchers, teachers and students to further explore the potential of curriculum bridging that may lead to more effective practices in DLE programs.

This qualitative study examines how multilingual children and multilingual teachers in Korean-English and Spanish-English two-way immersion programs utilize their linguistic, semiotics, and cultural resources to communicate, interact, and make meaning of the world. I build on previous studies on “translanguaging” (García, 2009) and “hybrid language practice” (Gort 2015; Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Martínez 2013) to include semiotics, such as gestures, sounds, and affective expressions, as well as sociocultural values that transfer and embed into the communicative practices.

In line with understanding “what [multilinguals] actually do with language, what language does to them, and what language means to them” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 188), this study presents multiple contextual and discourse evidence of how creative and strategic multilingual speakers are, as they purposefully use all their affordances and resources (linguistic, semiotic, and cultural), to effectively communicate their ideas, to show accommodation of other interlocutors’ language/speech, and to show agency/confidence in their own language practice(s) tied to their identity and culture. In addition, this study contributes to the expansion of the corpus of a linguistic variety, spoken by Korean Americans, who are part of the larger multilingual speaker group (Sun et al., forthcoming). Finally, this research sheds light on teacher education practices, in line with the TWI goal of “critical consciousness” to re-examine and take caution of ways that may create cultural misunderstandings and gaps, as their hybridized semiotic practices reflect ideologies, values, and norms that stem from their own complex linguistic training and cultural background.

Educational researchers are often tasked with postulating and measuring unknown processes that account for observed outcomes. Logically, this requires inductive reasoning about which constructs are relevant to the situation we seek to understand, prior to attempts at measurement. Exploratory mixed methods designs, along with a few classic designs from psychometrics, represent the canonical approaches to addressing this research problem. However, I argue that these canonical approaches require rethinking in order to fully embrace both the logic of discovery and the philosophy of measurement. Four normative strands are presented to guide this rethinking: an emphasis on the logic of discovery alongside the customary logic of justification, a move towards radical transparency, an invitation to philosophical exploration, and an appeal to integrate qualitative analysis at every major step of the measurement process. The result of following these normative strands would be a discovery-based workflow for educational measurement. To illustrate such a workflow, I take as an example data from a program evaluation of an intervention for underrepresented minority students in a university STEM program.

Optogenetic functional magnetic resonance imaging (ofMRI) is a novel technique that enables whole-brain visualization of the downstream effects of manipulating a specific neural population. This thesis presents two studies that demonstrate the advantages of ofMRI in brain circuit analysis and offer practical recommendations for ofMRI data analysis. We first describe a study where the technical advantage of ofMRI is utilized in the investigation of arousal networks. The role of central thalamus in forebrain arousal and the frequency-selective modulation of whole-brain networks are uncovered. We then address the challenges of accurate detection and characterization of hemodynamic responses with highly variable temporal dynamics in the ofMRI datasets. In order to find the optimal analysis method, a comprehensive evaluation of the commonly used approaches is presented.

Given the increasing number of multilingual learners enrolled in U.S. secondary schools and persistent disparities in access to quality STEM education for these students, teacher education programs must prepare secondary science teachers capable of teaching multilingual learners in equitable ways. There is a consensus in science education scholarship that as part of this preparation, preservice secondary science teachers should learn to support the literacies and languages of science so that multilingual learners can engage in meaningful disciplinary sensemaking and discourse practices. However, this scholarship has paid less attention to the ways in which preservice science teachers’ understandings of effective literacy and language support are mediated by their language ideologies. Without scrupulous attention to language ideologies, even well-intentioned efforts to support multilingual learners can reproduce linguistic hierarchies that privilege the languages and language practices of educated, white, middle-class, monolingual English speakers and further stigmatize the languages and language practices of multilingual and/or racialized students. In order to disrupt harmful language ideologies, secondary science teachers must be able to reflect critically on the opportunities they create for students to engage in the literacies and languages of science and the ways in which they support this engagement. In this qualitative study, I explored the connections across preservice secondary science teachers’ language ideologies, understandings of language support, and capacities for (critical) reflection. To do so, I analyzed interview data collected from 26 preservice secondary science teachers enrolled in a teacher education program with an explicit focus on preparing teachers to work with multilingual learners. I found that participants’ understandings of how to support the literacies and languages of science were shaped by language ideologies related to bi/multilingualism, academic language, and scientific literacies. Participants’ understandings of effective literacy and language support for multilingual learners were constrained by monoglossic language ideologies and their uncritical acceptance of “academic language” and other constructs related to simplistic, structural views of language. At the same time, participants understood oral and written discourse to be central to science learning and often reported supporting scientific literacies in ways that foregrounded students’ abilities to engage in disciplinary sense-making and communication practices rather than simply reproduce linguistic forms. It was much more common for participants to reflect on their own and their students’ challenges with scientific literacies than for participants to reflect on beliefs or practices related multilingualism or academic language, and yet few participants engaged in any critical reflection. Based on these findings, I argue that teacher education programs must be more intentional about creating both ideological spaces and implementational spaces for heteroglossic understandings of bi/multilingualism (Flores & Schissel, 2014) and adopt a sociolinguistically-informed approach to disciplinary language. At the same time, teacher education programs should meaningfully engage preservice secondary science teachers in critical reflection on their beliefs about language so that they develop the ability to surface, interrogate, and disrupt any language ideologies that might further marginalize their multilingual learners and perpetuate linguistic hierarchies.