This inquiry into teacher education explores the potential for using multicultural children's literature to broaden preservice teachers' orientation toward the value of multiculturalism. The setting for this collaborative exploration was a College of Education course on Children's Literature during the 1992 spring semester. Literacy experiences with multicultural literature were created to provide preservice teachers with an opportunity to critically reflect on their awareness and understanding of multiculturalism. Weekly small group literature discussions, roving dialogue journals among three students and the university teacher, and end-of-semester interviews with each student were the primary sources of data collected during the semester. Findings from the analysis of data indicate the need for multicultural children's literature that accurately and authentically presents unique, diverse, and universal characteristics of a specific culture. Of equal importance to the selection of multicultural literature is the multicultural experience with these books which creates a critical consciousness among children and teachers. Evidence of the generative nature of dialogic experiences was seen where a multiplicity of voices pushed preservice teachers' awareness, acceptance, and appreciation of multiculturalism. As students reflected on their perspectives on culture that extended far beyond ethnic or racial perspectives, understanding of their own and other cultures was broadened. The results of this inquiry indicate the need for teacher education that is multicultural. A teacher's critical consciousness of the value of multiculturalism can transform her/his work with children in classrooms. Teacher themselves need opportunities to expand their orientation toward learning and living in a pluralistic society in order to foster critical students/citizens who actively participate in the nation's democracy.

According to critical scholars there is a global education policy community that contributes to the increasing convergence of national education policies (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Key players in this community include the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Although the scholars point out that global education policies are not uniformly copied or implemented, missing from the literature on globalization and education are the voices of the students and educators impacted by them. The process of policy implementation is neither seamless nor mechanical. The intended impact of a policy is not necessarily its outcome. Not only may there be unanticipated consequences, but educators and students may also resist, adapt, or transform practices suggested by the policies. This study examines international influence on the classroom practices of educators in one high school in northern Mexico by tracing the implementation of a recent national high school reform. Mexican education officials drew on the examples of recent high school reforms in Europe in designing the reform and, in addition, borrowed money from the World Bank for its implementation. Analysis of key official documents related to the reform along with participant observation and interviews of teachers, students, parents, a union representative, and education officials reveal that although just like the policies of the global education policy community the reform promotes neoliberal and human capital views of schooling, these views are not shared by all of the participants in this study. In addition, participants do not believe that the reform is adequately adapted to the context of Mexican schools. Judging from the teachers participating in this study, Mexican schools and educators have strengths that were overlooked in the development of the reform.

This is a case study of school improvement factors at a Southwestern Middle School where the researcher examined the demographics of the Southwest Unified School District and Southwest Middle School, the school's academic performance history, school leadership, teachers and the school improvement process it was mandated to follow for five years. Also, there included a discussion of the reasons Southwest Middle School moved into school improvement, the number of years it remained in school improvement, the leadership during these years, and the mandates imposed on the school from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation and the Arizona Department of Education state mandates. The mandates were determined by the school's level of improvement. In this case study Southwest Middle School had been at a serious level of improvement for the previous five years 2008 - 2013. Therefore, a visit from a team of Arizona Department of Education school improvement experts called the Solutions Team was initiated. This initiated visit was to be an evidenced based inquiry that generated four school improvement recommendations to be followed as a framework for continuous school improvement. Also, the researcher examined the documentation generated through the Solutions Team visit and the impact it made on the Southwest Middle School improvement process. Quantitative outcomes in the area of student achievement are presented in this case study that shown continuous decreases in the standardized test results generated from the State mandated test known as the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS Test) results until the school remained open till spring, 2013. Interviews with personnel involved in the school improvement efforts showed differing perceptions of success in efforts before the school closure. There was some evidence that test scores had begun to improve at Southwest Middle School but, it was too little, too late and the school closed in Spring, 2013. Unfortunately, in spite of increased efforts, it was too little, too late, and the improvement was minimal, forcing the Southwest Unified School District to close Southwest Middle School in spring, 2013. Following were identified factors that facilitated or hindered the implementation of plans aimed at school improvement.

This mixed-method study investigated how and to what extent direct instruction in Spanish-English translation and interpretation affects the acquisition of academic language proficiency in both English and Spanish by Heritage Language Learners of Spanish (HLLS). The subjects of the quantitative part of the study were 24 participants who were from six high schools with a large number of minority students. These high schools were located in Tucson and Nogales, Arizona. The participants in the qualitative part of the study were six case study students, chosen from the whole group. The participants were enrolled in the 2006 annual 3-week Professional Language Development Program (PLDP), held in July at the University of Arizona. The PLDP's additive teaching translation and interpretation model engaged the participants in learning by not only the novelty of practicing real-life, challenging exercises in class, using their unique cultural and linguistic skills, but also by the dynamic collaborative learning environment. The improvement in the participants' academic language proficiency was assessed through individual interviews of six case study participants, their high school teachers, and the two PLDP instructors.The use of translation and interpretation to improve the HLLS's academic English (and Spanish) stands in stark contrast to the subtractive teaching English-as-a-Second-Language model that promotes English fluency at the expense of the heritage language. The study, therefore, expands research on minority HLL's cultural capital that is not utilized in American education, where limiting the use of bilingual education for English language learners is the norm. The success of the program was demonstrated by the students' newfound appreciation for their heritage language and culture, academic learning, motivation for higher education, and statistically significant gains in Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP; Cummins, 2000).

This research investigates language use in Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) of an urban center of post-Soviet eastern Ukraine The major focus is on how the signs represent linguistic, social and ideological phenomena in the context of competing local, national, and global language ideologies with Ukrainian, Russian and English in Cyrillic and Roman scripts. More than 100 pictures of public signs were selected and analyzed, from more than one thousand photographs.Detailed analyses of the signs show that the `one state - one language' official language policy is not effective in the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine: the signs frequently use Russian, and blend in Ukrainian. There were revealing differences between establishment categories. Bank signs were almost all in Ukrainian, because they are government regulated. In contrast, local clothing store signs used Russian, along with English and European languages to convey `modernity', `prestige' and `high fashion'; other establishment (casinos and electronics stores) mixed Russian and Ukrainian with some English. English and European languages with Roman script were also frequently used to `smooth over' the conflict between Ukrainian and Russian.The genetic closeness of Ukrainian and Russian allows a linguistic phenomenon that reconciles the languages, `bivalency'. Bivalency refers to shared linguistic elements between the languages, allowing the signs to appeal to the local population, while complying with the official Ukrainian language policy. This work analyzes and documents bivalency at phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, introducing a new sensitive tool for quantifying language dominance in signs.The overall conclusion is that signs in the LLs reveal that despite the official language policy, both Ukrainian and Russian appear in signs. In this way, Linguistic Landscapes may predict a future Ukraine in which both Russian and Ukrainian are accepted as official languages.This work contributes several new perspectives to the analyses of LLs. It demonstrates that LLs are multimodal, multilayered and multidimensional to be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective; the methodology integrates Critical Discourse Analysis and grounded theory; LLs are considered as texts analyzed on multiple discourse levels. The work invents and applies continua of bivalency as a multilevel phenomenon. The research focuses on LLs in eastern Ukraine.

This dissertation used a mixed method to develop an analytical model from a random selection of one of eight secondary history textbooks for instances of Indians to determine if the textual content: 1) constructs negative or inaccurate knowledge through word choice or narratives; 2) reinforces stereotype portraits; 3) omits similar minority milestones in United States history and politics; and 4) contained the enactments of political milestones in the development of US history and politics with regard to personhood and sovereignty of the American Indian. The methods used to evaluate secondary history textbooks are content manifest and critical discourse analysis and a modification of Pratt's ECO analysis which measures judgment values of descriptive terms. Data mining includes word choice, events, contributions, and governmental relations as these refer to the American Indian. Unexpected outcomes from this research resulted in a spider graph of four relational power axes to visually display diametrically opposed ideological discursive formations. Textbooks introduce students to authoritative content within the public school environment to impart national historical experiences that will shape their national identity, ideology and culture. Negative or inaccurate instances of the United States relationships with 566 American Indian Nations can affect social and political issues of Indian People today. This work will contribute to the field of American Indian Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Cultural Studies, Critical Discourse, Critical Pedagogy, Indigenous Theory and Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Social Justice, Language Studies, Identity, Ethics, American Indian and Public Education.

This dissertation presents the findings of an on-line survey completed by 222 FYC (First Year Composition) instructors at universities and community colleges across the United States along with supplemental information derived from multiple open-ended interviews with seven FYC instructors in Arizona. Both survey and interview questions were designed to accomplish three primary goals: to determine which conventions of academic English FYC instructors identify as most important; to understand the common problems encountered by instructors in teaching those conventions, and; to solicit instructors' perceptions about ways in which learning outcomes might be improved. Results indicate general consensus among FYC instructors on which skills are both the most critical to academic English proficiency and the most difficult for their students to learn. At the same time, the survey and interview responses reflect widespread dissatisfaction with the ways in which academic English sequences are currently structured, apparently related to the instructors' common perception that the sequences are only "somewhat" successful in terms of preparing students for successful academic writing. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of FYC instructors suggest changes for increasing the effectiveness of their programs; however, there is surprisingly little agreement among them on what those changes should be. The concluding section of this study presents pragmatic suggestions - congruent with a number of the instructors' observations - for reconfiguring FYC sequences. Additionally, it is argued that, aside from the targeted skills addressed by the instructors, the survey and interview responses indicate that academic English has been implicitly invested with culture-specific values which should be made explicit in instruction and which, given the gatekeeping status of FYC courses, the increasing diversity of student populations and the growing divide between the academic and wider cultures, require critical examination.

Through analysis of written texts produced by school districts and high schools with predominantly Mexican American populations, beliefs about Mexican American students that mediate attitudes and expectations can be exposed. In this work, I conduct comparative critical discourse analyses (CDA) of school district and high school mission statements from a total of 35 schools and 20 school districts in the Southwestern United States and Chicago, Illinois. The sites were selected because of their large to predominantly Mexican American students populations. Of the 35 school mission statements I researched, 19 were from predominantly Mexican American high schools and 16 were from predominantly White high schools. Of the 20 school district mission statements I collected, 11 were from largely to predominantly Mexican American school districts and 9 were from largely to predominantly White school districts.Analyses conducted in this study of the mission statements utilizing several `tools' of CDA revealed ideologies, or ideological discursive formations (IDFs), of low expectations and negative attitudes for Mexican American students when compared to White students. These IDFs materialize by way of frames and signs that are (re)created in the district and school mission statements. The IDFs serve to mediate the discourses that are utilized to describe Mexican American students and the districts and schools they attend. These discourses serve to mediate beliefs about Mexican American students that in turn reinforce the IDFs already in place.Understanding the types of discourses that (re)produce low expectations for and negative attitudes about Mexican American students is a first step in changing these schooling discourses that ultimately contribute to low academic achievement.

This study investigated differences in Vietnamese (native) and English (second) oral language proficiency across sex, age, socioeconomic status (SES), and grade levels for Vietnamese students as a result of their exposure to a 3-year (K-2) transitional bilingual education program. It also attempted to determine whether there was a difference in English language proficiency across Vietnamese language proficiency as well as whether there was a relationship between English language proficiency and Vietnamese language proficiency. One hundred twenty six subjects were selected based on the fact that they had participated in the said bilingual education program and that the scores they had obtained on the Language Assessment Scales (LAS) which measured their proficiency in English and Vietnamese were available for both kindergarten and second grade. These children's school records were examined in view of noting their LAS scores, sexes, birthdates, and SES. Statistical treatments used were analysis of covariance and Spearman's rho correlation. Tukey post-hoc tests were calculated where appropriate. The results indicated that: (1) for Vietnamese language proficiency, girls scored higher than boys, middle- and high-SES students scored higher than low-SES students, but no significant difference was found between the scores of older students and the scores of their younger counterparts; (2) for English language proficiency, females scored higher than males, older students scored higher than younger students, and scores increased linearly with SES increment; (3) there was a significant difference in English language proficiency across Vietnamese language proficiency; (4) there was a significant positive relationship between English language proficiency and Vietnamese language proficiency; and (5) the subjects enjoyed a marked gain in English but suffered a significant loss in Vietnamese.

Description of students as at-risk became a trend in educational policy and programming in the late 1980s. The term at risk was originally part of the specialized discourse of medicine and psychology, and related subfields of education such as special education and educational psychology. Due to the influence of national reform reports, the term at risk became more common in the discourse of policymakers and practitioners. It was used as a descriptor of students, often low-income and/or minority students, likely to fail or drop out of school. This study employed methods from sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and policy analysis to trace the uses and meanings of at risk through national reports, state education policies in Arizona, and district policies in a medium-sized Arizona school district with both rural and suburban schools. Analysis of reports and recorded interviews with state policymakers, district administrators, principals, and teachers identified differences in the meanings of at risk at different levels of the educational system. Groups at each level had particular interests in students, as reflected in their definitions of the problems of at-risk students and their policy recommendations. The most common consequences for students of being labelled at-risk were to be removed from the mainstream for special treatment, despite arguments of some researchers and theorists that educators need to rethink such approaches.