College of Education

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    Re-Positioning Latino Heritage Language Learners: The Case of one adolescent's experiences in two different pedagogical spaces.
    (2015) Merrills, Kayra Zurany; Martin-Beltran, Melinda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    To improve the education of heritage language learners, more research is necessary to understand alternative educational practices and learning contexts that tap into and further develop heritage language learners' bilingual competence. This inquiry investigates how one Latino heritage language learner (HLL), Yolanda, experienced distinct opportunities to use and develop her heritage language as she participated in a bilingual extra-curricular program and in a world language classroom. Drawing upon Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1999; Harré & Moghaddam, 2003; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999), this study explored how her positioning promoted languaging and language use. Drawing from sociocultural theory, this study applied the concept of languaging to understand language learning (Swain, 2002, 2005, 2006; Swain et al, 2009). I use the term languaging to describe metalinguistic discourse in which students explain or discuss a linguistic problem to others or the moments when learners talk aloud to themselves to mediate understanding of language (Swain, 2006). This study provides an analysis of how the HLL's different positionings influenced the amount of languaging and the type of language (Spanish, English or both) she decided to use. This single-case study incorporated both qualitative and quantitative methodologies with exploratory purposes. Methods of data collection included observations, field notes, audio-recording, video-recording, and student interviews. Data analysis was guided by interactional ethnography, conversation analysis and grounded theory. I also used Dedoose software to code transcripts and identify the co-occurrence of languaging and positioning. This study found that a bilingual extra-curricular program afforded Yolanda positionings that promoted a higher quality and quantity of opportunities for languaging and use of linguistic multicompetence due to collaborative opportunities with linguistically diverse students. This study contributes to research on HLLs by focusing on classroom practices that promote languaging and use of linguistic multicompetence. This study has implications for teachers and teacher education by providing a rich description of an academic space that re-positions a heritage language learner as a multilingual expert and learner.
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    EXPLORING FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE AND CAPITAL: CASE STUDIES OF LATINO IMMIGRANT FAMILIES SUPPORTING THEIR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION, WITH A FOCUS ON MATHEMATICS
    (2014) Napp-Avelli, Carolina A.; Chazan, Daniel; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Latino students are frequently positioned by widespread achievement gap discourse at the bottom of the attainment spectrum. Both students and families are portrayed as inadequate and deficient, and are blamed for their lack of success in mathematics. One recommendation to improve Latino students' educational performance is to increase parental involvement in mathematics among Latinos. However, life conditions of Latino immigrant families include factors that often make it difficult for parents to get involved in the education of their children in the ways that schools expect. This study explores the knowledge and resources two Latino immigrant families have acquired thorough their experiences and how they use them to support their children's education and mathematics education. In order to analyze families' resources, a theoretical framework composed by the concepts of educability, capital, and funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth was developed. The construct of educability, which analyzes the tensions between the limitations that poverty and other life conditions impose on families and the possibilities for students to succeed in school, provides the overarching structure of the framework. Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital and the cycle of reproduction of capital describe why social groups with more capital (middle and upper classes) acquire capital easily, whereas social groups with less capital (low socioeconomic working classes) have fewer opportunities to acquire capital. This piece of the framework explains why it is so difficult for students living in hard conditions to overcome them and succeed academically. The funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth perspectives made it possible to identify the resources and knowledge families have acquired through their experiences and understand their actions and hopes in connection to their life histories. In particular, the study analyzes how families use their resources along three dimensions that affect children's conditions of educability. First, the study looks at how parents influence students' dispositions towards education; second, how parents develop relationships with schools; and third, how parents influence what students do in their leisure time. The researcher's journey as a white middle-class highly educated woman working with Latino working-class families is also analyzed as part of the study.
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    Differences among Latinos in Anticipated College Experience and Use of College Services by college generational status and gender
    (2007-12-10) Najera, Hugo Estuardo; McEwen, Marylu K; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study was to determine whether differences in Anticipated College Experience and Anticipated Use of College Services exist between first-generation and continuing generation college Latino students, and between male and female Latino students. The University New Student Census was used to collect data. Items exploring short and long-term college expectations, and use of college services were selected as dependent variables and tested using two-way MANOVAs; ANOVAs were used to analyze significant main effects. A total of 211 Latino first-year entering freshmen responded to the instrument. Results indicated females and first-generation college students had a stronger expectation to use college services than male and continuing generation students. Males expected more than females to have the skills and knowledge to complete their semester goals, yet males indicated a stronger expectation to drop out and not complete a degree. Females expected to be more concerned over financing their college education than males.