1998 UC LMRI Conference Program

Room: Redwood

Latino Immigrant Parents and Computer Training Literacy
Richard Durán (Education, UC Santa Barbara), Pedro Paz, (Education, UC Santa Barbara) & Rosalba Villanueva (Education, UC Santa Barbara)

Increasing use of computers in the schools is giving rise to new forms of literacy among children. These developments create a challenge for low income Latino immigrant families who wish to support the education of their children, but who have little or no familiarity with computers. This presentation describes a CREDE project training Latino immigrant parents in Spanish in the use of computers and software familiar to children. Parents author and publish materials such as stories, essays, and poems that include graphics. Plans for the projects include a bilingual newsletter jointly developed by parents and children and training of parents in the use of the internet. Results of the project thus far indicate that parents are successful in acquiring basic computer skills, even when they have no prior experience in using a computer. Two key elements in the success of training are personalized training and well-specified learning and performance goals for each training session.

Electronic Research Dissemination at UC LMRI
Enedina Galarza (Electronic Services Coordinator, UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute)
Advanced Web Design Techniques
Jay Tankersley (System Administrator, UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute)

In the first segment we will take a look at the Electronic Services provided by UC LMRI as a means of disseminating and motivating research on the Internet. After a brief tour of the LMRINET web site, we will examine the LMRI email list servers and why they are integral to our dissemination effort.

Immediately following, we will dive into some exciting new ways of bringing web pages alive with JavaScript. JavaScript is Netscape's cross-platform, object-based scripting language for client and server applications. JavaScript applications run over the Internet and are viewed in a browser, such as Netscape Navigator. The JavaScript language is an extension of HTML and allows for the creation of dynamic web pages that process user input and maintain persistent data using special objects, files, and relational databases. In this segment, we will learn how to create dynamic web pages using forms, buttons, and images that change properties.

Room: Executive

Negotiating Education Policy in California
Patricia Gándara (Education, UC Davis/UC LMRI Educational Policy Center)

This session explores some of the key policy issues surrounding language learning and instruction in California schools and the recent activities of the LMRI policy center in this regard. There will be a focus on the current initiative to bar bilingual education and the various strategies that LMRI has engaged in to counter this proposal. Up to date policy materials will be handed out.

Effects of Class Size Reduction on the LEP Population
Dianna Gutiérrez (Education, UC Davis)

In the spring of 1997 as part of a larger study conducted by West Ed and PACE. We investigated the reactions of school-based personnel to the state's Class Size Reduction (CSR) initiative. Principals, teachers, special education coordinators, and limited English proficiency coordinators were interviewed at random schools in Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Coastal, Lakeside Joint, Paradise, Somis Union, Burrel Union, Glendora, Tustin Unified, and Monterey Peninsula school districts. We asked questions regarding the impact of the CSR on school programs and the advantages, disadvantages, general implementation procedures, and future plans of CSR. This paper focuses on the effects of the class size reduction on the limited English proficiency students.

Room: Coast

Second Language Literacy Development in the Context of Content-Based ESL
Thomas Destino (Education, UC Riverside)

This study of second language literacy in a secondary content-based ESL context is a response to Bernhardt's (1991) call for observational studies of how the act of literacy, reading in particular, gets played out in individual classrooms by groups of students. In response to this gap in the scholarly knowledge of L2 classroom-based literacy, the present study documented both quantitatively and qualitatively over an eight month period the manner in which four levels of ESL students and their teacher managed literacy teaching and learning. Data on several context variables reveal a dynamic context for L2 literacy in which the teacher strategically alters her language and planning based upon students' proficiency levels. Reading comprehension assessed through reading recall protocols provide support for Bernhardt's theory in that both knowledge-driven aspects of reading and text-driven aspects must be studied together in order to gain an understanding of reading development in this setting.

Curriculum Reform in a Rural, Latino Community: Contextualizing Language and Promoting Multiple Literacies
Bernadette McCormack (Education, UC Davis)

The research study is mainly an ethnographic description and analysis of contexts and issues of language and literacy in the setting: two fifth grade transitional, bilingual, classrooms in a rural agricultural, working class, Latino community in Northern California. All five fifth grade teachers at the site are working as a cohort to design and implement an experimental curriculum that is community-based, technology enhanced and integrated across the content areas. The study looks at ways in which the curriculum as implemented contextualized language and promotes multiple literacies (technological, scientific, cultural, linguistic) and the degree to which practices in setting are consistent with what is known about effective instruction for language minority students.

Room: Redwood

Five Standards for Effective Teaching and Learning
Barry Rutherford (Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, UC Santa Cruz)
Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence Staff

CREDE's Five Standards for Effective Teaching & Learning have been established through the research of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, and by analysis of the research-and-development literature in the entire field of education and diversity, across all cultural, racial, and linguistic groups in the United States; across all age levels, and all subject matters. The Standards apply to effective education for all students. For the mainstream, they express the ideal; and for at-risk students, the Standards are vital. The Teaching Alive! Workshop presenters enact the Five Standards through hands-on activities; participant discussions; videotapes of diverse, real classrooms; mini-lectures, and demonstrations.

Room: Executive

The Use Of Research and Experts in Litigation Concerning Language and Immigrant Rights Issues
Deborah Escobedo (Staff Attorney, Multicultural Education, Training & Advocacy, Inc.) & Edward Chen (Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California)

This panel will be presented by public interest lawyers who will discuss the use of experts and research in litigation brought to defend the education and employment rights of language minority and immigrant persons. These lawyers have been involved in litigation challenging Propositions 187 and 209, language discrimination in the workplace and assaults on LEP student rights (Comite v. State Board of Ed. and Quiroz v. Orange Unified).

Preparation of Teachers for Linguistic and Cultural Diversity: The California Case
Priscilla Walton (CA Consortium for Teacher Development, UC Santa Cruz), Natalie Kuhlman (Education, San Diego State University) & Jesus Cortes (Center for Bilingual Studies, CSU Chico)

This presentation will focus on findings related to a 3 year (1994-96) study of the implementation of California Commission on Teacher Credentialing CLAD/BCLAD Standards at four campuses of the University of California. Presenters will discuss the benefits and costs of using a collaborative and coordinated formative valuation approach in the implementation of new standards rather then a traditional evaluation approach. Presenters will also focus on how the new domains for CLAD/BCLAD knowledge were implemented and the successes and difficulties encountered at the four campuses during the formative and summative phases of implementation. Future research needs are also addressed.

Room: Coast

Educating LEP Students in High School: California Tomorrow Immigrant Education Project
Catherine Minicucci (Minicucci Associates) & Laurie Olsen (California Tomorrow)

This panel will present results from a unique research/demonstration project for California high school age Limited English Proficient students. In collaboration with two northern California school districts, California Tomorrow has been implementing a school change process model to help schools become responsive to the needs of immigrant students. Since the fall of 1994, the project evaluation has been tracking cohorts of high school students - 2,500 students in total. The project has collected information on student language fluency, immigration history, schooling, and academic progress in high school. The unique data set provides insight into the complex population of immigrant high school students as well as the impact of the demonstration. The Mellon Foundation-funded demonstration had three major goals: to help students learn English, to learn academic content, and to make progress in high school and prepare for higher education. The interventions supported by the project included new models for staff development, greater attention to placement of students in classes, use of data and inquiry for accountability purposes, development of standards and exit criteria for ESL classes, programs for under schooled students, focused attention to literacy in the primary language and English and increased access to academic classes.

Room: Redwood

Five Standards for Effective Teaching and Learning
(For Description See Session 2)

Room: Executive

Title VII, Teaching Philosophy, and School-Wide Context: Influences on a Bilingual Teacher's Goals and Instruction
Ann-Marie Wiese (Education, UC Berkeley)

This qualitative study illustrates the many influences on one bilingual teacher's student goals and classroom instruction, such as federal policy, teaching philosophy, and school-wide constraints. The study found that a teaching philosophy in line with Title VII policy guides the teacher's decisions about language goals and the pedagogical practices. District policy, however, does not explicitly shape her teaching philosophy. For Spanish, the teacher focuses on literacy ad student-centered, open-ended instruction. For English as a second language (ESL), the teacher focuses on oral devel9opment and more teacher-centered, closed instruction. The constrained nature of ESL instruction is a product of the conflict between teaching philosophy and school-wide policy constraints. In response, the teacher attempts to shape school-wide language goals and instruction through the Title VII restructuring of the bilingual program. These findings indicate a need for school-wide collaborative decisions regarding language goals for students and classroom instruction.

Effective Teaching Strategies for Creating Optimal Learning Conditions for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: How A Latina First Grade Teacher Merges Theory and Practice to Challenge Traditional Pedagogy and Policy
Julie López-Figueroa (Education, UC Berkeley) & Erminda García (Teacher, San Francisco Unified School District)

This qualitative study documents effective teaching strategies that were used to successfully address the needs of two district diverse student populations. Both formal and informal district-wide policies create schools and classrooms even when the separation of language for instructional purposes causes segregation of students. Many language minority students are under served and marginalized by district policies and as a consequence by schools. District and school policies often reinforce the idea that language minority students lack the necessary resources to contribute to each other's academic development. Most districts narrowly define academic success based on skills tests, thereby disregarding students knowledge and linguistic collateral. The challenges most associated with meeting the needs of diverse student populations became this teacher's opportunity to move beyond traditional bilingual pedagogy. This teacher created a social context that encouraged and planned for the collaborative use of students' cultural and linguistic repertoires which assured students social, linguistic and academic success.

Room: Redwood

Exploring Latino Adolescents' Worlds through Multiple Methods
Leslie Reese (Sociobehavioral Research Group, UC Los Angeles), Kendall Kroesen (Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, UC Los Angeles), Gery Ryan (Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, UC Los Angeles) & Ronald Gallimore (Education, UC Los Angeles)

While it is widely accepted that out-of-school factors can be powerful influences on student performance in school, studies with language minority youth have tended to focus on those home cultural factors which the students "bring with them" to school and which may serve as barriers to their optimal performance in American school settings. A promising approach which seeks to move beyond this one-dimensional model of home-school effects is one which identifies the multiple worlds of family, school, and peers inhabited by adolescents, examines the transitions students make as they navigate among potentially incongruent worlds, and seeks links between students' academic achievement and their success in making these transitions. In this study we utilize a combination of qualitative interview data, focus group data, and quantitative analysis of interview tasks and responses to describe the multiple worlds of Latino middle school youth as they enter adolescence. We seek to identify specific congruencies and lack of congruencies in their worlds and to determine the extent to which these are correlated with achievement in the early stages of adolescence. Our findings to date suggest that (1) the worlds of young Latino adolescent have not yet solidified into the three posited in the worlds model above, (2) there are important overlapping among activities and personnel across worlds, and (3) borders between worlds which make achievement in school problematic are the exception rather than the rule.

PASS+S Dynamic Assessment: An Alternative Assessment of Cognitive Competence for Schooling
Sybil Kline (Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, UC Santa Cruz)

This presentation will describe a CREDE/CREST research project and demonstrate a product which attempts to integrate sociocultural theory and research into the psychological services provided in the schools. This product, The PASS+S Dynamic Assessment, is based on the cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky and Luria, and operationalizes Luria's neuropsychological model of cognition. this assessment, which has been found to positively correlate with performance-based assessments of achievement, is tailored to measure cognitive competence for schooling with subtests designed to be ecologically valid for the classroom. This project has the potential to address some critical assessment issues for the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students who are traditionally over represented in promise of distinguishing between learning handicaps and culturally-based cognitive patterns, as well as identifying gifted CLD children, through dynamic testing and the collection of "opportunity" norms which evaluate children's development within their sociocultural niche.

Room: Executive

Children's & Teacher's Bilingual Language Practices in a 4th Grade Classroom.
Thomas Destino (Education, UC Riverside)

The study addressed the language use practices and beliefs of bilingual students and their teacher in a four-grade class in which the teacher had intermediate fluency in the students' native la Children's and Teacher's Bilingual Language Practices in a Fourth Grade Classroom language, Spanish. Combining ethnographic and quantitative analyses, the study investigated the role of school plays in the sociolinguistic phenomenon of language shift from a minority language to a majority language. Although the students held very positive views of both languages regardless of the language use practices at home and at school, data revealed a substantial shift toward English over the school year. The students' and their teacher's language collectively shifted from considerable use of Spanish at the beginning of the school year to almost no Spanish by the end of the year, despite the fact that the teacher explicitly planned for the use of the native language in class. The study addressed both students' and the teacher's use of their bilingualism, specifically in math and science class.

Adapting Mathematics Instruction for Spanish Speaking Students
Mary Brenner (Education, UC Santa Barbara)

The presentation reports on a case study of one teacher adapting a pre-algebra curriculum unit for use in a bilingual seventh grade classroom. The national standards for mathematics instruction presented by the national Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the California Mathematics Framework clearly state that mathematics teaching for all students should be based upon constructivist models of learning that emphasize problem solving, mathematical communication and mathematical reasoning. A team of teachers and researchers designed a twenty day unit to implement these standards. A quasi-experimental study demonstrated that this curriculum unit increased algebraic problem solving skills in samples of both native English speakers and samples of students who spoke English as a second language at a transitional or fluent level when compared to students who received traditional instruction.

Room: Coast

Socio-Political Considerations: Classroom Processes and Student Roles in a Two-way Immersion Kindergarten.
Esther Delgado-Larocco (Center for Bilingual Studies, CSU Chico)

Data from a study investigating classroom discourse patterns of teachers and native Spanish and English speakers in a two-way kindergarten classroom will be presented. The analysis of the data suggests that socio-political factors affect instructional decisions and roles of English and Spanish native speakers in the classroom.

Report on a Dissertation Study of How Students Selected Cooperative Work Partners in a Dual Language 1st Grade
Teri Lynn Foster (Education, UC Santa Barbara)

Preliminary findings will be presented form the study which examined partner choices for cooperative tasks in an ethnically and linguistically diverse first grade classroom. Qualitative data was collected in a bilingual classroom (two-way bilingual in a self-contained situation) which incorporated cooperative learning involving student choice of workmate. Of particular interest were the circumstances under which students chose cooperative work partners from different ethnic and/or native language groups than themselves and the languages they used in those situations.

Rationale for the study came from the movement in education toward a "thinking, meaning-centered" curriculum where social interaction is a key to learning. Because California public schools continue to experience an increase in ethnic and language minority students, more research is needed in order to determine how social interaction strategies can be effectively implemented in diverse educational settings.

Room: Redwood

Moderator: Sybil Kline

Perspectives: Three Case Studies of Preservice Teachers Learning to Teach in a Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Setting
Sue Heredia (Education, CSU Sacramento)

One of the primary purposes of this study is to inform teacher education practice about how preservice teachers think about teaching and learning in a diverse setting. Understanding the perspectives intending teachers bring them to their professional studies could provide an insight into how to conduct curricula and program direction in order to prepare teachers for culturally and linguistically diverse educational settings.

A Meta-analysis of Teacher Research on the Acquisition of Second Language Literacy
Sharon Ulanoff (Education, CSU San Marcos) & Lillian Vega Castaneda (Education, CSU San Marcos)

This paper examines research conducted by teachers in the field as they explore "burning question" regarding their own practice and the literacy acquisition of L2 learners. Teachers were pursuing their MA in education and were enrolled in a L2 literacy course. This paper answers the following questions: What questions related to second language literacy do teacher-researchers explore? How does their research impact their instruction? What can we learn from examining classroom practice in this manner. Findings indicate that teacher-researchers are interested in both the process and product of second language literacy acquisition. They explore why students succeed in reading in their L2, how students achieve biliteracy, and what strategies are most useful in promoting L2 literacy. They further explore the impact of flexible grouping and variety of sociolinguistic factors that relate to both first and second language and literacy acquisition. These findings have implications for the teaching and learning of L2 learners, and the role of teacher-research in informing classroom practice.

Room: Executive

Moderator: Margarita Azmitia

Mentoring High School Latino Students: Realism Versus False Hope
Maria Mejorado (Education, UC Davis)

Mentoring is currently experiencing the strongest push ever from the state and federal government such as Governor Wilson's Mentor Initiative and Colin Powell's Alliance For Youth. The perception is that mentoring is simple, inexpensive and a win/win situation for the mentor, the mentee, and for society in general. However there are major concerns with the notion of mentoring. These concerns will serve as a backdrop for the responses from over 300 Latino mentors who are involved in a high school program targeting Latino students in the 9-12 grades representing eighteen different high schools. Questions asked include who is the most appropriate type of person to mentor Latino students and what role should they play, the importance of mentors being linked to schools and the influence of culture and language on mentor's satisfaction with the mentoring relationship. We hypothesize that the success of the mentoring relationship increases when students and mentors are matched using criteria reflecting commonalities such as family background and upbringing, language and socio- economic status. This foundation leads to engaging Latino parents in promoting their child's academic achievement in ways schools have been unable to achieve. Sharing this research is timely and links with the school reform efforts to increase the achievement of Latino high school students in the state of California.

The Hazards of Changing Schools for California Latino Adolescents
Katherine Larson (Education, UC Santa Barbara) & Russell Rumberger (Education, UC Santa Barbara)

A variety of evidence suggests that students in the U.S. change school frequently. Several studies show mobility to be related to poor psychosocial adjustment, poor school achievement and poor test scores. However, there has been little research that examines the causes of school mobility nor its impact on high school completion. In a study on school

dropout previously conducted by the authors data indicate that urban Latino adolescents have exceptionally high school mobility rates. There has been no study to date comparing the causes and consequences of school mobility between Latino and White youth.

Room: Coast

Policy, Research and Pedagogy: Bridges Across the University, the Schools, the Families and the Community
Ana Inés Heras (Chicano Studies, UC Santa Barbara), Eileen Craviotto (Teacher, Mckinley Elementary School), Javier Espíndola (Chicano Studies, UC Santa Barbara), Mr. Juan Francisco García (Parent, Santa Barbara School District), Hilda Sanchez (Chicano Studies, UC Santa Barbara), Mrs. Maria García (Parent, Santa Barbara School District), Denise Maltese (Education, UC Santa Barbara), Verónica Morales (Chicano Studies, UC Santa Barbara) Mirna Nuñez (Parent, Santa Barbara School District) & Miguel Ruiz (Parent & Santa Barbara Community Member)

This interactive session will portray the ongoing work of a researcher-practitioner team focusing on the ways in which bridges are being established across four educational contexts: the university, the families, the community, and the schools. The presenters are a team composed of a university professor, one graduate student, three undergraduate students, a bilingual elementary teacher, three parents, and one community member from Santa Barbara. In our presentation, we will address two questions: (1) What are the concrete ways in which policy, research and pedagogy relate to each other, specifically as they affect the education of language minority students?, and (2) What are the specific ways in which different constituencies are affected by and can in turn affect policy design and implementation?

The presentation will first portray a working theoretical framework based on two fundamental concepts, those of "investigación participativa", and of "cross-border knowledge creation". Following this overview, the audience will be invited to interact with the presenters in a small group format, where the presenters will provide specific examples of the work being accomplished from their specific roles and perspectives (e.g., parent; community member; researcher; and teacher). The audience will be invited to reflect on the information received in order to pose issues and questions on the successes and challenges of bridging pedagogy, practice and policy.

Room: Redwood

Moderator/Discussant: Russell Rumberger

Understanding the Implementation of Educational Reform
Lea Hubbard (Sociology, UC San Diego), Hugh Mehan (Sociology, UC San Diego) & Amanda Datnow (JESPAR , Johns Hopkins University)

The purpose of this set of papers is to illuminate the school reform implementation process by presenting data from two studies examining themes in "scaling"up" reform designs. There are dozens of school restructuring designs (e.g., Coalition of Essential Schools, AVID untracking program, Success for All) each with a national support group, each rapidly growing. A wide variety of K-12 school reform designs have demonstrated that they can result in positive changes in individual schools or small numbers of selected schools. However, over the past 25 years, very few reforms have clearly demonstrated the ability to have educationally significant effects when implemented in large numbers of schools. A variety of studies have suggested that replicating the successes from a limited sample to a large sample of schools is very difficult, as bringing a program to scale is a "nested" problem existing in similar forms at different levels of the system. If programs that have the potential to positively change schools exist, but have not been readily transferred using what has been known about "scaling up" promising programs, then thoughtful studies of the implementation process are a critical next step toward school improvement.

Room: Executive

Transnational Strategies for Children's Schooling: Implications for Teachers of Immigrant Children
Marjorie Faulstich-Orellana (Department of Human Development, UC Berkeley) & Anna Eunhee Chee (University of Southern California)

Immigrant families move across borders in different ways based on the social, political, and economic situations in their host and home nations. Through ethnographic research in two California communities - - a "first stop" area for Central American, Mexican, and Korean immigrants in central Los Angeles, and northern California community with children of immigrants from Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Mexico and Yemen, as well as African Americans and whites. We explore families' active transnational strategization to maximize their children's educational options, consider the effects of recent changes in immigration law, and probe implications for teachers.

The Place of Linguistic Minority Students in Spain's Recent Educational Reform Law
Cathryn Teasley (Education, UC Berkeley/Universidad da Coruña, Spain)

Upon analyzing the impetus, the primary mission, the major aims, and the specific content of this ambitious piece of 1990 Spanish State legislation - presently in its final stages of implementation - it becomes evident that the law's treatment of Spain's diverse collectives of linguistic-minority students is hierarchical at best, and absent at worst, even in the most ideologically-charged and well-intended of its articles. These hegemonic biases become most salient when the law is analyzed through the critical lens of the educational needs of precisely the linguistic collectives it overlooks: Gypsies - themselves culturally and linguistically diverse - and the more marginalized of immigrant groups, such as those from Africa and Latin America. Conclusions are drawn regarding the potential influence of this reform project on the educational needs of such populations.

Room: Coast

Timed Picture Naming in Young Second Language Learners
Kathryn Kohnert (Center for Research in Language, UC San Diego)

This research presentation will explore the use of processing dependent measures of lexical-semantic skills in children from Spanish speaking homes acquiring English as a second language. We will present the preliminary results of experimental studies which measure 5-13 year old children's production time as they name familiar words. These times, on-line measure are designed to capture not only the degree of word knowledge (i.e., response times). The study presented here is the first in a series intended to explore the use of psycholinguistic processing methods to measure language abilities in Spanish-English bilinguals, as opposed to the more knowledge and experience dependent language assessments traditionally used in clinical, academic and research settings. By looking at the results of the Picture Naming study reviewed here are intended to provide a preliminary method of establishing baselines for normal language performance at the lexical production level in linguistic minority children, as well as for informing theory on second language learning and sequential bilingualism.

Managing, Competing, or Cooperating?: Ideologies Underlying Latino Children's Interactional Strategies in Peer Cooperative Learning Groups
Amy Kyratzis (Education, UC Santa Barbara) & Nereyda Hurtado (Education, UC Santa Barbara)

Despite the official agenda of "cooperation" in classroom peer cooperative learning groups, "unofficial" agendas operate. this report examines how ideologies supportive of groupwork are established in classrooms. A particularly useful ideology is a family-based one. Cook-Gumperz (1997, April) argues that a "family" framing of the situation provides a likely script for interaction, and given this frame, girls are more likely to play the part of the organizing sister. An ethnographic, sociolinguistic study of two 4-5th grade bilingual classrooms was undertaken. Extensive fieldnotes were kept on children's interactions during math and science peer cooperative learning groupwork, and periodic video recordings of the interactions were made. The findings indicated: 1) strategies the teachers used to frame a family-like supportive groupwork ideology; 2)impediments to the children's adoption of such a frame, in the form of children's creation of competing ideologies through their talk, and 3) that when the supportive groupwork ideology operated, girls rather than boys would manage groupwork.

Room: Redwood

Guidance of Latino High School Students in Mathematics and Career Identity Development
Edward López (Psychology, UC Santa Cruz)

The proposed study will assess the guidance Latino high school students experience as they develop skills in mathematics and form their career identities. The key question of the study concerns the relationship between assisted performance, individuation and Latino students' career identity status and math grades. This work will identify processes of guidance Latino high school students consider helpful to them for their mathematics and career identity development and will contribute information towards helping understand how to assist these students in completing high school and fulfilling their career goals.

Linguistic Minority Students in University Writing Classrooms: Developing Academic Language Proficiency in an L2 without Academic Language Proficiency in an L1
Robin Scarcella (Education, UC Irvine)

Each year, over 300 UCI freshmen enroll in writing courses that have been designed to increase the English language proficiency of linguistic minority students. Most of these students are immigrants who have lived in the United States over five years, have completed high school in California public schools, and have graduated in the top 12% of their high school classes. None of the students were enrolled in bilingual programs in elementary school, and research indicates that the majority have not acquired academic language proficiency in either their first or their second language. Despite their many years of exposure to English and their previous schooling in the United States, their English writing proficiency is deemed inadequate for academic purposes, and they are required to acquire more academic English before enrolling in freshman writing courses. Through an examination of student writing, written questionnaires and oral interviews, this presentation focuses on student needs that affect individual writing proficiency. In identifying particular needs, I consider individual language learning histories pertaining to the students previous interactions with peers, teachers, and family members. In addition, I consider students on-going, daily interactions with UCI professors and peers both inside and outside of UCI undergraduate classrooms. Finally, I explore means of addressing the needs of UCI language minority students.

Room: Executive

A Study of Acculturation, Family Stress and School Performance for Latino Children
Katherine Elliot (Education, UC Santa Barbara) & Merith Cosden (Education, UC Santa Barbara)

In immigrant families, children tend to become acculturated to the dominant culture more quickly than their parents, sometimes at a cost to their original cultural identity. The discrepancy in acculturation between parents and children has been associated with increased family stress. The purpose of this study is to enhance our understanding of the relationship of parent and child acculturation to family stress and school performance. It is hypothesized that 1) families in which children and adults report strong bicultural affiliations will experience less stress; 2) families in which there is a match in acculturation level between parent and child acculturation to family stress and school performance. Fifty Latino students (6th grade and older) and their parents will be given a modified version of the Bicultural Involvement Questionnaire. Parents will be administered the Parenting Stress Index in either Spanish or English. Students' school records will also be reviewed. Thus far, data on 15 children and their families have been collected. This presentation will cover a preliminary analysis of the data collected and will review the literature related to acculturation, family stress and school performance.

Restructuring in a Linguistically and Culturally Diverse School: Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together
Esperanza Alcalá-Collins (Education, UC Berkeley) & Manuel Correia (Education ,UC Berkeley)

This session will provide a preliminary analysis of whole-school restructuring at an urban elementary school with high levels of linguistic and racial diversity. The presentation will focus on qualitative data related to goal setting, challenges in school-wide/parental decision making, and specific accomplishments in the first year of this Title VII funded urban school restructuring. The presentation will provide an overview of current research pertaining to the restructuring of bilingual programs and authentic student assessment and how that research was or was not relevant to the school. Emphasis will be placed on the process of interpreting assessment policy/practice and how it relates to schools, teachers, and students as the restructuring process unfolds.

Room: Coast

Responding to the Needs of Language Learners
Margaret Syzmanski (Teacher, Paramount Unified School District/Hollydale Elementary School), Rebecca Simon (Education, UC Santa Barbara) & Michaele Smith (Independent Researcher, UC Santa Barbara)

In order to facilitate non-native English speaking children's acquisition of academic English literacy, teachers need to use instructional techniques that respond to student's natural language learning behaviors. Children are naturally motivated to communicate, and they learn language when they engage in meaningful social activity. Teachers of increasingly diverse student populations are faced with the challenge of addressing the language difficulties that arise as their students' use language for academic purposes. this work combines both researcher and practitioner experiences to examine two significant language learning issues: 1) the role that social activity plays in language learning in the classroom, and 2) how teachers' instructional responses to students' learning activity can be decisive in improving educational outcomes.