First Advisor

Kimberley Brown

Term of Graduation

Fall 1997

Date of Publication

1997

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Department

Applied Linguistics

Language

English

Subjects

Second language acquisition, English language -- Study and teaching (Primary) -- Bilingual method, Spanish language -- Study and teaching (Primary) -- Bilingual method, Language and culture -- Study and teaching (Primary), Linguistic minorities -- Education (Primary)

DOI

10.15760/etd.3505

Physical Description

1 online resource (148 pages)

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis research was to determine if there were significant educational advantages in terms of sociocultural development for culturally and linguistically different students enrolled in a two-way bilingual education program as compared to those directly mainstreamed. Eighteen third-grade students were selected from two schools in the same school district. Half of the subjects spent their third grade year in a two-way bilingual educational program while the other half were mainstreamed into a submersion education program. Each subject was culturally (Hispanic) and linguistically (Spanish was the dominant language) different from mainstream students. A qualitative summary and statistical analyses were used to determine any group differences in terms of sociocultural development. The quantitative analyses showed minimal statistically significant differences suggesting that participating in the two-way bilingual program may not be any better or worse than the direct mainstreaming of culturally and linguistically different children. Conversely, the qualitative data, centered on researcher observations and teacher interviews, arguably pointed in the two-way bilingual program's favor. These results imply that independent of program model, the positive attitude of teachers (and students) stimulates culturally and linguistically different student's educational success. Additionally, in-class use of the sociocultural checklist can serve to enlighten teachers to common factors inhibiting the successful education of the Hispanic student population, thus leading to more effective assessments and fewer mistaken diagnoses. An extension of this work should assess student, teacher, and parental attitudes in more depth. General suggestions for future research include a better understanding of student's background factors. academic achievement, school characteristics. school performance, and school experiences.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39853

Download

Share

COinS