We present findings across three randomized trials of "Descubriendo la Lectura" (DLL), an intervention designed to improve literacy skills of Spanish-speaking first graders struggling with reading. DLL is a one-to-one Spanish-language literacy program lasting 12-20 weeks offered to a school's lowest performing emerging bilingual first…

As teacher educators on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, our goal is to (re)conceptualize a pedagogical approach for bilingual teacher development informed by teacher education research in the borderlands and anchored in the myriad of historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic realities of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands -- a border pedagogy.…

This research examines the perceptions of 141 Arizona educational stakeholders' (i.e. teachers, parents, high school students, and teacher candidates) perceptions of five English L1 teachers and five English LX teachers (with Spanish as their L1). Listeners responded to a survey in which they heard brief (1.5-2 min) recordings from each speaker;…

This dissertation explored the perspectives of stakeholders within a university-level Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) program in Arizona, focusing on their language ideologies and critical language education efforts. The study, rooted in Critical Language Awareness (CLA) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) frameworks, challenges deficit-based…

The present study conducted a critical discourse analysis and a visual analysis on 12 beginner-level Spanish textbooks. The goal of the study was to examine the representation of Afro-Latinxs and the ideologies behind these representations. The frameworks that guided the study were Fairclough's framework for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and…

Purpose: We investigated the efficacy of "Story Champs" for improving oral language in third-grade Spanish-English bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: We implemented a concurrent multiple-baseline across-participants single-case design with four bilingual Spanish-English third-grade students with DLD.…