Purpose: Syntax provides critical support for both academic success and linguistic growth, yet it has not been a focus of language research in school-age African American children. This study examines complex syntax performance of African American children in second through fifth grades. Method: The current study explores the syntactic…

Little is known about mismatches between the language of mathematics testing instruments and the rich linguistic repertoires that African American children develop at home and in the community. The current study aims to provide a proof of concept and novel explanatory item response design that uses error analysis to investigate the relationship…

This study examined an in-service teacher's enactment of code-meshing and code-switching pedagogies in a clinical summer reading clinic, as a requirement for a reading specialist program. Thus, the enactment of code-meshing pedagogies was based upon embracing the students' use of African American English (AAE) in academic writing contexts and…

Over the years, less attention is given to students' spelling skills compared to other areas of literacy achievement like word reading and passage comprehension in relationship to nonmainstream dialect usage. Considering that English spelling is based on the phonological and morphological structures of Mainstream American English (MAE), it is…

This study used data from questionnaires completed by teachers employed in North Carolina schools (N = 370) to determine if teachers felt that non-school-related or school-related factors served as barriers that limited the number of African American male children from participating in gifted programs. The majority of the teachers taught 3rd- to…