Presently, across the nation, immigration headlines grip the public's attention with negative messages, under the assumption that immigrants are stereotyped as either individuals with criminal intent or people who are unpatriotic to the United States. Under this thought, politicians scramble to meet the needs of their state by protecting their…

This three-article dissertation examined how policy choices in three key policy areas -- initial enrollment, service provision, and reclassification -- impact English learner (EL)-classified students. The first article examined the national landscape of state statutes, regulations, and state education agencies' (SEA) guidance that support…

From a sociocultural perspective, identity is understood as constructed through active negotiations with others (Gee, 2006; Lantolf, 2009). Language constitutes a mediation tool used to create meanings in new social and cultural contexts as individuals become members of new communities of practice (CoP). In doing so, an ongoing process of sharing…

The time between the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and its replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, marked a period of unprecedented policy-driven education reform. Unfortunately, the major objectives of the policy were not achieved, and the very problems it sought to fix still exist. One reason for this was an…

This study is framed in Bourdieu's theory of capital, which asserts that the choices we make are usually designed to help us become better off economically; that economic capital is, to some degree, exchangeable with other types of capital (e.g., social and cultural); and that other types of capital can be exchanged for economic capital. The…

The case study of bilingual tutors and their impact on the reading comprehension of children whose primary language is not English is fundamental to this dissertation. Recent research has indicated that there is a positive correlation between a tutor having knowledge of the parent language of bilingual children and the children's improvements in…

The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 and the Lau v. Nichols Supreme court case (1974) have changed the way school districts prioritize education for English Learners. With the same intention to prioritize education for English Learners alongside foster youth and low income, former Governor Jerry Brown and the California legislature followed suit by…

This study examined the knowledge, motivation, and organizational (KMO) influences that shape how dual language immersion program (DLIP) administrators sustain these programs on their campuses in a California public school district. Using a modified version of Clark and Estes' gap analysis model, a qualitative case study explored the assumed KMO…

When second language learners are identified as having learning disabilities, their need for instruction in English language development and the benefits of instruction in their native language are essential for academic success. This could become a challenge for special education students and teachers when the magnet school is a dual language…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how English as Second Language (ESL) instructors perceived and implemented new literacies in their pedagogical contexts. The research was viewed through the Communicative Language Teaching and the New Literacies Studies theoretical lenses. A basic interpretive qualitative case study was…

The number of English language learners (ELLs) in early childhood education (ECE) continues to increase, particularly with students whose first language (L1) is Spanish. Recent studies have shown the connection between teachers' self-efficacy and student achievement, but very few specifically address early childhood education teachers'…

Bilingual education has had a resurgence in the United States since the Bilingual Education Act of 1968. Since that time the number of language immersion programs across the country has increased exponentially. Although language immersion programs are a type of bilingual education there are considerable differences in the implementation and…

There have been numerous studies about the instructional delivery models utilized for meeting the needs of ELLs, and particularly for ELLs with LD, but no specific studies were discovered that identify the instructional delivery models available for ELLs with LD from Latin America. Therefore, the problem that was addressed in this study was to…

To keep the United States economically competitive in a rapidly changing world, business leaders are calling for employment candidates who can work efficiently in a globalized context with both language skills and cross-cultural dispositions critical to the economic success of the country. These language proficiency skills and cross-cultural…

As human rights education initiatives expand globally, there is wide variation among contexts about what human rights education is and accomplishes beyond a basic transmission of knowledge of rights. In an Andean highland province in Peru, two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)---Fe y Alegria and IPEDEHP---have collaborated over the course of…