Purpose: The overarching purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which differences existed in Grade 4 STAAR Writing performance by student economic status, gender, and language status. In the first article, the purpose was to investigate the extent to which student economic status (i.e., Not Poor, Moderately Poor,…

Studying the oral language growth of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States is increasingly important given the critical role early language development plays in reading outcomes. In this article, we report on the Spanish and English growth trajectories observed in 124 bilingual preschoolers collected over 2 years in 36 classrooms…

This study explored the perspectives of speech language pathologists and school psychologists, to identify the systemic challenges they identified that negatively impact how emerging bilingual students are referred, assessed, and identified for special education. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with 6 speech language…

California has one of the largest populations of multilingual learners (MLs) in the United States (California Department of Education [CDE], 2020; 2021). These MLs have unique strengths and needs, which require school psychologists to have specialized training (Gonzalez et al., 2022; Harris et al., 2021). However, few school psychology training…

In here, I provide a description of a multiliteracies elementary classroom's ecology according to how an elementary bilingual teacher and bilingual language learners in her classroom interact and engage with traditional (linguistic) and alternative (multimodal) texts in language arts. This multiliteracies classroom ecology shows their dynamic…

Bilingual children are a more heterogenous group than their monolingual counterparts with respect to the sources of variation in their language learning environments, as well as the wide individual variation in their language abilities. Such heterogeneity in both individual difference factors and language abilities argues for the importance of an…

Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are widely used in large introductory courses. Recent research focuses on MCQ reliability and validity and overlooks questions of accessibility. Yet, access to the norms of academic discourse embedded in MCQs differs between groups of first-year students. We theorize these norms as part of the institutionalized…

When individuals read a narrative text, they construct a mental representation known as a situational model to comprehend the unfolding story. These models require updates at meaningful changes in the story to reflect current information accurately. Existing research highlights the attentional and working memory demands of these updating…

This study examined the reading performance data for a grade level of fifth graders using the Web-based Accelerated Reader assessment program. Based solely on student archival data, this study focused on the hypothesized relationship between the volume and complexity of quizzes taken from books read using the Accelerated Reader assessment program…

"Word Study: Letter Name-Alphabetic Sorts for Spanish-Speaking Multilingual Learners" is the ideal stage-specific companion to "Word Study with Multilingual Learners." Beginning with picture concept sorts, it provides strategies to help teachers make sorting meaningful. The text develops a routine for introducing English…

This article shows how two Latina bilingual teachers provided opportunities for their Latinx students from immigrant families to enact their agency in a highly regulated Head Start bilingual preschool classroom in ways that aligned with culturally sustaining pedagogy. Using video-cued ethnography and data from the Blinded Study, the authors center…

Persistent inequalities in the education of multilingual students make the effective integration of content and language instruction an urgent issue for theory and practice. This article contributes to the literature on content and language integration by exploring empirically the relationship between teacher learning and changes in teacher…

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making…

Informed by translingual practice [Canagarajah, S. 2013a. "Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations." New York: Routledge] and poststructuralist conceptualisation of identity [Norton, B. 2000. "Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change." "TESOL Quarterly" 35…

This mixed methods study examined how a National Professional Development Grant project's first cohort (2018-2020) in the Midwest impacted mostly White and monolingual inservice teachers who work with emergent bilingual learners (EBLs). Two research questions (RQs) guided this study: RQ1: What were the inservice teachers English language…