scholarly journals Scaffolding the continua of biliterate development in the Spanish language immersion classroom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dawn M. Heston

The purpose of this qualitative research project is to describe the scaffolding strategies used by a teacher to engage and support students as they work within the continua of biliterate development in the fifth-grade Spanish language immersion classroom. As language immersion programs and dual language schools continue to grow in popularity in Canada and the United States, this study seeks to illuminate and interpret a teacher?s work with students in the Spanish Language Immersion Program (SLIP), a research site located in the urban Midwestern United States. This instrumental case study employed the lens of Sociocultural Theory to explore the principal research question: How does the teacher scaffold student development of biliteracy within language and content instruction in the immersion school context? The research also explores pre-planned scaffolding versus interactional scaffolding, as well as the tensions and forces within the broader context that the teacher encounters while working with students in this bilingual educational environment. Classroom observations, teacher interviews, administration interviews, and artifacts were analyzed using methods borrowed from Grounded Theory. Findings from this study highlight the characteristics of the Community of Practice created by the teacher in this classroom that include a focus upon encouragement, knowledge, organization, and literate habitus. Additionally, two visual models were created to present the data including: "Scaffolding Episodes in the Development of Biliteracy," to illustrate the task-oriented support provided by the teacher, and "Centripetal versus Centrifugal Forces," to present the forces and tensions that the teacher faced within the historical phases of the Spanish Language Immersion Program.

Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta N. Lukacovic

This study analyzes securitized discourses and counter narratives that surround the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversial cases of security related political communication, salient media enunciations, and social media reframing are explored through the theoretical lenses of securitization and cascading activation of framing in the contexts of Slovakia, Russia, and the United States. The first research question explores whether and how the frame element of moral evaluation factors into the conversations on the securitization of the pandemic. The analysis tracks the framing process through elite, media, and public levels of communication. The second research question focused on fairly controversial actors— “rogue actors” —such as individuals linked to far-leaning political factions or militias. The proliferation of digital media provides various actors with opportunities to join publicly visible conversations. The analysis demonstrates that the widely differing national contexts offer different trends and degrees in securitization of the pandemic during spring and summer of 2020. The studied rogue actors usually have something to say about the pandemic, and frequently make some reframing attempts based on idiosyncratic evaluations of how normatively appropriate is their government's “war” on COVID-19. In Slovakia, the rogue elite actors at first failed to have an impact but eventually managed to partially contest the dominant frame. Powerful Russian media influencers enjoy some conspiracy theories but prudently avoid direct challenges to the government's frame, and so far only marginal rogue actors openly advance dissenting frames. The polarized political and media environment in the US has shown to create a particularly fertile ground for rogue grassroots movements that utilize online platforms and social media, at times going as far as encouragement of violent acts to oppose the government and its pandemic response policy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 205789112110405
Author(s):  
Ikhsan Darmawan

Although the number of countries that have adopted e-voting has decreased lately, the number of academic publications on e-voting adoption has increased in the last two years. To date, there is no coherent narrative in the existing literature that explains the progress of the research on e-voting adoption. This article aims to answer the following research question: “How has research on the topic of e-voting adoption progressed over the last 15 years?” The article provides a semi-systematic review of 78 studies that were conducted from 2005 to 2020. In this article, I argue that although the studies on e-voting adoption are dominated by a single case study, by research in the United States, and by the positivist paradigm, scholars have employed the term “e-voting adoption” diversely and the research on e-voting adoption has evolved to address more specific research questions. Recommendations for the future agenda of research on e-voting adoption are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Craig Allen

The first completely researched history of U.S. Spanish-language television traces the rise of two foremost, if widely unrecognized, modern American enterprises—the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. It is a standard scholarly history constructed from archives, original interviews, reportage, and other public materials. Occasioned by the public’s wakening to a “Latinization” of the U.S., the book demonstrates that the emergence of Spanish-language television as a force in mass communication is essential to understanding the increasing role of Latinos and Latino affairs in modern American society. It argues that a combination of foreign and domestic entrepreneurs and innovators who overcame large odds resolves a significant and timely question: In an English-speaking country, how could a Spanish-speaking institution have emerged? Through exploration of significant and colorful pioneers, continuing conflicts and setbacks, landmark strides, and ongoing controversies—and with revelations that include regulatory indecision, behind-the-scenes tug-of-war, and the internationalization of U.S. mass media—the rise of a Spanish-language institution in the English-speaking U.S. is explained. Nine chapters that begin with Spanish-language television’s inception in 1961 and end 2012 chronologically narrate the endeavor’s first 50 years. Events, passages, and themes are thoroughly referenced.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devin L. Jenkins

In a census-related study on language maintenance among the Hispanic/Latino population in the southwest United States, Hudson, Hernández-Chávez and Bills (1995) stated that, given negative correlations between language maintenance and years of education and per capita income, “educational and economic success in the Spanish origin population are purchased at the expense of Spanish language maintenance in the home” (1995: 179). While census figures from 1980 make this statement undeniable for the Southwest, the recent growth of the Spanish-language population in the United States, which has grown by a factor of ~2.5 over the last twenty years, begs a reexamination of these correlations. A recent study on the state of Colorado (McCullough & Jenkins 2005) found a correlational weakening, especially with regard to the relationship between language maintenance and median income.
 The current study follows the model set forth by Hudson et al. (1995) in examining the interrelationship between the measures of count, density, language loyalty and retention based on 2000 census data, as well as the relationship between these metrics and socioeconomic and demographic variables, including income and education. While some relationships existed in 2000 much in the same way that they did in the 1980 data, especially with regard to count and density, the measures of loyalty and retention saw marked reductions in their correlations with social variables.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Gasca Jiménez ◽  
Maira E. Álvarez ◽  
Sylvia Fernández

Abstract This article examines the impact of the anglicizing language policies implemented after the annexation of the U.S. borderlands to the United States on language use by describing the language and translation practices of Spanish-language newspapers published in the U.S. borderlands across different sociohistorical periods from 1808 to 1930. Sixty Hispanic-American newspapers (374 issues) from 1808 to 1980 were selected for analysis. Despite aggressive anglicizing legislation that caused a societal shift of language use from Spanish into English in most borderland states after the annexation, the current study suggests that the newspapers resisted assimilation by adhering to the Spanish language in the creation of original content and in translation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document