This dissertation study called Young Adults Acting On the World (YAAOW), addresses the injustices of withheld opportunities for critical literacy engagement and the marginalization of refugee-background students through a qualitative experiment of a critical, collaborative project, patterned after social design-based experimentation (Gutierrez,…

Experiences preservice teachers (PTs) have in their preparation programs can directly impact their use of effective and just pedagogy in the classroom (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Tolbert, 2015; Stoddart, Pinal, Latzke, and Canaday, 2002; Bravo, Mosqueda, Solis and Stoddart, 2014). However, researchers in the field of Education have struggled to make…

This dissertation reports on a qualitative longitudinal study that explores the original conceptualization of drama-based instruction (DBI) in the L2 classroom among ten K-12 teacher-candidates in a language teacher preparation program. It gives particular attention to two case study participants as they continued to (re)conceptualize drama-based…

Since the middle of the twentieth century waves of immigration have increased heterogeneity in American classrooms and contributed to new challenges and problems for both teachers and learners. These trends in the United States are, in fact, part of a global phenomenon of large-scale movement of people (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2009;…