Social science and humanities researchers have long considered Appalachia a dynamic site for research. Within literacy education, scholars have called for continued critical literacy research within Appalachia, and to study the ways students' learning contexts can be designed to simultaneously support their comprehension, engagements with…

Despite existing literature documenting patriotism and nationalism in education and children's knowledge of patriotic and national songs, the impact of patriotism and nationalism in American elementary music education through patriotic and national songs has not been examined in the context of current national standards. This examination is…

This dissertation explores the construction of the "mixed-heritage" category in Polish community-based heritage language education (HLE) and its effect on school purposes and school operations. As the number of heritage language speakers in the US who identify with multiple ethnicities grows (Parker et al., 2015; Alba et al., 2018), the…

The expansion of heritage language education in the U.S. is contingent upon the improvement of heritage language teachers' knowledge and abilities in the classroom, as well as the adoption of the most effective methods for instructing heritage language learners. In order to accomplish the aforementioned goal, it is imperative to identify a set of…

Today, about 350 languages are spoken and signed in the United States, many of which are heritage languages (HL). A HL is a language to which a speaker has an ethnic, historical, or sentimental connection. This dissertation reports on an ethnographic case study on the language and literacy socialization practices of one trilingual family (English,…

This study investigates the effects of native language experience and phonetic properties on the discrimination of labial-velar versus labial and velar contrasts, as well as voicing contrasts in labials, velars, and labial-velars. Research indicates that phonological perceptions are influenced by native language experience and the specific…

Within the past few decades, notable contributions have been made in heritage language education research that continued to gain ground in language pedagogy and teaching practices (e.g., Davila, 2017; Valdes, 2000; Fishman, 2001; Kelleher, 2010; Polinsky & Kagan 2007). This dissertation is guided by translanguaging and social identity, two…

This dissertation explores innovative approaches to preserving and revitalizing the linguistic and cultural heritage of Mayan-speaking youth of Guatemalan descent in rural Nebraska. It delves into the intersection of technology, artistic expression, and cultural practices, emphasizing the revitalization of Mayan languages in Abya Yala (the…

An ancestral skill is a "first" skill that may have originally been used for survival purposes but is no longer considered by Western culture to be required knowledge for human survival. Ancestral Skills Education is a method of sharing this ancestral knowledge through participatory, informal learning practices, in non-competitive…

The field of Heritage Language has experienced a great deal of advancement in the past few decades. Much research effort has been dedicated to analyzing and understanding different aspects of heritage language speakers, but less work has been done in the topic of pedagogical approaches. The few recent studies on pedagogical approaches have focused…

The primary goal of this dissertation is to contribute to a predictive model of Spanish heritage grammars by applying recent advancements in machine learning to ferret out factors and covariates that give rise to the Spanish subjunctive. Given that "[p]redictive models would entail that we have a far better understanding of the various…

This study aims to examine Black educators' experiences within cultural heritage institutions that are documenting topics that include the long arc of the American Civil Rights Movement. Black educators are powerful conduits of the African American story because they align with African American cultural heritage institution's goals to foster…

This project explores how the variation in language experiences and attitudes that Mexican American Spanish heritage speaker bilinguals in the United States have affects their speech perception in both their languages. Heritage language bilinguals speak as a first language a minority language that they have cultural ties to (e.g., Spanish in the…

Code-switching has been studied from different approaches, ranging from syntactical, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, phonetically and many others. One key area that phonetic studies have explore has been the production of VOT in Spanish-English bilinguals due to the differences across the languages. To understand how bilinguals co-activate…

This dissertation examines heritage language learners of Spanish enrolled in university Spanish courses, focusing on their strategic use of suprasegmental speech features in two speaking tasks. The research investigates attitudes' influence on heritage language learners' speech production in different task types. Participants engaged in two…