Within the field of TESOL, representation in research and pedagogical knowledge has overwhelming been representative of the White educator's narrative. Lack of representation of voices from teachers of color serves to further marginalize the experience of this group and delegitimize the knowledge and expertise that they bring to their professional…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the use of language sample analysis and standardized norm-referenced assessment in early childhood intervention research focused on language outcomes. A sample of data from a larger randomized control trial was used to explore interrater reliability between two independent transcribers, provide a…

This dissertation investigates the nature of the interface between morphosyntax and cognition. My goal is to connect formal semantic theories of meaning with theories of cognition, drawing on the initial hypothesis that the interface between language and cognition is transparent. I look at different forms of adjectival comparatives -- positive and…

The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which participants built meaningful culturally and linguistically responsive (CLR) relationships with students and to what extent those same participants engaged in cognitively demanding academic discourse with their students. The participatory action research (PAR) study took place in a rural…

Gifted and talented initiatives provide challenging education programs designed to cater to the unique dispositions of students exhibiting exceptional promise by tapping into their inherent proclivities for productive discovery and contribution to society. As population trends in the United States move toward increasingly diverse communities,…

Adult humans are uniquely proficient in reasoning with abstract relations (relational reasoning) - a capacity which underpins much of human-unique cognition, including scientific analogies, artistic metaphors and many phrases in day-to-day language and thought. An important question for cognitive science, therefore, is exploring the nature of this…

Vision and language are the primary modalities of our human perception and learning. Recent years have witnessed fast development of methods that connect vision and language. Current deep learning methods are data-hungry, thus pre-training on large-scale data helps warm up the model and shows better fine-tuning results on downstream tasks.…

This dissertation examines the discourses surrounding remote learning during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic through Twitter conversations. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis informed by Michel Foucault's theories of discourse and power, this study explores how the pandemic has transformed educational interactions over social…

Linguistic diversity is an integral thread in the tapestry of America. As such researchers how linguistic differences across ethnoracial groups can be understood as resources rather than problems. The aim of this study was to examine ideologies concerning race/ethnicity and language in the discourse of educational language policies that guide…

Coloniality permeates across realms and leaves no systemic stone unturned in its path. As such, coloniality manifests in our education system through a variety of practices, policies, and procedures that center Western-European modern rationality and White supremacy. To disrupt and decenter these unilateral paradigms within our schools is to…

This study is a language policy ethnography of the families of four Latina fifth-grade students at a TWBE elementary school as they transition to middle school. Parents and their children jointly acted as policy agents as they navigated the school district's open enrollment system and, through their choices, co-created policy. Situated within…

Prevent, Teach, and Reinforce for Families (PTR-F) has been found effective in increasing parents' use of positive behavior support (PBS)-based strategies and decreasing children's challenging behavior. However, only few studies have purposefully explored the effectiveness of PTR-F for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families. To…

Our visual experience is surprisingly rich: We do not only see low-level properties such as colors or contours; we also see events, or what is happening. Within linguistics, the examination of how we talk about events suggests that relatively abstract elements exist in the mind which pertain to the relational structure of events, including general…

This case study examines the home language and literacy events and practices of two families with children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder. These families are immigrants from Peru and Pakistan, they are multilingual and from working class backgrounds. Specifically, this study explores how these families create meaningful opportunities to provide…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the significant teaching and learning experiences of ESL teachers around the issues of culture and language. The theoretical framework of the study was informed by transformative learning theory. The study began with semi-structured in-depth interviews with twelve teachers who obtained their ESL…