Recent research has emphasized the economic, social, and cognitive advantages available to bilinguals. Yet for many immigrant groups, bilingualism is a temporary phenomenon. Most immigrant children arrive in the United States as monolingual speakers of their native language, develop bilingualism as they acquire English, establish English-speaking households, and raise their children as English-speaking monolinguals. According to survey data, even Spanish, a language thought to be particularly enduring in the United States, seldom lasts beyond the second or third generation. Despite evidence that shift toward English is occurring for many immigrant groups, most researchers have neglected to focus on the different levels at which shift occurs, the factors that influence its development, and the course it takes during individuals' lifetimes. In an effort to address these concerns, this paper reports on research that investigates native language maintenance and shift to English among 64 Mexican-descent children and their families. Although the participants in the study live in the same suburban community, they have different immigration backgrounds (Mexican-born, U.S.-born of Mexican-born parents, U.S.-born of parents who were also born in the United States.) Data sources referred to here include a variety of interviews and activities used to investigate the participants' language proficiency, attitudes, and choices.

This dissertation examines affordances for Language Awareness within a classroom serving English learners in a coastal California middle school under the policy context of No Child Left Behind. As an ecologically inspired account, this study contributes to understanding how students use and learn language in classroom settings. Affordances for Language Awareness represent possibilities available to students for accessing relevant information to make meaning of language within a classroom. Affordances for Language Awareness are opportunities for meaning making. That is, the learner seeks out meaning, while the classroom context (teacher, pedagogy, realia, classmates, etc.) provides the potential to give meaningful information. No one has conducted a similar study within the context of this policy environment-- a context in which students' and teachers' opportunities to draw on their repertoire of linguistic, cultural, and intellectual resources in classroom and school settings have been drastically constrained. For this reason, a study of affordances for Language Awareness can offer a lens on how a particular policy context may impact classroom language learning.

Taking an ecological perspective on bilingual learners, defined as multi-competent L1/L2 learners, the research questions in this study focus on how affordances for Language Awareness are constructed within the school context by multi-competent L1/L2 users. A second goal of this study is to understand what factors mediate potential affordances for Language Awareness. A third goal of this study is to consider how the broader ecology of the school, district, state, and federal government language education policy under No Child Left Behind influenced the construction of affordances for Language Awareness.

To address the research questions within an ecological perspective on language learning, a qualitative design was employed. In drawing on qualitative methods, the researcher collected classroom interaction data focused on episodes of meaningful exchanges and case study data which enabled the researcher to understand the range of student practices through which affordances for Language Awareness occurred. The unit of analysis in this study is Language Awareness Related Episodes (LAREs), defined as episodes of conversational exchanges containing ideas contributing to students' Language Awareness in the construction of meaning. The LAREs were inductively coded, revealing four emerging categories.

Further examination of these categories within the individual practices of the case students found that affordances for Language Awareness occurred as bi-directional semiotic activities between students and their teacher while exploring classroom texts, which were contextualized through multi-sensory and multi-modal mediating factors (e.g. listening to text, listening to peers' response to text, text projected on board, keeping marginal notes, visual imagery, music and film). Findings showed that students most frequently engaged in affordances for Language Awareness while constructing understanding around metalinguistic elements such as morphology and polysemy. The second most frequent finding was students engaged in analeptic discourse exploring shared experiences that allowed for affordances for Language Awareness. A less frequent and third finding was that students engaged in affordances for Language Awareness through prolepsis or co-constructing inference in texts guided by instructional language puzzles. The least frequent occurrence was students who engaged in affordances for Language Awareness through register shifts. The case study findings showed that students demonstrated a range of language practices within the classroom, including (a) independently seeking out opportunities, (b) engaging in dynamic exchanges with classmates and the teacher, and (c) being drawn into the community of learners by peers and the teacher in order to marshal relevant resources for gaining affordances for Language Awareness. While the policy context situating this study was shown to be disruptive, constraining affordances for Language Awareness, this study found that the instructor was able to negotiate policy demands to support students' classroom engagement allowing for affordances for Language Awareness to occur.

The implications of this study are that teachers can resist the dominant discourse supporting classroom practices for students to engage in affordances for Language Awareness through (a) their teaching practices and (b) supporting students to draw on their heritage language resources. Another implication of this study is that classroom practices must allow for the various ways in which students may experience affordances for Language Awareness. A further implication for policy makers is the need to reconsider how drawing on multiple language resources may support affordances for Language Awareness for both bilingual development and classroom learning.

Despite repeated pleas for diversifying a predominantly White U.S. teacher workforce, a significant teacher diversity gap persists in almost every state of the country (Boser, 2014). Teachers of Color who enter the profession with commitments to social justice, in particular, face an array of racist structural and interpersonal challenges often leading to their burnout and in some cases push out from the field (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016). In response to neoliberal, color evasive, and apolitical approaches to teacher support, educators and organizers have reclaimed and reframed their pedagogies through critical professional development (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015) to center healing from the damaging impacts of oppression (Ginwright, 2015; Pour-Khorshid, 2016). This three-year ethnographic case study (Yin, 2003) of a California racial affinity group of 12 critical educators of Color (CEoC) committed to healing, empowerment, love, liberation and action (H.E.L.L.A.) offers insights about alternative approaches to teacher support rooted in critical-healing praxes (Cariaga, 2018).

Relying on ethnographic approaches such as participant observation (Wilson, 1977), semi-structured interviews (Patton, 2002), and testimonios (Pour-Khorshid, 2016) as focal methods, I utilized grounded theory (Straus & Corbin, 1998) to examine: (a) the nature of learning and interactions that unfold over time, and (b) the personal and professional impact that members experienced through their participation. The findings from this research illuminate how the group explicitly centered 12 members’ experiences, needs, and collective knowledge to (a) engage in fugitive learning as an act of political and pedagogical resistance to White Supremacy; and in so doing, (b) cultivated a sacred space for soul care and collective healing. I conclude by discussing how and why critical racial affinity group spaces for CEoC offer a more holistic approach to support their personal, political, relational, and pedagogical growth and well-being.