This study addresses the challenges teachers face in teaching English Learners, who are learning English as a second language while they are learning academic content in English. Many educational reforms have focused on how to teach them, including Proposition 227 in California in 1998. This study was conducted five years hence, as teachers interpreted, adapted, and implemented policies regarding the education of English Learners. To explore these topics, this study draws upon social and cultural theory, which considers the meaning that is made by humans and the context within which that meaning is made. As context also includes participants' identities, the study also draws upon theories of teacher identity. Thus, the questions that guided this study were: a) what effect, if any, does teaching English Learners have on a teacher's identity and social status in the school, b) what are the challenges teachers perceive in teaching them, c) how do teachers interpret, adapt, and implement English Learner policy, d) what, ultimately, does it mean to teachers to teach English Learners and how is this meaning connected to both the classroom and school and the wider social and political context.

Using an ethnographic case-study approach, the researcher explored how teaching English Learners impacted teachers' identity and social status, the challenges teachers faced in doing so, and how teachers interpreted, adapted, and implemented English Learner policy, all within the social and political context of their local district and schools. Data included field notes from participant-observation and interviews along with institutional documents. Data analysis revealed that having an identity as a teacher of English Learners had the greatest impact on teachers' social status, yet not all teachers with English Learners were ascribed this identity. Each teacher also had to navigate challenges related to teaching English Learners, which also contributed to the meaning they made. This study suggests that their teacher identity and social status, intertwined with being deemed capable of meeting parental educational expectations regarding the education of their children, influenced the meaning they made of teaching English Learners and how teachers interpreted, adapted, and implemented English Learner policy in their classrooms.

Focusing on the process of learner socialization among Second Language (L2) students, this dissertation investigates one key aspect of this socialization process--the role of student identities in a school-based online language learning activity. Although the integration of online technology is gaining popularity in L2 classrooms for developing L2 students' electronic literacy while cultivating their language skills, research in this area has seldom considered the issue of identity in relation to L2 students' participation and interactional patterns in formal online language learning. Drawing on Gee's theory of Discourse and identity, which conceptualizes identity as multiple, dynamic, and contextually situated, the study asked three research questions: a) what are the dominant norms and values that the institution attempts to socialize the ESL students into, b) how do the diverse discourses that L2 students participate in within their life worlds shape their development of student identity at school, and c) how do ESL students enact their social identities through their discursive practices of online language learning, and how is such identity enactment related to the dominant values of the institution and the discourses students participate in within their life worlds outside school.

Using a qualitative approach that included discourse analysis, the researcher explored a case-study community college ESL classroom that incorporated online discussion forums. Data included records of class and on-line participation for six focal students as well as interviews with these students, their instructor and the department administrator, and institutional documents. Data analysis showed that students' investment in school-based language learning activities was mediated by the social identities with which they affiliated. Furthermore, situated in an institution that highlighted Academic Discourse, the students each negotiated this discourse in their own way, recreating the interactional dynamics and role expectations underwritten by the dominant discourse of the college. The study suggests that L2 students' language practices in school-based online language learning need to be understood in a holistic institutional/instructional context with reference to students' identities inside and outside school and the human agency that L2 student draw on in learning and using their L2 in different learning contexts.

Students moving from high school writing to college writing are, from a sociocultural perspective, transitioning from one "community of practice" to another, from one "Discourse" to another (Gee, 1992; Wenger, 1998). This process can be difficult, not only for basic writers (Bartholomae, 1985; Shaughnessy, 1977) but also for those students who test into regular freshman English classes and therefore are considered ready for college level writing. Drawing on sociocultural theory, I studied students' experiences as they entered this community of freshman writing at a four-year university focusing on a class for students who had satisfied the prerequisites for Freshman Composition 1.

I studied the class using case-study methodology (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). I observed and recorded every class session (approximately 30) for an academic quarter, held multiple interviews with the instructor and four focal students, and collected the focal students' assigned writing and other classroom documents. I analyzed the data thematically and structurally, drawing from Bartholomae (1985), Blau (2010), Smagorinsky, Daigle, O'Donnell-Allen, & Bynum (2010) and Sperling & Freedman (1987), and looked for developing themes based on Wenger's (1998) theoretical lens of Communities of Practice. Themes included the development of shared repertoires, willingness to engage in the routines/practices of the classroom community, students' response to student/instructor expectations and challenges, and gaining or denial of legitimacy as a potential member of the classroom writing community.

My study found that while participation in key community practices was part of the process of joining a new community, the mutual granting of legitimacy by the instructor and student was instrumental in moving students toward membership in this new community. In addition, my study examined the multiple avenues of access offered through instructor feedback to the students and the possible impact student response and interpretation of these comments had on writing performance.

My dissertation contributes to understanding how students from varied pre-college contexts negotiate the 21st century college writing community, adding to our knowledge of the ways that varied students' experiences, academic promise, and writing performance come together and unfold in this key course for incoming college freshmen.

This dissertation uncovered how a group of second language (L2) students, including international and immigrant students, became socialized into American academic discourse through the writing that they did as graduate students in the context of their academic field. In particular, this study focused on Mandarin Chinese-speaking graduate students studying in an M.A. program of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at a major U.S. university located in the Bay Area of Northern California. This study used a combination of writing research methods--case study techniques of interview and document collection, combined with discourse and text analysis of students' oral and written language--within a socio-cultural/historic theoretical frame. This study revealed that even within one language group learning to write in a particular field, there is great variety among the students in terms of their writing perspectives and performances, struggles and strategies, as well as participation norms and membership negotiation in their academic/professional discourse community. Further, the students' differing perceptions/perspectives reflect the different social and writing experiences that they bring to their new learning and living contexts, with ambivalence and tensions inherent in their academic literacy practices that show their individuality as well as group membership. This study also revealed the TESOL community a complex and varied one, allowing different kinds of written participation that (re)define the students as they engage in writing and other related activities in their course(s). Implications and recommendations for the areas of theory, research, and teaching are also discussed.

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Educators’ Views on the Common Core State Standards

by

Michael Arthur Harrison

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate School of Education

University of California, Riverside

Dr. Melanie Sperling, Chairperson

The most recent reform of education in the United States, the Common Core State Standards, seeks to produce students who are college and career ready. One of the strategies to help students become prepared for life after secondary school is to develop their skills in writing. The goal of this qualitative case study was to help us understand the range and nature of educators’ beliefs and attitudes about the nature of writing and writing instruction in order to gain insight about how they responded to the CCSS writing standards. The participants were employees of one school district including district office personnel, school administrators, English teachers and math teachers. For this case study, I conducted interviews with the Director of Curriculum, two teachers on assignment working at the district office, the principal and assistant principal at one school site, a focus group of English teachers, one additional English teacher, a focus group of math teachers and one additional math teacher, all also at the school site. I used three epistemological positions -including formalism, structuralism and dialogism- as the conceptual framework to examine the beliefs, attitudes and values of the participants on the nature of writing and writing instruction. In addition, I determined how these views affected the educators’ responses to the CCSS writing standards. The results of the study indicate that a range of views on writing existed in the school district which led to an uneven response among participants to the new standards. There was also a mismatch between the teachers and the district office personnel in their interpretation of the standards, contributing to the varied responses to the CCSS. Despite this conflict, there was agreement that the state-wide assessments were the driving force in affecting changes in curriculum. This study implies the need for those who design reform policies to account for the current views of educators tasked with implementing new policy in order to best meet the challenges in new reform policy.

The implementation of new policy is often influenced by factors within and outside of an organization. This qualitative case study examines the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in the field of history-social studies (HSS) in a Southern California school district. The literature on implementation points to three possible explanations for variations in policy implementation at the local level. One is lack of understanding of the policy itself on the part of actors implementing the policy. Another is competing priorities both inside and outside the organization that lessen the importance of a new policy. The third is the role of front-line implementers in tailoring policy to the particular needs of the client base they serve. Data from this study suggests that all three factors played a role in standards implementation in the school district studied. Teachers in the district were exposed to three different interpretations of the CCSS and their meaning to the HSS curriculum. One interpretation, dubbed the “literacy” interpretation, suggested that HSS classrooms were to be a location for explicit instruction on reading and writing. Another, labeled the “inquiry” interpretation, envisioned HSS classrooms as a location for student questioning and history education as a process of investigation. The third, the “rigor” perspective, saw CCSS implementation in HSS as a process involving higher levels of student cognition. Given these mixed signals, as well as other demands from district and site administration, teachers in the district studied implemented the CCSS in HSS in a manner I call defensive implementation. Drawing on McNeil’s (1986, 2000) concept of defensive teaching, defensive implementation was characterized by three factors: a reliance on outside “experts” as the source of knowledge, compartmentalization of authority and responsibility, and essentialization and display of the reform as implementation of the reform. This study concludes that despite the label of reform carried by the CCSS standards, implementation of the CCSS in HSS classrooms was not uniform. Instead, teachers drew from existing understandings and were mindful of what they believed were more important priorities within the school district to implement the CCSS defensively.