The Methodology

Quantitative Questions

What are the language concepts and ideologies with which pre-service teachers come into the classroom? What are the language concepts and ideologies when they leave the classroom after the intervention of the language unit?

Hypothesis: Pre-service teachers will gain a greater understanding of language and multicultural issues from the language unit created than will pre-service teachers who do not experience the language unit as measured by pretest/posttest scores.

Qualitative Questions

How are these concepts and ideologies expressed by pre-service teachers over the course of the session after the intervention of the language unit? How does the teacher-educator address these concepts and ideologies within the framework of the class? How does the teacher-educator use quality approaches and techniques to design learning opportunities for pre-service teachers to promote the learning of language concepts and ideologies?

The Participants

• Students admitted to the college of education enrolled in Educational Psychology 2212
• Convenience sample

The Class

• Educational psychology-Introduction to learners and learning- 2212
• Focuses on child development
• Introduces multicultural issues
• Textbook has language development chapter
• Includes field observation at St. Louis city elementary or middle school

The intervention included a multicultural unit designed for pre-service teachers. The unit used language knowledge as a means to explore issues of diversity within the classroom. Most importantly, this unit links language knowledge to practical applications in the classroom. This language unit covers 7 out of the 10 course objectives listed on the master course syllabus including:

• Identify various theories of development, and their implications for the interaction of nature and nurture in understanding children's development in situated contexts.
• Understand how to support optimal physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral development, at home, in daycare, schools, and after-school programs.
• Identify the educational implications of this development understanding, including the best practices to help children learn effectively.
• Get first hand experience with educational technology: electronic and Internet searches for information and resources.
• Explore the complex relationship among language acquisition. cognitive development. identify process, and school success.
• Compare child development practices in various cultural contexts.
• Get a better understanding of your own socially-situated learning history and perspective, thereby allowing you more freedom to understand the perspective and experience of people different in various ways from yourself.

The Language Unit

• 4 lectures
• General linguistics
• Language acquisition and innate language theories
• Phonetics, phonology, and historical linguistics
• Sociolinguistics and multiculturalism
• Movies
• Do you speak American?-social variation in American English
• The secret life of the brain-language acquisition
• Readings
• Lisa Delpit (2001)-The Skin We Speak.
-multiculturalism, language, and education
• Lisa Delpit(2001)-Other People's Children
-multiculturalism, language, and education
• Lippe-Green (1997)-English With an Accent
-education, language, and power
• Christine Sleeter(2001), Boutte, Gloria S. and Christine McCormick(1992)
-multicultural applications in the classroom

The Assignments

• Attend and participate in classroom lectures and view movies
• Read 4 required readings outside of class
• Respond to the 5 Discussion board forums regarding reading, lectures, and movies
• Respond to 3 student or teacher posts in any of the 5 discussion boards forums

Pre-test/post-test survey

• Test surveys knowledge of multicultural and language topics according to course syllabus objectives and language unit content

Materials

• Web application-Blackboard
• allows for set up of discussion board forums
• allows attachment of readings, links, and resources for students
• allows for email and electronic communication between and among students and teacher-educator
• allows for electronic record of discussion board texts collected for qualitative analysis

Each class session is 2 hours. To complete the language unit, 4 class periods will be needed. A total of 8 classroom hours will be devoted to the language unit.

Five discussion board forums will be set up. Four of the forums will have an attached documents with guiding questions. The fifth discussion board will be set up for students to respond to in class lectures and movies. This discussion board will not have an attached reading but will have guiding questions about class lectures and movies.

Class 1

• Administer pre-test survey to students
• Give instructions regarding the unit to students
• General linguistics lecture

Class 2

• Language acquisition and innate language theories lecture
• Movie: The secret life of the brain-language acquisition

Class 3

• Phonetics, phonology, and historical linguistics lecture
• Movie: Do you speak American?

Class 4

• Sociolinguistics and multiculturalism
• Administer pro-test survey to students

• Test for significance between the pre-test/post-test
• Use critical discourse analysis to analyze student/teacher texts generated and collected from the 5 discussion boards. The CDA analysis aided by the use of TAMS-Analyzer for Macintosh computer