November 10th: Dr. Rebecca Callahan

November 10th: Dr. Rebecca Callahan

Assistant Professor of Education, University of Texas, Austin

“Adolescent ELs’ Schooling:
Measuring Access through Achievement, Preparation and Instruction”

6:00 pm

Cubberley 115

Pizza and refreshments will be provided

 

In 1974, Lau v. Nichols mandated that schools ensure equitable, meaningful educational access for English learners (ELs). Several national surveys suggest that the majority of secondary ELs experience discrete ESL instruction, and when content area support occurs, it does so in the form of sheltered coursework. The academic preparation ELs experience provides one measure of academic access; their instructional experiences another. This talk will explore how to best measure academic access among ELs at the secondary level: through programmatic placement, academic achievement, academic preparation, or instructional modification. Regardless of the chosen indicator, are these sufficient measures of policy? If not, what else might we consider? How might future research tackle the issues of achievement, performance and access?

Rebecca Callahan received her PhD in Education with an emphasis on Second Language Acquisition from UC Davis. She previously held an AERA-IES Post-doctoral fellowship and is currently on faculty in the College of Education at the University of Texas, Austin. Last year, she was awarded the AERA Bilingual Education SIG Early Career Award. Dr. Callahan’s primary research interests center on the academic and civic experiences of immigrant, language minority adolescents as they transition from high school into young adulthood. She is presently involved in several research projects which explore the effects of school context, social and academic processes, and teachers’ practices on immigrant adolescents’ academic outcomes. She currently teaches courses in Educational Linguistics, Immigration Theory in Education and Language Assessment and Evaluation. She is interested in bridging the gap between policy and practice as it pertains to ELs educational trajectories. Recent publications have focused on the stratification of educational opportunities for immigrant, language minority students through English as a second language (ESL) placement; primary language use and college-going; and school processes as they relate to the political integration of immigrant young adults. Dr. Callahan is especially concerned about the educational experiences of adolescent English learners. Her recently published work appears in American Educational Research Journal, American Journal of Education, Educational Policy, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Social Science Quarterly, Theory and Research in Social Education, and the Bilingual Research Journal.