Previous Speakers: 2005 – 2006
Speaker (Affiliation) :: Title :: Theories/Research Tools
Prof. Bryan Brown (SUSE) :: The Evidence is in the Air: Language, Identity, and Science Learning :: Investigates how language, identity, and classroom learning are related to the construction of a discursive identity, through discourse analysis of interaction in science classrooms.
Prof. Kenji Hakuta (SUSE) :: Research on Bilingualism and Education: Reflections on the Interaction of Methods and Substance :: Draws from his research history, involvement in federal and state language policy, and role in the evolution of federal educational research policy to answer questions regarding the nature and pursuit of educational research.
Prof. James Banks (University of Washington, College of Education) :: Increasing the Academic Achievement of All Students: What Have We Learned from Theory and Research? :: Uses his Dimensions of Multicultural Education as a conceptual framework to discuss some of the significant insights and findings that have been gained from research, scholarship, and wisdom of practice about how to increase the academic achievement of students from diverse groups and to help all students develop democratic racial attitudes and values.
Prof. Kathryn Davis (University of Hawai`i) :: Practicing Sociolinguistic Theory and Theorizing Practice in a Migratory Era :: analyzes critical practices through ethnographic studies of high school, community college, and community-based projects serving diverse migrant and local populations in Hawaii.
Prof. Suzanne Romaine (Merton College, University of Oxford) :: Language revitalization and the politics of immersion: all in the family? :: Compares a number of indigenous language revitalization movements underway in the US, Brittany, Canada, Ireland and elsewhere, and argues that despite considerable variability in the local settings in which revitalization is carried out, immersion schools have tended to develop along similar lines and are faced with similar issues.
Prof. Patricia Baqeudano-Lopez, Jorge Solís, and Shlomy Kattan (UC Berkeley, Graduate School of Education) :: Time, Discourse, and Learning in Classroom Interaction :: Presents a conceptual framework for articulating the relationship between time, agents, language, and activities in learning processes and classroom interaction, building on research of classroom discourse and adaptation processes in science inquiry elementary classrooms.
Prof. George Bunch (UC Santa Cruz, Education Dept.) :: Language Minority Students and Access to Higher Education: Uncovering Language Testing and Placement Policies in California Community Colleges :: Presents preliminary results of an ongoing study analyzing placement tests and policies at 15 community colleges in central California and the San Francisco Bay Area, examining how students are steered toward either the ESL or regular English exams, what is measured (and not measured) by the tests, and what assumptions about language proficiency underlie the process.
Savitha Moorthy (Stanford University, Haas Center for Public Service) :: Putting Critical Pedagogy to Work: Lessons from a Community-based Adult ESL Program :: Drawing from thirteen months of intensive participant observation and practitioner research of a community based adult ESL program, describes critical pedagogy-in-action and outlines the successes, challenges, and tensions encountered when critical pedagogies like the participatory approach are translated into day-to-day functioning in pedagogical settings.
Prof. Penelope Eckert (Stanford University, Linguistics Dept.) :: Sounding variously adolescent: Language and the preadolescent heterosexual market :: Traces the emergence of a heterosexual market in each of two ethnically distinct schools in Northern California, showing how patterns of variation in the Northern California Vowel Shift emerge in the course of participation in this market.
H. Samy Alim (UCLA, Anthropology Dept.) :: Black Language in White public space: Language, discourse, and racism in educational institutions :: Presents research conducted in a California high school about teachers’ language ideologies in relation to the observed linguistic practices of their students.
