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theses

The rising numbers of young Hispanic children in the United States (now about 25% of those under five) poses obvious challenges in terms of meeting their particular needs for preschool education (Passel, Livingston & Cohn, 2012). Yet, education policy is only beginning to address these even with respect to language development (Castro, Garcia & Markos, 2013; Waldfogel, 2012). Some researchers have suggested that high quality early childhood education programs that incorporate home language instruction are particularly beneficial for addressing the home-school cultural divide as well as developing English language proficiency (Zepeda, Castro & Cronin, 2011). However, high quality bilingual early childhood is expensive and challenging to provide. It requires teachers who are knowledgeable about best practices for all children and for bilinguals, both of which are in short supply (Garcia, Arias, Murri, & Serna, 2010; Whitebook, 2014). Both teacher preparation and staffing patterns impact this problem. The goals of this study were two-fold. First, through a pre/post-test design with an embedded second randomized trial of professional development, impacts of professional development regarding the education of young DLLs on practice and children’s learning were assessed. Second, the relative effectiveness of different teacher and assistant teacher bilingualism combinations on teaching practices and children were also assessed. In addition, the study presents a first look at classroom quality for DLLs using an instrument specifically designed to measure practices that are supportive of home language maintenance and English acquisition for DLLs. Findings revealed that PD was not effective at improving classroom practices for treatment group teachers and consequently no differences in children's receptive vocabulary scores were found. Results of the second research question showed that the classroom quality scores relative to staff language configurations did matter with Spanish-speaking lead teachers earning significantly higher scores that the other staff language configuration groups of teachers. While no effects were found relative to child outcomes on tests of receptive vocabulary in English or Spanish, the implications of the study do present a springboard for policy conversations regarding the supply and demand of bilingual teachers and teacher assistants, pre-service training and professional development.

ETD_7627

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Alexandra Daniel

doi:10.7282/T398899F

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.