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AN INVESTIGATION OF LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT AND STUDENT INTERACTIONS
IN TWO FORMS OF BILINGUAL PROGRAMS

BY

Denford Musvosvi

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1987

©1988

DENFORD MUSVOSVI

All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT

AN INVESTIGATION OF LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT AND STUDENT INTERACTIONS
IN TWO FORMS OF BILINGUAL PROGRAMS
By

Denford Musvosvi

Qualitative fieldwork methods were used in this study to
investigate the purposes of two forms of bilingual programs (ESL).
The two forms of bilingual programs were pull-out programs. The
medium of instruction in both the pull-out programs and the regular
program was English. The use of English as the medium of instruction
in both regular and bilingual classes precipitated the initial
research question, ”If English is the only medium of instruction,
what warrants the pulling out or separation of these bilingual
students from the rest of the youngsters at their grade level during
social studies, English, and reading classes?" Included in this
investigation were factors that influenced teacher-student classroom
interactions.

Conclusions drawn from this investigation suggest that students'
cultural experiences, exposure, prior knowledge of the subject
matter, and communicative competences influence the way they
participated in classroom discussions, the way students defined words
and social behaviors, and the way students selected favorite subjects

and their performance in all subjects.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to Dr. Robert
Hatfield, the committee chair; Dr. Richard Navarro, Dissertation
Director; Dr. Lois Bader, my cognate area advisor; and Jacquelyn
Nickerson and C. Tane Akamatsu, committee members, for their
insights. Drs. Hatfield and Navarro contributed much in their final
editorial comments. Susan Burdick worked with me in the initial
stage of data collection. I thank her heartily for her insights.
Her prior experience working in the Asian community indeed helped
me. For his generous help in editing, I thank Tapera Chiocha. Vicki
Swanson, who is a classmate and Christian friend, also gave of her
time in editing this document. Her Christian spirit has made life
much easier for me during very difficult times. -Karla Bellingar, who
typed several drafts, including this final one, has been patient and
very helpful. Karla surpasses herself as a typist. Her willingness
to help and her friendliness will never be forgotten. I want
especially to say to her, ”Thank you a million times." Most of all,
I would like to acknowledge the manifestation of the power of God in
all phases of this project. I owe God the greatest "Thank you." In
conclusion, it is appropriate to quote:

For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and

bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was

with the Father and was manifested unto us; That which we

have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may

have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is

with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these

things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. (I John

1: 2-4)

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I: Introduction ......................................... l
Aspira v. Board of Education ................................ 4
Bilingual Programs in Michigan .............................. 6
Statement of the Problem .................................... 9
Operational Definition of Terms ............................ 12
Organization of the Study .................................. 14

Chapter II: Literature Review .................................. 15
Background Information on Bilingual Students ............... 15
Goals of Bilingual Programs ................................ 27
Experience and Learning .................................... 29
Communicative Competences .................................. 39
Reading Instruction ........................................ 44

Chapter III: Design of the Study ............................... 48
Research Questions ......................................... 48
Michigan Policies on Bilingual Education ................... 48
Bilingual Programs at the School District Level ............ 51
Research Design ............................................ 59
Procedures ................................................. 60

Participant observation ............................... 60
Interviews. ............................................ 62
Information gathered through the questionnaire ........ 63
Analysis of data ...................................... 64
Summary .................................................... 66

Chapter IV: Description of Findings ............................ 67

1. What Purposes Does the Bilingual Program Serve Which

Uses English as the Only Medium of Instruction? ........ 67
2. What Teaching Techniques Are Inherent in the Bilingual

Classroom Activities? .................................. 74
3. How Do These Techniques Compare and Contrast to Those

of the Regular Eighth Grade Social Studies Class? ...... 81

4. How Did the Prior Knowledge of the Subject Matter and
Students' Prior Experiences Influence the Way They
Defined Words and Social Behavior, and the Way They

Selected Favorite Subjects? ............................ 84
Students' Favorite Subjects ....................... 90

5. How Do Cultural Experiences and the Learning Climate
in Each Classroom Influence Classroom Interactions? ....96

iii

Chapter V: Interpretation of Findings .......................... 104

Purposes ................................................... 104
Purpose-Process ............................................ 106
Experiences Influencing Students' Definitions of Words and
Actions .................................................... 110
Students' Selection of Favorite subjects ................... 111
Linkages or Threads That Connect the Data .................. 112
Insights from Work Already Done in This Area ............... 114
Chapter VI: Summary, Conclusions, Implications for Research and
Practice, and Recommendations ................................... 117
Conclusions ............................................. ...118
Implications for Research and Practice ..................... 120
Recommendations ............................................ 121
Appendices

Appendix A: How My Thinking Has Changed Since February 1,
1984: An Intellectual Autobiography of the Research

Process ...................................................... 123
Appendix B .................................................. 128
Appendix C .................................................. 130
Bibliography ..................................................... 134

iv

LIST OF TABLES
Table I: Teacher-Student Ratio in All Classes
Included in This Study ........................................ 54

Table II: Statistics Representing Special Bilingual
Students' Choices of Subjects ................................. 90

Table III: Statistics Representing Quasi-Bilingual Students'
Choices of Subjects ........................................... 91

Table IV: Statistics Representing Regular Students' Choices
of subjects ................................................... 91

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: BIC Classroom Map ..................................... 57
Figure 2: Classroom Activities .................................. 83
Figure 3: Spectrum Covered by Student Classroom Interaction ....102

Figure 4: Elements That Influenced High Yield in Classroom
Interaction ................................................... 114

vi

CHAPTER I
Introduction

The United States of America has always been and continues to be
a land of heterogeneous people. This fact is shown through the
attention the news media give to immigrants and the problems they
face in this country. John Meyers, publisher of TIME magazine,
wrote, ”Since the turn of the decade, TIME has closely followed the
newest waves of immigrants to America and the ways in which they are
changing our nation. A 1981 cover story described the pervasive
Hispanic influence in south Florida, and another in 1983 dealt with
the mix of ethnic groups in Los Angeles. The subject, however,
encompasses areas as diverse as education, culture, food, business,
religion, indeed every aspect of our lives" (July 8, 1985, p. 3).
From this observation, Meyers accordingly concludes that this wave of
immigrants represents a change of historic dimensions.

Included among the aforementioned historic dimensions is
education. Educational programs needed to be broad enough to
accommodate the new immigrants. It is difficult enough to plan
educational goals in simple and homogeneous societies let alone a
heterogeneous society such as the United States of America. And yet,
in an effort to promote democratic principles in this country, equal
opportunity to education is guaranteed by law (Shulman & Sykes,
1983). In spite of this guarantee, it may be doubted whether the
objectives of equal opportunity to education for all the American
citizens are being realized (Shulman & Sykes, 1983). These
objectives may not be fully realized partly because society is

unwilling to change the status quo and partly because the needs of

2
the language minority students are not clearly defined. The notion
of equal opportunity to education raises controversies among
politicians and among educators.

Equal opportunity to education for all the citizens is not
achieved by simply providing students with the same facilities,
textbooks, teachers, and curriculum (Navarro, 1984). Adler (1982)
quotes Horace Mann as saying, “Education is the gateway to
equality." Good as this notion may sound, Adler suggests that there
is more to equality than merely giving people access to an
education. According to Adler (1982), the innermost meaning of
social equality is substantially the same quality of life for all.
Navarro (1984), presenting the same argument, says that merely
improving the English communication skills of the bilingual students
does not result in the redistribution of opportunities for education,
employment, and representation in political systems. There is, it
seems, an ever present and ever pressing need to have consensus among
decision makers on the approaches for addressing inequalities
suffered by language minorities. The issues Adler and Navarro are
raising affect the language minority groups in this country and in
many other countries where the population is heterogeneous. Because
of differences in language and culture, language minority groups
often times do not have the same access to employment opportunities
and to political involvement as monolingual English speakers.

The need to address inequalities suffered by language minorities

is a pertinent one. Civil rights activists and proponents of equal

3
opportunity to education have consistently pointed to the inequali-
ties that remain in the American educational system (Shulman & Sykes,
1983). Contemporary bilingual education programs are an example of
one attempt to minimize these inequities. As the following court
decisions suggest, bilingual programs in the United States resulted
from serious efforts to improve the situation undertaken by minority
and non-minority groups.

A brief history of the events that led to the organization of
bilingual education programs in the United States provides a
background for current activities. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
included, among other things, equal educational opportunity for all
the American children. Based on this law, on May 25, 1970, the
Office of Civil Rights sent a memorandum to school superintendents to
the effect that each school district was required to rectify language
deficiencies among bilingual students so as to open its instructional
program to them. This extension of equal educational opportunity to
language minority children was later affirmed by the U.S. Supreme
Court in the L§u_x‘_fl1§h21§ decision of 1974 (Navarro, 1984).

Perhaps the Supreme Court decision in the case of Lag_x‘_fli§h91§
was the most significant statement on the educational rights of the
language minority students in the United States. It has remained a
very strong pillar supporting the development of bilingual education
programs. In that decision, the school district was required to take
affirmative steps to rectify language minority students"language
deficiency so that its instructional program would be open to them.
This was indeed a landmark decision whose impact is still felt today

in many biligual programs, especially those that take compensatory

4.
measures so as to provide bilingual students with English
communication skills which they lack.

The enactment of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, the subse-
quent Bilingual Education Act of 1974, and the anti-discrimination
provision of Title VI of 1984 have strongly determined the means and
methods for implementing bilingual education. In addition, other
federal and state legislative sources have provided funds for
bilingual-biculturel education including programs such as the
Vocational Education Act of 1963 (Bilingual Vocational Training);
Emergency School Aid Act, Title VII (Desegregation Assistance,
Bilingual Programs); Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Titles
I, III and VII (Bilingual Education Basic Programs, and technical
assistance in coordination); Higher Education Act, Title V (Teacher
Training) and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974 (Padilla,
1979).

The decision by the federal government to take measures that
protect language minority students as described here was prompted by
L§g_x‘_fljghglg§ (1974) decision as well as the A§311g_x‘_figerg_gfi_
Education (1974) decision. Santiago (1978) highlights the impact of

Minimise (1974) on the decisions made by the

federal goverment. Following is a summary of the case.

v o d
The following is a brief summary of that lawsuit:

”In 1974 the Board of Education of the city of New York (the
Board), a school district with one of the largest concentrations
of minority children in the United States, signed a landmark
agreement with Aspire of New York (Aspire, a Puerto Ricen
community agency). The agreement, legally termed a consent
decree was an outgrowth of a suit brought by Aspire and a class

5
of children of limited English-speaking ability: Aspire of New
York Inc. et al. vs. Board of the City of New York et al. (Aspire
vs. Board of Education or Aspire).
The consent decree required that by 1975 the Board implement a
bilingual education program for all the children whose English
language deficiency prevents them from effectively participating
in Spanish in every local school district in New York City. As a
result of this agreement, many changes in policies effecting the
education of children of the limited English proficiency in New
York City schools occurred, particularly during the two years

following the signing of the consent decree." (Santiago, 1978, p.
139)

Santiago's (1978) analysis of this case unfolded the complexity of
institutions and forces that were involved in determining
language-of-instruction policies and practices in the New York City
public schools prior to the suit.

Resulting from the court decisions mentioned were decisions by
the federal government to regulate bilingual education. The federal
government regulates bilingual programs emanating from federal
statutes by imposing standards upon which these programs should be
run. For instance, they set the certification and licensing
standards for all the bilingual programs which receive federal aid.
Along with standards, they impose accountability procedures. Because
the federal government provides matching grants and some services,
they earmark the grants and the types of services which they
provide. By so doing, they are indirectly regulating the program.
Since the federal government provides matching grants and selected
services to these programs, there are bound to be political
implications in the nation, and financial implications at the state
and district level. These activities are noted in Chapter III where
recipients of bilingual education programs are strictly defined

together with the exit conditions of those students.

6

While states play a major role in planning and implementing
educational programs in the United States of America, the federal
government is also involved in sponsoring and regulating certain
educational programs. Most of these efforts by the federal
government are focused on ensuring equal treatment for underserved
populations. States are, to a certain extent, autonomous although in
particular areas such as equality of treatment, they are subject to
federal regulation. The influence of the federal government over the
states' role to provide educational programs is portrayed in the
following description of bilingual programs in Michigan.

This historical overview has been on bilingual programs in the
nation. The following discussion is a brief historical background of
bilingual education in Michigan where the present study was

conducted.

Wan

Rather than relying on the courts to initiate bilingual education
in Michigan, Spanish-speaking citizens utilized political action to
change the education of their children in the state. Through their
efforts, the Bilingual Education Act of 1974 (Act 294) was passed by
the legislature mandating bilingual education in Michigan (Porter,
1977). The law ensures an equal educational opportunity for students
whose first language is not English and where linguistic skills are
different. The intent of the law is illustrated in the following:

"First, every effort needs to be expended to implement fully

the current provisions of Act 294 to ensure that no child's

success in public school is unduly inhibited because he or
she is a child of limited English speaking ability.

Second, every effort needs to be expended to ensure that all

children are provided opportunities to gain an understanding

of their own cultures as well as the cultures of others"

(Porter, 1977, p. 3).

Accordingly, this act suggests that in Michigan, bilingual
education is an integral part of that states' educational program
which can help to ensure that all children are prepared for
meaningful, diverse lifestyles in the future. Porter's (1977) report
suggests that Michigan's position on bilingual education has not
changed much from the decision made in 1974.

State funds have provided a major impetus to the development of
bilingual programs showing a relative increase from 1974 to 1980.
During the 1976-77 school year, the state approved $850,000 for the
program and the amount increased in subsequent years. For the
1977-78 school year it rose to $4,000,000 and for the 1979-80 school
year, the state appropriated $4,500,000. The economic crunch in the
state affected the bilingual education budget in the intervening
years. The 1983-84 and 1984-85 school years witnessed a recovery
from that economic crunch and the budget appropriation for bilingual
education was on the rise again. This is still the case to date.

For the state to allocate such a budget to bilingual programs
suggests that there is an increasing need to organize and run
bilingual programs in Michigan. In the 1985-86 school year, 71
constituent school districts and six intermediate school districts
had 14,008 students of limited-English proficiency who were in
bilingual programs and 18,561 students who were eligible. These

figures show that some students who were eligible were excluded from

the program by school districts because of the expiration of the

8
three year funding limit imposed by the state legislation and the
inapplicability of the state legislation for language groups of fewer
than 20 students in each school district. Because many ethnic groups
who are eligible for bilingual programs are below 20 in number, the
bilingual program in this study does not have more than one language
of instruction, although tutors who can interpret for both students
and parents serve in that program.

The language groups which are predominant among students eligible
for bilingual education in Michigan are Arabic, Chaldean, Chinese,
French, German, Korean, Filipino, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Laotian.
Others who are in small minority groupings are referred to as
”others" in the State Department of Education records (Runkel,

1981). The ethnic groups of students included in this study are
discussed in Chapter III. Due to the multiplicity of language groups
among students who are eligible for bilingual programs in the
district where this study was conducted, English is used as the
medium of instruction in their so-called bilingual programs. Their
classes are actually structured under a plan similar to that of ESL
(English as Second Language) programs. One hundred students who were
in the special bilingual program represented the following ethnic
groups: Vietnamese, Laotian, Korean, Chinese, African, Arabic,
Polish, Thai, and Hispanic. Although this program could easily be
defined as an ESL program, there were elements which seemed to
receive emphasis. These were the historical backgrounds of the
countries where the students came from and lessons accommodated
students' cultural perspectives. These elements made this program

different from other ESL programs. Though more about these

9
characteristics is going to be discussed in Chapter IV, it may be
pointed out here that students' historical backgrounds are likely to
influence both their performance and social behaviors in school. In
fact, students' cultural or historical backgrounds are among the

elements the present study is closely examining.

MW

Howe and Elderman (1985) paint a grim picture about the cultural
minority students. According to these two authors, the cultural
minority students are dropping out of school in large numbers.
Perhaps the dropout figures shown in Howe and Elderman's (1985)
studies are giving a strong message to educators. The message may be
that the needs of the cultural and linguistic minority students need
to be examined. This present study is, accordingly, an investigation
of the educational experiences given to bilingual students.

Classroom experiences influence students' future attitudes and
behaviors. The future of America and, indeed, the future of
democracy, to a certain degree, lies in the classroom experiences.
The future of any nation is, to an extent, determined by the quality
of education given to all the children regardless of their race,
religion, creed, national origin, and cultural and linguistic
background. As Howe and Elderman (1985) suggest, the demands for
equal educational opportunity is a desire to promote excellence in
all our schools and our society.

The aforementioned authors further assert that if our children
are at risk then the future of the nation is grim and indeed the

nation is at risk. It must be remembered that the price of success

10
is less than the cost of failure. Failure to employ remedial
measures to the problems of the language minority students may cost
the nation more when they try to solve the ensuing problems and
complexities of the minorities later on in society.

There are many bilingual educational programs that attempt to
address the problems of language minority students. Some programs
employ more than one language as a medium of instruction. English as
a Second Language programs help language minority students to learn
English communication skills. In spite of what these programs are
attempting to do, language minority students' needs seem to remain
inadequately addressed. This leads to the following description of
the focus of the present study.

The successful conduct of these programs requires an inquiry into
specific programs to identify key aspects and interpret what is
happening. The program selected for this study was the Morgan
Vocational Education Center (somewhere in Michigan), which has a
Bilingual Instructional Center (BIC) for language minority students
who have limited English communication skills and whose performance
on the SAT test is below the 40th percentile margin. These students
are bussed to the Center from their home schools where they spend
about one-half of the school day. Morgan Vocational Education Center
(all names used here are fictitious) is on the southern edge of the
city. This Center is located in a low income area where the
community is expected to benefit from vocational education programs
which are geared to endow poor and unemployed members with
job-related skills. People who need the aforementioned skills come

to the Center from all over the city. Most of these people are drawn

11
from the adult population and school age students who may have
dropped out of school for various reasons.

The language of instruction both at the Center and in the home
schools is English. The initial problem in this study is woven
around the question "If English is the only medium of instruction in
the BIC, what warrants the pulling out or separation of these
bilingual students from the rest of the youngsters at their grade
level during social studies, English, and reading classes?” In an
attempt to find an answer to this research question, data collection
occurred in two phases, in 1984 and 1986. Data gathered from the
first phase precipitated the following questions.

1. What purposes does the bilingual program serve which
uses English as the only medium of instruction?

2. What teaching techniques are inherent in the bilingual
classroom activities?

3. How do these techniques compare and contrast to those
of the regular eighth grade social studies class?

4. How does the prior knowledge of the subject matter and
students' prior experiences influence the way they
defined words and social behavior, and the way they
selected favorite subjects. '

5. How do cultural experiences and the learning climate in
each classroom influence classroom interactions?

These questions provided direction to the data collection for the
study.

The English-only bilingual program does not seem to solely serve
the purposes of teaching English to the students whose first language
is other than English. If this was the only intent, this program
could be defined as the ESL program. Its goals and purposes seem to

stretch beyond those of the ESL programs.

12

Classroom interactions and climate in bilingual classes and in
the regular eighth grade social studies class are a primary focus of
this investigation. During these interactions, paralinguistic
characteristics will be identified. What behaviors are appropriate
in an interaction among many diverse cultures? How are compromises
reached? How are social meanings shared by participants? Words and
actions have social meanings. How are these meanings shared among
different cultures? How do participants' prior knowledge and
experiences influence meanings they attach to words and actions? How
can participants strike a balance between their cultural perspectives
and those of others in the process of attaching meanings to words and
actions? Is it what we say or how we say something which appeals to
our listeners? Can participants see meanings which are beyond
dictionary definitions when they attach social meanings to words?
How do cultural meanings compare and contrast with dictionary
meanings?

In order for participants to interact successfully they need to
know not only the manifest content to be discussed but also
understand the routines that need to be used in that interaction
(Boggs, 1985). Hymes (1962) describes this as "speech economy." In
the present study, knowledge of the content to be discussed and

participants' interactional styles receive considerable attention.

0 i e
The following terms are going to be used in this study according
to the given definitions:

Aggulguxgtign - cultural modification of an individual or a group
of people.

9

13

fileeleegel - applies to a student whose home culture is different
from the mainstream American culture.

- refers to the student who speaks any language other
than English as his/her first language.

- - program gives instruction to
bilingual students. Though this program is under the umbrella of
bilingual education, it employs English as the only medium of
instruction. To distinguish this program from the other
bilingual programs and the regular program, this program is known
as the English-only Bilingual Program.

fifileezegzeme - as the term suggests (English as a Second
Language) help speakers of other languages to learn English.

Experienee - term employed to describe what students had learned
through participation or observations prior to classroom learning
situations. This includes prior knowledge of cultural
interactional styles.

Home Seheel - where the student is permanently enrolled and where
the rest of the subjects are taught.

Wm - approach employed in teaching

reading. It recognizes the vital links which exist among the
language arts skills such as reading, writing, speaking, and
listening. This approach purports to teach reading through
utilizing both the aforementioned language arts skills and the
learner's background experiences.

L1m1;ee_fing11eh_e;efi1e1eney - limited communication skills in
English.

w - bilingual students are pulled
out of their regular classes and bussed to the Bilingual
Instructional Center (BIC) where they spend a period of time each
week. Then they are bussed back to their home schools.

- term employed to distinguish a
building- ~1evel program from the special bilingual program where
students were bussed from different schools to the Bilingual
Instructional Center.

§9£1§lIZB£193 - to adapt or to fit into a certain social
environment.

11159.6221252h - tried approach suggests that when teaching
meanings of words the perspective projected in the printed
matter, the teacher's perspective, and the learner's perspective
need to be taken into account.

14
W

This study is reported in six chapters. Chapter I deals with
introduction, general statement which includes a brief history of
events that led to the organization of bilingual programs in the
United States, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, the
significance of the study, initial research questions, operational
definition of terms, and the organization of the study.

Chapter II reviews literature on bilingual education, the role of
experience in learning, and the importance of the language experience
approach in the teaching of reading.

Chapter III begins with a brief description of the two research
sites selected for this study and a description of the bilingual
program. Also included in this chapter are the research methods and
procedures which were followed in this study and the description of
the English-only special bilingual program.

Chapter IV includes descriptions of the findings. Quotes from
interviews and narrative vignettes are reported in this chapter.

Chapter V provides interpretations of the findings reported in
Chapter IV.

Chapter VI contains the summary, conclusions, implications for
teaching and educational research, and recommendations for possible
areas where further studies could be done.

An appendix section is also included where significant data not
included in Chapter IV are reported. Also included in this section
is the researcher's intellectual autobiography where the researcher
reflects on the events that affected changes in the way he viewed the

findings reported in Chapter IV.

CHAPTER II

Literature Review

Literature of bilingual programs is organized according to
student background information, goals of bilingual education,
experience and learning, communicative competences of students and
teachers, classroom reading instruction, and the language experience

approach to the teaching of reading.

WW

Bilingual or language minority students are generally
characterized as underachievers in the literature. There are
proposed program models which suggest how instruction should be
carried out in a bilingual classroom. Yet, many methods which are
suggested for helping language minority students do not seem to
achieve the intended goals and objectives (Santiago, 1978).

Sanchez's (1979) study found that Mexican children who were
taught by a Mexican teacher yielded better results in mathematics
tests and reading achievement tests than those Mexican children whose
teachers were of a different ethnic group. This seems to suggest
that language minority children, apart from the help they need in
English communication skills, need teachers whom they can identify
with. Sanchez (1979) hypothesized that there is a relationship
between student achievement and specific ethnic profile character-
istics of both the student and the teacher. She studied Mexican and
Mexican-Americanstudents who were enrolled in 58 bilingual settings.

Their grade levels ranged from kindergarten through sixth grade. She

15

16
set two structures in her study: (1) a competitive goal structure
and (2) a cooperative goal structure. By competitive goal structure,
she meant students perceive that they can obtain their goal if, and
only if, the other students with whom they are linked have failed to
achieve their goal. Competitive instruction is a process of striving
to achieve one's goal in a way that blocks all others from achieving
the same goal. Whereas in a cooperative structure the students per-
ceive that they can obtain the goal if, and only if, the students
they are linked with can obtain their goal.

The findings in her study indicated that Mexican and Mexican-
American students responded more negatively to a cooperative teacher
in the lower grades (K-2) and more positively in the upper grades
(3-6). Mexican and Mexican American students responded positively to
the competitive teacher in the earlier grades and responded nega-
tively to the competitive teacher in the upper grades.

Sanchez (1979) further found that a bilingual setting with a
Chicano teacher who is bilingual yielded positive results in reading
and mathematics. According to Sanchez, these results seem to
indicate that the use of a language other than English within the
bilingual setting is not the only factor that had a positive
influence on both the reading and mathematics scores. There were
systematic differences in social motivations and learning styles that
existed among different ethnic student populations. The social
motivation styles such as the way students responded to cooperative

teachers and competitive teachers mentioned above were among the

17.
social differences noted among students included in Sanchez's study.
It seems these influenced the results significantly.

Sanchez's (1979) study also suggests that students' cultural
backgrounds should be taken into consideration when organizing and
implementing educational programs. It can be inferred that teachers
who understand the nature of changes which occur in students at
certain stages of their growth and development and the nature of the
students' cultural milieu may obtain better results than those
teachers who do not. The implication of this research for language
minority students who are generally viewed as underachievers is
establishing a relationship between cultural background and
experiences with the learning experiences or achievement.

Moreover, bilingualism introduces additional factors in the life
of the individual and it is natural that, compared with a child who
has only one language to master, the bilingual student may face a
good many adjustment problems (Rao, 1974; Sanchez, 1979). These
additional factors spring from the following causes:

1. the early cognitive stimulation (which may have taken place
in different cultural patterns. When learning a new
language, new patterns will have to be adopted).

2. bilingualism stands in the way of adjustment. It is
difficult to adjust to a new culture when one views things
from a different cultural and linguistic perspective.

3. bilingual children are often bicultural, too. They may have
their own sets of values and goals. These sets of values
and goals permeate their daily experiences. The
teaching-learning process may either promote or hinder these
experiences. If one group of students whose culture is
different from that of the dominant group is failing to

achieve highly, this might be an indication that the school
program is not adequately utilizing their experiences.

18

4. his marginal status makes it difficult for him to identify
himself either with his own mother-tongue group, from which
many times his family is actually cut off, or with the
second language group, where he is not at home yet. A
change of adjustment may arise from this single cause.
There may be the meshing of culture whereby a child won't
accept his culture or the new culture where he is compelled
to function in order to survive.

5. the bilingual child usually comes from a home where the
elders frequently do not know the second language and have
stereotypes about the second language group. In this case,
if the child is in the process of identifying with the
second language environment, there may be intra-family
adjustment problems. "Many times he may be punished for
bringing into the home peculiar ways of talking and peculiar
phrases from outside. He is not sure where he is" (Rao,
1974, p. 31). Rao added, "... it is important that a child
gets along with his peers, that his teachers accept him at a
level common to other children, and that he be sure within
himself that his status is equivalent to that of his
classmates" (p. 31). If a child is culturally different
what the teachers say is less important than what the
teacher projects by his eyes and movements (Rao, 1974).

"But the bilingual, because of either his own feelings or
marginality or his poor language skills, finds himself in
the outskirts of his peer group. His attempts to reach them
may be met with rebuffs, insults, etc." (Rao, 1974, p. 31).
In keeping with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it should be
noted that school learning is enhanced when students'
psychological needs are met (Biehler, 1978).

The child's language difficulties may lead to reading
difficulties and emotional difficulties. In many ways he may find
himself inadequate and frustration ensues. Usually he feels isolated
and inferior to others. It is well known that opinion of self is a
fundamental factor to the growth and development of a child and yet
how many of us realize that social development is profoundly in-
fluenced by language develOpment (Rao, 1974)?

Rao (1974) claims that some studies done on the adjustment
difficulties of bilingual children were not well planned because they
placed undue importance on mental development and completely ignored

the social and emotional development of the bilingual child. Rao's

l9
observation is valid. Education ought to develop the total person
rather than give a sort of lopsided development in communication
skills only. There ought to be a harmonious development among the
mental, physical, and moral powers of the child. In fact, language
development may be faster if other things are equal.

Bicultural education not only helps the language minority
children but also serves a number of educational functions to the
culturally dominant groups. It can contribute to the development of
a global perspective which all children need to have. This
perspective offers untold advantages to both ethnolinguistic
minorities and the culturally dominant groups. According to Martinez
(1979), bilingual programs ought to be organized around the following
goals:

1. to assimilate individuals or groups into the mainstream
society;

2. to unify a multilingual society;
3. to enable people to communicate with the outside world;

4. to help people gain economic advantages as individuals and
as a group;

5. to preserve ethnic or religious ties with their country of
origin. Perhaps it may be appropriate here to point out
that some Arabic communities in this country have special
schools which start at 6:00 p.m. and end at 8:00 p.m. The
purpose of these schools is to restore their Arabic culture
and promote the Islam religion. This observation seems to
suggest that people need an educational program that
incorporates their cultural values and experiences;

6. to reconcile different or socially separate communities;

7. to spread and maintain the use of a colonial language. This
goal may have negative connotations. European colonial
powers taught their language to the people they colonized in
many parts of the world. The intent was to spread and
maintain their languages and their cultures;

20

8. to embellish or strengthen the education of the elite (e.g.,
United Nations International School in New York City);

9. to give equal status to languages of the unequal prominence
in the society;

10. to deepen understanding of language and culture (e.g., the

study of Greek and Latin among Europeans).

Gonzales (1978) conducted a study of Mexican-American students in
bilingual education classrooms grades one and three. The purpose of
this descriptive study was to discover which elements of the
Mexican-American students' culture were given more reinforcement in
the bilingual programs and which ones were not reinforced in
organized lessons. The study divided these cultural elements into
two categories: (1) surface-culture elements (traditional songs in
Spanish, Mexican crafts, culinary activities, Mexican dances, Chicano
music, Mexican-American history, Mexican-American personalities, folk
tales, proverbs, poetry, and word play in the Spanish language), and
(2) deep cultural elements (family ties, folk myths, grooming and
presence, subsistence, time concept, values, esthetics, ethics,
precedence, rewards, privileges, ceremonies, courtship, marriage,
health, medicine, gestures and kinetics, ownership, rights and
duties, religion, sex roles, space and proxemics, and tabu).

The majority of the bilingual programs analyzed by Gonzales
(1978) indicate that (1) traditional songs in Spanish, Mexican
crafts, and culinary activities were the surface culture elements
reinforced more often; (2) surface culture elements which received
less attention or little reinforcement were Mexican dances, Chicano
music, Mexican-American history and Mexican-American personalities,

folk tales, proverbs, poetry, and word play in the Spanish language;

21
(3) the deep cultural elements which appeared to have less organized
lessons were esthetics, ethics, precedence, rewards, and privileges;
(4) those deep elements that received little or no attention and no
reinforcement were ceremonies, courtship and marriage, health and
medicine, gesture and kinetics, ownership, rights and duties,
religion, sex roles, space and proxemics, and tabu.

A careful analysis of the elements which did not receive enough
reinforcement indicate that there is a dearth of acculturation in the
bilingual programs. It is no surprise that educational literature
reviewed by Santiago (1978) was replete with records of underachieve-
ment on the part of the language minority students. Children come to
school with a package of experiences. If these experiences are not
utilized, the teaching-learning process will be relatively difficult.

In summarizing the results of that study on the cultural
elements, Gonzales (1978) said that it remained evident that
transmitting or reinforcing culture in bilingual education classrooms
remains one of the most misinterpreted and inadequately achieved
goals of bilingual education instruction. Gonzales touches the core
of the issues that should be reviewed in bilingual-bicultural
education. This question of experience is discussed in detail in
Chapters IV and V.

Kwok's (1979) study is one of those that give us a glimpse of
what is actually going on in some of the bilingual classrooms. While
Kwok is interested in classroom activities, she seems to focus on the
question "what does language orientation do to the racial and ethnic
attitude among the Chinese American children in the primary grades?"

Perhaps any information that helps answer this question may lead us

22
to identify some of the needs of bilingual students in this
particular ethnic group. Kwok's study determined that there is a
relationship between language orientation and racial/ethnic
attitudes. It also demonstrated that Chinese-American students,
regardless of language orientation, can classify students and
distinguish very well when racial/ethnic criteria are used. The
study found significant differences among the linguistic groups in
the area of racial/ethnic similarity to mothers. Bilinguals were
distinctive in this regard, as they were in acceptance of Caucasians,
preference, self preference and overall racial/ethnic attitudes.
Kwok reported that in most cases, bilinguals were found to exhibit
less pronounced racial/ethnic attitudes. According to her, this may
be indicative of loss of identity, with movement toward the Caucasian
end of the scale. This study suggests that bilingualism is related
to a more moderate racial/ethnic attitude.

Kwok (1979) suggests that the findings of her study provide very
serious implications for the education of Chinese-Americans.
According to Kwok (1979), early recognition and identification of
racial/ethnic attitudes could help numerous children to overcome
serious learning handicaps. If these racial/ethnic attitudes are
identified, continued Kwok, it is hoped that appropriate educational
programs would be organized in such a way that barriers that divide
the children would be removed. When these barriers are removed, an
atmosphere conducive to learning may be created in the classroom.

Apart from overcoming learning handicaps as suggested by Kwok
(1979), children need to be taught about their culture. Howe and

Elderman (1985) argue, "To keep people ignorant on the most precious

23
part of their heritage is to debilitate people. Students whose
cultural and linguistic backgrounds are different from the dominant
culture of the society do not yet have full access to quality
education. As the public school population changes to include an
increased percentage of students who speak a first language other
than English, cultural discrimination undermines the education of
more children in our public schools than before. Although the
overall extent of the cultural bias in the schools is difficult to
measure, there are a number of indicators that underline the
seriousness of the problem” (p. 16). These two authors made the

following observations:

1. Only about one-third of the estimated 2.7 million limited
English-proficient students aged five to fourteen receive

any form of special programming responsive to their
linguistic needs.

2. In 1980, only 10 percent of the Hispanic children with
limited proficiency were in bilingual programs.

3. Studies conducted in urban high schools have revealed
dropout rates as high as 85% for Native Americans, and
between 70-80% for Puerto Rican students.

4. Many textbooks remain culturally biased, both in their
presentation of material and in their omission of material
on the culture, history, or achievement of many of the
national and cultural groups represented in our schools.

5. Nearly 25% of all the public school teachers in the United
States had limited English proficiency children in their
classes in 1980-81, but only 3.2% of these teachers said
they had the academic preparation or language skills to
instruct LEP students (Howe & Elderman, p. 16).

Many administrators and teachers neither understand nor

appreciate cultures different from their own. Due to this lack of

understanding and appreciation, it is claimed by many witnesses of

multicultural education programs that it is often nothing more than

24
making masks and celebrating holidays. Conclusions drawn from these
observations indicate that school systems are unable or unwilling to
implement affirmative action policies that would diversify the
teaching and administrative staff in such a way that is more
representative of racial and cultural minorities served by the
oschools (Howe and Elderman, 1985). What these authors are suggesting
is appropriate because children have to function in a multicultural
world. Howe and Elderman (1985) seem to hit the nail on the head
when they pointed out that the history of Native Americans, Africans,
Asians, Chinese, and Filipinos is related in a few paragraghs in
American social studies books. In fact, in American social studies
textbooks, neighboring states are given more coverage than the whole
continent of Africa which is composed of 51 different countries and
much larger than the United States. European history is given a
better treatment than that of Africa. No wonder some Afro-Americans
are not aware of and some do not appreciate their rich African
heritage. These and other issues precipitate a strong desire that
bicultural education be given to minority children in all the
American schools.

An analysis of Howe and Elderman's (1985) study raises the

following questions:

1. What influences American social studies textbooks to give
more detailed coverage to the neighborhood than they do to
the history of the language minority student?

2. Are the American neighborhoods more diverse and filled with
more cultural enrichment than the countries where the
language minorities have come from?

3. Don't the cultures of the language minority students have

values that may add enrichment to the education of all the
American children?

25
According to these two authors, cultural minority students are
dropping out of school in large numbers. What are the possible
factors influencing this? Howe and Elderman (1985) report,

In Lansing, Michigan representatives of the state's Native
American communities investigated why so many Indian children
fail to complete their schooling. Their findings describe
multiple forms of discrimination experienced by these children:
some counselors have discouraged Indian children from either
staying or returning to school after dropping out... some
teachers are not sensitive enough in dealing with and
understanding the Indian culture and values, and convey the
message either knowingly or unknowingly, that Indian children do
not belong in the classroom... some teachers simply ignore Indian
children in the classroom and have little concern over their
attendance and school work (pp. 17-18).

Bilingual education is more than the employment of two languages
in the teaching-learning process. It is more than taking remedial
measures to improve the child's communication skills in the second
language. Usually bilingual children are also bicultural and belong
to different ethnic groups. It is from this perspective of bilingual
education that King (1980) highlights the importance of teaching
ethnic awareness to all children but especially to those who belong
to minority ethnic groups. King (1980) advocates that multi-ethnic
approaches be included in minority studies. According to King, there
is a need to closely examine the processes of perception of human
differences and commonalities and how they influence the way we deal
with people.

Too often, minority studies at the elementary school level have

. taken on superficial and spurious forms when including materials
about the many ethnic groups in American life-~Italian-Americans,

Greek-Americans,-Irish-Americans, Arab-Americans and so on. A

common pitfall in this context is the listing of heroes or

well-known personalities of the ethnic or minority group. This
gives the children an idealistic and distorted view of the ethnic
group and encourages stereotyping. Those people are all good
athletes or outstanding politicianso-whatever the model or hero

chosen. Hero worship usually highlights the contributions of
well-known men of the ethnic group, since our society

26

historically has left out the work and contributions of women of

all ethnic or minority groups, as well as women of the dominant

group (King, 1980, p. 6).

King views current ethnic education as being very superficial. What
is currently being done in ethnic education programs, according to
King (1980), is the inclusion of a Mexican dance step and making
Japanese kites on the appropriate day. With this type of tokenism,
King sees teachers deluding themselves into thinking that they have
incorporated ethnic studies into the curriculum. This is a more
recognition of some quaint and colorful custom of a specific
nationality. "This approach to ethnic education also tends to focus
on the most profound differences between them and us--on the bizarre
rather than everyday patterns and life of a group" (King, 1980, p.
6). '

King not only levels these strong criticisms on ethnic
educational programs but also suggests ways to improve these
programs.

To begin teaching about ethnicity teachers must be equipped

with a sense of their own ethnic and personal identity,

self-awareness and positive acceptance of their group
affiliation. Unique likes and dislikes must be recognized

by the teachers before ethnic education can occur in the

classroom. This means that the teacher must be aware of how

he or she was socialized as a child and young adult, what

values and customs were internalized and continue to be

followed as the result of personal and group affiliation.

Teachers need to accept and be comfortable with their

ethnicity and then respond positively to individuals who

belong to other ethnic groups. This is a lifelong process

(King, 1980, p. 7).

Put another way, King (1980) seems to suggest that students' prior
knowledge and experiences need to be included among the learning

activities. This has not been the case in our schools and this put

the melting pot concept in reverse.

27

MW

Until recently, the process of educating the young in the United
States of America was thought of in terms of socializing them so that
they adapt to the mainstream American culture which was basically
Anglo-American culture. The ideas implicitly expressed in education
were such that the goals of educators were to inculcate the young
with the Anglo-American protestant beliefs, values, and life style.
Today this melting pot syndrome is in reverse. Large minority groups
express their sense of cultural uniqueness (Longstreet, 1980).
People melted amorphously into one thick soup through the melting pot
concept. Yet, according to Longstreet, now there is an emotional
cry, ”Hey, stop the world. I want my heritage back!" (p. 15). This
cry should hold significance for those who serve in bilingual
education programs. The proponents of bilingual education appear to
place more emphasis on its language aspects than they do with its
cultural aspects. Longstreet (1980) claims that culture forms the
lens with which a person views the world around him. Take away
culture from people, their cultural heritage, their pride as a people
is gone. People are prisoners of their culture and experiences.
Longstreet suggests that the tie between one's language and one's
culture is very strong. It is this tie or relationship which
proponents of bilingual education are concerned about and because of
this relationship bilingual education is a pertinent issue in the
United States today.

One of the reasons why the melting pot syndrome is in reverse is
that the melting pot wouldn't melt (Selakovich, 1978). Selakovich

likened schools to factories where the major goal was to make goods

28
and sell them for a profit. The goal of the schools during the
melting pot concept was to produce Americans. According to
Selakovich (1978), schools succeeded in making the masses literate in
English, but beyond that, it is difficult to make serious claims.

Americanization was viewed as:

If...we can by any means purify these foreigners, enlighten their
ignorance and bring them up to our level, we shall perform a work
of true and perfect charity... With the old, not much can be
done; but with the children, the great remedy is education. The
rising generation must be taught as our own children are taught.
(Selakovich, 1978, p. 18)
This view appears to be acceptable as long as there was a trickle of
immigrants. But this was not the case as it turned out. In the last
quarter of the 19th century, there was a flood of immigrants into the
U.S. (Selakovich, 1978). In spite of serious efforts by educators to
solve the problems of immigrants, school authorities were at times
overwhelmed. "In the early years of the 20th century as immigrants
poured into the United States by millions, the concern deepened to
near panic" (Selakovich, 1978, p. 20). The majority of the
immigrants at this point in time were no longer from Western Europe.
They were from Eastern Europe and they did not speak English. These
were unskilled workers. The great culture-conflict of the last
century has been between the agrarian rural values versus industrial
urban values, and the immigrants and their children were caught up in
the center of the clash (Selakovich, 1978). This has been a
continuous process from the beginning. 'Selakovich observed, ”As one
group inches up the ladder, other groups have come to take their

place at the bottom. There have always been real obstacles to full

acceptance, however, it is defined" (p. 23). The impact of this

29

problem has always been felt in the American schools. Selakovich
(1978) continued,

In the light of this analysis, it would be expecting a great

deal of the schools to make middle-class Americans out of

the children of immigrants. The schools couldn't, even in

general, change the economic and social system. The

economic and social barriers and prejudice were, in a sense,

functional for those trying to climb off the bottom rung of

the socio-economic ladder (p. 23).
Navarro (1984) is very critical of these economic and social barriers
in the United States. These problems, among others, set the melting
pot syndrome in reverse. The immigrants and their children were not
melting and are not melting now. Hence, there are moves to seek

alternative ways of educating the bilingual-bicultural child, and

search for these alternative ways continues.

W

In light of the preceding issues raised about bilingual educa-
tion, the following section reviews how experience influences
learning. It is hoped that the review may help shed light on
approaches that may be used to improve the quality of the classroom
instruction given to bilingual-bicultural students.

Vygotsky (1978) claims that the physical and social conditions
surrounding the learner interact with the internal forces inside the
learner and these influence behavior change. Accordingly, he asserts
that due to this possible interaction of these external and internal
forces in people, humans are active and vigorous participants in
their own existence and at the end of each stage of development
children acquire the means by which they can completely affect their

world and themselves.

30

This seems to suggest that in learning there is a place for both
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Perhaps employing the learner's
background experiences or ideas the learner can relate to may be one
of the ways this intrinsic motivation can be enhanced in the
classroom. Leeper (1967) indicates that,

Whenever we think about teaching and learning, we go on forever

adding things, more subjects, more homework, more teaching

machines, more audio visual equipment, more languages, more math,
more science, more physical education, more, more, always more.

The list is practically endless. Yet the dropout with whom we

are all concerned is not the product of the system which has

failed to provide him with information... The trouble is, he
never discovered what it all meant. Our failures are almost
never failure of information. Rather they are human problems,

breakdown of personal meaning. (p. 74)

Lack of cultural experiences on the part of the language minority
students which preceding studies suggest seems to be one of the
possible factors influencing underachievement and the rate of
dropouts. It seems there is a big difference between knowing and
behaving. Behavior requires more than knowledge. It requires
motivation and personal experiences.

Vygotsky (1978) eloquently argues that the child's physical and
social environments influence development. If school achievement and
desire to stay in school are included in what we mean by development,
then by the time children come to school some of that development
will have been shaped by their environment. This development, as
Vygotsky (1978) seems to suggest, does not occur in a vacuum. It
occurs in a physical environment and in a cultural milieu. The

learner, it seems, is a prisoner of his environment and culture which

shape his early, present, and later experiences.

31

Leeper (1967) argues that students learn best when the material
to be learned has personal meaning to them. He says that a person
may be calm when someone's child is in trouble, but gets tense when
it involves his own child. With this illustration, he asserts that
emotional involvement comes with personal meaning of whatever is
going on.

Viewing what Leeper (1967) and.Vygotsky (1978) are saying, it
appears learning takes place better when it accompanies the learner's
experiences. Dewey (1938), who championed the idea of education and
experience, suggests that the idea of continuity in learning is
important. While advocating the inclusion of experience in learning,
he says that experiences should have a capacity to foster growth and
development of those experiences which come after them. According to
Dewey (1938), if experiences have this capacity, it is only then that
these experiences are qualitative and educative. He asserts that
there are some experiences which fail to meet this criterion and
according to him, they are miseducative. Is it possible that by
merely excluding certain types of experiences which some students
went through because of their cultural nurturance, some teachers may
be allowing such experiences to be miseducative to those students?

Dewey (1938) and Vygotsky (1978) seem to be in agreement in the
way they view the role of experience in learning. Vygotsky (1978)
argues that in the early stages of development humans have been
acquainted with counting fingers which serve as a bridge between the
immediate qualitative mathematical operations and counting.
Projecting the same argument further, he asserts that man does not

trust his memory and is often unwilling to go by it. Man, therefore,

32
employs devices to assist his untrusted memory. Vygotsky (1978)
suggests that people tie knots on their fingers which serve as
reminders in their psychology of everyday life.

It seems appropriate to suggest at this point that some of the
knots which a learner ties as reminders are locked up in the
learner's culture. When these knots--these reminders-~are not
employed, learning becomes meaningless and this may be mirrored in
underachievement or the rate of dropouts among certain ethnic groups.

Krasner and Ullman (1973) view experience in this perspective,
”One attribute of living beings, including people, is that they are
continuously being altered by experience" (p. 195). What provision
is made in the school systems for the language minority children
whose experiences might have altered them differently from the way
the mainstream children were altered? What rationale is behind the
utilization of students' prior knowledge and experiences in the
teaching-learning situation?

There is plausable evidence in literature that students' prior
knowledge and experiences influence the way they handle school
learning. Cell (1984) illustrates how children's early experiences
influence their behavior in later lives. He proposes that earlier
experiences influence the way people make generalizations and the way
they react to different situations in life. As Cell (1984) suggests,
learning involves a change of behavior and this change of behavior is
found on different levels namely, response learning, situation
learning, transituational learning, and transcendent learning. Our
prior knowledge and experiences influence these four levels of

behavior change. Cell (1984) points out that many times we carry on

33
a stream of transactions with our world and when we are not engaged
in this process, we are generally reflecting, dreaming, or wondering
about that engagement.

One of the four levels of behavior change listed above is
transcendent learning. This level needs to be discussed briefly
because it forms the premise from which the present study purports to
view classroom participation and the role of experience in learning.

Cell suggests that when available concepts are modified,
relatively new concepts are created which provide new possibilities,
new tools for interpreting individual situations.

Since concepts are tools for social transactions, the

creation of new concepts is brought to a successful

completion only when it becomes part of the transactions of

one or more groups. Transactions are effective only when

those involved interpret the situation in fairly similar

ways. Visiting a culture that we know little about may

present difficulties, because we do not understand how

others see a situation. (Cell, 1984, p. 53)

If our life experiences are not organized in such a way that we see

sense in the flow of those experiences, it is difficult for us to

make sense of what is going on in our world. Cell (1984) suggests
when we select a learning situation, there are two factors

for us to consider. First, in what ways the situation

encourages and supports functional learning and in what ways

will the opposite be true? Second, what opportunities for
learning and what limitations to learning does the situation

present? (p. 57)

It seems these questions become even more crucial in learning
situations which involve multicultural and bilingual students. These
questions become more crucial in such settings because we learn the
behaviors that our environment rewards, and by primary thinking, we

learn to look at ourselves and our environment in a certain way

(Cell, 1984). It is important to note the importance of primary

34

thinking which Cell (1984) is suggesting because learning experiences
in the classroom are to a large extent influenced by our primary
thinking. Progress takes place and students may start to think in
many different ways, but primary thinking which is shaped by our
environment needs to be viewed as the starting point. True, we keep
on adding to our repertoire of experiences and yet, as Cell (1984)
suggests, when facing new situations we seem to draw from those which
have gone on before. This is why people are able to generalize and
interpret situations. According to Cell (1984) we are able to map
our experiences, and our ability to understand and interpret new
information is limited to what can be charted on our map. This
leaves this present study with a need to investigate possible
experiences which were charted on the maps of bilingual students.

Gallagher and Reid (1981) view social experience gained by
interaction with people in social relationships, through education,
language, and culture, as one of the important factors that
influences development. According to these authors, rates of
progress in development among children vary from culture to culture,
which suggests that acculturation can accelerate or retard a child's
development. Although they promote this notion, they admit that
culture alone cannot explain everything. Other things such as
maturation and the physical environment also play a part in the
growth and development of a child. This view seems to be in keeping
with Vygotsky's (1978) idea of seeing what a child is able to do on
his own as well as with assistance from society. These views seem to
suggest that society has a certain amount of influence onclassroom

learning. Dewey (1938) seems to support the idea of learning

‘35
experiences which are transcendent. Viewing the threads that run
through what the above authors are saying, it seems appropriate to
suggest that prior knowledge and experiences need to be employed so
as to promote further growth and development of classroom learning
experiences.

Gallagher and Reid (1981) suggest, ”. . .If growth in knowledge
was to occur, the growth had to be regulated by reorganizations, or
reconstructions of past understanding, or present means of organizing
thinking are not eliminated by new knowledge" (p. 16). Gallagher and
Reid (1981) argue that these reorganizations or reconstructions of
past understanding are not imposed from outside or given. They are
self regulated. This argument is valid as long as the theory of
developmental stages championed by Piaget (1971) is universally
accepted. Problems arise when we want to find out what a child is
able to do with assistance from the social as well as the physical

environment (Vygotsky, 1978).

Dewey (1922) claims that people's habits or certain patterns in

0

their behavior can be changed by modifying conditions surrounding
that habit or these patterns of behavior. According to Dewey (1922),
personal traits are functions of social situations. He asserts,

A genuine appreciation of the beauty of flowers is not
generated with a self-enclosed consciousness. It reflects a
world in which beautiful flowers have already grown and been
enjoyed. Every ideal is preceded by an actuality, but the
ideal is more than a repetition in inner image of the
actual. It projects in securer and wider and fuller form
some good which has been previously experienced in a
precarious, accidental, fleeting way. (p. 22-23)

Dewey (1922) is suggesting that society is responsible, to a

certain degree, for the behavior of any member of that society. How

36
much responsibility does society claim for the dropout rates and
underachievement observed among the bilingual and bicultural
students? How much responsibility do the school systems claim from
the problems minority groups face in their educational careers? What
happens in school, to a certain degree, is influenced by present
school experiences feeding upon those experiences that have gone
before them. This means some preschool experiences influence school
experiences and academic achievements as well as students'
involvement in classroom discussions.

Looking into what Piaget (1971) and Vygotsky (1978) are saying,
it seems reasonable to suggest that more maturation alone does not
promote learning, nor does environmental intervention alone. It is
the cumulative effects of both maturation and nurture which need to
be taken into account when the factors that influence learning need
to be analyzed. A main question, then, is how do cultural
experiences of nurturance influence the way students handle different
classroom situations? This question is raised from the assumption
that the history of the learner is at the core of school learning
(Bloom, 1976). Each learner comes to school with a history which has
prepared him differently from other learners (Bloom, 1976). Bloom
(1976) argues that if each learner enters school as a "tabula rose”
or with similar relevant histories, it is assumed that differences in
school achievement would disappear. All things being equal, this
assumption would hold true. What seems to be at issue, according to
Bloom (1976), is how these histories can be understood and taken into
consideration in relation to the learning which is intended to take

place. Knowledge of answers to this question may help reduce

37

individual differences (Bloom, 1976). If learners have different
histories, as Bloom (1976) suggests, it seems reasonable to expect
more differences between the way bilingual students and regular
students respond to different learning situations. Bloom (1976)
asserts, "Where conditions for learning in the home and school
approach some ideal, we believe that individual differences in
learning should approach a vanishing point" (p. 16). Yet as records
suggest, this vanishing point is not arrived at (Howe & Elderman,
1985). Some of the literature already reviewed about the achievement
of bilingual students shows increasing reports of underachievement
and increasing numbers of dropouts among the bilingual students.
This condition suggests that disparity existed between the
characteristics the bilingual students brought with them to school
and those regular American students brought to school with them. If
this disparity did not exist, then records of achievement should be
more uniform among the regular and bilingual students. Lack of
uniformity in achievement (Howe and Elderman, 1985) suggests that
factors which influence this disparity among the characteristics
students bring with them to school need to be investigated further.

Socio-cultural differences between students and teachers and
between students and their peers influence the teaching-learning
process. Such differences at times are crucial to how educational
institutions open or close gates to students who are trying to decide
on life careers (Erickson, 1975). Students may have gates closed
before them because they are negatively evaluated. People have
different cultural norms which they employ for interpreting behavior

or for attaching meanings to words. When this happens conflicts

38
usually arise. The problem of conflicts that arise when the norms of
interpreting social meanings are drawn from different groups of
students and teachers in one educational setting has been documented
in educational research (Mehan, 1974, 1978; Erickson & Shultz, 1977;
Dorr-Bremme, 1976; Philips, 1972; Cazden, 1977; Hymes, 1972).
According to Trueba (1981), such differences in interpretations of
social meanings which are placed on words and actions can easily lead
to negative evaluation of student participation. The same negative
~evaluation can even lead to differential treatment of students'
similar answers, and sometimes can lead to students' exclusion from
participation (Trueba, 1981).

In lieu of the preceding research studies, particularly in
Erickson's (1975) and Trueba's (1981) findings, there is growing
concern that a student's use of language in the classroom and in
other school contexts may adversely affect his relationship with
persons who make key decisions about life chances. This suggests
that culture plays one of the major roles in learning since it, to a
certain extent, shapes a person's communication styles.

Barker (1982) asserts that

Culture dictates moral values, ethical considerations, and

educational values which affect perception of the

communication setting. In the classroom the subculture of

the immediate neighborhood in which the school is located

will probably have more influence on the students and

teachers than the greater cultural concepts held by the

nation as a whole. Conflicting subcultures may produce

dissonance within communication settings, and such

dissonance must be reduced before communication may be

completely successful. In a heterogeneous classroom, the

teacher's communication job is more difficult than in a

homogeneous community. Though it is occasionally possible

to change culture through education, it is usually better to

try to understand what values are operating in the classroom
and adapt to them initially. (p. 13)

39

Communication or classroom interaction plays a major role in
school learning. Yet, the role of communication stretches beyond the
walls of classrooms. Communication influences personal consideration
and how others perceive that person. How one is perceived by others
affects one's social and emotional development. In return, social
and emotional development influences school learning. This suggests
the existence of and interplay between social and emotional

development and school learning.

WW

Teachers, through their efforts to facilitate learning,
communicate to students what they are supposed to learn. Viewing the
classroom communication process, Erickson (1986) stresses the
importance of seeking to understand the ways in which teachers and
students in their actions together constitute environments for one
another (Erickson, 1986, p. 128). These environments are made
possible as Erickson claims,

.through culture humans share learned systems for

defining meanings, and in given situations of practical

actions humans often seem to have created similar meanings

of interpretations. But these surface similarities mask an

underlying diversity; in a given situation of action one

cannot assume that behaviors of two individuals, physical

acts with similar forms, have the same meanings to the two

individuals. (Erickson, 1986, p. 126)
There needs to be a constant sharing of meanings.

Weber (1978) defines social action as ”A social relationship may
be said to exist when several people reciprocally adjust their

behavior to each other with respect to the meaning which they give to

it, and when this reciprocal adjustment determines the form which it

40
takes" (p. 30). This is, perhaps, what Erickson means by ". . .con-
stituting environments for one another" (1986). Meaning in this
sense, as Erickson views it, is oriented to the action of others in
the scene. He further suggests "Classrooms, like all settings in
formal organizations, are places in which formal and informal systems
continually intertwine” (Erickson, 1986, p. 126).

It is important for people communicating to go beyond meanings of
words and understand the social context of what each person is saying
(Seville-Troika, 1986). Seville-Troika (1986) gives the following
illustration: English speakers know the meaning of "Do you have any
cigarettes?" (p. 14). This is recognized as a request rather than an
information question. So the person who answers "Yes, thanks,”
without offering one is either joking or rude. In interactions that
involve many multicultural and multilingual participants, such social
expectations as the example given above need to be known and
clarified.

Although Saville-Troike (1986) suggests that English speakers
understand the intent of the question "Do you have a cigarette?”, it
may be argued that English speakers who smoke may be more familiar
with the usage of such a question as a request rather than an
information question. Those who do not smoke or do not stay with
smokers might be less familiar with that usage.

Patterns of communication among different social and cultural
groups differ significantly. Some are influenced by particular roles
and groups within society such as sex, age, social status, and
occupation (Saville-Troke, 1986). These differences mentioned above
are augmented by cultural differences and by the range of

experiential backgrounds among the participants.

41

Seville-Troika (1986) also suggests that language serves many
communication functions. Chief among these are (l) a language
creates/reinforces boundaries, unifying its speakers as members of a
single speech community and excluding outsiders from intragroup
communication, and (2) many languages are also made to serve a social
identification function within a society by providing linguistic
indicators, which may be used to reinforce social stratifications.
In keeping with this view, linguistic features are often employed by
people, consciously or unconsciously, to identify themselves and
others and thus serve to maintain various categories and divisions
(p. 15). Seville-Troika (1986) indicates "At the level of
individuals and groups interacting with one another, the functions of
communication are directly related to the participants' purposes and
needs" (pp. 15-16).

When two people are speaking to each other, ". . .their relative
status is conveyed by their choice of pronominal forms in one
language; in another by the distance they stand apart, or their body
position while speaking; and between bilinguals even choice of which
language to use in addressing one another” (p. 17).

In a multicultural and multilingual setting, it is not easy for
one to tell whether participants are employing macrolinguistic
patterns of communication or microlinguistic patterns, or when to
shift from one set of communication styles to another. The very
nature of classroom teaching-learning situations forces the
participants to adapt special communication styles. Such special
communication styles may be discriminatory as they tend to ignore

minority groups' communication styles.

42
Saville-Troike (1986) suggests

Communicative competence extends to both knowledge and
expectation of who may or may not speak in certain settings,
when to speak and when to remain silent, whom one may speak
to, how one may talk to persons of different statuses and
roles, what appropriate nonverbal behavior are in various
context, what the routine for turn-taking is in
conversation, how to ask for and be given information, how
to request, how to offer or decline assistance or
cooperation, how to give commands, how to enforce
discipline, and the like-~in short, everything involving the
use of language and other communicative dimensions in
particular social settings. Clear cross-cultural
differences can and do produce conflict or inhibit
communication. . . . (p. 23)

Erickson (1981) views the timing and context of everyday
discourses as having implications on social meanings which
participants attach to words and behaviors. Meanings are drawn from
paralinguistic cues and from nonverbal communicative actions. If
these are not understood perhaps due to social or cultural
differences moments of stumbling occur (Erickson, 1981). Class
participation requires knowledge of the subject matter as well as
knowledge of cultural modes of communication. Without this knowledge
and without related life experiences, classroom learning becomes
difficult and complex.

Erickson (1982) asks:

1. How do we know when someone is angry, humorous, or
ironic?
2. How do we know when something new and important is

beginning to happen in an event?

3. How do people recognize and react to breaches in the
social order of interactions? How are positive and
negative sanctions done, behaviorally, and what gets
sanctioned?

4. How do the same people move within interaction from one
set of role and status relationships to another with
and across events from superordination to a
relationship of great equality, from informality to

43
formality, from conduct according to bureaucratic rules
and protocols to a more pragmatic, less sacral mode of

relationship in which standard operating procedure can
be suspended?

5. What is the range of communicative knowledge and skill
that an individual needs in order to be able to
interact effectively and appropriately with and across
a variety of social occasions? What is an individual's
interactional repertoire?

These questions help unravel the complexities that exist in
multicultural and multilingual classrooms. Communicative competence
may determine to a certain extent how students participate in the
.classroom learning activities.

Success and failure in school, in some cases, may be influenced
by congruence of or incongruence between ways of speaking learned at
home and those required at school. This is a match-mismatch
phenomenon (Boggs, 1985). Where there is congruence, children are
expected to interact as the teacher expects them to and this results
in the class spending their time productively learning. Conversely,
when a mismatch exists, children may fail to participate and this
reduces productive learning (Boggs, 1985). Philips (1972) was among
the earliest researchers to arrive at conclusions that deal with this
match-mismatch phenomenon in her study done among the Warm Springs
Indian children. Cazden and Hymes (1972) observed that when children
employ interaction patterns learned at home in their class
discussions, they talk and work effectively. In the Kamehameha
Education Program, Boggs (1985) reports that children showed success
in learning when interaction styles similar to those used at home

were employed in school. In Hawaii, similar results were reported

when instructional methods included the Hawaiian "talk-story." Among

44
the Hawaiian children, Pidgin English and "talk-story" express
strongly held egalitarian values and serve as a means for promoting
solidarity (Boggs, 1985). Including these values in the
instructional methods and the successful results which accrued is an
indication that cultural experiences and learning compliment each
other. Reading lessons which utilized interaction styles known to
the learners yielded positive results as indicated in the studies
cited above. In lieu of the findings in studies cited above, the
following section deals with how reading lessons may be taught in
bilingual classes. Approaches to reading instruction suggested here
address reading instruction from a cultural, linguistic, and

experiential perspective.

W

Reading viewed from sociolinguistic and ethnographic perspectives
is a process that involves both academic tasks and social and
interpersonal contexts. These two perspectives imply that what
constitutes the academic task is determined by how it is delivered
during the social and communicative interactions (Bloome and Green,
1985). This perspective proposes that the academic tasks are
products of the social, interpersonal context of reading instruction
(Bloome & Green, 1984). This perspective is proposed because it is
known that, ". . .two teachers may have the same materials, similar
groups of students, similar training, and the same stated task
(reading and discussing a story) and not produce the same academic
task. Differences in delivered tasks result from the ways in which

the teachers distribute turns, the types of questions asked, the

45
point at which questions are asked, and the types of information to
be discussed, the ways in which students respond and so forth"
(Hedley & Beretta, 1985, p. 168).

According to the two authors mentioned above, this element goes
beyond disparities found in teachers' tasks and products. The same
element influences the way students are evaluated on their academic
tasks. Social interpersonal characteristics influence the
teaching-learning process. There is such a thing as the match or
mismatch between teacher and student's interactional style which
influence teacher perceptions of students (Colling, 1981; DeStefano,
Pepinsky & Sanders, 1982). It remains to be seen whether the high
percentages of dropouts among bilingual students reported by Howe and
Elderman (1985) has something to do with this teacher-student
mismatch rather than other reasons which are usually ascribed to it.
Erickson (1975) also discusses the extent to which college counselors
judge students on the basis of nominally objective criteria such as
grades, aptitude scores, and available college job slots, heavily
influenced by such things as race, ethnicity, appearance, or
communication styles.‘ If such factors influence college counselors'
decisions, there is a strong suggestion that such factors may also
influence what goes on in elementary and secondary schools.
Communicative competence is known to influence the way students are
evaluated. The following discussion deals with this in more detail.

Other possible factors that may be influencing classroom
complexities, i.e., underachievement and increasing numbers of
dropouts among bilingual students, could be enshrined in the

approaches to teaching of reading.

46

Proponents of the language experience approach to the teaching of
reading seem to address the preceding question adequately. Speche
and Speche (1986) contend that language experience, more than any
other approach, conceives learning to read as part of the process of
language development. To paraphrase these two authors, it may be
appropriate to suggest that learning is part of the person's
development, and this development is influenced by the person's
cultural setting. Speche and Speche (1986) continue to suggest that
the language experience approach to the teaching of reading recog-
nizes the close relationship among reading, speaking, writing, and
listening. It alone, according to these two authors, recognizes that
progress in reading is determined by the extent of the child's
experiences in all these language media, prior to and during his
early school years. The word "prior" in the preceding Statement
seems to be the key to this discussion and those discussions which
come in Chapters IV and V. This seems to suggest that prior
experiences to those that took place in school need to be taken into
account during the teaching-learning process. Moreover, Speche and
Speche (1986) contend a child is not expected to deal with ideas that
are much farther advanced than those he can speak. These authors
climax their argument by viewing the psychological advantages that
are yielded through this approach. They say this approach has self
actualizing effects which the learner needs. According to Van Allen
(1963), the child feels:

1. What I can think, I can talk about.

2. What I can say, I can write about.

3. What I can write, I can read.

47

4. I can read what I write and what other people write for me.

This approach was employed successfully in New Zealand and where
the Maoris children were both bilingual and bicultural (Karlin,
1978). Hittleman (1978), McKim (1956), and Veatch (1978) recommend
this approach on the grounds that it utilizes the learner's prior
knowledge and experiences.

In the light of the problems which seem to surround the language
minority children and the suggestions that experiences have a role in
learning, the present study investigated how students' prior
knowledge and experiences influenced their class discussions and the
way they defined words in class. It also investigated how cultural
modes of communication influenced classroom interactions.

The following chapter give a description of the settings, the
goals of the bilingual programs, and a brief description of how the

researcher went about analyzing his data.

CHAPTER III

Design of the Study

Using qualitative fieldwork methods, this study was of a single
district's programs operating within the context of bilingual
education policies at the state and district level. Within the
district, two types of bilingual programs were conducted. A
description of their contextual factors is included to provide a
picture of the programs being studied. The major problems studied
are derived from these programmatic conditions and the provisions of
two different bilingual programs. In this chapter, the research
questions, the overall bilingual policies and programs, and the

design followed for the study are stated.

W

The present study seeks to address these questions.

1. What purposes does the bilingual program serve which uses
English as the only medium of instruction?

2. What teaching techniques are inherent in the bilingual
classroom activities?

3. How do these techniques compare and contrast to those of the
regular eighth grade social studies class?

4. How does the prior knowledge of the subject matter and
students' prior experiences influence the way they defined
words and social behavior, and the way they selected
favorite subjects.

5. How do cultural experiences and the learning climate in each
classroom influence classroom interactions?

W
The Michigan Department of Education's policies are such that

approval for permits to run bilingual programs is not granted if

48

49
there is no qualified staff available for employment. Included in
these policies is the ruling that a district may not retain staff on
special permit and lay off endorsed bilingual teachers within a
language classification. I

Eligible students for bilingual instruction are identified

through the following methods:

1. The school district sends a heme language survey form that
is approved by the department to the home of every student
enrolled in the district. If this form is not returned
within a reasonable period of time, the home is contacted
either by telephone or a visit so that the necessary
information is obtained.

2. Teachers, administrators, community groups, advisory
committees, other students, parents, and other appropriate
parties may be used to solicit referrals for bilingual
program placement. The home language survey information is
obtained for all students referred to for bilingual
placement.

3. For students whose survey forms were not returned, follow-up
surveys are conducted in the manner described above and
appropriate information is compiled and analyzed before any
student is declared eligible for bilingual instruction.

A review of bilingual policies in the Michigan Department of

Education indicates that a potentially eligible student for bilingual
instruction funded under Section 41 is considered eligible if that

student meets one or more of the following:

50
(a) A student is monolingual in a language other than
English;
(b) A potentially eligible student is enrolled in grades 3 -
12 and scores at or below the 40th percentile on a test of
oral English language proficiency or an English reading test
or subtests, as approved by the Department of education.
A potentially eligible student found to be ineligible in
previous years because of test results shall be considered
eligible if in later years the student scores at or below
the 40th percentile on a test of oral English language
proficiency or an English reading test or subtests as
approved by the Department of Education in Michigan.
A school shall not determine eligibility of a student to
receive bilingual instruction on the basis of test scores
that are more than six months old.
Tests that determine the eligibility of a student shall be
within one test level of the level designed for the grade in
which the potentially eligible student is enrolled.
In cases where either the bilingual teacher, the student's
parent(s), or guardian(s), or the student is in doubt
whether the test scores were accurate, the student shall be
retested with the same instrument or a different instrument
which measures the same skill. The retest score is then
substituted for the original score in the student's
records. Eligibility of that student is then determined

using the new score.

51
In Michigan, students served by bilingual instruction programs
come from the following language backgrounds: Arabic, Chaldean,
Chinese, French, German, Korean, Filipino, Spanish, Vietnamese, and
other minority languages not mentioned in the document from the
Department of Education because speakers of such languages may be

very few.

81W

Two sites were selected for this study. One was a vocational
education center where the Bilingual Instructional Center (BIC) for
all the schools in the district was located. The second site was a
junior high school.

This vocational education center was located in the southern edge
of the city. The center served mostly adults who came to learn
job-related skills and those adults on welfare who were required by
law to go to school to learn how to read and write English. A large
number of the adults who were enrolled in the programs offered at
this vocational educational center were immigrants coming to learn
English.

Unlike most of the programs at this vocational education center,
the BIC catered to school-age students. Junior high and senior high
school students were pulled out of their home schools and bussed to
the BIC where they learned English and Social Studies. Those who

needed to learn how to read took lessons in reading as well as the

52
other two subjects mentioned above. School-age students had separate
classrooms from the adults because they were in a different program.

Since bilingual programs are mandated by the state's Department
of Education, the eligibility status of students for these programs
is determined by similar standards as those stipulated by the
Department of Education.

In an interview, the coordinator of the special bilingual program
said that parents of those students were asked to give permission in
writing that their children be enrolled in the special bilingual
program. He further pointed out that they were free to withdraw
their children from the program at any time. He also pointed out
that the program was mainly concerned with teaching basic English
communication skills to those students.

According to the handbook (which shall remain anonymous for the
purpose of confidentiality promised to this school district), the
purpose of the special bilingual program was to assist students from
language backgrounds other than English to be competitive and to
achieve equally in school with those students from monolingual
backgrounds (English-speaking students).

Clearly stated in this document is the idea that the program
incorporates within its area of responsibility the ESEA Title I
Migrant Education Project and ESEA, Title VII Bilingual Instructional
Center (BIC). The document indicates that 95% of the students who
are eligible for migrant education services are also eligible for the
Title VII-funded BIC project and for the bilingual program.

As stated in that handbook, the special bilingual program is a

state-mandate under compliance with the Office for Civil Rights.

53

Under such a plan, bilingual instruction must be provided for the
students from a language background other than English who are
underachieving until they become competent enough to be competitive
and benefit from regular classroom educational instruction. Entailed
in this plan is the idea of testing the students before they are
admitted into the program and testing them regularly at different
check points so as to allow those who have gained minimal
competencies required to exit from the program. A total of 100
students were enrolled in the special bilingual program where
students were pulled out of their regular classrooms during social
studies, English, and reading classes. They were then bussed to the
BIC where they received special instruction in these classes. All
instruction was in English except in very few cases where teacher's
aides interpreted for some of the students. This was only done when
students failed to understand explanations given in English. The
program is under the umbrella of bilingual education because it
serves the needs of bilingual and bicultural students. Instruction
is not given in two languages.

The goals and objectives of this special bilingual program are

centered around:

1. Increasing students' reading, math, and language
skills.

2. Meeting the special educational needs of students whose
parents are, or have been within five years, migratory
workers.

3. Providing a program of bilingual instruction for histor-

ically underachieving papulations (Arabic, Hmong, Lao,
Spanish) and providing inservice training to the
bilingual staff and parents associated with the
project.

54
Some of these goals and objectives also apply for the quasi-
bilingual program which was included in this study.
Table 1 shows the teacher-student ratio in each class selected
from the two bilingual programs and regular program for this study.
Table l

Teacher-Student Ratio in All Classes Included in This Study

Regular 8th grade social studies class 1:30
Spanish quasi-bilingual 8th grade social studies

class (Mexican-American) 1:15
Special bilingual class, reading, lst hour 1:17
Special bilingual class, world history, 2nd hour 1:9
Special bilingual class, beginning reading, 3rd hour 1:16
Special bilingual class, U.S. history, 5th hour 1:17
Special bilingual class, government, 6th hour 1:6

- ............................................................... b---

As indicated in this table, all bilingual classes had fewer
students than the regular class. This allowed the bilingual teachers
to spend more time with each student than regular teachers do.

The following is a description of the five bilingual classes
observed at the Bilingual Instructional Center (BIC).

The first hour in the morning was a reading class. Grade levels
represented ranged from the sixth to the eighth. All 17 students
assigned to this class wrote an English proficiency test which was
used to determine if they needed the class. Most of the students
come from Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Two were Arabic and one was

Korean.

55

World history was taught during the second hour. All nine
students in this class were in the 8th grade. Those students
represented the following ethnic groups: Korean, Hmong, Laotian,
Hispanic, Chinese, and Arabic.

During the third hour, reading was taught to the beginning
readers. The 16 students came from the ethnic groups mentioned
above. One African student added to those groups already mentioned.
Their grade levels ranged from the 6th to the 9th.

Lunch break came during the fourth hour. During this time the
special bilingual class teacher, known as Carol from now on, went to
the cafeteria with two Vietnamese ladies. One of these ladies was a
secretary in the BIC office and the other was a teacher's aide. The
teacher's aide who worked with Carol preferred to have his lunch
alone in the classroom or elsewhere. The researcher was asked to
join this group and he did so gladly. Occasionally the BIC
coordinator joined the group during lunch. This was one of the times
when the teacher and the coordinator of this program discussed some
important matters, such as taking students to the state capitol and
to the zoo in Detroit.

U.S. history was taught during the fifth hour to the beginning
reading group. There were 17 students in this class. Their ethnic
groups were Kampuchian, Korean, Polish, Hmong, Vietnamese, Japanese,
and Hispanic.

The sixth hour was designated for government and had only six
students. These were mature students in their early and
mid-twenties. Through informal interaction with these students

between class sessions, the researcher got the following information

56
from them. The oldest was 24 years old. She worked and also
attended school. According to her, she was the head of her family,
supporting her 20 year-old brother, who was in this government class
with her, and her mother. She was the breadwinner of the family.
The students in this class were more vocal than those in the earlier
classes. They came from Ecuador, Vietnam, and Kampuchia. The
student from Ecuador was not a refugee. She was here for one year as
an exchange student. She came to the United States to learn
English. This group of students came into Carol's classroom during
the last hour of the school day. She was more flexible with them.
She took them to the state capitol one day and to a Chinese
restaurant another day. The researcher went with them on these two
occasions and had a chance to get acquainted with all of them. Three
of these students worked on part time jobs. The researcher rode with
the 24¢year-old young lady and her brother. This was the time when
she talked about herself and her family. The map in Figure I shows
the seating positions of students who were more actively involved in
the class interactions which will be discussed in Chapters IV and V
of this study.

Students in the regular and quasi classes did not use the same
seating arrangements all the time and so there are no maps for those
classes.

Narratives discussed in this study include students' cultural
experiences. Since most of the students who came to the BIG were
Vietnamese and Laotians, it is appropriate to discuss their cultural
and religious backgrounds. This will help shed some light on the way

some of these students viewed the world. This information was

|_1_|

not drawn to scale

BIC Classroom Map

Chalkboard and Map

Teacher's Table

I_2_l

fl_.‘t._|

I._L_l

|_1.2_fl

57

I._3__|

|_5_.l

|__LI

Figure 1

phone
dictionaries

door

58
gathered from Vietnamese and Laotians who worked with this researcher
at Michigan State University. There were no interviews with these
adults; however, many informal conversations were held with them.
Most of these people were or had been Buddhists before they came to
the United States.

Buddhists are required to respect their religion. They believe

in the spirit. According to their religion, they are not supposed to

1. steel

2. scorn

3. kill

4. lie, and

5. take someone's wife.

They are allowed to drink, but not to excess.

In Laos and Thailand, monks are not allowed to drink or sleep in
people's houses. Their food is to be clean. They are to have meals
twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon. They must eat beef
in the afternoon or during lunch. Monks should stay away from women.

Boys and young men are expected to obey certain rules. They are
supposed to go to the temple when they are not busy. If they are
busy, they should think about their religion during those busy
schedules.

When one becomes a man, he is not supposed to shake hands with
people. In their culture, they are not supposed to clap hands in
approval of what someone is saying. Boys and young men are not
supposed to stay close to girls and women. They even maintain a
distance from their mothers and sisters. Interestingly, young men

maintain a distance from their girl friends, as well. Men and women

59
do not hold hands, even husbands and wives. One young man said, ”If
I date an American girl, I will feel shy or uncomfortable to hold her
hand. We shake hands to say goodbye but here in America, they
don't.”

It is required in their culture to respect their elders. This
should be shown in their manner of greeting and in general politeness
as they interact with them. One young man commented, ”If you are
quiet and don't talk much it is good." As is expected in that
culture, older people talk much more while the younger people talk
less. Young people must leave the presence of adults when guests
come home. Youngsters are supposed to obey and respect their
parents. The opinions of their parents are important and must be
valued at all times. Men are required to support their brothers'
families if they need help.

In Vietnam and Laos they have no nursing homes. Old people stay
with their sons and daughters. One young man said, "We live
together. When parents die, children share their property.”

This is a brief religious and cultural background of many of the

students who were included in this study.

Wan
This study employed qualitative research methods. The following
steps were taken to gather and analyze data:
1. MW
(e) There was only one bilingual instructional center in the
district and so there were no other alternatives from which

to choose.

60

(b) One junior high school was selected. This school housed

the regular eighth grade social studies class and the
quasi-bilingual eighth grade social studies class.
1W:
(a) Participant observation
(1) note taking
(ii) interviews (some of which were taped)
(iii) surveys
1W
(a) triangulation of all the data.
Details of what was done in the research design will be given in

the following section.

Broaden:

The researcher secured written permission from the school
district, the principals of the two schools, the three teachers who
participated in this study, students, and their parents. All the
participants were informed that they were free to discontinue their
participation in the study at any time, if they chose to.

These written agreements were then taken to Michigan State
University where permission was secured from the office which gives
clearance to any research studies that use human subjects. The
following methods were used for gathering data:

£e:;ie1nen§_epeergeeien. Participant observational research is

used in the social sciences as a research method (Erickson, 1986).

This method entails intensive, long participation in a field setting.

61

During the observations made at research sites events were
carefully recorded. These field notes were supplemented by
information gathered from school records and where possible program
handbooks were used.

Audiotaping was done in three class sessions and in the
interviews conducted away from the BIC. No taping was done at the
BIC because the special bilingual teacher did not allow any taping
because she felt it was sensitive especially to her students who were
mostly refugees. According to her, they would feel uncomfortable if
their school activities were taped.

In the home school where the regular eighth grade social studies
class and the quasi-bilingual eighth grade social studies class were
observed, the teachers concerned suggested that the amount of taping
during class sessions should be minimized as much as was possible.
Thus, three class sessions and some interviews were taped.

Reports of findings in this study include many detailed
descriptions of what happened in classroom settings and most of these
reports will be in the form of narrative vignettes. It has been
stated earlier that field notes were heavily relied upon and so most
of the narratives in this study were drawn from that source. Data
gathered from interviews, achievement records, and samples of
students' written work has been included whenever and wherever
necessary.

The classes selected for this study were social studies and
reading. The regular 8th grade class and the quasi 8th grade class
had no reading classes. Hence, all the reading activities observed

were in the special bilingual program. Reading activities were

62
included in this study because there were similarities in the way
Carol, the special bilingual teacher, conducted the reading lessons
and social studies lessons. These similarities were noted when new
words were defined by either the teacher or the students in reading
classes as well as in social studies classes.

In the regular 8th grade social studies class, a total of eight
observations were made. The same number of observations were made in
the quasi 8th grade social studies class.

A total of 47 observations were made at the BIO. During the
initial data collecting process in 1984, eight observations were made
in the special bilingual 8th grade class and eight in the regular 8th
lgrade social studies class. Since each observation lasted an hour,
this means that the researcher spent a total of 79 hours gathering
data for this study.

Ineexgiege. Interviews were held with two bilingual teachers who
taught in different bilingual programs (already defined in this
study), the coordinator of the special bilingual program, an
assistant principal in one home school (who was also bilingual), one
Vietnamese bilingual education specialist who represented the adults
in that ethnic group, two counselors who worked with both regular and
bilingual students in this study, five bilingual students, and five
parents. Each of the above was interviewed separately. The
assistant principal referred to above worked closely with
Mexican-American students and other minority students who were in
that school. Her functions included other duties assigned to any
assistant principal. This information was gathered from her in an

interview.

63

The interviewees were selected on the basis of the questions
which were beginning to emerge from the classroom observations.
Since this study primarily investigated factors which influenced the
pulling out of bilingual students from their regular classes, all the
participants interviewed were drawn from the bilingual population.
The researcher secured written permission to interview all these
participants.

What made these interviews important? Erickson (1986), Erickson,
Florio, and Buschman (1980), and Gordon (1980) believe that it is
important to find out from the participants what their actions mean
to them. It is crucial in interpretive research to discover if the
researcher is sharing the same meanings of what he/she is describing,
with the actors or participants. The aforementioned interviews
served this function in this study. These interviews helped to
clarify and give supplementary information on patterns which were
beginning to emerge in the present study. It was not feasible to
interview every bilingual student due to time factors and other
constraints that became inevitable when dealing with human subjects.
To supplement this interview, a questionnaire was used.

ed e st ir . It was noted
while this study was in progress that special bilingual students
asked for help in mathematics whenever they were given a chance to
ask for help in subjects other than those they learned at the BIC.
In order to make sense of this phenomenon, the researcher sent a
questionnaire to students in the regular class and in the two
bilingual programs. This was a short questionnaire where each

student wrote his/her name, his/her most favorite subject, and the

64

languages they was interested in learning. This information was
compared to achievement records so as to find out if students
performed best in subjects they viewed as their most favorite.
Patterns which emerged from this information are discussed in
Chapters IV and V.

Anelye1e_e£_ee§e. During the interpretation or analysis of data,
the following questions and statements were taken into account:

(a) What did the participants mean when they said what they

said? Was the researcher sharing the same meanings with the
participants?

(b) All the available data were considered before any conclusive
interpretations were made. This was done so as to avoid
inaccurate conclusions or interpretations.

(c) This process involved the study of the context, the time and
the place, when or where certain statements were said or
certain things happened, especially those that appeared out

of context or out of harmony with what was going on in that
particular event(s).

(d) What was meant by what was said was very important in the
interpretation process. What was said in one situation was
validated against what was said in other situations. To
allow the interpretations of data to meet the preceding
criteria, Chapter IV gives a very extensive report of many
classroom narratives.

There were two separate periods during which data were collected
for this study. The first, which was the initial data collection
process, was during the month of February, 1984. The second, in
which the bulk of the data were gathered, started at the beginning of
April and ended at the beginning of June, 1986.

In 1984 the researcher visited the two sites selected for this
study on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One hour on each of these days was

spent in the special bilingual eighth grade social studies class and

one hour in the regular eighth grade social studies class.

65

In 1986 the researcher visited the junior high school where the
regular 8th grade social studies class and the quasi-bilingual 8th
grade social studies class were housed on Mondays. He spent an hour
in each of those classes. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays, he
spent a total of 6 hours each day at the Bilingual Instructional
Center (BIC). A total of 20 hours each week was spent gathering data
for this study.

In the process of analyzing data information collected from the
observations, quotes from the participants, samples of students'
assignments, and quotes from interviewees who included five parents,
were taken into consideration. Information was gathered from various
sources so that it could be cross-validated (triangulation). These
sources were classroom observations, achievement records made avail-
able to the researcher by the special bilingual program coordinator,
quotes from interviews and dialogues between participants.

To discover the goals of the bilingual program, the researcher
reviewed the bilingual handbook which was made available to him by
the program coordinator. The quasi-bilingual program which was
included in this study drew some of its goals from the same handbook,
although students in that building-level program did not have limited
communication skills in English as did special bilingual students.

The quasi-bilingual 8th grade social studies class and the
regular 8th grade social studies class were used as the basis for
comparing and contrasting the activities of the special bilingual

classes.

66
man:

This chapter has briefly restated the research questions,
described bilingual education policies in Michigan, described the
settings where this study was conducted, discussed the procedures
that were used for gathering data, and discussed the steps taken to

analyze the data.

The next chapter deals with the description of findings.

CHAPTER IV

Description of Findings

Information gathered from interviews, written reports, observa-
tions, and questionnaires are used to answer the research questions
which were developed as a guide to the study. These questions, which
follow, guided the data collection, interviews, and analysis provide

the organization for this chapter.

1. What purposes does the bilingual program serve which usesl
English as the only medium of instruction?

2. What teaching techniques are inherent in the bilingual
classroom activities?

3. How do these techniques compare and contrast to those of the
regular eighth grade social studies class?

4. How did the prior knowledge of the subject matter and
students' prior experiences influence the way they defined

words and social behavior, and the way they selected
favorite subjects.

5. How do cultural experiences and the learning climate in each
classroom influence classroom interactions?

The school district in which this study was conducted had two
forms of bilingual programs. All bilingual students were pulled out
of their regular classes during social studies classes. Some had
separate social studies classes in their own school buildings. This
is what is known as the quasi-bilingual program in this study.
Another group of bilingual students was bused to the Bilingual

Instructional Center (BIC) to learn English, reading, and social

67

68
studies. This is described as the special bilingual program in this
study.

An attempt to address the preceding question begins with the
remarks of the quasi-bilingual teacher who said in an interview,
”These students no longer have limitations in English communication
skills and yet they like the idea of being among their own ethnic
group. In the regular classes many times they don't say anything at
all. They feel uncomfortable to speak.” (4-21-86) Mr. A was talking
about his 15 students who were all Mexican Americans. Mr. A was also
Mexican American. He taught classes in the regular program as well
as this quasi-bilingual class which he was describing in the
interview.

Mr. A said that when his quasi-bilingual students were compared
to the regular American students, they appeared to be relucatent to
take part in classroom discussions. "I teach some of these students
in some of my regular classes," he said, "and.they do not participate
in disussions at all. Look at them now. You can see it yourself
that they are free to discuss some things with me. I try to make it
clear to them that when they need help they can count on me."
(4-21-86)

Two counselors who worked at the same school were also inter-
viewed. The counselors worked with regular students, quasi-bilingual
students, and special bilingual students. When they were asked to
state the purposes of these two forms of bilingual programs, they

pointed out that these bilingual programs serve as transition between

69
students' home culture and the regular school program. One counselor
said, "These students (bilinguals) have split schedules here at G--
school. They spend half of their time here and half at the Bilingual
Instructional Center (BIC). They do come and try to find out exactly
where they fit. When we give them school district tests it is done
here in our school building for the students in our school. We have
a few of them (bilinguals) who do very well in SAT tests. Language
is their problem when they are tested. I think they do very well in
the bilingual program. . . . We have had students who had very little
English but generally once they're here a whole year they seem to do
better. These students do not seem to fit into the regular program
because of the language problem. I think they lack English
communication skills. As I said, when they come here they speak just
their native tongue. . .' At this point, the second counselor
interjected, ”Bilingual students are generally quiet during class
sessions." Asked whether bilingual students were accepted by their
peers, he answered, ”I think they are accepted by others but one
problem is that they have a tendency to want to be with their own
bilingual peers. They seem to communicate well with counselors but
they are generally quiet in classes. They do not participate in
class discussions." (5-28-86)

These two counselors further pointed out bilingual students
communicated well with them because they (the counselors) tried to
reach out to them. 'The counselors then suggested that bilingual
programs are structured in such a way that they help students to pick
up English communication skills which they lack as newcomers to the

United States.

70

At the BIG, Carol, the special bilingual teacher, and the
coordinator of the program, and one adult Vietnamese who is a
specialist in bilingual education were interviewed. Their views
about the purposes of the English-only bilingual program will be
discussed in the following paragraphs.

Carol said that she taught her students English as well as the
subject matter. According to her, one of her responsibilities was to
help her students adjust to the American culture and educational
system in a way that does not make them feel that their cultures were
less important. Among all these responsibilities, she pointed out
that the teaching of English was given top priority in all her
classes. She said, "I want my students to learn to speak, read and
write English. If my students fail to grasp meanings of words and
concepts, I make them act or dramatize the idea portrayed in those
words or concepts. This helps them visualize the idea. We do more
in this program so that our students experience the new words and
concepts we are trying to teach them." (5-19-86)

Typical examples of what Carol said are depicted in the following
vignettes which were lifted from some of her class sessions:

Carol was teaching a reading lesson. Students were asked to

pronounce all the new words, to define them, and to use them

in sentences. After that, the oral reading lesson pro-

ceeded. "If you can't pronounce a word, put up your hand.

I will help you," said Carol.

As they read from the textbook, Carol asked questions to see

if they understood what they were reading. One student

confused the word "along" with "alone" as she was trying to

answer Carol's question. Carol said, "Alone means by

yourself. Along means with somebody else.” As the lesson
developed another student was confused with the two meanings

' 71

of the word “kind." Carol said, "Kind means many different

kinds or something like, be kind to me. It means be nice to

me. Is that all right, honey?" When Carol asked this

question, a girl from Korea we shall name A-l according to

her seating position asked, "Why do you call her honey? Do

you mean that thing which is sweet made by bees?" Carol

smiled and said, ”It means a nice person." (4-28—86)

Carol's reading lessons as well as social studies lessons were
conducted in a similar way to what is demonstrated in the preceding
vignette. Many times when this study was in progress, Carol asked
her students, "If you come across a word you don't understand, what
do you do?" Usually her students would answer in chorus, "Use a
dictionary."

One day after a class session which took place in more or less
the same way as the one described above, a girl from Korea, who is
referred to as A-l in this study, said, "I like all my classes. I
like mathematics and science. I like this class, too (That class was
a world history class). I learn more English here." This researcher
had asked that girl what classes she liked best in school. (4-29-86)

Another time, Carol made comments to her class about what they
were going to read. She paused and said, "I seem to have an idea
that you are doing a lot better. YOur English has improved, keep on
trying.” (5-6-86)

There was strong evidence in both what Carol and her students
said that the learning of English communication skills was given top
priority in the special bilingual program. More evidence of this is
given in the following discussion.

All of the 23 special bilingual students who responded to

questionnaires pointed out that they were in this program because

they learned more English in that program than they did in their home

72
schools. When asked to give reasons why they were coming to school,
their random responses suggested the following:
1. To learn to survive in the American society.
2. To prepare themselves for the job market. They pointed
out that in spite of the fact that they wanted to
adjust to the American culture, they still wanted to
maintain their extended family ties, their religion,
and the respect for older or elderly people.
Given a chance, these students proposed to teach the Americans

the following:

1. To help their parents when they are old (giving them
money or other kinds of help).

2. Not to divorce easily.

Records indicate that approximately 90% of all the students who
enrolled at the BIC proceeded to college for either an associates
degree or a four-year college degree. Carol, the special bilingual
teacher and the coordinator of that program claimed that this
happened because they gave the students adequate help in English and
emphasized the importance of higher education in the special
bilingual program.

More of how bilingual students viewed their learning activities
will be discussed in the section on students' favorite subjects.

Apart from giving the teaching of English top priority in her
lessons, Carol also tried to make her lessons relate to students
different cultural backgrounds. At one time she was talking about
the word celebration. She asked, ”Do you celebrate Christmas in
Vietnam? What date is your independence day in Korea?" At another
time during a drawing and writing assignment, Carol said, "This is

your family tree which represents your family and your culture. So

73
choose your own colors." In all 47 observations made in Carol's
special bilingual classes, she took her students' cultural
perspectives into account.

It was not only Carol who saw the importance of including
students' cultural experiences in classroom discussion. Others who
were interviewed for this study held similar views.

An assistant principal at the school where Mr. A, the quasi-
bilingual teacher taught, said in an attempt to express the impor-
tance of cultural viewpoints of different students. ”I do not deal
with the Indo-Chinese who are in our school because I do not know
their cultural background. . . . I interact with Mexican-American
students a lot more easily because I am Mexican-American myself and I
understand their culture." She pointed out that there were times
when she would speak to Mexican-American students in Spanish. Those
students would understand the message more clearly because they knew
the langauge and the paralinguistic characteristics which go with
this language and their culture. She saw the use of the child's
communicative competence as important, ". . .It means more to the
child," she concluded. (3-7-84)

The coordinator of the special bilingual program and the
Vietnamese adult who is a specialist in bilingual education said that
they teach English communication skills in their program and their
approach to the subject matter takes students' cultural backgrounds
into account. Parents who were interviewed separately for this study
expressed their views as follows:

Parent 1 commented: "This bilingual program is a

transitional or an interim ESL solution to the second

language problem. Some programs are sympathetic to the

bilingual program or need but have no help to offer."
(5-30-86)

74

Parent 2 said, "There are not many multicultural instances
in the curriculum. . . . Our children ought to have exposure
to cultures other than what they see on the TV. They need a
program which includes their cultural perspectives."
(5-30-86)

Parent 3 said, "High school education has a lot of European
elements but no elements of the Asian, or other cultures.
We like this special bilingual program because it at least
recognizes our Asian culture and our children talk about it
in class." (6-10-86)

Parent 4 said, "This program is helping the child to be
proud and accept his ethnicity. In the black week emphasis,
they talk about King and other blacks. They do not stretch
enough to their African heritage. Nothing is said about
other ethnic groups in this country.“ (6-17-86)

Parent 5 said that he liked the special bilingual program
because his child is learning a lot of English and other
cultures represented in that program. He paused and said,
"All my fingers help my hand. All my people help my land.
My children meet many people from other parts of the world.
We can all be part of this satellite ball in the United
States of America. Such values are not common in the public
school. They used to ask me in school, 'Did you have a
toast or an egg for breakfast?‘ I did not raise my hand
because I had soup and fish. I felt stupid. I am glad my
child is made to feel we can be part of this satellite ball
in America. That is what I think the special bilingual
program is teaching my child." (6-13-86)

In summarizing the purposes of the English-only bilingual program it
is important to note that it was viewed by the participants as
helping the bilingual child to

1. learn English communication skills,

2. view the subject matter from his cultural perspective,

3. accept and respect his culture and those of others.

": Lé 9 1‘ ' 1! ° ;‘ , o . 4' -a 1 1- B .n:ue. ae- ..
Actixitissl
In the last section, it was suggested that Carol, the special

bilingual teacher, saw the teaching of English as her top priority

75
among her other teaching responsibilities. She emphasized the
pronunciation of new words, their definitions, and the way they were
used in sentences. Dictionaries were used in all her class sessions.

It was stated that Carol's approach to the subject matter allowed
students to view it from their own cultural perspectives. A typical
social studies or reading lesson in Carol's classroom had the
following components:

1. Pronunciation of new words.

2. Definitions of new words with the help of dictionaries.

3. Using those words in sentences.

4. Oral reading.

5. Discussion of what was read-~this included comprehension

questions.

6. A writing exercise, a quiz, a test, or an examination.

7., Assignments for the next class.

The following vignette lifted from Carol's history class will
help explain these steps as they have been outlined above. Those
seven components did not necessarily come in the order listed above.

Carol walked into the classroom and socialized with her

students in what looked like an informal discussion. After

about five minutes, Carol stood up and asked students to

turn in their written vocabulary assignment. They went on

to pronounce the words which were at this time listed on the

chalkboard.

"What is the meaning of coral reef?” asked Carol. Her

students did not know the meaning of that term. Carol said,

"Look it up in your dictionaries, maybe you will understand

it. I will give you a chance to look it up in your

language, maybe you will understand it better. You know how

to read Hmong and Thai. If you understand it, it is all

right."

They used dictionaries but still they could not understand

the meaning of "coral reef." At this point, Carol tried to
define it for them. Still they did not understand what

76

coral reefs were. After an illustration was used of how
coral is formed, students began to grasp its meaning.

They proceeded to define ridges, outbreak, Aborigines,
ashes, corals, shell fish, boomerang, yams and fibres.
Students were asked to use the words in sentences. When
this was done, Carol asked students to read aloud portions
of the story. One student at a time read aloud while others
listened.

They located Australia on the map and discussed portions of
what they were reading about. After a short writing
assignment, the world history lesson was over. (5-8-86)

Carol's approaches to the subject can best be portrayed in the
following comments she made to this researcher in an interview:

”If these students are expected to function adequately in
this country, they must be taught English. I teach English
in history and reading classes. What I teach is centered
around the learning of English. I teach some other things,
too. I teach them how to be polite to one another in ways
which are appropriate in an American society. I teach them
grooming and many other things pertaining to cultural traits
which are regarded as appropriate in America. I connect
these things with what they already know in their own
cultures. I teach them how to dress themselves
appropriately for different occasions. Most of these
students are not living with their own parents and because
of this they need a teacher who has a motherly, caring
spirit. They sometimes pick up language that is not
appropriate from the streets. I have got to teach them to
speak using language which is appropriate." (4-29-86)

Carol organized her subject matter or content around the above
goals. To help demonstrate that what happened in the preceding
vignette was not an isolated incident, the following vignette is

included.

This was a reading lesson. Carol greeted her students and
some greeted her first. This was an informal way in which
her classes started, nearly always. This lasted for less
than five minutes.

Pretty soon the reading activities commenced. Students were
asked to pronounce new words after the teacher. These words
were "landing, shoots, tenant, mirage, felt, geraniums,
pumpernickel, nourishment, chandelier, imitation, keen,
hazard, flushed, incredible." Students were asked to define
these words with the help of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
After this they used all the words in sentences.

77

After an oral reading exercise, Carol asked her students to
read from the text silently, paying special attention to the
listed vocabulary words on which they were going to be
tested on the following day. She asked them to get help
from her, the teacher's aide, or this researcher.

When this was done, they were asked to continue a writing
assignment which they had been working on for several days.
They had a trip to a zoo in Detroit and their writing
assignment was about this trip. One young man came to this
researcher's desk and asked, "How do you spell fat__?" His
pronunciation was not quite clear. This researcher asked
him to use that word in a sentence. "A snake bite is
fatal." From the sentence, this researcher got the word and
then spelled it "f-a-t-a-l." Soon that reading lesson came
to an end. (5-27-86).

In this vignette, students pronounced new words after their
teacher. They defined those words and used them in sentences. There
was an oral reading exercise and a writing exercise. This pattern of
lesson development existed in all Carol's 47 lessons which were
observed for this study. More than this, Carol approached the
content of learning in ways that utilized the students' cultural
experiences and exposure.

Some episodes which were observed in Carol's classroom activities
suggest that cultural experiences and exposure were needed to help
students define words and social behaviors. A typical example of
these episodes is shown in the following vignette.

Carol asked her student to work on a creative writing

exercise after she pronounced words and defined them with

her students.

One student pronounced the word "slave" as "sleeve." Carol

pronounced that word with him slowly. That student then

went back to his seat and started working on the assignment.

Another student repeatedly asked, "What must I do?" Carol

explained but he could not understand. The word which was

problematic in this episode was "creative." She asked him

to use a Vietnamese dictionary. He could not find the

word. Carol went to his seat and tried to help. The word
was not in the Vietnamese dictionary. Carol then said, "to

78

pretend, to imagine, like the story of Cinderella. To make

up a story." After this explanation, the student started

working on his creative writing assignment. (5-20—86)

Here, while Carol was in the process of presenting her lessons in
ways that allowed students to learn more English vocabulary words,
she also allowed students to see meanings of words and social
behaviors from their experiential, cultural, and linguistic
perspectives.

In spite of Carol's efforts to deal with the subject matter in
the manner already described in this episode, it remained unclear
whether the idea inherent in the word "creative" is expressed in the
Vietnamese language. Failure to find this word in the Vietnamese
dictionaries was problematic in Carol's attempt to approach the
content from her students' perspectives.

In another episode which is already narrated in this study,
students could not understand the meaning of ”coral reefs" though
some of them could read and speak Vietnamese and Lao in which some
dictionaries were written. The word "coral reef" was defined in
those two languages.

Language in those two episodes was not only portraying ideas but
was also portraying the culture and experiences of the people who
spoke that language. It is important to view the findings in this
study from both a linguistic and a cultural perspective.

What has been discussed so far was the way Carol presented her
lesson. Nothing has been said about her communicative competences.
This will be discussed in the next few paragraphs.

Carol smiled at times during her lessons; she encouraged her

students to respond to her questions. "I know you can answer this

79
question," she said to a student who was reluctant to answer her
question. .At times, she would say, "Come on, try," in encouragement
to her students to take part in classroom discussions.

One day a student asked Carol, "Am I gay?” Instead of saying yes
or no, Carol asked, "What do you mean by gay?” After her student
defined that word, Carol proceeded to tell him that he was not gay.
Details of this episode will be narrated later in this study. Yet it
may be appropriate to note that here Carol was trying to find if she
was sharing the same meaning of the word ”gay" with her student.

At times Carol walked close to students who were giving answers
to her questions. Occasionally, she touched some slightly. These
appeared to be warm gestures on Carol's part and yet one day when an
Asian young man asked Carol to help him solve a mathematical program,
this gesture did not serve the intended purpose. Carol walked close
to the young many and touched him on the shoulder. The young man
looked at Carol and said, "Don't touch me.”

In Chapter III it was pointed out that Buddhist young men are not
allowed to be near women. This particular young man was not only
near a woman but she also touched him. This episode will be viewed
in more detail in the analysis of data in Chapter V.

Mr. A, the quasi-bilingual teacher, employed techniques which
were different from Carol's techniques. A typical history class
taught by him would include the following elements:

1. Vocabulary words which were always part of a short writing

assignment.

2. Introduction of the topic.

80

3. The teacher's lecture.

4. Silent reading done to answer certain questions assigned to

students.

5. Test, quizzes, and examinations.

A typical example of Mr. Ads approach to the subject matter is
portrayed in the following vignette.

When all of his students were settled in the classroom, Mr.

A had roll call. Mr. A then said, "Read Chapter 6 in five

to ten.minutes." This chapter was only two pages long.

After this silent reading assignment, Mr. A. passed out a

writing exercise to the students. On this exercise there

were vocabulary words which students were asked to define.

They were also asked to give answers to questions which were

listed on the same assignment.

After this writing assignment, students were allowed to

leave the classroom to attend other classes which followed

this one. (4-14-86)

In the last section, it was suggested that Mr. A wanted his
students to view social studies from the viewpoint of
Mexican-Americans. The following examples drawn from three of his
lessons will help confirm this suggestion. One day when the topic
was Werld War I, he told his students the position that was teken.by
Mexico during that war. Another time when the topic was World War
II, he again mentioned the position that was taken by Mexico. The
last example is drawn from his lesson about the European colonial
powers in Africa. He illustrated the African struggle for
independence with Mexican-Americans fighting for equal rights in the

United States.

It is important to note the following:

81
1. Carol's approach to the subject matter had the learning of
new English words as the primary focus.
2. Carol included paralinguistic characteristics as she
communicated with her students.
3. Mr. A, whose approach differed from Carol's, attempted to

help his Mexican-American students see what they learned from

their historical and cultural point of view.

 

Eighth grade social studies classes in all three programs used
the same textbook. In the regular class, the quasi-bilingual class
and the special bilingual class, they covered the lesson on ”The
Industrial Revolution." The subject matter was the same.

Mr. Dixon, the regular classroom teacher, approached the subject
matter in a typical lessen as follows:

1. Introduction of the topic.

2. A lecture interspersed with either comprehension questions or

attention-getter types of questions.

3. Silent reading with specific questions to answer.

4. Writing exercises, quizzes, tests or examinations.

Mr. Dixon, unlike the other two teachers, used American
situations to illustrate the topic he was trying to teach. Two
examples of this which were drawn from different lessons are
discussed in the following paragraphs.

One day Mr. Dixon was teaching a lesson about "The

Industrial Revolution." His lessons followed the steps

which are outlined above. During the course of his lecture,
Mr. Dixon said, "People who made things by hand were mad

82

when machines were invented." "Why?" asked some of his
students. ”Because machines were taking away jobs from
them,” explained.Mr. Dixon. Some of his students did not
make sense out of this and so the teacher illustrated, "The
Japanese make cars and sell them to American citizens and we
get mad because they are taking away jobs from us."

Students understood the point he was trying to make after
this illustration. (5-8-86)

Another day Mr. Dixon was teaching the Italian history. He
named a political group which was known as "The Red
Shirts.” Some of his students echoed, "Red Shirts! Red
Shirts!” This must have suggested to Mr. Dixon that they
did not quite understand what this group's name was all
about. He again illustrated, "During slavery we had
underground railroads. This is just a name because we did
not have railroads under ground.” Once again this
illustration seemed to suffice. (5-7-86)

Here, Mr. Dixon employed illustrations that regular Americans can

understand. This approach was different from Carol's and Mr. A's.

These two looked at illustrations or asked students to provide some

illustration which were drawn from their own cultures.

A typical class session in Mr. Dixon's classroom is illustrated

in the following vignette.

Mr. Dixon dictated the following questions to his class:
1. What was the young Italian society?
2. Who started it?
3. Why was the Pope against Italian unity?
4. Who were the Red Shirts?
5. What contributions did Mazzini make?
6. Who was Mazzini's opponent?

When this was done, students were asked to read from the
text silently and write down answers to the preceding
questions.

Mr. Dixon then went on to discuss the lesson with his
students who he asked to give answers to the above
questions. They referred to a map which was hung on the
wall when they were discussing the territory which was
designated to the Pope in Italy. This ended Mr. Dixon's
history class. (4-21-86)

83

The following figures taxonomize the classroom activities in each

of the three programs so as to compare and contrast what was going on

in each of the programs.. This figure shows the teaching techniques

which were employed in each of the three programs most of the time

when this study was in progress. As the three sections suggest,

there were similarities and differences in the way the three teachers

approached the subject matter.

Figure 2

Classroom Activities

Special Bilingual Classes

W

i
A. Pronouncing new words aloud | E.

B. Using new words in sentences I F

Writing assignments

. Asking questions or asking

for help with difficult

C. Reading aloud in random order | learning material

D. Oral answers

The Quasi-Bilingual Class

I
I
A. Vocabulary words as written I
assignment |

|

l

l

B. Silent reading with specific
questions to answer

 

C. Answer the teacher's
questions with oral
answers

D. Writing assignments

Regular Eighth Grade Class

00 a t ci at o

l
B. Silent reading with specific I

questions to answer I

A. Giving oral answers to questions

 

C. Asking the teacher

questions

D. Writing assignments

84
As these figures show, the special bilingual classes had two more
components than the other two classes. Basically, this is how the

three programs compared and contrasted.

To address this question adequately, data that deal with it are
divided into two section, namely (1) role of experience in definition
of words and (2) students' favorite subject.

In the special bilingual classes where the primary goal is to
furnish students with adequate English communication skills so that
they become competitive among their American peers, the mastery of
new English words received a special treatment. Students pronounced
new words after Carol. Working together with her they defined all
the new words in their lessons and used them in sentences. This
pattern was observed in all of Carol's classes at the BIC. Reading
also received emphasis in nearly all of Carol's classes. Even social
studies classes included some reading activities. Words were also
defined and used in sentences.

In the quasi-bilingual class new words were defined too, but this
was incorporated in the written exercises. Words were rarely defined
in the regular eighth grade social studies class. Certain patterns
emerged when words were defined in the special bilingual classes and
similar patterns were noted when new words were used in the regular
eighth grade social studies class although the amount of data

connected with meanings of words was minimal in that regular class.

85
The following words and their definitions illustrate how
students, both in the regular program and special bilingual program,
defined words in class discussions. These definitions were drawn
from the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.
Gay 1. happily excited
2. keenly alive and exuberant
3. brilliant in color
4. bright, lively
5. given to social pleasure, licentious
6. having or inducing high spirit
7. turn from a sober to a more timely tradition
8. homosexual
When our society describes someone as gay, they are referring to
definition number 8 which means homosexual. This definition which
appears to have been drawn from dey-to-day observations made in
society was selected by two students in a class interaction.
Grain 1. cereal grain
2. small hard particle or crystal
3. truth of what is being said
4. appearance of outer skin or hair

5. the wood fibers in a piece of furniture
A student from one of the rice-producing countries of the world
(Korea) selected cereal as an appropriate definition of the word

grain when she said, "Grain means food” although her teacher had used

a grain of wood on her table to illustrate that word.

Acting l. holding a temporary rank or position
2. the art or practice of representing a character on the
stage

When students were required to define this word, the teacher was a
substitute, someone holding a temporary position. A student said,
"Acting means taking someone's job, like a sub does." That present
experience with a substitute teacher in his classroom seemed to have

influenced the student to select that definition. When this

86
definition was rejected, another boy selected the second definition
when he said, ”Like a TV star.” This episode will be discussed fully
in a later section.
Decoration 1. act or process of decorating
2. ornament
3. badge of honor or military award

Out of the three possible meanings, a Vietnamese boy chose definition
number 3. This boy came to the United States from a fighting situa-
tion. He might have seen soldiers decorated in medals. He defined
the word decoration as 'decoration--like soldiers." Interestingly,
his teacher, Carol, chose to define the same word as follows: "Like
a Christmas decoration.” The teacher's illustration is not given in
the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary where all these definitions have
been drawn from. It seems Carol and her students in certain
situations defined words according to the way they had interacted
with these words before.

The last word in this illustration was drawn from the regular
classroom for the sake of comparison.
Cabinet 1. small room

2. a case or cupboard
3. room providing seclusion
4. a small exhibition room in a museum
5. a body of advisors of a head of state

This particular student selected the meaning which meant a case or
cupboard because she had a cupboard (cabinet) which she used in her
school building. The intended meaning here was number five because
the lesson was on the British government.

None of these words were drawn from the quasi-bilingual class

because their vocabulary words were part of the daily writing

assignments. The researcher did not have access to these and so no

87
patterns were noticed in the quasi-bilingual class as far as
definition of words was concerned.
The following vignette will illustrate how students attached
meanings to words in the special bilingual classes in a more detailed
way than what has been done in the preceding list of words.

Her students walked in and greeted her. Some sat in their
seats while others lingered around the table talking to

her. She told them to sit down and gave an assignment which
she called ”A Family Tree." While they were coloring the
pictures in this assignment, one student chose bright colors
for coloring both men and women in his pictures. On
noticing these pictures, another boy sitting next to him
said, "You are gay.” ”Why?” asked the other. ”Because you
have bright pictures. Men are not supposed to choose bright
colored clothes." Confused, this student took his
assignment to Carol, the bilingual teacher. ”Look at my
pictures. Are they not beautiful?" he asked. "Very good.
They are pretty. I like them," Carol said, not knowing what
had transpired betwen the two boys before the picture had
been brought to her. The boy stood there transfixed for a
moment. He was silent, perhaps searching for the truth
about his pictures. Then he asked, "Am I gay?" ”Why?" Carol
asked, full of surprise. "That boy said I am gay because my
pictures have men in bright clothes,” the boy answered.
”What is the meaning of the word 'gay'?" asked Carol. "A
man liking another man." At this point, Carol said, "No, it
doesn't matter. You are not gay. Your pictures are bright
because they reflect your culture." This ended the problem.
(2-8-84)

Carol knew the possible meanings of the word "gay." Perhaps she
was not sure which meaning her two students had in mind when one
called the other gay. It was appropriate for her to ask, "What is
the meaning of the word 'gay'?" This was an attempt to find out if
she was sharing the same meaning with those two students. This
attempt must have been prompted by the fact that Carol realized that
people define words from different perspectives.

It seems that if students' perspectives are to be broadened,
there is a need to employ the triad approach to the teaching of new

words, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter V.

88
The following vignette shows the reserve of that approach.

On this particular day, Carol, the special bilingual
teacher, was absent and in her place was a male substitute
teacher. This man wrote the vocabulary words on the
chalkboard pretty much in the same way as Carol did in all
her classes. The words were "physical, include, common,
anthropology, race, acting.“ He went over the meanings of
these words with the students. In fact, he asked the
students to define the words and he helped out if they
needed that help.

After this short exercise, they started reading a story in
which those words were used. One student while reading the
story stumbled over the word "culture." The teacher helped
him to pronounce the word correctly. "Do you have a culture
different than me?” asked the teacher. The boy who was
reading said, 'Yes--skin." "No, traits," the teacher
commented. "The way you eat," another student suggested.
One boy said, ”Different people from different countries."
Another said, "Chinese are different from Indonesians." At
this point, students appeared to know or to give the right
answer. Three students spoke, one after another, ”customs,"
"traits,“ and "different values." "What else?" One boy who
had not spoken before said, "No one is born with a culture.
Culture is learned." This was a thoughtful answer from the
researcher's perspective.

Again the class went on reading, one by one. "What is the
meaning of the word acting?” the teacher asked, not knowing
the type of answer that was going to be given. The same
student who gave a thoughtful answer said, "Acting is taking
someone's duties for a while, like a sub.” ”I don't like
that answer," the teacher said, looking somewhat uncomfort-
able. He was a substitute teacher himself. Perhaps he was
offended by this definition. Whatever the case may be, he
did not like that response. The last student to respond to
that question said, "Like a TV star." The teacher said
“Good“ and so ended the lesson. (2-9-84)

Human behavior is undulatory and unpredictable. Here this
teacher's behavior was somewhat inconsistent with the goals of the
bilingual program. The program encourages creativity on the part of
the students and yet this teacher seemed to stifle it. This sub-
stitute teacher did not employ the tried approach which allowed
creativity to the teaching of new words as Carol, the special

bilingual teacher, did.

89

The student who was asked to define the same word after the
teacher had rejected ”Acting means taking someone's job, like a sub
does" said, “Like a TV star.” The teacher said, "Good." In spite of
the inconsistency observed in this episode, students seemed to define
words according to the way they had interacted with those words in
their day-to-day experiences.

Observations made in the regular 8th grade social studies classes
give evidence that the same pattern existed in that class. In a
history class one girl saw the word cabinet as referring to a piece
of furniture. That particular girl used a cabinet in that school
building. The fact that her teacher was teaching about the British
government did not make the new meaning of the word cabinet dawn on
her. The girl's prior knowledge and experience did not seem to
influence her to see the teacher's intended meaning for the word
“cabinet" as she said, "I have a cabinet downstairs.“ These pieces
of evidence suggest that prior knowledge and both cultural
experiences and experiences that are attained through exposure
influenced the definitions of words selected by students observed in
this study. Cultural experiences as well as exposure influenced the
way students defined words and the way they viewed social behaviors.

While this study was in progress, it was noted that special
bilingual students were allowed to bring questions and problems they
had in other subjects. Most of the times Carol's students brought
mathematics problems to her. Mathematics was taught in the home
schools. This researcher wondered what were the possible factors
influencing those students to bring mathematics problems to Carol who

‘was not a mathematics teacher. The researcher decided to find out

90
the most favorite subjects for students in the three programs and the
languages they were interested in learning. The following section

discusses related findings.

Studentsi_faxcrits_suhiects. A questionnaire was sent to
selected students in all three programs included in this study. The
purpose of this questionnaire was to determine if students were
influenced by prior knowledge and experiences to select favorite
subjects. The findings yielded the following results.

Different patterns were observed in the way students in the three
programs selected their favorite subjects in school. How did experi-
ence influence the way students selected these favorite subjects?
Data gleaned from a survey that the researcher administered revealed
the following patterns in the students' choices of favorite
subjects. Each educational program produced different patterns.

Table II indicates which subjects the special bilingual students
regarded as favorite and the languages they wanted to learn.
Surprisingly, none of the special bilingual students selected English
and reading as favorite subjects although they spent most of their
time at the BIG learning English and how to read that language.

Table II

Statistics Representing Special Bilingual Students'
Choices of Subjects

Subject Number of Students Percentage
Mathematics
Drafting
Science
Typing
Social Studies
Music
Did not understand question

H
UIF‘F‘NDF‘P‘BD

Total number of students 23 100.0%

91
Achievement records which were made available to this researcher
at the BIG indicated that special bilingual students generally
performed best in mathematics.
Table III indicates the responses of the quasi-bilingual class on
the same questionnaire.
Table III

Statistics Representing Quasi-Bilingual Students'
Choices of Subjects

Subject Number of students Percentage
Mathematics 4 26.6
Art 2 13.3
Gym 3 20.0
English 4 26.6
Did not understand question 2 13.3
Total number of students 15 100.0%

Though the quasi-bilingual students indicated that mathematics
was their favorite subject at a higher percentage than regular
students, their percentage in terms of this choice was significantly
lower than that of the special bilingual students.

Table IV indicates responses of the regular class.

Table IV

Statistics Representing Regular Students'
Choices of Subjects

Subject Number of students Percentage
Mathematics 6 20.0
Gym 1 3.3
English 5 16.6
Spanish 1 3.3
Science 2 6.6
History 3 9.9
Art 1 3.3
Drama 2 6.6
Did not respond 9 30.0

Total number of students 30 100.0%

92

Twenty-three students in the special bilingual class responded to
a questionnaire. Fifteen Spanish students in the quasi-bilingual
program were asked to respond to the same questionnaire and only
thirteen responded. Thirty students in the 8th grade regular social
studies class were asked to respond to the same questionnaire and
twenty-one did.

The responses indicated that 52.2% of the special bilingual
students who were asked to respond selected mathematics as their most
favorite subject. 52.2t is a conservative projection of the choices
made in that class because five students who did not respond to the
questionnaire represent 21.7% of the students included in that
survey. Judging from the academic achievement records, it is highly
probable that if they had responded, special bilingual students could
have been more than 52.5% in favor of mathematics. In the Spanish
bilingual class, their most favorite subject was mathematics, with
26.6% selecting that subject. In the regular 8th grade social
studies class, 20% selected mathematics as their most favorite
subject. These data suggest that among the students who were in the
study, more bilingual students sew mathematics as their most favorite
subject than the regular students did. District-wide records
indicated that bilingual students ranked higher in mathematics
achievement than their peers and than in other subjects.

Among the 23 special bilingual students who responded, only one
student (4.4%) elected a liberal arts subject as favorite. Among the
Spanish students, four (26.6%) chose liberal arts subjects as the
most favorite. In the regular class, nine (30%) chose liberal arts

subjects as the most favorite.

93

An interview with two counselors at one of the home schools
indicated that bilingual students performed better in mathematics
than they did in other subjects. As he was responding to an
interview question, the coordinator of the special bilingual program
also said that these students perform better in mathematics. The
achievement records which this coordinator made available to the
researcher indicated higher achievement in mathematics than in other
subjects for the special bilingual students.

What are the possible explanations to the way these students
selected their most favorite subjects and the differences in their
performances across all the school subjects? Obviously, aptitude
would not be a valid answer because aptitude does not favor one
ethnic group. The researcher was left with one alternate explanation
which seems to make sense. A close analysis of all the data
described in this study seems to allude to one theme and that is
experience. Because of one's culture, one's exposure, or one's
background experiences, one is bound to find some things easier to do
than others. Liberal arts subjects require more communication skills
than mathematics. In mathematics, the processes that are used in
calculating answers are not as much culturally bound as the processes
involved in communicating. In the reading activities already
described, words were defined according to three different perspec-
tives. At times, attempts to define words left students with limited
exposure at a point where meanings of certain words were confusing.
These students employed the meaning which was closest to their
background experiences. Calculations in mathematics are more

consistent. 2 + 2 - 4 (to base 10) regardless of what culture one

94
comes from. The word "gay" does not mean the same thing everywhere
where English is spoken and every time it is used, even in one
society. In the replay of experiences portrayed in these narratives,
the phenomena that were prevalent seemed to arise from the diversity
of experiences among those who were participating in classroom
activities. This was more evident when words were defined. This
happened because there was a tendency among the participants to
define words according to their own previous experience with those
words. In another classroom situation, one student was asked to
define the word "believe“ and he said, "I believe in Buddha.“ The
same student was asked to define the word "bless" and he said, "I am
blessed by Buddha." It is likely, therefore, for a language minority
student with a foreign culture to perform better in school subjects
that have fewer biases and require limited interpretation than those
that have more varied interpretations. Liberal arts subjects seem to
have cultural biases and hence most of the bilingual students avoided
them, as they selected favorite subjects.

While the researcher is persuaded to subscribe to the view
discussed above, he wants to point out that there are elements that
disconfirm the idea that mathematics has limited biases. The
following vignette reveals some of those elements:

While the researcher was informally talking with Carol, the

special bilingual teacher, and her teacher's aide they got

involved in a discussion about how to calculate the

following problem: 1265 divided by 25. Carol did it as
follows:

25 / 1265

E

150

OE

95

The teacher's aide did it as follows:

1265 | 25
0150 | 50.6
00 I
- 50.6

An adult showed another method from Japan:

1255 /25
.1219 50-6
15.0

11.9
0

Carol did not quite master this method from Laos even though

the aide tried again and again to explain it. The

researcher asked the aide to teach him but the researcher

did not understand it either. There is a difference in the

way they calculated problems of this nature in Laos but

there is no bias or difference in the answer. (5-22-86)

At this point, the researcher made the following assertion.
There seems to be a limited amount of cultural bias in subjects such
as mathematics. Whatever bias exists, it is in the interpretation
and process rather than the answer which is the final product.

To summarize this section, it is appropriate to point out the

following:

1. cultural experiences and exposure had an influence on how
students performed in different subjects taught in school;

2. students defined words according to their cultural
experiences; and

3. how students selected favorite subjects and how they
performed in those subjects was influenced by their cultural
experiences and exposure as well.

In the three programs that were included in this study, a certain
pattern was observed among students. This pattern is related to
teacher-student interactions. Students talked more in some
situations than in others. Students were more willing to take part
in classroom discussions than they did in others. Sometimes, the
same students who were actively involved in some class discussions
were reluctant to take part in others.

There were times when students answered questions with questions
or they said things which appeared to be unrelated to what was being
discussed. Most of the examples narrated here will be drawn from
Carol's special bilingual classes where this researcher spent more
time than in classes that represent the other two programs and where
more cultural differences were influencing teacher-student
interactions more than in the other two educational programs.

One day in Carol's reading class a young man was asked to read
aloud. He was reading about a girl. When this young man came to the
end of the paragrah, Carol said, "Describe her," meaning the
character the young man was reading about. The young man answered,
"Describe her?” and Carol replied, "Yes." The young man said, "I
just read it." 'I know but just describe her so that I can see if
you have understood the story." At this point, the young man
proceeded to describe that character.

Another time, students were reading as usual in Carol's world
history class. Carol said to a young man who had just finished

reading a portion of the text they were discussing, "What is a yak?"

97
The young man answered, “Yak?” in a tone which suggested he was
asking a question.

On the same day another young man was asked a question and he
said, "I can't remember.” Carol was not content with this so she
urged him, "I know you know the answer. Come on, speak.“ The young
man then gave the correct answer. It seemed uncertain why he would
not give that answer when he was asked to do so at first. It is
unclear why he answered the same questions after being urged to
speak.

Another narrative already discussed dealt with the definition of
the term ”coral reefs.“ Carol asked students to use both English
dictionaries and some dictionaries which were written in the native
languages of some of her students. ,Surprisingly, all her students in
that class could not grasp the meaning of ”coral reefs," even after
some had read the definition in their language.

One other time, Carol asked an Asian young man to locate China on
a world map which had the United States at the center. This
arrangement split Euro-Asia into two sections. Details about this
map and other maps are in the appendices of this study (Appendix B).
The young man walked to the map with a pointer. He looked at the map
for a while and then asked, “What's wrong with that map?" Perhaps
there was nothing wrong with that map and yet a map like that might
have not been within his realms of experiences and exposure.

One young lady in the regular class was sitting listening to a
lecture on the British government. As the lesson proceeded, her
teacher said the British Prime Minister has a cabinet. The young

lady said, ”I have a cabinet downstairs." What she had downstairs

98
was a piece of furniture. There was a miscommunication between this
young lady and her teacher.

It has already been mentioned that Carol touched one young man's
shoulder and he said, ”Don't touch me.” This was another
miscommunication between the teacher and her student. Touching is a
meaningful gesture but its intended purpose was misconstrued by both
the teacher and her student. It was acceptable from her cultural
perspective for Carol to touch the young man but not from the young
man's perspective. When Carol touched this young man, their two
cultural perspectives were in competition with each other.

The idea that different cultural modes of communication influence
classroom interaction was confirmed by participants who were
interviewed. The assistant principal who was quoted as saying
earlier, "I do not interact with these Indo-Chinese very much because
I don't know what is going on in their culture,” seemed to confirm
the bunch that cultural modes of communication were an important
factor that influenced her interaction with students.

One Mexican-American parent who was included among the five
parents interviewed for this study said, "Everything I say in Spanish
has a connotation.” This statement leaves gaps in our analysis.

What did she mean by this? Did she mean that some of the things she
says in English have no connotation? This can be doubted seriously.
Every statement in any language has a connotation and yet may not
have the same connotation to speakers of other languages. Viewing
her statement in this context it appears that what she was saying
meant things she said in Spanish had more connotation to her and

speakers of that language than to speakers of other languages.

99
Knowledge of the subject matter and of the cultural interactional
styles certainly influenced the level of student participation in
classroom discussions. Once again, a vignette is going to be lifted
from one of Carol's world history classes to illustrate this view.
What is depicted in that narrative was typical of all the lessons in
which the subject matter was familiar to students.

On this particular day during the second hour of the day,
the teacher was getting ready to start a world history
lesson. During the informal time before the lesson began,
these students seemed a little more hyper than they were
during the first hour. One student wanted to use a
dictionary which was being used by another student. He
said, "Give me that dictionary.“ The teacher told him to be
polite. Another boy commented, "I will be polite."

As the teacher approached a Vietnamese girl who tied her
dress with a belt which did not quite match the dress, the
teacher talked to her about color coordination. The girl
said she would try to match her colors.

Pretty soon the world history lesson began with Carol
dictating the following spelling words, "seat, east,
ploughing, flashing, crust, waterlog, evaporation,
mechanization, thrashing." At the end of this writing
exercise they turned in their work. Many of them got the
spelling words right. After grading the work, Carol said,
”Let's all clap our hands for getting all these A's. These
are hard words.” After these remarks she asked them to read
page 81 of their history textbook. One student pronounced
the world ”sheep” as "seep." The teacher helped with the
pronunciation and asked him to repeat it after her slowly.

They were reading about the nomadic people of Mongolia which
is in Asia. It must be remembered that most of the students
in this special bilingual program were Asians. The teacher
interjected while a boy was reading, "Nomadic people are
people who have no fixed home. What's a fixed home?" A
girl who sat near the teacher's table answered, "No
permanent home." They discussed the conditions which are
necessary for farming and after that they located Mongolia
and the Gobi Desert on the map. "What does the word bless
mean?" Carol asked. A Vietnamese boy answered, "I am
blessed by Buddha.” He continued, "I believe in Buddha."

The next section of the textbook chapter dealt with water
buffalos. After reading this, Carol told them that they
were familiar with water buffaloes and they were asked to
talk about them. They were actively engaged in that dis

100

cussion. They talked about how a buffalo produces twice as

much milk as a cow. One Vietnamese girl said when they kill

a buffalo they invite the whole village to come and share

the meat with them. In December they kill a pig and share

the meat with their friends. The discussion ranged from

talking about how buffalo meat is seasoned and dried to how

they cook different types of food. Carol asked questions

and no one repeated the questions before answering them.

Even those who said, "I don't know” in the reading class did

not say that. They talked more freely during this

discussion. (4-29-86)

There was a change of tempo in this lesson. Students were not as
involved in other lessons as they were in this one. The change of
tempo which is evidenced in the preceding vignette seems to suggest
that there was a missing link in the classroom activities at the home
schools. This link did not seem to exist in the activities reported
by the counselors at one of the home schools. It appears that even
some of the activities at the BIC where special bilingual students
showed a certain amount of reluctancy in class participation did not
have this link. According to these observations, the missing link
did not exist in some classroom situations but existed in others.
Even in this situation two Arabic students who were in this class did
not take part in the discussion on Mongolia. One of them tried to
play his Lebanese music on a tape and Carol told him to stop.

The preceding vignette demonstrated how this pattern which was
noted among bilinguals changed in certain situations. This shift in
the same pattern was also noticed among quasi-bilingual students who
were also described as passive recipients.

This researcher had a chance to watch the classroom interaction
during the time when the school district sent two sex education

specialists to G School which was included in this study. The class

interactions on sex education were taped both in the quasi-bilingual

101
class and regular class. In the regular class, students asked many
questions and gave answers to questions asked by one of the
specialists. On the contrary, the specialist who worked with the
quasi-bilingual class probed them.more and more until he gained a
response. Some of them seemed to be shy to talk about sex. The
specialist asked, ”What is going to happen if you get pregnant?"
There was silence for a while. He then pointed to one girl to answer
the question. She said, "My father would kill me.” She answered
that question after the specialist put her on the spot. No one
raised their hand to answer that question and he chose her.

It was easy to conclude on face value that Mexican-American
students in that class were passive and did not like asking
questions. Days after this while this study was still in progress,
the quasi-bilingual teacher brought a boy from another class to role
play Henry Stanley, a historical character who went to search for
David Livingston in Africa. When they were told to ask questions,
students asked questions such as:

Why did you take a lot of Africans in an expedition where
many of them died?

Why did you colonial people remain in Africa trying to teach
Africans even some things they did not want to learn?

Did you care about the African people?

Did you regard them as people?
Once again there was a shift in the pattern which was observed
earlier among the same group of students. Mexican-American students
were reluctant in talking and asking questions about sex and yet they
were active in asking quesions that pertained to justice among the

then oppressed people of Africa. But this was not the end of the

102
whole issue. These students' behaviors were paradoxical, it may be
suggested. On close examination, other types of questions may be
raised. The boy who was role-playing Henry Stanley was about the
same age as those Mexican-American students in the quasi-bilingual
class, whereas the sex education specialist was an adult male. Could
it be possible that students in some cultures find it easier to
dialogue with their peers than with adults? Could it be possible
that they knew this boy who role-played Stanley since they were
attending the same school? These questions suggest possible factors
which might have influenced that behavior change among
quasi-bilingual students. Observations made in both sets of
bilingual students yielded findings which covered a wide range on the
spectrum. Figure 3 illustrates this.

Figure 3
Spectrum Covered by Student Classroom Interaction

 

no participation passive participation active participation
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one end of the spectrum to the other. It must be understood that the
researcher is not claiming that all the students in the regular class
included in this study talked every time. There were some who did
not participate in the regular class, too. It is the degree of
unwillingness to talk about certain things which raised concerns in
the mind of the researcher, particularly those times when students
refused to answer questions which after being probed or persuaded to
answer they answered correctly. These are the situations which

suggest that there was a missing link either in the learning

materials or the approaches which were employed by teachers.

103

To summarize this section, it must be pointed out that

1.

When students did not know the subject matter, the
level of teacher-student interaction was low. Students
were reluctant to discuss unfamiliar subject matter.

When students did not know the intent of their
teacher's questions or request, it stifled
student-teacher interaction. For example, the student
who was asked to describe what he had just read asked,
“Describe her?” When the teacher confirmed that she
wanted him to describe her, he said, "I have just read
it." There were moments of fumbling and uncertainty on
the part of the student.

Reading or discussing topics that related to students'
cultural experiences increased their level of
participation and reduced the moments of fumbling and
uncertainty.

CHAPTER V

Interpretation of Findings

This chapter provides an analysis of the findings discussed in
Chapter IV. In some instances, the data will be quantified or the
intensity of some isolated events will be taken into account. In
addition, the five different sections in Chapter IV are linked
together in a form that unravels the existing patterns in all those

sections.

221223.91

To discover the purposes of the English-only bilingual programs,
it is appropriate to examine elements which received top priority in
the two forms of bilingual programs. Carol, the special bilingual
teacher, is quoted as saying, ”I want my students to learn to speak,
read and write English." This element permeated all of Carol's
lessons which were observed when this study was in progress.

In all 47 observations at the BIG, new words were pronounced,
defined and used in sentences. Carol taught reading and social
studies and these elements were included in all the reading and
social studies classes. This suggests that the teaching of the
English language was one of the major purposes of these bilingual
programs.

Five students who were interviewed individually claimed that they
learned English more in the bilingual classes than they did in their
regular classes. Five parents who were interviewed suggested that

school programs needed to include their cultural backgrounds in the

104

105
teaching-learning materials. Two teachers who taught bilingual
classes saw the importance of this component in their lessons.
Thirty-eight bilingual students were asked to respond to a
questionnaire and they all suggested that their schools should teach
English, their languages and their cultures.

Although there is doubt that the lessons observed when this study
was in progress taught bilingual students' culture, it should be
noted that attempts were made to allow students to view what they
were learning from their cultural perspectives. Examples of such
attempts are depicted in the following citations:

1. Carol said, ”It is your family tree and it represents
your culture. Choose your own colors."

2.. Mr. A said, "I talked about Mexico because these
students are Mexican-Americans. If I had blacks in
this class, I could have included the role played by
blacks in that war.”

3. Carol asked a student, "What do you mean by gay?"

Students were allowed to view their learning materials from their
own perspectives, from their teacher's perspective, and from the
perspective which was projected in the learning materials. These
three perspectives formed an important triad in the lessons that were
observed in the two forms of bilingual programs.

All things considered, it seems appropriate to suggest that the
English-only bilingual programs served interim purposes of furnishing
the bilingual students who lacked English communication skills with

those skills. These programs also allowed the learning process to

include the students' cultural viewpoints.

106
W

In the preceding section the purposes of the English-only
bilingual programs have been articulated. This section examines the
process that was employed to achieve these purposes. Teaching
techniques employed by both Carol and Mr. A are described as the
processes in this discussion.

In all of Carol's lessons, students were asked to pronounce,
define and use vocabulary words in sentences. She encouraged her
students to use dictionaries whenever and wherever possible. She
also provided practical experiences to her students so as to broaden
their exposure. She took them to the state capital, to a zoo and to
a Chinese restaurant. She allowed students to incorporate their
cultural experiences in the process of defining words and in the
sentences which were constructed from those words.

Carol also defined words according to her cultural or
experiential perspectives. For example, she said, "Like a Christmas
decoration,” and “Look at the grain of wood," pointing to the top of
her table. Dictionary definitions, students' own perspectives of the
meanings of those words, and the teacher's perspective became an
important triad in the learning process.

Mr. A.had his students define new words as part of their writing
assignment. It is not known what perspectives were employed in those
writing assignments. Notwithstanding this, his approach to the
subject matter included his students' cultural perspectives.

Likewise, Mr. Dixon, who taught a regular American class,
employed American illustrations which allowed his students to see

things from the American point of view. This suggested that the

107
triad approach to the teaching of new concepts existed in the three
educational programs depending on the cultural backgrounds of the
students who represented those classes. A mismatch was quite
possible in the regular class as well as the special bilingual
classes which had more than one ethnic group. The quasi-bilingual
class was unlikely to have a mismatch because there was one ethnic
group represented in that class and the teacher belonged to the same
ethnic group. They shared the same language and cultural background
which allowed them to employ similar paralinguistic characteristics
and other communicative competences.

One Asian young man who said, "Don't touch me,” to his teacher
must have been influenced by his cultural ways of interactions which
were different from Carol's. Raised under the Buddhist religion
which requires boys and young men not to stay close to a girl or
women, this young man must have been perturbed to see Carol, his
teacher, touching his shoulder. If she had touched his head, it
probably would have been worse because this is considered a taboo in
that culture. Carol said to another youngster who had just finished
reading a passage, “Describe her." Then came the response, "Describe
her?” When Carol said, ”Yes,“ another response came, "I just read
it.” This must have been a communication problem. Perhaps the young
man thought that if he read the passage within the hearing of his
teacher and the whole class who were also following in the book, why
would his teacher request him to "describe her?" Hence, the comment,
"I just read it."

What goes on in interactions that take place at home or other

places outside school? When people ask questions they are seeking

108
information and not testing what the other person knows. School is
one of those few, and perhaps strange, places where people ask others
what they already know so as to test them.

One needs to understand school culture and its communicative
competences before one is expected to interact in modes that are in
harmony with school culture. Before one acquires communicative
skills that are employed in classroom settings, one will be having
moments of fumbling and uncertainty. A typical example of this
situation is a student who knew the answer but did not know how to
interact. When Carol told him that she wanted to see if he
comprehended what he read, that student went on to answer the
question.

How do we know without further investigations whether students
fail to give appropriate answers because of lack of knowledge or
because of failure to understand the communicative competences
involved in questions and answering situations in our classrooms?
How do we know if some students dislike some of their teachers'
paralinguistic characteristics and as a result they refuse to answer
questions in class or say things which are regarded as out of
subject? If a student says "Don't touch me” because he feels
uncomfortable, is he on task or off task? This makes a classroom a
unique and a complex place where teachers make decisions inside
decisions and where students make decisions inside decisions.

Moments of fumbling and uncertainty occurred when students did
not know the subject matter or some concepts in what was being
discussed in the observations that were made in this study. For

example, Carol said, "What is a yak?“ The response from the student

109
was "Yak?” He answered a question with a question. Carol said,
"Yes, yak.” This particular student did not give any further
response which might have implied he did not know what a yak is.
This shows a big difference between the way these youngsters
responded to questions. One knew the answer but did not understand
the intent of the question which became a communication problem
rather than a comprehension problem. There is also a possibility
that responses like that may be used as a launching pad. Some people
repeat a question first and then give an answer.

The latter case does not fall into any of the two categories
described above. The student's problem was not a communication
problem nor a comprehension problem. He just did not know what a yak
was. This was an information problem. He had not been exposed to
yaks before. There was no prior knowledge nor experiences which
exposed him to yaks. If he indeed knew what yaks were then perhaps
the English word yak could have been problematic which still leads to
the problem of exposure, exposure either to the word or to what that
word symbolizes.

Answering questions with questions among some of Carol's students
stemmed from three possible premises:

1. It could have been used as a launching pad to answer the

teacher's question. People repeat questions sometimes
to allow themselves enough time to think through their
answers or to gain further assurance that they have
understood the question. In such cases, answering a
question with a question becomes a launching pad from
which the answering process begins.

2. It could have been that the student did not quite
understand the intent of the question which means that
there was a mismatch between the communicative
competences and paralinguistic characteristics of the
teacher and those of the students. It is known that

mismatches between a teacher and students have a
negative influence on classroom interactions.

110

3. It could be that the student had no prior knowledge of
and experience with the content on which he was asked
questions.

’;0; ;g '.; Q _;9 9‘ _e;g ' D; 9 sq e We 0‘ {go i 09“

How did students define words in the observations already
narrated in Chapter IV? Students in the two forms of bilingual
programs had vocabulary words to define in all of their bilingual
classes. In the special bilingual classes the new words were not
supposed to be more than twelve in each class session. Forty-seven
observations were made in the special bilingual classes; thus during
these observations, a possible total of 564 new words were defined by
Carol and her students. Out of this fairly large list, four words
were selected. One word was drawn from the regular class which gives
a possible total of 565 words. Including this one, five words were
selected randomly from lessons in which they were presented.

It is interesting to note that in all the five situations where
these words were defined, students relied more on their cultural
experiences or exposure to define words than on dictionary
definitions. Experience in this case was used by students as a
scaffolding on which vocabulary words were defined. To draw from a
illustration already given, a girl said, "I have a cabinet
downstairs“ when her teacher was talking about the British Prime
Minister's cabinet of ministers. Her experience with a piece of
furniture downstairs led her to select that meaning from two possible
meanings of that word.

There were instances when students rejected the teacher's

definitions and substituted their own. For example, A-l said, "Grain

111
means food" as she refused to accept her teacher's definition of that
word. Teachers in some situations acted in the same way. The
substitute teacher rejected a student's definition that "Acting means
taking someone's job like a sub does.“ Here, the substitute's
behavior seemed to reveal that he was sensitive to that definition.
How do people from many different cultural and linguistic backgrounds
know what things are sensitive and which are not? Such issues in
this study influenced classroom interactions, the way people defined
words and social actions. Such situations influenced their
attitudes, too.

It was stated earlier that the definition of "coral reefs" was
problematic even though some students read that definition from their
languages. These students lacked exposure to situations where coral
reefs existed. In another situation, narrated in Chapter IV, the
word "creative“ did not exist in the Vietnamese dictionaries which
were in the classroom. This created a limitation in those students'
learning experiences. Learning in that situation was not a
progression from the known to the unknown or from familiar
experiences to novel experiences. This exposure could have been used
as a scaffolding where the definition of "coral reefs” or "creative"

was going to be launched.

WWW

Patterns which existed when students were selecting definitions
of words also existed when students were asked to name their favorite
subjects. Different ethnic and linguistic groups made significant

differences in the way they selected and actually performed in

112
different subjects. 52.2t of the special bilingual students, the
bulk of whom were Vietnamese, chose mathematics as their favorite.
In the quasi-bilingual class, composed of Mexican-Americans, 26.6%
chose mathematics as a favorite subject. The regular American class
which had several ethnic groups had 20% choose mathematics as a
favorite subject.

It was even more interesting when achievement records were
reviewed. Students' achievement scores were nearly corresponding
with the choices of favorite subject they made. For instance, 50% of
the Vietnamese whose records were reviewed performed above average in
mathematics. Students whose records were reviewed from the other two
programs were lower than that of the special bilingual classes.

This superiority in mathematics among most of the Vietnamese
students suggests earlier exposure to that subject. This argument is
supported by the fact that their performance in English was not as
high. In fact, as was narrated in Chapter IV, the English language
is their most serious problem in school. Once again, the scaffolding
which is experience and exposure must have been missing or minimal in
the formative years of these youngsters. The same argument holds as
far as students' classroom interactions were concerned. When
students knew their teachers' communicative competences and the
intent of their teachers' questions, the result was high yield in

student-teacher interaction and teacher-student interaction.

MW

What grand story do the pieces gathered in these data tell? How

do these pieces hang together? Before these questions can be

113

addressed adequately, it is appropriate to review the main findings

of this study:

1.

The purpose of the two forms of bilingual programs which
employed English as the only medium of instruction was to
furnish bilingual students who had limitations in English
communication skills with those skills and/or to help
bilingual students view the subject matter from their
cultural and experiential perspective.

(a) To teach English to special bilingual students by having
them pronounce and use words in sentences. Students were
encouraged to use dictionaries.

(b) In the process of learning English, students were
encouraged to include in their discussions situations

drawn from their cultures.

The quasi-bilingual students view the content in their

elessons from the Mexican-American historical perspective.

This was the process that was employed to achieve the already

stated purposes of the English-only bilingual program.

The processes or techniques employed in the regular class
were not geared to teaching students English communication
skills but to teach the content. Students were, however,
allowed to see things from both their cultural and

experiential perspectives.

The

Purposes of the program' A
well articulated 1

Teaching techniques or
processes

content

h
e
Students' knowledge of the l
P

114
Students' cultural experiences and exposure when employed as
a scaffolding upon which the new learning experiences were
launched helped to increase the level of student-teacher
interactions. Knowledge of the subject matter and.of
communicative competences also increased student-teacher

interactions.

Teachers' interactional styles and their knowledge of the
students' communicative competences seemed to enhance
teacher-student interactions. It seems apart from what was
taught in these bilingual classes; what was caught in the

process also influenced classroom interactions.

following figure charts these findings.

Figure 4
Elements That Influenced High Yield
in Classroom Interaction
Students' prior knowledge
and experiences

Knowledge of the communi-
cative competences

040H'UBH

Classroom interaction or teacher-student interaction

Literature that has been reviewed in this area seems to agree

that there are complexities in bilingual education. Though the line

of focus differs from one study to another, linkages exist among the

115
issues which are raised. Following are the isues which have been
reviewed in Chapter II of this study. An attempt is made to let them
shed light on the present study and vice versa.

Howe and Elderman's (1985) study suggested that language minority
students are dropping out of school at rates that are proportionately
higher than those of the majority students. From their findings they
concluded that because of the high drop-out rate among the bilingual
students the nation is at risk. These two authors claim that it is
difficult to measure the cultural biases that exist in school
although their study underlines the seriousness of the problems that
arise due to the cultural biases existing in school.

Bilingual students face a great many adjustment and language
problems (Rao, 1974; Sanchez, 1979) which may lead to reading and
other learning problems (Sanchez, 1979, p. 2). Sanchez found that
when students are taught by teachers who belong to their ethnic
group(s) academic achievement scores increase. Apparently, teachers
from the same ethnic background of the students extenuate cultural
differences.

Erickson (1981), in his findings, suggests that constituting
environments for one another and sharing the same social meanings
among participants is crucial in the teaching-learning process. In
order to draw similar social meanings to situations, words, or
behavior, participants need to understand both the culture and the
social context of what is going on (Erickson, 1981; Seville-Troika,
1986).

Some interactions in the present study were described as

problematic. Participants in those interactions did not have proper

116
contexts in which some words were said or in which some social action
took place. These issues and their implications will be discussed in

the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI
Summary, Conclusions, Implications for Research
and Practice, and Recommendations

This study investigated factors that influenced school district
authorities to decide that bilingual students who need to learn
English communication skills should be withdrawn from their regular
classes and sent to bilingual classes even though the language of
instruction was English in those pullout programs. It was necessary
to compare the activities of bilingual students in the reading and
social studies classes to those of the regular 8th grade social
studies class to determine whether there were differences in what was
going on in the three programs. This school district had two types
of bilingual programs: the special bilingual program and the
school-building level bilingual program (quasi-bilingual program).

Two sites were selected for this study. One school housed the
regular 8th grade social studies class and the quasi-bilingual 8th
grade social studies class which were included in this study. The
second school was a vocational education center and the Bilingual
Instruction Center (BIC) was housed in this school building. Here
the special bilingual students learned English and social studies.
Some students who were diagnosed as lacking in reading competence
skills included reading among those classes they took at the BIC.

The primary method used for gathering data was participant
observation. This method entailed a great deal of note taking. All
the interviews except those done at the BIC were audiotaped.

A total of 79 classroom observations were made when this study

was in progress. Five parents, five students, two teachers, two

I

117

118
counselors, one assistant principal, the coordinator of the special
bilingual program, and one Vietnamese bilingual education specialist
were interviewed.

The state bilingual education requirements and school district
bilingual education requirements were reviewed for this study. A
questionnaire was completed by 30 regular students, 23 special
bilingual students, and 15 quasi-bilingual students. After data were
gathered from these sources, ethnographic research methodologies were

employed to analyze and interpret the findings. Conclusions were

then drawn from these findings.

We

The following conclusions were drawn from the findings of this
study. The purposes of the English-only bilingual programs where
students were pulled out of their regular classes for reading,
English, and social studies were to (a) furnish these students with
English communication skills which they lacked, serving as an interim
link between the students' home culture and the school programs and
(b) help students to view the content they were learning from their
cultural and experiential perspectives. Viewed from this
perspective, students' cultural experiences and exposure became a
scaffolding upon which new learning experiences were launched.

Techniques that were used in the special bilingual classes
allowed students to pronounce and use vocabulary words in sentences
before they encountered those words in the content or subject matter

which they were learning. This leads to the following conclusion.

119

Approaches that were used in the three programs were different
from each other. In the special bilingual classes the teaching of
English received top priority. Students pronounced new English words
and used them in sentences before they started discussing the subject
matter. Oral reading was included in all of the 47 class sessions
that were observed in the special bilingual program. The
quasi-bilingual class placed emphasis on helping students to view the
subject from their cultural viewpoint. The regular class focused
more on the subject matter than on the processes that were observed
in the two forms of bilingual programs.

Prior knowledge of the content to be discussed and students'
experiences and exposure had an influence on teacher-student and
student-teacher interaction. Teacher-student interaction was
initiated by the teacher and student-teacher interaction was
initiated by the student.

Experiences and exposure were employed as a scaffolding upon
which students built definitions of new words. They also influenced
students' choices of favorite subject and performance in all school
subjects.

The subject content taught in the classroom and the learning
environment influenced classroom interactions.

During the classroom interactions both the teachers and students
communicative competences influenced the degree to which bilingual
students participated in classroom discussions. A mismatch between a
teacher and a student in the area of communicative competences
influenced lack of participation on the part of the student. When

questions or requests to take part in discussing the content were

120
given, some students did not understand the intent of the questions
or requests due to this mismatch problem. When the intent of the
questions was not understood, there was a moment of fumbling and
uncertainty among students who were asked to give answers to those
questions. Students sometimes spoke in question-like tones to ask
their teacher to clarify the intent of her questions or they repeated
her questions. Repeating the teacher's questions served three
functions among special bilingual students. First, it indicated that
students did not understand their teacher's intention in asking them
the question. Second, it was employed as a launching pad or a place
where students' answers began. Third, it was used by some students
as an indicator that they did not know some answers to the teacher's

questions.

W

It has been suggested that students' cultural perspectives
influenced classroom interactions, the way students defined words,
how they selected favorite subjects and their performance in those
subjects. It appears that there was a need on the part of the
teachers to find epistemological connections between the content they
taught and the aforementioned factors which influenced classroom
interactions. These factors were extending beyond the four walls of
classrooms. Students' cultural backgrounds and communicative
competences were at times in competition with those of their teachers
or with the content of learning.

Where there seemed to be greater success in classroom

interactions and in attaching meanings to vocabulary words or social

121
behaviors, learning activities were viewed from three perspectives:
the students', the teacher's and the perspectives portrayed in the
written materials.

This cultural and experiential component in the teaching-learning
process influenced students' definitions of words more than did
dictionaries and other materials which were used for that purpose.
This condition leads to the next suggestion.

A triad approach to the teaching of new words and concepts
included the students' perspectives, the teacher's and that which was
projected in the content of learning. This approach appeared to have
had a high yield in student participation in classroom discussions.
However, more follow up work could have provided more evidence to
this if bilingual students' classroom behavior was observed in their
home schools as well. Because such follow up work was not feasible
when this study was in progress, it has weakened the evidence which
supports the initial purposes of these English-only forms of

bilingual programs.

mandarin:

From this study, the following recommendations can be drawn.

The triad approach to the learning of new words and concepts
seemed to have had a high yield in student participation in classroom
discussions. Reading activities could have yielded more beneficial
results in the special bilingual classes if the language experience
approach to the teaching of reading was employed. This approach
allows students to dictate experience stories to their teachers and

these experience stories then become the initial reading materials

122
for the students. Students will be motivated to read their own
stories. The stories will not be threatening since they will be
written in the students' own vocabulary. It seems there was a need
to intertwine the triad approach to the teaching of new words and
concepts with language experience approach especially in the reading
activities which were observed in the special bilingual reading
lessons.

More comparisons between the bilingual students' classroom
interactions in the home schools and their bilingual classes need to
be done. This will help to define the purposes of the English-only
focus of bilingual programs.

Experimental studies on the language experience approach to the
teaching of reading may provide more information needed to support
the suggested triad approach to the teaching of new words and

concepts.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

How My Thinking Has Changed Since February 1, 1984

An Intellectual Autobiography of the Research Process

With reference to my fieldwork experience since the beginning of
this research study, I can safely say human experiences and behaviors
are undulatory and very unpredictable. I went to the Bilingual
Instruction Center with a bias. I questioned the wisdom of running a
special bilingual program if the medium of instruction was English.
When I went to the bilingual center, I intended to prove my bias that
there was no need to run such a program. I contended that both the
regular program and the bilingual program were basically doing the
same thing.

Surprisingly, when the observations started, I discovered that
although the two programs were teaching the same concepts, the
approaches used in the two programs were substantially different.
There were different approaches to the subject matter and yet it was
not easy to direct my focus onto one particular feature of the events
that were taking place in those classrooms. At one point, I decided
to study how differences in culture among these students influenced
the way they were learning. I took notes of all the things that were
happening. In most of the events, it was difficult to determine
whether certain behaviors were influenced by the participant's
culture or the amount and kind of exposure that participant has had.
As I continued to review the strings that ran through my notes,

certain patterns began to emerge. I began to notice that students

123

124
responded to the teacher's questions in a somewhat different way in'
the special bilingual class. They seemed to exhibit a certain amount
of reluctance when making class contributions. But this was by no
means always happening this way. This put me in a position where I
started to doubt my beliefs and believe my doubts. I made hunches; I
made assertions which I later disbelieved and modified. At one time,
the students were asked to read a story about a dog. The teacher
defined a word for them. One student spoke to another student in
their own language, perhaps one of the Vietnamese languages. I
concluded he was defining that word in his language. After class I
was not satisfied with my conclusion, so I asked the boy what he was
telling his friend. He was asking whether his friend had a dog at
home or not. This event and many other events led me to question
things, even those that seemed obvious to me. For days I went on
watching and questioning what was happening.

During the initial data gathering process, I asked a white male
teacher, ”How do these students from different ethnic groups relate
to you?” He had white students, black students, Hispanic students,
and one Native American student in his social studies class. He told
me he did not look for those things in his class. He looked at his
students as students and not as different racial groups. He sent me
to a teacher next door whom he said looked for those things I was
asking for. I am black. When I got to the classroom next door, I
discovered this teacher was black. It was then that I clearly
understood what that teacher was saying. To him, my question
appeared to find out if he was a racist or not. This was a sensitive

question to ask. That may be the reason why he sent me to a black

125

teacher who surprisingly asked me, "Why did he send you to me? I
don't know anything about that!" I never got my answer to the
question. I was not looking for racism. ijas looking for
differences in the ways students from different ethnic groups
behaved.

In the process of time, I thought I had learned from these
situations. ”No more sensitive questions now!” I told myself. In
spite of this awareness, I still had more lessons to learn and more
mysteries to solve.

When X, a student labelled on one of the seating positions in
Chapter III, said that Americans think people who do not know how to
speak English are stupid, I asked what his teacher thought about
that. She said, "You are stretching it too far. He was not
serious. He talks too much, you know. . . and girls tease him."
Here, the teacher appeared to be defensive about the attitudes of
Americans in general. This was again a sensitive issue. I did not
raise this issue, a student did. What I was trying to do was to seek
explanations for a statement which I felt was powerful. What I
learned from this episode was to turn elsewhere for answers and
explanations to this pending question. I instead turned to my
interviewees for answers to this question.

When I asked the interviewees what they thought about this
question, four out of five held the same view: they thought
Americans looked at them as though they were stupid if they did not
know how to speak English. The fifth interviewee suggested that
Americans skip whatever part of the conversation they think their

non-American friends failed to understand. These differing views led

126

me to modify my assertion and I decided to look at the issue as a
two-way problem in which the non-American trying to communicate with
them gets the impression that he/she is being treated as stupid.

Such issues as the above kept altering my thinking. As my
thinking kept changing, I did not accept what I heard on face value.
I questioned and questioned to look for deep rooted answers which lay
beneath what people were saying. I started to treat familiar things
as though they were strange and strange things as though they were
familiar. When I did so, this gave me more opportunities to ask
questions. Through these questions, I got a variety of answers,
sometimes contradictory answers. These answers unfolded a lot of
information to me. These answers, to a large measure, shaped my
thinking.

In an interview with the teacher who taught in the
quasi-bilingual program, we discussed the problems he saw in that
program. He pointed out that he did not see major problems in the
building-level bilingual program but he thought the BIC was losing
students who had sufficiently mastered English skills. He said they
should reevaluate their goals so that they do not lose their
students. Yet, inherent in the goals that are articulated in the
special bilingual program is the idea that as soon as those students
mastered sufficient English communication skills they should be sent
back to the regular programs. The quasi-bilingual level program was
operating on different goals from those articulated at the BIC. The
quasi-bilingual program aimed at keeping their students, whereas the
special bilingual program served interim purposes of endowing the

students with English communication skills and also helped students

127

adapt to the American culture while in the process of viewing the
content of learning from their own cultural perspectives. Three
perspectives were employed in the teaching-learning process. This
triad approach to learning was more pronounced in the special
bilingual classes than in the other two programs.

These discussions and the information I got from the participants
modified my thinking. When I encountered these different views, I
asked more questions, I listened more, and I watched more closely to
see silent but salient information which was enshrined in the
behaviors of the informants.

This is how my thinking has changed since the time this study was
in progress. Now I have new tools through which I view the world.

Yes, my thinking has changed since February 1, 1984.

APPENDIX B

The following maps illustrate how students may be confused if

they have not been exposed to maps drawn from different projections.

128

 

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APPENDIX C

X, who is discussed in Appendix A, drew a picture (a photocopy of
which is shown in this appendix). The day following the U.S. raid on
Libya, X's teacher discussed the U.S.-Libya confrontation with her
class. Two days after this discussion, X brought a picture to
class. In his art class, students were asked to draw pictures which
reflected their feelings about the U.S.-Libya situation.

Others in their pictures opted for war but X opted for peace.

Two hands clasped together symbolized peace in Vietnam before the
communists took over. X came to the United States in search for
peace. Now he is opting for peace in his art class. His picture
reflects Vietnamese cultural experiences. There was a replay of
experiences in his picture. Peace efforts brought X out of Vietnam
but they did not take Vietnam out of the young man. His Vietnamese
experiences are still reflecting on his attitudes and feelings in his
art class.

It seems in the teaching-learning process cultural experiences
are intertwined with learning experiences. This suggests that a
tried approach to learning is important because it allows the student
to view the content of learning from his/her own perspective, from
the teacher's perspective, and from the perspective which is
projected in the printed materials. This suggested approach has
certain elements which are common to the language experience approach

to reading.

132

 

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