| dc.description.abstract | In public education in Texas, administrators, educators, and policymakers struggle with decisions on how to improve overall quality instruction to meet the needs of English language learner (ELL) student populations. Specifically, there is an ever-increasing need to provide effective teacher pedagogy to ELLs that promotes positive academic outcomes and to evaluate effectiveness of the quality of instruction in the bilingual classroom context. Therefore, researchers have asserted it is critical to collect observational evidence related to quality instruction that impacts to students’ academic outcomes. It is also important to examine variables that relate to instructional practices and classroom occurrences with at-risk student populations such as ELLs. Through continued observation of teachers’ pedagogical practices with ELL students, it is possible to determine the factors that may impact quality or lack of quality in classroom instruction that which in the long run may improve teacher development. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationships among related variables within the domains of language of instruction, language of content, communication mode and activity structure from teacher observations conducted in second grade bilingual education classes. As part of original study, there was a treatment and control group that took part. The identified variables and domains serve as the foundation of a four-dimensional model known as the Transitional Bilingual Observation Protocol (TBOP) that was implemented in over 100 classrooms as part of a grant-funded project, ELLA. Data will be analyzed to see to what extent these variables are highly related within the process that allows English language learners (ELLs) to acquire language as well as literacy skills. The data used for this study was pre-existing and taken from a randomized, longitudinal, federally funded research project (Project ELLA, U.S. Department of Education Award No. #R305P030032, 2003-2008). As part of this investigation, a non-parametric design implementing a Chi-squared test of independence and Cramer’s V were used to analyze the relationship (significance and strength) between condition and categorical variables under each domain (language of instruction, language content, communication mode, and activity structure) that occurs within the context of transitional bilingual classroom. An additional analysis consisting of Odds Ratio (OR) was implemented to examine the effect size of specific category under each of the four domains. | |
