Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Publication Date

6-3-1973

Abstract

The Problem

The education of the Spanish-speaking Mexican-American child has been the concern of educators and governmental agencies due to his limited knowledge of the English language, low achievement in the subject areas, negative self-concept, and generally slower educational progress in the schools. Bilingual education has been implemented as one alternative in seeking to improve educational opportunities for this minority ethnic group. The preparation of bilingual classroom teachers to impart instruction through the Spanish language - a language in which the majority of these practicing or potential teachers have not received formal professional training - has posed several problems. A central problem is that teachers who have for the most part practiced their Spanish within a social and familial context are in need of specialized training in the use of the various levels of communication occurring in the classroom environment.

Statement of the problem. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a theoretical Spanish language instructional model for bilingual education which would be: (1) comprehensive as a system which describes a teacher's total repertoire of Spanish linguistic behaviors in a bilingual classroom environment, (2) discriminant within levels of Spanish language and among individuals and groups tested, and (3) related to the needs of bilingual education teacher training programs.

Procedures for the Study

The design of the study included the derivation of a theoretical Spanish language instructional model based on current sociolinguistic theory and on intuitive and empirical assumptions about general Spanish language instructional competency in the bilingual classroom. The five general components or levels of the model included: (1) the local Spanish dialect, (2) classroom commands and directions, (3) concepts, (4) professional communication, and (5) knowledge about language. The theoretical model was delineated and exemplified through the establishment of more specific categories and sub-categories for the above mentioned five-levels and through the accumulation of an array of discrete Spanish language units (lexical and syntactical) for each of these categories. This collection of language items was regarded as the total verbal repertoire of the model. A diagnostic evaluation instrument derived from the theoretical Spanish language instructional model was tested through the preliminary pretryout stage with two hundred potential and practicing bilingual teachers in the central and northern parts of the state of New Mexico. A panel of experts judged the worth and comprehensiveness of the model and the verbal repertoire and selected a smaller verbal repertoire and the most appropriate set of one hundred test items for the instrument developed here to preliminarily test the model. Descriptive statistics were employed to describe the population's scores, and differences in scores were related to such demographic variables as position, experience, ethnicity, education, sex, age, study of Spanish, first language spoken, geographic origin, and training.

Findings

The model was preliminarily validated through the development of procedures which began with the use of sociolinguistics to derive a five-level classroom language framework, the establishment of verbal repertoires, panel of experts consensus; and terminated with the construction, administration, and analysis of the diagnostic evaluation instrument of the study. This instrument was able to discriminate among subjects with varying levels of professional preparation and experiential background, as well as differentiate between levels of the test itself. The demographic variables most nearly related to competency as measured by the test were education, study of the Spanish language, ethnicity, position, and experience.

Recommendations

It is recommended that the sociolinguistic notions about language in the classroom, the theoretical Spanish language instructional model, its verbal repertoires, larger samples of the population, and the whole question of assessment of the Spanish component of the bilingual classroom be subjected to further investigation and research in order to answer questions related to validity, reliability, generalizability, and the role of language within a situational/contextual dimension in the classroom.

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Elementary Education

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy

First Committee Member (Chair)

Keith F. Auger

Second Committee Member

David Wayne Darling

Third Committee Member

Miles Vernon Zintz

Fourth Committee Member

Dolores Gonzales

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