"How can I teach students if I can't speak to them?" Practices experienced elementary general music educators use to respond to linguistic diversity

Means, Abby Gail

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117707 Copy

Description

Title

"How can I teach students if I can't speak to them?" Practices experienced elementary general music educators use to respond to linguistic diversity

Author(s)

Means, Abby Gail

Issue Date

2022-08-16

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Sweet, Bridget

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Sweet, Bridget

Committee Member(s)

• Barrett, Janet R
• McCord, Kimberly A
• Nichols, Jeananne

Department of Study

Music

Discipline

Music Education

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• emergent bilingual
• emergent multilingual
• English as a second language (ESL)
• elementary general music
• English Language Learners (ELL)
• linguistic diversity
• music teacher preparation
• music education

Abstract

In 2019, 60.3% of all students labelled English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States were enrolled in the early childhood grades of K-3rd, representing over half of the linguistically diverse students in K-12th public schools nationwide (NCES, 2020a). This demographic is not shared by their music educators, as 95.17% of music teachers in the U.S. reported that English is their “first and only language” (Elpus, 2015, p. 321). Elementary music teachers facilitate learning for the entire population of a school, meaning that they are, in essence, responsible for creating social and music-making experiences for the largest percentage of ELLs in public schools. For this reason, this study specifically focused on elementary general music teachers who taught the early childhood grade levels of K-3rd. Palmer and Martínez (2013) promote using the term emergent bilingual for this population of students, as this term refuses the deficit perspective that assumes students are missing English, but instead focuses on the knowledge that these students are continually engaging in the use of two languages. However, because many of the students in this study already spoke two languages before learning English, I chose to adapt this term to emergent multilingual to recognize the complex linguistic repertoires they possessed and worked within. The purpose of this study was to examine strategies that monolingual, experienced general music educators use when teaching emergent multilingual students in an English-speaking general music classroom. The two research questions were: 1. What practices do experienced elementary general music educators use when teaching emergent multilingual students in the music classroom? 2. From what sources did these music educators develop teaching practices and strategies to better facilitate emergent multilingual music students? A multiple case study design was used to examine the practices and resources of three elementary general music teachers who were regarded by their peers as equitable facilitators of linguistically diverse students. Data revealed four themes that emerged from analysis of the classroom artifacts, observed teaching episodes, three semi-structured interviews, and classroom environment descriptions. These themes included the teachers’ use of multimodalities, use of multiliteracies, consistency in teaching practices, and purpose/intent. Translanguaging was also examined within the music classroom context to determine if music teachers who were not aware of translingual pedagogies still created an environment to serve as a linguistic third space. This study was situated within a teacher knowledge framework, acknowledging the importance of a teacher’s personal practical knowledge in making pedagogical and instructional decisions.

Graduation Semester

2022-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Abby Means

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