English learners are the fastest growing segment of the public school population in the United States. The School’s faculty and researchers have deep expertise in issues surrounding the assessment, teaching and learning of English learners. Find more on our research and other resources here.
Our research focuses on the language and literacy development of young children, particularly dual language learners. We have several ongoing projects. The lab is supported by grants from the National Institute of Health, Foundation for Child Development, Language Learning, and Yolo Community Foundation.
Many assume bilingual education can level the academic playing field for English learners, but one UC Davis professor calls foul on current programmatic practices.
In a new paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) on April 20, 2015, education professor Chris Faltis argues that “colorblind” approaches to multilingualism in education mask agendas that privilege the dominant, or “whitestream,” culture.
Through this study, professors Jamal Abedi and Christian Faltis investigating the impact of the WRITE Tier 2 writing program on the academic performance of English Language Learner (ELL) students and on teacher instructional practices in middle and high schools.
Implementing Educational Language Policy in Arizona: Legal, Historical, and Current Practices in SEI, edited by Chris Faltis and M. Beatriz Arias, brings together scholars, researchers, and educators to present a critical examination of Arizona’s restrictive language policies as they influence teacher preparation and practice. The Structured English Immersion model prescribes the segregation of English learners for four hours a day from English speakers and academic content for a minimum of one year.
George Yonge, education professor emeritus, is translating Afrikaans texts from the faculty of education at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Yonge says that the depth and substance of the work done in the faculty has led to his decision to spend part of his retirement years by making these texts accessible to a wider audience. Read more at the University of Pretoria’s Web site.
Standardized testing that seeks to measure students’ English language proficiency has improved significantly nationwide since 2001, when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, according to “English Language Proficiency Assessment in the Nation: Current Status and Future Practice,” a report edited by Professor Jamal Abedi in November 2007. Read the Executive Summary. Abedi’s 196-page report is the first to summarize the progress of the four effort s and to report on the current testing landscape nationwide.
Margarita Jimenez-Silva is an associate professor and director of teacher education at the School of Education in University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on preparing and supporting teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse learners, especially in addressing emergent bilinguals’ linguistic and academic content development. More specifically, her research strands include teacher education pedagogy and curriculum, educational policy, and family/community engagement.
Anthropology of consciousness; Bilingual Education; Child Development; Classroom discourse; Classroom research; Community and rural development; Critical discourse analysis; Cultural studies; Education in Developing Countries; Ethnography and Ethnographic research; Feminist theory; Geographical areas of Hawai’i and Solomon Islands; Indigenous epistemology; Language Acquisition; Language development and socialization; Language socialization theory; Linguistic anthropology; Literacy and Language policy; Organizational structure/effectiveness; Pidgin/creole langu
Specializing in educational and psychological assessments, Jamal Abedi’s research focuses on testing for English language learners and issues concerning the technical characteristics and interpretations of these assessments. Abedi is the author of many publications in the assessment of and accommodations for English-language learners. He is on the advisory committees for several major assessment organizations and advises a number of states on testing for English learners and children with disabilities.
Faculty ProfileEMPHASIS AREA: LLC. Academic language; Academic literacy; English learners; Language development and socialization; First- and second-language writing
I research the relationship between students’ everyday uses of language (English and Spanish) and their engagement in school-based uses of language and literacy. Some schools identify bilingual adolescents as “limited” in their English proficiency even though they use sophisticated literacy repertoires outside of school; other learners are deemed ”fluent” in English but still struggle with the language and literacy demands of their academic coursework.
Faculty ProfileEMPHASIS AREA: LLC. Adolescent Language and Literacy; English Education; Linguistic Anthropology of Education; Sociocultural Approaches to Learning; Discourse Analysis; Black and Latina/o Youth Interactions; Ethnography
Faculty ProfileEMPHASIS AREA: LLC. Early literacy; English learners; Bilingualism and bilingual education; Educational television and multimedia; Language acquisition
Early Literacy; English Learners; Bilingualism and Bilingual Education; Educational Television and Multimedia; Language Acquisition; Literacy development; Quantitative methods; Sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.
