Olga A. Vásquez

Meaning Construction in School Literacy Tasks: A Study of Bilingual Students

This study examined the ways in which Mexican-American students construct meaning when reading school materials. It focused on the strategies they use when reading English and Spanish, the knowledge sources they call upon, and the ways in which these relate to understanding. Twelve fifth-grade students, all who come from bilingual homes, were asked to read both Spanish and English stories and informational pieces. Interspersed questions, post reading probes, and oral and written recalls were designed to tap their text understanding over time, as well as what they recalled after reading each piece. Interviews and school records provided background information about the students’ personal and school histories both in the United States and in Mexico. Transcripts, fieldnotes, and student writing samples were analyzed for patterns in the students’ approaches to the construction of meaning and in their differential uses of language and genre. Findings indicate that: (a) beyond a necessary basic, but limited knowledge of English, the students’ abilities to use good meaning-making strategies made the major difference in how well they comprehended in both Spanish and English; (b) the students’ language competence in Spanish helped them understand and respond to questions in both languages; (c) the students’ familiarity with genre affected their ability to build meanings in both languages; and (d) the kinds of questions the students were asked affected their ability to communicate what they understood.

Latinos in the Global Context: Beneficiaries or Irrelevants?.

It is well established that the impact of globalization is immediate and widespread. Yet the public institution most affected by this force of change is slow in responding to the need for change in content and its conceptualization of the learner and citizen. This article examines at ground level the impact that this inertia has on one of the youngest and fastest growing groups in the United States: U.S. Latinos. Although gifted with many of the skills and dispositions highly valued in the global economy, U.S. Latinos face three major educational roadblocks that impede their access to the global village: a low-quality education, resegregation across the educational system, and limited access to higher education.

Accountability of the informal: challenges and new directions

This article focuses on the assessment of impact of La Clase Mágica (The Magic Class), or LCM, on child participants at a time of demands for accountability in Californian schools. LCM is a bilingual/bicultural, computer-based, after-school programme serving Mexican American and Native American communities in San Diego County since 1989. This article discusses the challenges and lessons drawn from the evaluation of this programme and suggests new directions in the accountability of informal learning environments. In particular, we address the results of the Preschool Study, aimed at evaluating the preschool component of LCM, which worked in collaboration with a local Head Start programme for the past 16 years. We argue that the evaluation of the effectiveness of after-school programmes and other informal learning environments is complexly interrelated to funding and programmatic conditions. However, despite the difficulties encountered during the assessment procedure, we agree on the benefits of incorporating a mixed-method, cross-institutional framework, which can serve as the basis of future evaluations of after-school programmes in different contexts.