Research Starter Grant: An Examination of Effective Methods of Communicating About Language Variation to Educators

智力价值国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学少数族裔博士后奖学金启动助学金资助了一个项目的启动，该项目旨在研究向K-12教育工作者沟通语言差异问题的有效方法，并为Anne Harper Charity Hudley在弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡的威廉与玛丽学院担任助理教授提供基础设施支持。Pi？S博士后奖学金#512005评估了听众如何根据一系列学术和社会特征来评判说非裔美国英语和美国东南部英语的年轻人的声音。听众经常认为说英语的非裔美国年轻人的学术能力较差，他们的反应表明，许多教育工作者对英语内部的变异知之甚少。这些结果为这一后续项目提供了动力，该项目探索了引导教育者认识语言差异和语言不容忍的现实的方法。该项目有三个累积目标。首先，国际学生联合会将与巴尔的摩和里士满四所K-12学校的100名教育工作者合作举办研讨会，向不同方言学生的教育工作者传播准确和基础的语言知识。其次，一个由40名教育顾问组成的小组将与国际教育协会合作，制定教学上合理和语言上知情的战略，利用语言学家开发的、但大多数教育工作者基本上不知道的方法，解决学生语言和写作方面的差异。策略包括提高对语言变异的认识的最佳做法，教授关于语言变异的系统性的知识，以及利用关于语言变异的系统性的知识来帮助学生获得标准化的英语。第三，PI将从40名教育顾问那里收集一系列定量和定性的数据(来自测试前和测试后的调查、参与者的观察、简短的反思回答和深入访谈)，以揭示他们从研讨会中学到了什么知识，以及它如何为他们的语言相关教学策略提供参考。更广泛的影响这个项目的联合经验和应用性质有助于社会语言学和教育的理论和实践。这些发现将增加一小部分但具有批判性的文献，这些文献不仅涉及教育者对语言变异的了解，还涉及教育者如何处理这些信息并设想它在课堂上的使用。这一系列的工作坊培训将帮助教育工作者更充分地将语言、识字和文化知识融入课堂，从而帮助他们的学生满足学术和社会成功的语言要求。NSF的资助将允许教育顾问前往里士满和巴尔的摩的四个学校地点，以确保教育顾问制定针对其学校环境的有针对性的解决方案。这笔资金将确保教育工作者能够出席并充分参与讲习班，无论他们的经济状况如何。这笔赠款还将提供支持所有讲习班参与者的材料，并将支持开发一个专门针对讲习班的网站，以确保教育工作者更广泛地了解该项目的结果。这个项目的结果将帮助语言学家改进和实施未来的研讨会，以同样的方式与教育工作者就语言变异的主题建立联系。这项研究为社会语言学家和教育工作者以一种更具协作性的方式合作，促进非标准化英语学生的教育成就奠定了基础。由于PI在本科生部门任教，该奖项还将支持本科生参与研究的各个方面。

Intellectual MeritThis National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Minority Post-Doctoral Fellowship Starter Grant funds the launch of a project designed to examine effective methods of communicating issues about language variation to K-12 educators and provides infrastructural support for Anne Harper Charity Hudley in her position of Assistant Professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.The PI?s postdoctoral fellowship # 512005 assessed how listeners judged the voices of young speakers of African-American English and Southeastern American English along a range of academic and social characteristics. Listeners often judged African-American English-speaking youth as having lesser academic abilities, and their responses indicated that many educators knew very little about variation within English. These results provided the impetus for this follow-up project, which explores methods for orienting educators to the reality of language differences and linguistic intolerance.The project has three cumulative objectives. First, the PI will conduct collaborative workshops with 100 educators in four K-12 schools in Baltimore and Richmond to disseminate accurate and foundational linguistic knowledge to educators of dialectally diverse students. Second, a set of 40 educator-consultants will work jointly with the PI to develop pedagogically sound and linguistically informed strategies for addressing variation in the speech and writing of their students using methods that have been developed by linguists but that are largely not known among most educators. Strategies include best practices for promoting awareness about language variation, for teaching about the systematic nature of language variation, and for using knowledge about the systematic nature of language variation to help students acquire Standardized English. Third, the PI will collect from the 40 educator-consultants a range of quantitative and qualitative data (from pre- and post-test surveys, participant-observations, short reflection responses, and in-depth interviews) to reveal what knowledge they gained from the workshop and how it might inform their language-related teaching strategies. Broader ImpactsThe joint empirical and applied nature of this project contributes to sociolinguistic and educational theory and practice. Findings will add to a small but critical body of literature that addresses not only what educators know about language variation but also how educators process this information and envision its use in their classrooms. The series of workshop trainings will aid educators in more fully integrating knowledge of language, literacy, and culture into their classrooms, thereby helping their students meet the linguistic requirements of academic and social success. NSF funding will allow for educator-consultants to travel to four school sites in Richmond and Baltimore to ensure that educator-consultants develop targeted solutions that are specific to their school environments. This funding will ensure that educators will be able to attend and fully participate in the workshops, regardless of their financial status. The grant will also provide materials to support all workshop participants and will support the development of a workshop-specific website to ensure broader educator access to the findings of the project. Results from this project will help linguists refine and implement future workshops to similarly connect with educators on the topic of language variation. The study lays the groundwork for sociolinguists and educators to work together in a more collaborative fashion to promote the educational attainment of nonstandardized English-speaking students. As the PI teaches in an undergraduate department, the award will also support the participation of undergraduate students in every aspect of the research.