Examining the effects of a peer-mediated academic intervention on the language and literacy performance on emergent bilingual students
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About 5 million Emergent Bilingual (EB) students are enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools across the United States. Spanish-speaking EBs constituted 76 percent of the EB population in the U.S. educational system (Office of English Language Acquisition, 2019). Although not all EBs are at risk for falling behind grade level proficiency in literacy, examination of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveals that EBs, on average, demonstrate significantly lower levels of literacy proficiency than their non-EB peers in Grades 4 and 8 (McFarland et al., 2018). Schools support the literacy development of Spanishspeaking EBs through multitiered systems of support (MTSS), which encourages early identification and intervention for those students needing support. A fundamental aspect of MTSS is Tier 1, which consists of high-quality core instruction and universal screening of all children in general education classrooms. Despite the school policies and practices to close or reduce the academic opportunity gap for EBs by implementing MTSS, it has not fulfilled its promise for Spanish-speaking EBs. One aspect is that few programs do not address EB's home language as well as English language development and provide culturally and linguistically responsive instruction. This dissertation aims to examine the effects of an abbreviated peer- mediated academic intervention on literacy and language performance among 64 Spanish-Speaking EB students in a rural school district and to further examine the extent to which home language exposure affects literacy outcomes. A randomized cluster design was used to examine the effects of an abbreviated peer-mediated literacy intervention. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was used to examine the effect of home language exposure on literacy measures. Results indicated the treatment condition outperformed students in the control condition in Spanish oral reading fluency, bilingual receptive vocabulary, and English reading comprehension measures. Home language exposure did not affect literacy measures. This study addresses an important gap in the literature on providing abbreviated peer-mediated academic interventions for emergent bilingual students.
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Ph. D.