i VOLUNTEER TUTORS AND ADOLESCENT AT-RISK ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS (ELLs): THE NATURE OF INTERACTIONS AMOUNG VOLUNTEER TUTORS AND AT-RISK ELLs IN ONE-ON-ONE TUTORING SESSIONS. A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Sarah R. Edwards Moore December 2015 Temple University Examining Committee Members: Barbara Wasik, PhD, Dissertation Chair, College of Education Wanda Brooks, EdD, Literacy Education, College of Education Annemarie Hindman, PhD, Literacy and Learners, College of Education Catherine Schifter, PhD, Instructional Learning Technology, College of Education Elvis Wagner, PhD, TESOL, College of Education ii by Sarah R. Edwards Moore 2015 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT This qualitative case study examined how volunteer tutors are interacting with at- risk adolescent ELL students in one-on-one tutoring sessions. This study also investigated how volunteer tutors are supporting vocabulary acquisition within tutoring sessions with adolescent ELLs. As a non-participant observer, I used ethnographic methods, including observations, interviews, and document analysis to understand how three tutors were interacting in sessions and how they were supporting vocabulary acquisition over seven weeks. The following questions guided the research: How do volunteer tutors interact in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk adolescent ELLs? How are volunteer tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition for adolescent ELLs in one- on-one tutoring sessions? Data were analyzed to determine how volunteer tutors were interacting in sessions and supporting vocabulary. Six themes emerged to explain how tutors were interacting in sessions and three ‘a-priori’ themes explained how tutors were supporting vocabulary acquisition. The results of this study are used to inform schools who institute volunteer tutoring programs for at-risk populations, researchers interested in vocabulary acquisition and adolescent ELLs, and faculty or staff members who work with at-risk populations. Furthermore, recommendations for future research are discussed for the field of education. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are numerous people that need to be thanked and acknowledged for their support during my dissertation and educational journey. Dr. Wasik, thank you for devoting so much time and effort into helping me through the dissertation process. I will be forever grateful for your feedback and friendship. Dr. Brooks, thank you for helping me to discover the depth and breadth of qualitative research. Your wonderful feedback and encouragement gave me direction and hope. Dr. Hindman, thank you for helping me think about things in a deeper way. Dr. Schifter, thank you for your support of my dissertation and your wiliness to ask questions that made my work stronger. Dr. Wagner, thank you for your wiliness to be on my committee and for your important advice about research and life. Thank you also to the charter school site where I was able to conduct my research. I felt welcomed and supported throughout the process. I am especially thankful for the three tutors that allowed me to observe their tutoring sessions. Each one of the tutors taught me so much about what it means to be a selfless educator. Thank you to my friends and support networks at Temple that really helped me move forward in a myriad of ways. The writing center became a second home and I am indebted to tutors like Deidre and Rachel who become such an important part of helping me tell my story in a clear way. Mary Vesey and Gwen Miller were always willing to help me get things to the right people and places. My office mates, Lori and Perri, who always had a kind word and a belief in my abilities, thank you. Furthermore, people like Ashley, Erin, Lindsey, Brad, Dave, and Bradley who supported me by giving specific feedback and advice. v I am especially grateful to my friends and family who supported me along the way. Kierstin and Raymond, you were always interested in my work, encouraging, and proud of me which just adds to being the best sister and brother I could ask for. Ashley Ann Brenner, your constant feedback, encouragement, and humor was a source of light. Rucheeta Gholkar Kulkarni, those calls and emails from California were a gift and motivation. To my husband, Alexander Christopher Moore, your love and support was so important throughout the dissertation process. Everyday you believe in my work and in my abilities. Thank you for being the love of my life. This dissertation is dedicated to my mom and dad. You have always been my biggest fans and my strongest advocates. You both define for me what it means to be selfless and strong. Thank you for my life. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………..iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………..iv LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………………...xiii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION….……………………………………………………………………..1 Background………………………………………………………………………..1 Statement of Problem……………………………………………………………...2 Purpose of Study…………………………………………………………………..7 Research Questions………………………………………………………………..8 Definitions………………………………………....................................................8 Delimitations/Limitations……………………………………..............................11 Theoretical Base…………………………………….............................................11 2. LITERATURE REVIEW............……………………………………………………….15 Vocabulary Learning…………………………………………………………….16 Word Learning…………………………………………………………...16 Vocabulary Development………………………………………………..20 Instruction………………………………………………………………..22 Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension……………………………….28 Academic Vocabulary……………………………....................................30 English Language Learners………………………................................................33 ELL Background in The United States Public School System…………..33 vii ELL Second Language (L2) Acquisition………………………………...36 Vocabulary Development and Vocabulary Instruction with ELLs............40 Academic Language and ELLs…………………………………………..46 ELLs and Reading Development……………….......................................47 ELLs in Content Areas…………………………………………………...50 ELLs Instructional Practices……………………………………………..51 Tutoring………………………………………………………………………….53 Meta-analysis of Tutoring Programs…………………….........................54 Volunteer Tutoring Programs with Word Learning Components……….55 Characteristics of Effective Tutoring Programs…………………………58 Characteristics of Effective Tutoring Programs…………………………59 Tutoring Interventions with Middle and High School Students…............61 Theoretical Homebase…………………………………………………………...63 Stages of ZPD……………………………………………………………64 Instructional Model………………………………………………………64 Context of ZPD…………………………………………………………..66 Teacher/Researcher Collaborative Tool…………………………………66 ZPD in Tutoring …………………………………………………………67 ZPD in Vocabulary Development………………………………………..68 ZPD with ELLs…………………………………………………………..73 ZPD in an Vocabulary Intervention with ELLs………………………….77 3. METHODOLOGY………………………………………………....................................81 Qualitative Research and Case Design Study…………………………................81 viii Role of Researcher and Positionality…………………………………………….85 Positionality ……………………………………………………………..87 Reflections……………………………………………………………………….89 My Growth as a Researcher……………………………………………...91 Site and Population………………………………………………………………93 Purposeful Sampling……………………………………………………………..94 Data Collection…………………………………………………………..............96 Audio Observations……………………………………………………...97 Interviews………………………………………………………………..98 Documents……………………………………………………………...101 Reflections………………………………………...................................101 Data Analysis…………………………………………….......................102 Coding…………………………………………………………………..103 Research Steps………………………………………………………….106 Ensuring the Trustworthiness of the Findings………………………………….107 Data Saturation………………………………………………………….108 Triangulation………………………………………………....................110 Rich, Thick Description………………………………….......................110 Ethical Issues…………………………………………………………………...111 Delimitations and Limitations of this Study……………………………............113 Summary………………………………………………………………………..115 4. DESCRIPTION OF THE CASE……………………………………………….............116 Introduction……………………………………………………………………..116 ix Description of the Tutors……………………………………………………….116 Pete……………………………………………………………………...117 Molly…………………………………………………………................117 Hannah………………………………………………………………….118 Charter School Environment………………………………………....................118 Tutoring Settings………………………………………………………………..119 Cyber School……………………………………………………………119 High School Content Seminar Class……………………………………120 High School Resource Room Class…………………………………….121 High School ESL Level 1 and 2 Classes……………………………….122 5. RESEARCH FINDINGS………………………………………………………............123 Question 1…………………………………………………................................124 Tutors as Models………………………………………………………………..125 Molly……………………………………………………………………126 Hannah………………………………………………………………….127 Pete……………………………………………………………………...129 Tutors as Encouragers……………………………………………………………..........131 Molly ……………………………………………………………….......132 Hannah …………………………………………………………………134 Pete……………………………………………………………………...135 Tutors as Partners……………………………………………………………………….136 Molly……………………………………………………………………137 Hannah …………………………………………………………………139 x Pete……………………………………………………...........................140 Tutors as Strategists…………………………………………………………………….142 Molly…………………………………………………………................144 Hannah………………………………………………………………….146 Pete……………………………………………………………………...148 Tutors as Facilitators……………………………………………………………………149 Molly……………………………………………………………………151 Hannah………………………………………………………………….153 Pete……………………………………………………………………...154 Tutors as Translators……………………………………………………………………156 Molly……………………………………………………………………158 Hannah …………………………………………………………………160 Pete……………………………………………………………………...163 Question 2…………………………………………………................................165 Tutors Supported Vocabulary Indirectly……………………………………….165 Tutors Support of Vocabulary………………………………………….166 Type of Words Taught………………………………………………………….172 The Instructional Methods and Techniques Tutors are using…………………..174 6. DISCUSSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND CONCLUSIONS……………………186 Question 1……………………………………....................................................186 Tutors as Models………………………………………………………………..188 Tutors as Encouragers………………………………………………..................190 Tutors as Partners……………………………………………………………….191 xi Tutors as Strategists…………………………………………………………….192 Tutors as Facilitators……………………………………………………………193 Tutors as Translators……………………………………………………………194 Question 2……………………………………………………………................195 Connections to the Literature…………………………………………...............198 Tutoring Connections…………………………………………………………...198 Theoretical Framework…………………………………………………………204 Recommendations for Practice ………………………………………………...206 Implementation…………………………………………………………207 Design…………………………………………………………………..209 Monitor…………………………………………………………………210 Recommendations for Future Research………………………………………...211 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………..214 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………216 APPENDICES A. AUDIO PERMISSION FORM……………………………………………………………. 236 B. CONSENT FOR PARENTS………………………………………………………………...239 C. ASSENT FORM……………………………………………………………………………242 D. CONSENT FORM TEACHERS……………………………………………………………245 E. TUTOR INTERVIEW PROTOCOL………………………………………………………..247 F. TEACHER INTERVIEW PROTOCOL……………………………………………………..248 G. WORDS INTRODUCED BY TUTORS……………………………………………………249 H. MEMO EXAMPLE………………………………………………………………................254 xii I. TUTOR REFLECTION LOG………………………………………………………………..255 J. INITIAL OPEN CODES……………………………………………………………………..256 K. EMERGING THEMES Q1………………………………………………………………….262 xiii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Interview Schedule for Participants…………………………………………………………..99 2. How words were introduced………………………………………………………………...181 3. Words Taught in Responsive/Non-Responsive Context ……………………………………184 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Background This case study investigated the experiences of adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) in volunteer tutoring sessions. The research examined how volunteer tutors interacted in one-on-one sessions with adolescent ELLs. The research also examined how tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition within sessions. Through observations, interviews, and document analysis, this study describes and analyzes the one-on-one tutoring experiences of three tutors. The study’s findings contribute to filling a gap in English Language Learner research on adolescent students and vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore, it adds to research on volunteer tutors’ work in adolescent settings. Moreover, this study’s findings will inform faculty members, researchers, and curriculum designers as they plan future vocabulary interventions that support the work of volunteer tutors with secondary ELLs. In the following sections, literature on vocabulary acquisition, ELLs, and volunteer tutoring is reviewed followed by an explanation of how this study is the first to examine how volunteer tutors are supporting the vocabulary acquisition of adolescent ELLs through one-on- one tutoring. Questions driving this research will be discussed in addition to defining key terms necessary for a clear understanding of my research goals. After outlining the study’s limitations, I highlight its significance, mainly to illuminate how volunteer tutors and at-risk secondary ELLs are interacting in one-on-one sessions. Finally, I explain the rationale for using Vygotsky’s social learning theory of learning and the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as the study’s 2 theoretical framework, arguing that one-on-one interactions between a capable adult and a student result in student progress and development. Statement of the Problem The population of ELLs in the US is increasing dramatically. In grades K-12, ELL enrollment increased by 104% in the 1990s and it is estimated that by the year 2030, 40% of the United States school population will speak English as a second language (ESL) (USDOE & NICHD, 2003). In 2005, the number of school aged children with immigrant parents was 12.3 million and by 2020, it is projected that 17.9 million school aged children will have immigrant parents (Passel & Cohn, 2008). The increase in school enrollment of ELLs is concentrated in urban locations where ELL secondary students make up 56% of the student population (Berube, 2000). The study is geared towards at-risk secondary ELL students. An at-risk secondary ELL is defined as a student who has one of the following academic struggles: 1) low scores on standardized testing for reading 2) evidence of struggling in their content area classes or 3) poor attendance or behavior. The definition of an at-risk ELL secondary learner is influenced by how the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) defines an at-risk learner. The indicators for an at-risk learner, according to NCES are: the student tends to be from a lower socio- economic status, a single parent home, receives below average grades in school, has older siblings who left high school before completion, and is around negative peer pressure. With the increasing ELL school population, more research should focus on how instruction can support the academic success of at-risk adolescent ELL students because these students struggle to stay in high school and pass standardized tests. First, this struggle in high school will be discussed and then standardized tests. Specifically, the dropout rates of adolescent 3 ELLs are increasing. The United States Department of Education reported in 2010-2011 that nearly half the states graduated less than 60% of students with a limited proficiency in English. Pennsylvania, the site of my study, has an ELL graduation rate of 63% compared with Vermont and South Dakota that have the highest graduation rate, at 82%. Arizona has the lowest graduation rate, at 25%. In light of this report, it is not surprising that ELLs accounted for the highest population of high school drop outs in United States public schools (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). The U.S. Census Bureau (2012) reported that the highest percentage (13%) of ELL students who drop out of high school are Hispanic students. The National Center for Education Statistics (2004) noted that 51% of Hispanic identified high school drop outs reported having difficulty speaking English, compared to 18% who reported speaking English well. August (2006) further concluded after conducting an extensive literacy review on secondary ELLs that “[s]uccessful completion of high school is associated with the ability to speak English” (p. 24). Standardized tests scores between ELLs and first language learners (L1) differ dramatically and may determine how an at-risk secondary ELL student is given less opportunity to prepare for college or have success in their high school environment. On national state assessments, ELLs scored 20 to 50 percentage points below L1 learners. (Abedi & Dietal, 2004; Government Accountability Office, 2006). When an ELL student receives a low standardized test score, they usually are put in a lower academic track which hurts their future chances of graduation or being accepted to college. Valdes (1999, 2000, 2004) has reported on how academic tracking affects the levels of success for ELL students. He has found that the ELL students who performed poorly on assessments were not being admitted to college prep courses. Currently, 85% of secondary ELLs are part of an inclusion model in U.S. public schools (NAEP, 2013). 4 This means that most secondary ELLs are tracked, according to their standardized test scores, into content area classes (e.g. Science, Math, History) with L1 speakers; and all instruction, including the textbooks, is given in English. Research that has been conducted on high school content area teachers experiences with ELLs in U.S. public high schools has reported that the content area teachers feel that their workload intensifies when ELLs are enrolled in content area classes (Griffin, Buenda, Crosland, & Doumbia, 2002) and that they feel inadequately trained professionally to work with ELLs (Verplaetse, 1998). In the inclusion model, research has found that ELLs are not being given adequate support (Reeves, 2006 &SCT, 1996) and are not achieving academic success at the level of L1 speakers (NCES, 2003). The inclusion model is when students with special needs, including ELLs, are placed in classrooms with the general population of students. Three factors, discussed below, are linked to the lack of support being given to secondary ELLs; lack of resources, lack of teacher training, and limited vocabulary development of ELL students. The first factor is a lack of resources. With school district budget cuts and teachers having a myriad of responsibilities, ELL students are oftentimes lost in the shuffle (Smith, 2006 & Yoon, 2008). Teachers forget to make accommodations for their ELL students or do not have the time to do so (Youngs, 1999). Some of the resources that ELL students are not able to access include the teacher’s time for one-on-one instruction and accommodations during assessments. In other cases, ELL students would benefit from seeing classroom information being presented in visually friendly ways, such as illustrations or graphs, but teachers might tend to present new information through one modality in order to save lesson planning time. The second factor is that teachers have not been trained extensively or continuously on how to support ELLs. Currently, the state of Pennsylvania requires accredited certification 5 programs to include at least an introductory course that pre-service teachers must take on how to help ELLs. One course may seem limited, but prior to 2012, pre-service teachers were not required to take any coursework related to working with ELLs. In fact, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported in 2002 that only 12.5% of teachers in the United States had received 8 or more hours of training to work with ELLs. If an educator does receive professional development training on supporting ELLs, they tend to happen in isolation, maybe once or twice over the school year and only last for a few hours (Keller-Allen, 2006). This lack of consistent or extensive training invariably has repercussions on the chances of success for ELLs in content area classrooms. If a teacher has not received enough training, their student’s chance for academic success suffers. The third factor is that the vocabulary of ELLs is usually underdeveloped compared with L1 speakers, which makes understanding the content in classes more difficult (NCES, 2003). This vocabulary gap is especially significant in secondary settings where students, ELL or L1 speakers, are asked to grapple with textbooks that include academic vocabulary that is not typically used in everyday conversation (Scarcella, 2002, 2003). For many ELLs, the task to decipher the academic vocabulary becomes overwhelming (Olson & Land, 2007). The ELL students spend the majority of their time decoding the words in the text instead of concentrating on comprehending the larger context of the course. States address these roadblocks to academic success in different ways. For instance, in Pennsylvania every school district or charter school has to have a written plan for educating ELLs to improve both their English and academic standing in the content areas (Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), 2014). A school district or charter school in Pennsylvania identifies a student as ELL based on a language assessment test. The criteria for identifying 6 ELLs vary from state to state and once identified, the ELL student may receive Title III services that are affiliated with federal funding (PDE, 2014). Many of the interventions that are currently taking place in the U.S. to support at-risk learners, including adolescent ELLs, involve the work of support staff, such as volunteer tutors, because schools are trying to find ways to give at-risk learners one-on-one attention when the content area teacher is not able to. For example, in 1996, the Clinton Administration allocated 2.75 billion dollars toward The America Reads Challenge Act. Most of the allocated funds went toward putting 1 million volunteer tutors in elementary schools to help at-risk students with literacy. As a result, a lot of research was done on the effectiveness of volunteer tutors in elementary school settings (Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, & Moody, 2000; Shanahan, 1998; Wasik, 1998). More research needs to be done on how federally funded programs, such as volunteer tutoring, is supporting at-risk secondary ELLs. Currently, the largest federally funded program in the United States is Title I. Title I money is largely used by schools to help at-risk students and in 2008 alone, 26.4 billion dollars supported Title I services. Recently, the government has noticed the negative impact that a decline in federal funding and high standards has had on at-risk students. As a result, intervention programs that support struggling school districts and help at- risk students have been established. One of the programs that has been funded by Title I is Reading Rockets. Reading Rockets provides reading resources for a variety of audiences via the web and educational programming. It is widely used and geared toward early reading initiatives although it does provide some help regarding ELL strategies. Hardly any research has been conducted on how federally funded interventions are supporting at-risk ELL adolescent students. The only studies conducted to my knowledge have been a series of meta-analyses that provide an overview of some interventions, but do not offer substantive insights regarding a group of 7 participants within one particular volunteer tutoring structure (August & Hakuta, 2007; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Purpose of the Study The purpose of this case study was to explore and describe the interactions between volunteer tutors and at-risk adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions. Specifically, how are volunteer tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition? Vygotsky’s social learning theory and the zone of proximal development (ZPD) was used as the theoretical lens that helped to yield a better understanding of how the observed interactions either increased learning outcomes or hindered learning. Qualitative data was collected in the form of audio observations, interviews, and document analysis. Tutoring sessions were observed and field notes were taken. Volunteer tutors were interviewed two times during the case study (pre and post observations). Volunteer tutors were also interviewed informally after observations took place as necessary. Document analysis included; tutoring materials, content area texts, and reflection logs that the tutor filled out after each tutoring session. As stated previously, there is a lack of research exploring the interactions volunteer tutors have in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk adolescent ELLs. Additionally, the study noted how volunteer tutors supported ELL vocabulary acquisition in tutoring sessions which no study, to my knowledge, has specifically looked at. This study was necessary because it tells a story about how support staff affect a struggling population of students. Currently, research suggests that volunteer tutoring interventions are currently in place to help at-risk learners, including adolescent ELLs, but this study helped to explain what interactions are happening between volunteer tutors and at-risk adolescent ELLs within those interventions. Additionally, this study 8 supports future interventions focused on adolescent ELLs, volunteer tutors, and vocabulary acquisition. The case study adds to conversations about how Vygotsky’s ZPD is present in one- on-one tutoring sessions. Research Questions The study is guided by the following research questions: 1) How do volunteer tutors interact in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk adolescent ELLs? 2) How are volunteer tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition for adolescent ELLs in one- on-one tutoring sessions? Definitions Academic Vocabulary: The way that the academic vocabulary was defined in the study was as general academic vocabulary. General academic vocabulary refers to the broad all-purpose terms that appear across content areas but may vary in meaning depending on the discipline. They are words that would be considered tier two words by Beck and McKeown (2002). Tier two words (e.g. fraction) require instruction; they are not typically in a student’s everyday vocabulary like tier one (e.g. part) words. Tier two words are normally found across a variety of texts, but they are not extremely specialized words which are reserved for a tier three (e.g. oncology) distinction. Coxhead (2000) referred to tier two words found in academic text as academic words that occur frequently and uniformly across a wide range of academic material. Coxhead created an academic word list (AWL) that is made up of 570 word families that encapsulate 10% of the words in content area texts. Hiebert and Lubliner (2008) also have a general academic vocabulary list similar to Coxhead but the words are aligned with Language Arts standards and 9 are used in reading instruction in the K-12 grades. The Coxhead list of general academic vocabulary words was designed using college based academic texts. For my study, the understanding of academic vocabulary and how words are tiered helped with the analysis of documents such as academic texts and also helped analyze what types of words the tutors were helping ELL students acquire in tutoring sessions. Volunteer Tutoring: The way that volunteer tutoring was defined for the study is similar to how Ritter, Barnett, Denny, & Albin (2009) defined volunteer tutoring for a review that was conducted on volunteer tutoring programs in elementary and middle schools. Volunteer tutoring was defined as academically-focused instruction delivered by nonprofessionally trained adults which includes college students but not teachers. The volunteer tutors may have received a small stipend for their service. The volunteer tutors in the study received minimal training, meaning that they were only trained on general teaching practices in their college coursework prior to working with at-risk high school and middle school students. At-risk secondary ELL learner: At-risk ELL learners are defined in the study as learners who are currently enrolled in a Title One School that uses an inclusion model. The at-risk ELL learners are identified as having either one of the factors identified by NCES, and/or: low standardized test scores, low content area class grades, or difficulty understanding academic text in their content area courses. Tutoring Session: A tutoring session was a one-on-one interaction between the volunteer tutor and an at-risk ELL secondary ELL learner. The session was a scheduled tutoring session and lasted from 20 to 90 minutes. There was three tutors working with secondary ELL students that were observed during tutoring sessions. The same tutors worked with the same group of students over the course of the study. 10 Content Area Classroom: A high school class that is teaching core content to students (English, Science, Social Studies, and Math). The content area class was taught by a certified content area high school teacher. The class was taught in English and the academic text in the class was in English. Academic Success: The following factors define academic success: proficient or advanced proficient standardized test scores, high academic standing in all subject areas, and College Prep (CP) or Advanced Placement (AP) classes. Drop-out Crisis: High drop-out rates are a current crisis in United States public high schools. Every day, 700 high school kids drop out of school and most of these high school students belong to the following demographic groups. They go to schools that are typically considered underperforming, they have poor attendance, behavior, reading ability, and course performance grades. ELL learners account for the highest percentage of students that are dropping out of high school in United States public high schools. Social Learning Theory: Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of learning. Vygotsky argued that learning results from the social interactions and the environments that humans are exposed to. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): The ZPD term was introduced by Vygotsky and is rooted in the social learning theory. It is the idea that learning will occur in a one-on-one setting between a capable adult and student because learning results from social interaction. The adult helps the student progress through their ZPD by introducing new information and allowing the student to interact with the new information in a variety of meaningful contexts. Eventually, the student has learned the new information and is able to use it in order to interact with their world. 11 Delimitations and Limitations of this Study Limitations of this study’s design affected its generalizability. First, the sample size was small and all of the tutors in the sample were from the same volunteer tutoring program. Moreover, the case study was conducted in one school district in the Mid-Atlantic region at one school site. These features further constrain the study’s generalizability as the tutoring sessions may not be representative of other tutoring programs, school sites, or participants. Nevertheless, the study’s intensive investigation and depth of inquiry with each tutoring session observation yielded a richer and more nuanced portrait than a study using a larger sample would have. This study is still important to the field because it tried to understand a particular phenomenon, in this sense, though not broadly generalizable, the study’s findings provided insight into similar events and experiences. Another foreseen limitation of the study was the timeframe of data collection. Due to the structure of the tutoring program being observed, the school calendar, and the ELLs availability to be tutored, observations needed to be conducted over a seven week time period. If observations could have been conducted over a longer period of time, it might have allowed for a longitudinal discussion of the data where sessions could have been looked at over time. Nevertheless, observing tutoring sessions within a limited time frame provided sufficient data to answer the research questions. 12 Theoretical Base The concepts that Lev Vygotsky uncovered through his research on cognitive development have been and continue to be immensely useful to literary researchers whose focus is on how pedagogy affects literacy development. I believe that using Vygotsky as a theoretical home base to study how volunteer tutors are supporting adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions was beneficial in helping me explain how the findings of the study related to the ways students learn in a social context. I argue that secondary ELLs need to progress through their zone of proximal development (ZPD), explained in detail below, in order to develop academically. Blanc (1990) covers the historical and theoretical basis of Vygotskian theory, the belief that social interaction has a dramatic impact on cognitive development. Grounded in the Vygotsky theory of psychology, mental activity is uniquely human and results from social learning, the interioralization of social signs, and the internalization of culture and of social relationships. Vygotsky believed that learning is mediated by “tools” and the biggest tool was language, specifically word meaning. Words were tools to mediate the acquisition of “concepts,” which ranged in degree from the “everyday” or “spontaneous” to the more formal “scientific” concepts of schooling. In essence, biology and social development are not isolated from one another. According to Blanc’s (1990) synthesis of Vygotsky’s psychology theory, “the higher the neural activity of human beings is not, as it was once considered, simply ‘superior nervous activity’ but superior nervous activity that has internalized social meanings derived from the cultural activity of human beings and meditated by signs” (p. 44). Vygotsky believed that learning is mediated by the social interactions of students and by more knowledgeable peers. I analyzed if the tutors in my study follow Vygotsky’s theory of learning. By observing one-on- 13 one tutoring sessions, I was able to see if the tutors are using the “tools” of language to interact with students in their acquisition of “scientific” concepts, academic vocabulary and of their general education. Blanc (1990) noted that Vygotsky considered school the best laboratory of human psychology. The best place to see the mental development that results from social learning. Blanc (1990) writes, “[w]ithin the context of an active, systematic interaction between the child and the pedagogue in school, children are provided, in an organized way with the psychological tools that will determine the reorganization of their mental functions” (p. 50). Vygotsky believed that school pedagogy creates learning processes that lead to development unlike psychologists like Piaget who emphasized that development tows learning. Vygotsky did not deny biological development happens, but believed that biological development is shaped by human activity. For Piaget developing concepts through social exchange came after biological developments. For Vygotsky, concept formation was less about if the child had developed biologically and more about the cultural setting the child develops the concepts in. Two Vygotskian ideas are still used in school pedagogy that promotes learning processes through social interaction – children being active agents and the importance of play. Blanc (1990) writes, “Vygotsky’s most important contribution was to acknowledge children as active agents in the educational process” (p. 49). Children are able to learn so much more when they are given a voice in the process of concept formation and are able to interact with learning concepts in an interactive way. One interactive way that Vygotsky felt mediated learning was play. Through social play children were able to transact with each other and mediate each other’s learning. Playing with their representation of the world helps them learn to understand meanings 14 of the world. Blanc (1990) says Vygotsky “considered play to be the principal activity for the interiorization and appropriation of reality during the first years” (p. 50). The Vygotskian idea that the learning process leads the development process results in ZPD. The ZPD, according to Vygotsky (1978) is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving, and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Simply stated, the ZPD is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. It is the space in which teacher and learner could engage in dyadic interactions which promoted advancing degrees of concept development. The ZPD was Vygotsky’s way of saying that teaching has an important role in learning, as the learner can do more with assistance that she can do independently. Blanc (1990) explained that learning takes place in the ZPD when “a difficult goal is offered; the child receives orientation from an adult; he reaches that goal and another one is offered; he tackles it and solves it independently, if possible, or with the help of an adult” (p. 50). I believe that the ZPD interactions tutors had with students explained how at-risk secondary ELLs learned in the observed tutoring sessions. 15 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW As a foundation for the present research, four complementary bodies of literature will be reviewed: (a) Vocabulary Learning; (b) ELLs; (c) Tutoring; and (d) Vygotsky’s ZPD. A mix of theoretical scholarship and research will be reviewed in order to demonstrate a knowledge of the field and also make the argument that there is a gap in the current research on vocabulary interventions that support adolescent ELL learners. This study is the first study looking at volunteer tutors, adolescent language learners, and vocabulary acquisition. Vocabulary learning will be reviewed first and it will give a broad overview of the research on word learning, vocabulary development, and vocabulary instruction. The studies on word learning looked at in section one were conducted with students learning vocabulary in their first language (L1) Second, relevant literature on ELL learners will be explored including general background information, second language acquisition, vocabulary development, reading development, lessons learned from research, and ELLs in the content areas. The studies on vocabulary development in this section were conducted with students learning words in their second language (L2). It is important to note that because there has been such little research conducted on at-risk ELL adolescents and tutoring interventions geared toward vocabulary, some of the tutoring studies and intervention literature that will be discussed in this review were conducted with younger at-risk ELL learners. Then, literature on volunteer tutoring interventions will be reviewed using relevant interventions that have worked with both adolescent students and younger learners. Finally, research that has been influenced by Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) will be discussed and studies that have used aspects of the ZPD will be reviewed. The literature review will make an argument that advocates for conducting a qualitative case study that looks at how volunteer tutors are interacting with at-risk adolescent 16 ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions with a specific focus on what the tutors are doing to help at-risk adolescent ELLs with vocabulary acquisition. Vocabulary Learning Word Learning In order to understand how volunteer tutors are helping at-risk adolescent ELLs with vocabulary acquisition, word learning must be understood. There are two main methods of word learning present in the literature. The first is that words are learned directly. For example, a teacher will explicitly teach one word to her students each day as part of instruction. The second is that words are learned through context. For example, a student would learn a word because it was used in their daily environment or presented in a text they would be reading. Word learning that follows a “context only” approach aligns with the incidental word learning hypothesis. The incidental word learning hypothesis means that a student will learn words just by reading many books or by being in an environment where they are able to hear new words without being directly instructed. Jenkins, Matlock, and Slocum (1989) support the incidental word learning hypothesis as a rational and persuasive way to learn vocabulary. Several other researchers have argued that students have problems learning target words through “context only” instruction (Van Daalen- Kapteijns, Schouten-van Parreren, & De Glopper, 1993). The argument is that students need more explicit instruction from adults in order to teach the meanings of words before giving students another context that contains the word. Just giving the word in context does not clarify the meaning of the unknown word (Beck, McKeown, & McCaslin, 1983; Schatz & Baldwin, 17 1986) and students are limited in their ability to intentionally derive the meaning from the context (McKeown, 1985; Shefelbine, 1990; Van Daalen-Kapteijns & Elshout-Mohr, 1981). An argument can be made based on the above research that students learn vocabulary words best by blending direct instruction with context instruction. Studies that have been done that blend direct word learning with context word learning had much higher effects than studies that used a “context only” approach. For example, the meta-analysis of Marmolejo (1990) reported that “context only” studies had either small or non-significant results for poor readers (d=.11). Marmolejo’s (1990) findings support that word learning needs to happen before the students see the words in context. If an adult introduces new words to children and presents them multiple times in a relevant context, the student will be more likely to understand the word. This explicit instruction involves strategies like teachers having students participate and students being asked to connect words to things they know through semantic mapping. By observing if volunteer tutors are working with adolescent ELLs on vocabulary acquisition, I was able to analyze what approach they were using to support word learning. Researchers define knowing a word in different ways, which will be discussed below. One researcher could say that recognizing the definition of a word means the students know the word. Another researcher might say that the student would have to produce the definition of the word in order to know it. Ouellette (2006) says that in order to understand that a student knows a word, the depth and quality of the word learning needs to be measured. Vygotsky’s (1978) social interaction theory believes that a student would only know a word after they had learned it in a social context with a more capable adult or peer and then internalized it through the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Beck and McKeown (1983) say that to learn a word, a child will need a number of exposures to the word in a variety of context. My study was able to decipher 18 what word strategies volunteer tutors were or were not using that the researchers above have noted work. The process that a student goes through in order to know a word has been discussed extensively in the literature. Nagy and Scott (2000) suggested that word learning occurs in an incremental process. According to this theory, the meaning of a word develops from no knowledge to complete knowledge in stages (Schwanenflugel, Stahl, & McFalls, 1997). Beck and McKeown (2002) agree that knowing a word is not a one and done process but that word knowledge develops over a continuum. The continuum Beck, McKeown, and Omanson (1987) developed is: (a) no knowledge; (b) general sense; (c) narrow, context-bound knowledge; (d) generalized receptive knowledge; and (e) rich, decontextualized knowledge of a word’s meaning and its relation to other words. Calfee and Drum (1986) and Dale (1965) developed similar conclusions regarding levels of word knowledge. The incremental process of word knowledge is thought to develop as the word’s meaning becomes gradually more refined with each exposure to the new word (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). In order to incrementally develop knowledge of a word, students benefit from having certain word association skills. Calfee and Drum (1985) found that a student was more likely to know a word if they were able to associate it with a range of experiences, access it readily, be able to articulate the understanding of the word, and recognize synonyms, metaphors, and analogies that employ the word. Nagy and Scott (2000) have noted that metacognitive knowledge is a key factor in word learning. There are only a few studies that demonstrate the connection between using a metacognitive approach to vocabulary instruction. Dole, Sloan, and Trathen (1995) did one of the few studies where high school students were taught to use 19 metacognitive skills to monitor comprehension and clarify unknown words in a text, resulting in significant gains in vocabulary and reading comprehension. Additionally, Graves (1984, 1985, 1986) distinguished a number of word learning tasks required for a student to develop vocabulary. One is that a learner must learn to read words that are in their oral vocabulary. A second word learning task is for students to be able to read a word that is not in their oral vocabulary or their reading vocabulary, but they have an available concept in their vocabulary that is associated with the word (ex. synonym). The third learning task is for students to read words for which they do not even have an available concept. The last two tasks are the word learning tasks directly involved in my study because they are aligned with the definition of academic vocabulary. That is, words that are necessary to navigate academic text but rarely used in everyday conversation. The literature offers several insights into the skills required to know a word and what it means to know a word, but does not provide as much information on specific ways educators are incorporating vocabulary acquisition into their lessons. For example, Graves distinguished the word learning tasks required to develop vocabulary but did not offer specific information on how educators were employing word learning tasks within their daily instruction. Similarly, Beck, McKeown, McCaslin, and Burkes, (1979) distinguished three levels of word knowledge: unknown, acquainted, and established. How vocabulary acquisition was being approached in one-on-one instruction was not explicitly explored, or suggestions for specific pedagogical interventions that would help teachers know how to move students from one level to another. More recent studies have been done on word learning best practices (Biemiller & Bodte, 2006; Coyne, McCoach, & Kapp, 2007; Kamil, 2004; Silverman & Hines, 2009; Stahl, 2005; Stahl & Kapins, 2001) but the research on how to help adolescent students attain unknown words 20 or read words for which they do not have an available concept is sparse and the research on how to help ELLs in adolescent settings with word learning is even sparser (August & Hakuta, 1997; Snow, Griffin, & Burns, 1998). More research needs to be conducted on how, or if educators, such as volunteer tutors, are helping at- risk ELLs learn words. Especially words that are unknown, not being used in the everyday conversations of ELLs, but is frequently being used in academic settings where the ELL learner is expected to succeed. Vocabulary Development Vocabulary development differs from word learning. Word learning, as discussed above, is the process of getting to know words in isolation and vocabulary development is how a student develops a lexicon of words that enable them to interact with people, texts, and the world. It has been argued that vocabulary develops over time with many repeated exposures to a word in a meaningful context (Clark, 1993; Dorso & Shore, 1991, Paribakht & Wesche, 1996) which includes the interactions students are having with others, like more knowledgeable adults and peers. In order for a student to develop their vocabulary, many things need to happen. They have to know about sound structures, multiple meanings, phonology, and morphology. Students have to be able to understand how words are used in sentences and how they are used in conversation. This type of depth determines whether a student will be able to distinguish a word from other words and understand words in novel contexts or when they are represented in different forms. Vocabulary also develops based on the environment children are in and what vocabulary they need to communicate. When children enter school, they enter a world of academic English that requires a broad mastery of decontextualized language forms and conventions (Cummins, 1984, 2000; Rumberger & Scarcella, 2000). Students will learn this type of language, for the 21 most part, from teachers and textbooks (Fillmore & Snow, 2000). Prior to entering the school environment, the vocabulary they acquired would have been primarily from their caretaker. Research has shown that there is a gap between an at-risk student’s vocabulary development and a not-at-risk student’s vocabulary development (Hart & Risley, 1995). A not- at-risk student is defined as a student who has developmentally appropriate reading and vocabulary levels. This vocabulary gap between at-risk students and not-at risk students affects reading comprehension and academic success. Many not-at-risk students enter school knowing thousands of more words than their peers who are at-risk for language and learning difficulties (Hart & Risley, 1995). Children with an impoverished vocabulary cannot rely on learning new words through reading and read less than their achieving peers which means they are encountering fewer words (Stanovich, 1986). Children with impoverished vocabularies also suffer because they have less developed metacognition skills for word learning, which means they are less likely to use words around an unknown word as clues because the ratio of known to unknown words is too high (Carver, 1994; Stroller & Grabe, 1993). Biemiller and Slonim (2001) reported that a vocabulary gap continues to grow as a child moves through the primary grades. By second grade they estimated a child with a large vocabulary knows 4,000 more root word meanings than children with delays in vocabulary development. By high school, the gap has become more like a gaping hole that students who were previously at-risk for language and learning difficulties fall into which means they drop out. This is where the argument for a study that looks at how volunteer tutors are supporting vocabulary acquisition with adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions makes sense. Educators need to do find a way to support struggling students who want to have academic success but are currently unable to decipher the academic text in front of them. Furthermore, as stated previously, many teachers are overwhelmed with 22 other responsibilities to give adolescent ELLs one-on-one support. Research that focuses on what school support staff, such as volunteer tutors, are doing to support ELLs will provide important information that will fuel future interventions dedicated to closing the vocabulary gap. Finally, research has shown positive correlations between high levels of participation in rich oral and reading experiences and high levels of vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. (Greene & Lynch-Brown, 2002; Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Stahl, Richek, & Vandevier, 1991). The reality is that many at-risk adolescent ELL students are not being given the chance to participate in building their vocabulary and therefore are being left behind academically. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) report that having a large vocabulary repertoire is related to becoming an educated person because vocabulary knowledge is strongly related to reading comprehension and school achievement. Furthermore, a central idea to conducting a study on vocabulary acquisition is the knowledge that vocabulary development is central to reading. Research has affirmed that the major work of early reading is recognizing and pronouncing words (Ehri, 2005). My study was necessary because it may help to strengthen the methodologies of future tutoring interventions geared toward at-risk adolescent ELL learner’s academic success and vocabulary acquisition. If future volunteer tutoring interventions focus on working with secondary ELLs on vocabulary acquisition, it might help increase academic text comprehension which would increase course performance in content area classrooms and lead to greater overall academic success. Greater academic success for at-risk adolescent ELLs means less high school drop outs and potentially more college bound high school graduates. Instruction Several vocabulary instructional strategies have been discussed in the literature. Similar to the two ways of word learning, direct and through context, Ambruster, Lehr, and Osbourne 23 (2003) reported two ways in which children learn vocabulary, through direct and indirect vocabulary instruction. Direct instruction involves explicit teaching of vocabulary words and definitions and indirect vocabulary instruction pertains to learning words primarily through exposure – having conversations with others, reading independently, or being read to (Beck et. al 2002; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985). Currently, many researchers have done work that advocates for teachers to use a mix of both explicit and indirect teaching methods (National Reading Panel, 2000) but the current research has not measured what method of vocabulary instruction volunteer tutors are using, if any, in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk secondary ELLs. One of the ways I coded the data collected, detailed further in the methods section, indicated whether the tutors were using explicit or indirect teaching methods when teaching vocabulary. Coding and studying the type of word learning instruction that occurred in sessions may help future researchers design vocabulary interventions that directly train tutors to use a particular method based on the findings of my study. Three objectives should be met when teachers are giving vocabulary instruction according to Baumann, Kame’emui, and Ash (2003). The objectives include teaching students how to learn words independently, teaching students the specific meanings of words, and helping students to appreciate words and use them with satisfaction. The first objective, teaching students how to learn words independently, involves exposing the students to a word’s rich text, giving them independent reading time, and allowing them to have a choice in what vocabulary they would like to learn (Fisher et al. 1996). The second objective, teaching students the meanings of specific words, involves teaching synonyms or definitions using mnemonic devices, giving students partial knowledge of words, or pre-teaching vocabulary prior to seeing it in context. The last instructional objective, having students use and develop an appreciation of 24 words, involves teachers getting the students to use vocabulary in fun and interactive ways. For example, the teacher could promote word use in the classroom or promote the use of classroom vocabulary words outside of school such as with Beck and McKeown’s (1983) “Word Wizard”. For ELL students, a combination of direct instruction and multiple opportunities to process words in different contexts may have led to vocabulary acquisition gains in the sessions. When the principles of rich vocabulary instruction were used, ELLs may have also made gains in reading comprehension. Several studies involving young readers found that many teachers are incorporating little, if any, explicit vocabulary instruction into the curriculum (Neuman & Dwyer, 2011; Roser & Juel, 1982; Scott, Jamieson-Noel, & Asselin, 2003; Watts, 1995) and even though less is known about middle and high school classrooms, it is likely that little attention is being given to vocabulary instruction with so many other curriculum and literacy demands being placed on content-area teachers. What researchers have found is that in the interventions that have been done with adolescent learners, the focus tends to be on whether students have a word level reading knowledge without paying attention to really developing language (Deshler, Palinscar, Biancarosa, & Nair, 2007). In order to develop language at any level, students benefit from being taught a fewer number of vocabulary words in a much deeper way. A teacher should help students understand a word’s elements, related words, and have the students see the words in rich context (Graves, 2000, 2006; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). The assumption being that vocabulary will increase when teachers directly teach words, ask for student engagement, and show the words in multiple contexts. Since teachers do not have time, the hope is support staff, such as volunteer tutors, are using some of the one-on-one time they have with at-risk adolescent ELLs to help the students develop vocabulary that will give them more academic success and my qualitative study 25 was able to analyze what is, or is not, happening with regard to vocabulary acquisition in the tutoring sessions. The case study was also able to analyze the type of words, if any, that were being worked on in tutoring sessions. Knowing the type of words that at-risk adolescent ELLs are being taught in tutoring sessions matters because it impacts how they are able to then engage in their content area classrooms. The words that students learn should be general purpose academic words (e.g. analyze) (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Graves, 2000, 2006; Stahl & Nagy, 2006) and not low frequency, exotic words (e.g. burrowed) that are sometimes selected by teachers or targeted by textbooks for instruction (Hiebert, 2005). Because no teacher can expect to teach students the thousands of words associated with academic success, teachers must teach students word learning strategies so that students have some cognitive tools in order to learn words independently. Some of the cognitive tools that have been taught to students with positive results include using context clues (Fukkink & de Glopper, 1998; Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999), and using morphological awareness skills (Baughmann et al., 2002, Baughmann, et al., 2003; Keiffer & Lessaux, 2008; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbot, 2006). In all of the above studies, general strategies are offered in order to develop vocabulary but none of the studies focused on how or if volunteer tutors help at-risk adolescent ELLs acquire vocabulary in one-on-one settings. My study was able to add to the literature because it describes how tutors are specifically interacting with at-risk ELLs, what types of words were being taught or not taught, and what vocabulary instructional strategies were being used by tutors. Measuring this type of interaction adds to the field of vocabulary development because it provides more data about vocabulary instruction and development based on a short term case study looking at the interactions between volunteer tutors and at-risk secondary ELLs. 26 Before conducting a qualitative case study examining vocabulary development outside of the classroom space, it was important to know what type of vocabulary instruction was currently happening inside classrooms and if the vocabulary instruction that is being implemented is effective. Scott, et al. (2003) conducted 308 hours of observation during 68 days of instruction in 23 middle school classrooms in three school districts in Canada. The data revealed that only 6% of school time was devoted to developing vocabulary knowledge and only 1.4% of time was spent developing vocabulary in the academic subject areas (Math, Science, Art, and Social Studies) other than Language Arts. Most of the instruction time that was spent involved mentioning and assigning vocabulary versus directly teaching it. These findings are concerning, especially for students who depend on school in order to become proficient in academic English. Even if more time were being spent on vocabulary instruction, it is the quality of instruction that matters. A teacher can spend a significant amount of time teaching vocabulary, but if they are not using effective practices, students will not develop the academic vocabulary they need to be successful. Blachowicz and Fisher (2000) identified four main principles to guide appropriate vocabulary instruction. The first principle is that students should personalize word knowledge which is based on past research that indicates when students are able to choose the words they want to learn or the ways that would like to learn them, vocabulary develops more effectively (Dole, et al.,, 1995; Fisher & Danielsen, 1998; Haggard, 1982). The second principle is that students should be immersed in words. This involves a teacher that commits to interweaving the vocabulary words that they are teaching into many components and subjects throughout the day. The third principle is that students need to be able to build on multiple sources of information in order to learn words that they are repeatedly exposed too. Many exposures, over time, create 27 connections for students and help them connect vocabulary words to other words and concepts. The fourth principle is that students should be active participants in their word learning. The students should be encouraged to connect new words to things they know, manipulate words, and discuss new vocabulary words. The current study coded all observational data, when it was vocabulary-focused, and according to what main principles of vocabulary instruction were being followed. It was also noted if no vocabulary-focused interactions occurred. In addition to having guiding principles of how tutors might be assisting in student vocabulary development, there are several instructional approaches that have been found to be effective in word learning across the Pre-K to high school spectrum that the tutors might be using such as: (a) key word (Levin, Levin, Glassman, & Nordwall, 1992); (b) repeated multiple readings (Senechal, 1997); (c) rich context (McKeown, Beck, Omanson, & Pople, 1985); (d) computer-based (Heise, Papelweis, & Tanner, 1991); (e) pre-instruction (Brett, Rothlein, & Hurley, 1996); and (f) restructuring the task (Malone & McLaughlin, 1997; Scott & Nagy, 1997). In the key word strategy, students are taught a key word by first thinking of other connecting words that they knew that were associated with the key word. In the repeated multiple reading strategy, target words are represented repeatedly using a variety of different text and by repeatedly reading the different text, students receive multiple exposures to the target vocabulary. The rich context strategy used by Beck et al., (1985) helps students understand target vocabulary because they are able to engage with novel words in a variety of ways. Computer based instruction enables students to learn vocabulary by engaging the students in learning the definitions of new words in order to practice putting them into sentences and playing games that involve the new words. Finally, pre-instruction has been found effective because it gives students the background knowledge they need of the novel words in order to practice using them and 28 recognizing them. The above research findings further prove that student’s vocabulary knowledge benefits from explicit instruction and seeing new words in multiple contexts. As stated previously, giving context to students is very important for word learning and students will benefit if they are taught that words have multiple meanings (Beck et al., 2002). Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) found that reading comprehension in students improved if the vocabulary instruction was based on both providing definitions and context. One activity Stahl (1999) recommends in order to show students that words are related to one another is to have the students participate in semantic mapping. Semantic mapping involves creating visual word families and then having a class discussion about how the word families are similar. While the above instructional practices have been found to be effective, the researchers did not specifically test the practices with an at-risk ELL population. My study provided information about what particular instructional practices are being used within the one-on-one tutoring sessions. Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension The relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension is thought to be reciprocal. Knowing more words facilitates greater comprehension and if a person reads more, he/she will learn more words (Freebody & Anderson, 1983; Stanovich, 1986). In short, the more vocabulary a person knows, the more he/she will be able to comprehend what he/she is reading. One argument is that increasing adolescent literacy rates requires the development of empirically based approaches that will promote students’ reading comprehension (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006; Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999). So, observing how tutors focus on vocabulary acquisition makes sense considering that having a limited vocabulary knowledge is a potential source of reading comprehension difficulties among struggling older readers, regardless of being ELL or NS (Bailey, 2006; Biancarosa & Snow, 2006; Chall & Jacobs, 2003; Fillmore, 1982; 29 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002; Stahl & Nagy, 2006; Valdes, 2000). Several important studies have been done on the relationship between reading and vocabulary that have found a positive relationship (Davis, 1942; Just & Carpenter, 1987; Whipple, 1925). An inference can be made based on the above research findings that students’ reading comprehension may have increased when tutors supported vocabulary acquisition in the study. Anderson and Freebody (1981) suggest three hypotheses that may help to explain the positive relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. The first is the instrumentalist hypothesis, which suggest that the words a person knows directly enables them to comprehend text. The other two hypotheses, general aptitude and general knowledge, suggest that vocabulary and reading comprehension is related to a third factor, intelligence or world knowledge. The instrumentalist hypothesis is the hypothesis that most strongly suggests that there is a direct relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, 2000), a subgroup of the NRP, demonstrated a causal relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension that furthered the instrumental hypothesis correlation. The NICHD found that there was a consistent and robust relationship between learning vocabulary in specific text and comprehension measures derived from the same texts. The NICHD report returned vocabulary knowledge to a place of prominence in reading curriculum. The idea that knowing vocabulary in a given text will help to support comprehension of that text supports my decision to look specifically at how volunteer tutors are helping at-risk secondary ELLs with vocabulary acquisition. I was able to make inferences about students increased reading comprehension of 30 material brought to a tutoring session if the tutors went over vocabulary words embedded in the text. Knowing vocabulary words aids in comprehending a reading text, but it is not the only higher processing skill required. Some of these higher level processes include making inferences, accessing prior knowledge, resolving structural and semantic ambiguities while reading, and it also involves integrating both linguistic and cognitive skills (Alexander & Jetton, 2000; Kintsch, 1994; McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996). It can be argued that each of the tasks required for comprehension draws on vocabulary knowledge. Once a student has decoded words successfully, they must grasp the word’s meaning in order to comprehend clauses, propositions, and paragraphs. If a person knows more vocabulary, they will spend less time decoding and more time connecting with the ideas the text is trying to present. If a student wants to become a fluent reader, they will need to have a strong background in vocabulary. Academic Vocabulary Academic vocabulary can pose particular challenges for at-risk secondary ELLs because it tends to be complex and abstract. Academic vocabulary is a component of academic English which is used in academic settings, academic texts, and is crucial for academic success (Corson, 1997; Cunningham & Moore, 1993; Nation & Kyongho, 1995; Scarcella, 2003). Academic vocabulary is not found in the everyday working vocabulary of at-risk secondary ELLS. According to Beck, McKeown, and Kucan’s (2002) tiers of word knowledge, academic vocabulary would fall under either a tier two or tier three classification. Academic vocabulary could be tier two because they are high frequency words that are used across disciplines and have some overlap with general (not discipline specific) academic vocabulary words. Academic vocabulary meet a tier three classification because tier three words tend to be quite specialized 31 and have low frequency. Tier one words are not academic vocabulary because tier one words tend to need no instruction and are everyday words. In order for students in high school and middle school to be able to comprehend texts and ideas in their content classes, they need to be able to comprehend and possess an academic vocabulary. Coxhead (2000) developed a new academic word list (AWL) based on college texts that covered multiple content areas that was influenced by a previous general service list (GSL) described by West (1953) that contains 2,000 of the most frequently used word families in English. The new AWL is much smaller, containing 570 word families and it accounts for approximately 10% of the total words in academic text, and close to 12.6 words per page (Coxhead & Nation, 2001). The 570 words on the AWL represent general, or cross disciplinary, academic words. I argue that knowing these general academic vocabulary words may help ELLs in their middle and high school classes and also prepare them more for post high school academic work. The study reported what type of words the tutors were introducing and if any of the words were considered academic vocabulary. Academic vocabulary is primarily found in academic texts (Corson, 1997). This means that without explicit instruction and exposure to academic vocabulary, at-risk secondary ELLs struggle in content area classrooms. An ELL student may have strong basic conversational vocabulary (BICS) but are lacking access to the more cognitively challenging “language of schooling” (CALP). When at-risk secondary ELLs do not receive the vocabulary resources needed to understand the academic text, comprehending the text becomes challenging. Apart from reading comprehension, academic vocabulary knowledge will help ELL students gain access to codes of power and privilege. The ability to communicate powerfully and fluently through academic vocabulary is one way that society separates and segregates members outside 32 of the mainstream. The ability to understand academic vocabulary and use words well will help ELL students develop a communication tool that will help them gain more access to opportunities (Purves, 1990). Academic vocabulary needs to be taught in a context-specific manner with students. Students need to learn a word’s meaning, parts, synonyms, antonyms, and the word needs to be presented to the students multiple times in a variety of contexts. My case study will provide data on what type of words, if any, volunteer tutors are helping at-risk ELLs to acquire and what instructional method is being used. By exposing the interactions in volunteer tutoring sessions, future interventions focused on helping at-risk secondary ELLs attain academic vocabulary can utilize and incorporate the findings. In sum, the literature suggests five key practices that are likely to build student vocabulary skills and it suggests that a student is able to have greater reading comprehension with a greater vocabulary knowledge. The vocabulary practices include having students learn vocabulary words through social interaction and through meaningful contexts (Harris, Graham, & Adkins, 2011, Vygotsky, 1978). Secondly, students need explicit vocabulary instruction. Thirdly, students need to hear and use vocabulary words frequently in order to know a word. Fourthly, the vocabulary knowledge of students increases if they are taught strategies for inferring the meanings of new words. Some of the strategies include teaching students about context clues, morphological awareness, cognate knowledge, and using aides like dictionaries or glossaries (Garcia & Nagy, 1993; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996; Nation, 2001). Lastly, the type of vocabulary words that a student learns matters. Students need to be instructed on vocabulary words that will increase their chances of academic success. 33 English Language Learners (ELLs) The following section in the literature review will provide information on ELLs in United States classrooms. A more extensive background of ELL learners will be shared first followed by a discussion of the research that has examined how ELLs acquire a second language (L2). Then the research on ELLs and their development of reading, vocabulary, academic vocabulary, and experience in secondary content areas will be reviewed. Finally, the lessons learned from the research on how to teach ELLs vocabulary will be focused on. ELL Background in United States public schools There were more than 11 million children between the ages of five and 17 that spoke a language other than English in their home in 2009 (U.S. Department of Education, 2011) and this number has increased. In schools, these students, typically referred to as ELL students, make up 21% of all school age children and 11% of national public school enrollments (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). This is much different than in 1970, when ELL school enrollment was only at 6% (Fix & Passel, 2003). Most of the ELLs in the U.S. speak Spanish as their primary language (79%) and the second largest language group is Vietnamese (2.5%) (Kindler, 2002). The study involved a sample of Spanish speaking ELL students. With the increasing ELL population, more research has focused on ELL students and one discouraging finding reports Ells are at a high risk of academic failure (Ruiz-de-Velasco, Fix, & Clewell, 2000) even though under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, public schools are mandated to provide both academic and fiscal resources to help ELLs overcome language barriers and gain English fluency. In 2000, the dropout rate for Latino/Latina youth was 22.4%, which is more than twice the national average 34 (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2007; Pew Hispanic Center, 2004), and in a recent assessment of National Educational Progress (NAEP), a large majority of ELLs scored below basic in almost all categories of achievement at every grade tested -4th, 8th, and 12th (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2005). Thomas and Collier (2001) conducted a five year study looking at school programs being offered to the over 210,000 ELL students in the U.S and found that most of the programs failed to bring ELL students to average levels of achievement on standardized reading tests. More research on specific interventions that work for ELL students is needed because school policy mandates that ELL students are supported academically. Public schools have been tasked by Article III of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to prepare ELL students to meet the same challenging academic standards that all children are expected to meet (NCLB, 2001), but if the schools are not aware of how to adequately accomplish these tasks, ELLs fall through the cracks and the schools fail as well. The cause of academic failure or stress for the ELL population is multidimensional. Firstly, institutional practices like academic tracking (Callahan, 2005) cause many ELL students to be placed in lower level classrooms where, at best, basic information is shared. ELLs who are put on a lower level track miss out on interacting with Native Speakers (NS) in higher track classes and they are not exposed to college preparatory work. Secondly, an at-risk ELL students’ level of first language (L1) literacy (August & Shanahan, 2006) development can limit their academic achievement in their second language (L2). If an ELL students’ L1 is not developed prior to entering the public school system, it can be much more challenging for the ELL student to develop literacy skills in their L2 (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Thirdly, socio-economic status is linked to an ELL achievement gap (SES; Capps et al., 2005; Cosentino de Cohen, Deterding, & Clewell, 2005). ELL learners are more likely to come from low income homes and 35 attend schools that have a high concentration of poverty which may account for how their academic literacy is being, or not being, developed in schools based on what is known about the link between reading development and Socio Economic Status (SES) (Brooks-Gunn, Duncun, & Britto, 1999; Sirin, 2005). Lastly, a lack of teacher training and professional development on working with at-risk ELL students is a contributing factor to the current achievement gap. A national teacher survey found that even though 41% of teachers reported having ELLs in their classrooms, only 12.5 % reported that they had received only 8 hours of ELL specific training over a three year span (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2002). Even though in recent years more teacher preparatory programs are instituting mandatory ELL coursework, much more needs to be done in order to ensure ELL students are not struggling in elementary school, falling through the cracks in middle school, and then dropping out in high school. Finally, it is important to discuss how resources for ESL programs and ELL students are being funded in the education system because it could be argued that funding is directly related to academic success. A recent literature review done by Jimenez-Castellanos and Topper (2012) revealed that the funding ELL students are receiving is understudied and does not account for the complex and diverse needs of the ELL population. Of the 70 empirical studies reviewed, only 4 focused specifically on ELLs. Typically, the costing out methods for ELLs are limited to standardized test scores and the general student population. Funding allocation does not currently factor in that there are many different needs that each ELL student has and there is no method for determining if the funding, based on test scores and general population, is adequate for all the ELLs in a school classroom, building, or district (Gandara & Rumberger, 2008; Multi Cultural Education Training and Advocacy (META), 2008). In short, the funding being allocated for ELL students falls under the same funding being given to all students which leaves no room for 36 additional resources or intervention possibilities. The review also found that overall states are not allocating sufficient funds to educate the general K-12 population. An argument can be made based on the above findings that research needs to focus on conducting low cost interventions for ELL students because schools would not be able to sustain an intervention that strained its already stretched budget. My study focused on assessing how volunteer tutors helped adolescent at-risk ELL learners in a low cost tutoring program which adds to the discussion on how low cost programs like volunteer tutoring can be replicated in effective ways. ELL Second Language (L2) Acquisition It is important to understand how ELLs typically acquire a second language because the processes could be observed during the case study or help explain data. For instance, student participants might be using the same L2 processes to acquire vocabulary in the intervention. The term L2 acquisition includes the learning of a second language in natural settings as well as classroom settings. It encompasses learning an L2 in both oral and written forms. For the purposes of this literature review, the term is being used broadly to refer to anyone who is learning a second language that has a basic command of one (or more) language(s) already. The following review of L2 acquisition will look specifically at how students are learning a second language in a “L2-majority” context, meaning that the students are surrounded by the L2 in the society in which they live or the school that they attend. First, it is important to discuss the four groups of researchers that have provided most of the insight into L2 learning and acquisition because each of the four fields has different interests and methodologies that are worth considering in the proposed study on L2 vocabulary acquisition within one- on- one tutoring sessions. The four groups of L2 researchers were studied according to an extensive review by Dixon, Tarbox, Najdowski, Wilkie, and Granpeesheh (2011) 37 on language acquisition. The four groups are: foreign language educators, child language researchers, sociocultural researchers, and psycholinguistics. Dixon et al. reviewed 71 empirical studies that represented each of the four groups mentioned above. The empirical studies looked at L2 acquisition in different ways and it was evident that each of the fields has added important insight into how individuals acquire a second language. Foreign language educators want to enhance the effectiveness of L2 instructional techniques and therefore tend to study L2 learning in mainly adolescent or adult classroom settings. The two models that have been studied widely by foreign language educators are the input-interaction-output (IIO) model and the socio-educational model. In the IIO model, learners receive input to understand the rules of a language and then try out their understanding through speech or writing (output). The student’s interaction involves receiving feedback as to whether their output was understandable (Alcon, 1998; Gass & Mackey, 2007). The socio-educational model proposed by Gardner (1985, 2000) focuses on how integrated the learner is in the learning environment, their attitude toward learning, and their motivation. The findings of both of the above methods have found significant effects in L2 acquisition when ELL learners felt that they were more integrated in their learning environment or received an IIO model of instruction. Studies done by foreign language educators tend to use correlational or small scale quasi- experimental methods. Child language researchers have studied how language is acquired naturally, the role of language input, developmental errors, and verbal interactions between adults and other children (Bavin, 2009) in their first language. The work that child language researchers have done on L1 acquisition has influenced theories in L2 acquisition and L2 practices and often focuses on the interactions between an adult and child that promote language development (Cote, 2001; Pan, 38 Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005; Quiroz, Snow, & Zhao, 2010). For instance, the idea that L2 acquisition follows a developmental process and that the development of L1 language skills influence the development of L2 acquisition can be connected to the field of child language research. Child language research studies use descriptive, longitudinal studies with young leaners in naturalistic settings. Social and cultural researchers argue that L2 acquisition cannot be understood unless the specific social interactions that learners are engaging in are examined. The sociocultural researchers emphasize the importance of the learning environment and believe that language acquisition is a result of Vygotsky’s (1978) developmental theory. Vygotsky emphasized that learners will reach new levels of development if they receive instruction from others who have already mastered the task (Lantolf & Thorne, 2007). The interventions done by social and cultural researchers are usually qualitative in nature and done with any age group in order to understand that social and cultural forces at work in an L2 environment. Psycholinguists examine the mental processes involved in L2 acquisition, typically using quantitative methods and controlled experiments. They have been really interested in the component skills that build L2 competencies and what cognitive skills can transfer from L1 to L2. Psycholinguists have looked at how internal processes explain L2 Acquisition by observing external linguistic behaviors or experimental task performance. Current research done by psycholinguists might be answering questions about, how do L1 and L2 Acquisition interact with each other. The model that is used a lot to explain language acquisition in the field in the connectionist model meaning that the more input the student receives regarding a certain rule of language will lead to a stronger connection and more predictable outcome (Ellis, 2002, 2003; Seidenberg, MacDonald, & Haskell, 2007). 39 In my study I functioned as a social and cultural researcher by examining the interactions between volunteer tutors and at-risk ELL adolescent learners in one-on-one tutoring sessions. My research sought to understand what factors influence the academic language acquisition of ELLs during tutoring through qualitative data. Additionally, other aspects of L2 acquisition research presented itself within the collected data. Some interactions between the tutors and the learners may have followed an IIO method (foreign language educators) during each session. The tutors might have also created an environment designed to motivate at-risk ELL students and promoted a positive learning experience (socio-educational model). Tutors may have interacted with learners based on an understanding they have about how L1 acquisition influences L2 acquisition and how the interactions between adults and children matter to L2 acquisition (child language educators). Finally, tutors might have tended to give a lot of input to the learners that resulted in strengthening the connections learners had to concepts and vocabulary that was worked on in sessions (psycho-linguistics). In addition to the four groups that have studied language acquisition, other programs have had positive effects on ELL L2 acquisition. One program, Bilingual Education, has been supported by several studies. In one study done by Garcia & Barlett (2007), a secondary school used a bilingual model combining L1 content instruction with intensive L2 content instruction for the entire school which was made up of all L1 Spanish speakers. Results showed a highly successful outcome measured by graduation rates and passing rates on state graduation exams. The study did not conduct any specific assessment measures that may have helped show how the bilingual model affected certain aspects of reading development. Another program that has had significant results in supporting L2 acquisition is the sheltered instruction observation protocol (SIOP) model (Echevarria, Short, & Powers, 2006; McIntyre, Kyle, Chen, Munoz, & Beldon, 40 2010). The SIOP model is based on sociocultural principles and includes building background knowledge, comprehensible input, practice or application, and review or assessment (McIntyre et al., 2010). The SIOP model is predominately used in interventions in a whole class setting and the principles are applied to the entire curriculum. My study offered additional insight into what model is currently being used by volunteer tutors and what instructional model might work best with at-risk adolescent ELLs in a one-on-one tutoring session. The coded observations in my study were related, at times, to aspects of bilingual education or the SIOP model. Vocabulary Development and Instruction with ELLs Research suggests that ELLs are more likely to have an underdeveloped English vocabulary (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005) regardless of whether they are from a middle income or lower income background (Umbel, Pearson, Fernandez, & Oller, 1992). The fastest growing populations of ELL learners have migrated to the U.S. before kindergarten or are U.S born children of immigrants (Capps et al., 2005). Scarcella (2005) found that this particular population of ELL learners will enroll in U.S schools by kindergarten and have mastered Basic English by middle school, but will lack the academic English necessary to comprehend academic texts. There have been several studies done with elementary and middle school ELL learners that demonstrates the fact that their vocabulary levels are well below average (Manis, Lindsey, & Bailey, 2004; McLaughlin & Tilstone, 2000; Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005; Swanson, Saez, & Gerber, 2006). Additionally, the differences in vocabulary knowledge and reading outcomes between native speakers and ELL learners have been shown to widen over time (Kieffer, 2008; Nakamoto, Lindsey, & Manis, 2007). As stated in the vocabulary section, in order to know a word, a student must know many things – the literal meaning, connotation, syntactic constructions, morphological options, and 41 semantic associations (Nagy & Scott 2000). When a student knows the above mentioned various aspects of a word, they are thought to have depth of word knowledge, which is just as important as knowing many words (breadth of word knowledge). ELL students have been shown to have a lack of word knowledge depth, even for words that occur frequently (Verhallen & Schoonen, 1993). One study done by August et al. (1999) compared ELL 4th grade students with NS 4th graders and found that the ELL students had a limited breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge when all the students were given the Picture Peabody Vocabulary Test Revised (PPVT-R). This finding confirmed research done by Umbel et al. (1992) that there is a large gap in the breadth of vocabulary between ELLs and NS students and that gap does not diminish over time. In short, the research has found that ELL students know fewer words than NS students and they know less about the meanings of words (August & Shanahan, 2006). It is concerning to consider that ELL learners, a growing population, often have fewer opportunities to learn than their NS peers within the same school (Gandara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan., 2003; Hakuta, 1998; Snow et al., 1998) and tend to then have reading comprehension difficulties, especially after the primary grades (August & Shanahan, 2006). The current study is designed look at how volunteer tutors, selected to help struggling populations, are in fact supporting at-risk adolescent ELLs. Are the tutors helping the at-risk ELLs succeed academically and if so, how? We know that at-risk ELLs tend to have reading comprehension problems but we do not know what tutors are currently doing to support the vocabulary acquisition of at-risk ELLs. Research needs to be conducted on how, or if, interventions designed to help close the achievement gap, such as one-on-one tutoring, are providing instruction to at-risk adolescent ELLs that supports their academic success. 42 By high school, many teachers might expect that their job is to teach the content of a subject and that vocabulary learning is incidental if the student engages with the text. What might not be considered by teachers is that for ELL students, knowing fewer words and meanings of words makes incidental vocabulary learning while reading much more challenging compared with their NS peers. The ELL students are not able to use the context to figure out unknown words because many of the words in context are also unknown. Because an ELL student lacks complete command of English, they are less likely than NS to use linguistic cues to figure out word meanings (Stroller & Grabe, 1995). Carver (1994) found that reading a text in which just 2% of the words are unfamiliar can block comprehension and novel word learning. It can be inferred that the percentage of unknown words in the academic text many secondary ELL students are asked to navigate is much higher than 2%. In order to help ELL students learn more novel words, Huckin, Haynes, and Coady (1995) suggest that vocabulary instruction should be taught directly first and then ELL students should be provided with opportunities to encounter incidentally the novel words that were just taught in authentic and motivating text. Research has also found that ELL students benefit from being taught strategies for inferring the meaning of newly encountered words. Some of these strategies include context clues, morphological awareness, cognate knowledge, and using aids like glossaries or dictionaries (Garcia & Nagy, 1993; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996; Nation 2001). There are unique challenges that students face who are learning vocabulary in a second language (L2). Firstly, there is limited instructional time (August, et al., 2005). Typically, ELL students in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes are given direct vocabulary instruction through easily accessible words and simple sentences (Guerrero, 2004). While this type of exposure may be useful, it is not giving ELL students the academic vocabulary they need to be 43 successful in mainstream courses. Secondly, the abstract words being taught to ELLs are not always supported by graphics or pictures (Anderson & Roit, 1996). Thirdly, some teachers tend to overestimate the ELL student’s knowledge of written English vocabulary based on their conversational English (Beck et al., 2002; Scarcella, 2003) when in fact, developing a mastery of academic English could take several more years than mastering conversational English (Cummins, 1981; Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000). Lastly, the semantic knowledge of ELLs is often less developed than their NS peer group (Bialystok, Luk, & Kwan, 2005; Biemiller, 1999; Droop & Verhoeven, 2003; Geva & Siegal, 2000). The above challenges result in severe language gaps for ELL students who did not learn many, if any, vocabulary words in their second language (L2) from caretakers, and rely on the bulk of vocabulary learning to happen within the school environment. Currently, teachers are not being given the proper training to support ELL students in high school classrooms or do not have resources and time to invest in rich, vocabulary instruction. As a result, adolescent ELLs are being left behind in not just high school, but in their life possibilities. Despite the challenges, there is growing evidence that many of the same vocabulary learning techniques used with native speakers (NS) are also effective with ELLs (Shanahan & Beck, 2006). For instance, it has also been found that reading aloud from appropriate texts benefits L2 vocabulary development (Coady, 1997; Houk, 2005; Stahl, Richek, & Vandevier, 1991). The learning techniques that are used with NS speakers need to be supplemented For ELLs with visual aids and increased practice with new words in a variety of context (August et al., 2005). Even with the above findings that talk about how best practices can support NS and ELLs, the majority of empirical studies done on vocabulary interventions have been done with 44 monolingual English speakers and most of the studies are done in elementary school settings. For instance, in 50 vocabulary intervention studies reviewed by the National Reading Panel (NRP) in 2000, 39 were conducted with students in elementary schools. Most of the studies that the NRP reviewed looked at one specific aspect of vocabulary learning or used one word learning strategy, were short term, and the intervention was administered in small groups. There were no studies looked at by the NRP that were focused on ELL students. Since the NRP report came out, a handful of studies have been published that looked at a more comprehensive approach to vocabulary instruction (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Lubliner & Smetana, 2005; Nelson & Stage, 2007) which vary with the age studied or target populations. While these studies represent the promise of using comprehensive approaches for vocabulary instruction and offer examples of how challenging it is to develop vocabulary, they do not target ELL learners in secondary schools or look at how volunteer tutors are interacting with at-risk ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions. It is concerning that there is a lack of vocabulary research looking at ELL populations. As stated above, the NRP did not review any studies on ELLs or at-risk populations and Calderon, Hertz-Lazarowitz, & Slavin (2005) reported that few vocabulary intervention studies have been done with ELL students. In a review done by Shanahan & Beck (2006), only three vocabulary intervention studies were identified between 1980 and 2005 that were conducted with language minority learners. Two of the three studies were done with younger learners. In one study modeled after Beck and MeKeown’s rich vocabulary approach, Calderon et al. (2005) found significant effect sizes for Spanish speaking EL students in grade three. The study conducted by Calderon et al. (2005) included several aspects of instruction that were reported by Wasik (1998) as effective practices for reading tutors which will be discussed later on in the literature review. 45 Calderon’s intervention followed a curriculum, provided professional development, and followed an instructional routine. The teachers were trained to teach words directly, in context, and present the words in stories. It is evident by the studies mentioned above that the little research that has been done on vocabulary instruction with younger ELLs has found significant results. Even though there has been no studies done that look specifically at ELL secondary students, vocabulary acquisition, and volunteer tutoring, a handful of studies have evaluated classroom vocabulary instruction of linguistically diverse students beyond the primary grades. Carlo et al. (2004) used a 15 week comprehensive vocabulary program with 254 fifth grade ELL students that showed significant gains in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. The program was conducted in an after school environment by the researcher. Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, and Kelley (2010) evaluated the effectiveness of an implemented academic vocabulary program with 476 sixth graders (346 ELL) that had significant results on the meanings of words taught, morpheme awareness, and word meaning presented in expository text. The research was carried out in a whole group setting with the teacher as the instructor of the intervention. In each of the above studies, the interventions were very structured and followed a created curriculum that included several aspects of reading development. With the current lack of funding in many schools and pressures on teachers to meet common core standards, teach in full inclusion classrooms, and prepare students for standardized assessments, more studies need to look at how support staff, such as volunteer tutors, are supporting secondary at-risk ELLs. Are the volunteer tutors, recruited to help at-risk learners succeed, helping struggling ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions? It is important to research the interactions that are currently taking place in one-one- one tutoring sessions in order for future tutoring interventions to benefit the success of at-risk secondary ELLs. 46 Academic Language and ELLs In the field of second language acquisition, there has been influential work done on what constitutes academic language. One influential definition of academic language came from Jim Cummins’s (1984) work on the difference between cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) from basic interpersonal conversational skills (BICS). Cummins said that ELL students tend to achieve a BICS level of L2 acquisition much sooner than they are able to achieve a CALP understanding of an L2 because a BICS level requires a knowledge of everyday conversational skills and a CALP understanding of the L2 involves being able to read, write, and comprehend academic level text. Having different definitions of the levels of L2 an ELL student could attain shifted how teachers and researchers understood how language worked. The first understanding being that there are different types of language (e.g. language for specialized fields and everyday language). The second understanding was that acquiring different types of language is developmental, BICS is acquired first and CALP is developed later and acquiring CALP usually means a student will need more formal instruction because it is more cognitively demanding. Some contemporary scholars have rejected that there are stark differences between “academic” and “conversational” language but these same scholars agree that there is a language of schooling that is distinct from the language outside of school and that this language of schooling requires formal instruction and does indeed present challenges for ELL students who are still developing their L2 (Bunch, 2004, Schleppegrell, 2004; Valdes, 2004). Some scholars promote the idea that academic language does not only involve having English proficiency but it also involves having a mastery of content knowledge and learning strategies that promote continued learning (Krashen & Brown, 2007). Research that has been done on how social interaction promotes literacy and language shares the premise that the 47 language a student is able to produce will rely on the understanding they have of discourse, rules of interaction, and the genres or registers that mediate the language (Barton, 1994; Dyson & Genishi, 2005; Heath, 1983). My study referred to academic language as a language of schooling that is cognitively demanding and requires formal instruction by the tutors in order for the students to eventually develop the language. The tutors may institute learning strategies (e.g. morphological awareness, cognate awareness) that Krashen & Brown (2007) advocated for if they teach the ELL student word learning strategies that will help them to learn words after the intervention has been completed. Conducting a study that looked at how tutors and learners are interacting in one-on-one tutoring sessions with a focus on vocabulary acquisition inevitably looked at if the tutor was helping the ELL acquire academic language through social interaction. The qualitative observations that focused on vocabulary acquisition were coded according to whether the word learning interactions focused on the ELL acquiring academic vocabulary or basic vocabulary and the methods that the tutors use to teach vocabulary were noted. ELLs and Reading Development The relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary was covered in the first section of this literature review. This section of the review will look specifically at research comparing the reading development of ELL students to NS. ELL students are likely to move through similar phases of English reading development compared with NS peers, though perhaps at a different speed and they will have different strengths and weaknesses (August & Shanahan, 2006; Garcia, 2003; Grabe, 2009). For example, Lesaux, Koda, Siegel, & Shanahan (2006) did a literature review on ELL learners and concluded that when reading in a second language, ELL learners tend to read words accurately in the primary grades but struggle to reach adequate levels of reading comprehension in later grades. Garcia (2003) reviewed research as to why older ELL 48 students are struggling with reading comprehension and found that although second language reading comprehension requires many of the same cognitive strategies and processes as first language reading comprehension (i.e. graphophonic, lexical, semantic, syntactic, background, and textual knowledge), ELL learners encounter more unfamiliar words and topics than their NS peers which cause them to fall behind in their reading comprehension after the primary grades. This may be a result of ELL learners not being part of the majority and therefore they are unable to connect new words to the context surrounding them. Although the studies done on ELLs reading comprehension above the primary grades are lacking, two studies done with upper elementary Spanish speaking students provide insight to the struggles faced by ELL students past the primary grades compared to their NS peers. Nakamoto et al., (2007) measured national standardized reading comprehension test scores of a group of Spanish ELL students from 1 to 6th grade and found that after second grade, the ELL students reading comprehension scores dropped far below their NS peers and remained lower. The other study done by Mancilla-Martinez and Lesaux (2010) followed a group of low income Spanish ELL learners from pre-school to fifth grade and found that by 5th grade the students had fallen significantly behind their NS peers, reaching only a 2nd grade reading level by 5th grade. It can be inferred from the above two studies that by the secondary grades ELL students are significantly further behind their peers in their ability to comprehend academic text. As stated in the previous section, vocabulary has been found to be tied to a student’s ability to comprehend what they read. The field needs to pay attention to this and more studies need to be done on interventions that will help adolescent ELL learners have higher rates of reading comprehension past the primary grades. Considering vocabulary has been found to affect 49 reading comprehension positively, it made sense to see how a tutor is helping an at-risk ELL adolescent learner with vocabulary acquisition in the tutoring sessions that were observed. Many studies that have looked at ELL students in the primary grades have found that reading comprehension rates have been positively affected when interventions were geared toward developing oral language, vocabulary, and morphological awareness. No study has observed volunteer tutors interactions with adolescent at-risk ELLs to see what skills the tutors were helping their students develop and if those skills were affecting academic outcomes, including reading comprehension. ELL Oral language interventions have been associated with helping students develop greater word reading abilities (Carlisle, Beeman, Davis, & Spharim, 1999; Gottardo, 2002; Hedrick & Cunningham, 1995; Juel et al., 1986; Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey,, 2003; Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005). ELL vocabulary knowledge interventions are linked to greater ELL reading comprehension (Droop & Verhoeven, 2003; Whitely, Smith, & Connors, 2003; Proctor, Carlo, August & Snow, 2005). Morphological Awareness interventions for ELLs, designed to help students understand the structure of words as combinations of meaningful units called morphemes, can be linked to helping develop reading comprehension based on the findings of the RAND Reading Study Group (2002). RAND (2002) found that developing morphological awareness in ELL students could help them decode complex words and that the ability to decode morphologically complex words may lead to more word learning which will increase the breadth of vocabulary an ELL student knows. My study may help to add to the current discussion on reading comprehension best practices because the collected data will be able to see what reading comprehension best practices the tutors are developing, if any, with the learners. 50 ELLs in the Content Areas While studies on secondary ELLs and vocabulary acquisition are limited, there have been some studies done on the experiences of ELLs in content area classes that further make the case that at-risk ELLs are struggling academically and need to be supported in order to succeed. Schleppegrell & Achugar (2003) did a linguistic analysis of several history textbooks and demonstrated that reading the textbooks and writing about them could be particularly difficult for ELL learners. They recommend that teachers would need to explicitly teach grammatical features of textbooks to students. Short (2002) researched interactions in sheltered social studies classes to see how four teachers balanced content, vocabulary, and task based instruction. She found it to be problematic for ELL students that the teachers concentrated on content and task based instruction far more than language. She recommended that teaching should include explicit instruction in the four uses of language, vocabulary acquisition, grammar, and mechanics. Two studies conducted with ELL middle school students in their content area classes demonstrate the power of focusing on academic language in an intervention. Bunch, Abram, Lotan, and Valdes (2001) conducted an academic language intervention as part of a long term university school project. Bunch et al.’s (2001) intervention created a curriculum focused on having ELL students use more academic language in the classroom and in their writing. The goal of the study was to help ELL students be able to participate in classes with their native speaking peers and it had successful outcomes. It is important to note that the ELL students in Bunch et al.’s study were encouraged to use academic language in an interactive way. Another study that was done by Zwier (2009) focused on helping ELL middle school students learn history academic language in a functional way. Components of the intervention included Zwier creating word walls, chants, and motions for the target academic vocabulary he was teaching in the class. 51 The evidence provided by Zwier that the intervention had positive outcomes included showing how the students used the academic language that they had encountered in class in their final essays. The above studies positive effects support ongoing research in observing how learning concepts such as academic language is affected by social interactions. My study was able to observe and discuss what learning concepts, if any, the tutors were able to help at-risk secondary ELLs attain through social interaction. ELL Instructional Practices There are several instructional practices that have been used in past interventions with NS that have been found to be effective with ELLs. The strategies include providing definitions and context about a new word’s meaning, actively involving students in learning the target words, providing multiple exposures of each word, and teaching word analysis (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Beck, McKeown, & Kucan 2002, Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). While it is difficult to know exactly what strategies the tutors will use in their interactions with at-risk secondary ELLs, it is important to be aware of some key strategies, discussed below, that others have used when working with ELL learners. ELL students will benefit from an intervention that takes advantage of their first language, especially if the first language shares cognates with English. Carlo et al. (2004) had successful outcomes with Spanish speaking 4th graders when the students were taught to figure out vocabulary by using cognate knowledge from their L1. In another study done by Dressler (2000) on the influence of cognate awareness, it was suggested that Spanish speaking ELLs who are orally proficient in Spanish will benefit just as much by cognate awareness instruction as ELLs who are literate in Spanish as well. In Jimenez (1997) and Jimenez and Gamez (1996) the authors talked about a short term intervention that was done with middle school Spanish 52 speaking students. They were taught how to handle unknown vocabulary by recognizing Spanish cognates in English, by using background knowledge, and by asking questions. The data that was collected in the study, transcripts of each session, were analyzed and it was reported that students developed more awareness of cognates and a more positive attitude of reading. Many English words that are cognates of Spanish words are high frequency Spanish words and low frequency English words and provides students with the English labels for words they know in Spanish, therefore helping them develop a richer understanding of what Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) label Tier 2 words. One way teachers can assist students in recognizing cognates is during reading (Field et al., 2001; Szpara & Ahmad, 2007). ELL students also need to know the labels for the many words NS already know. Beck et al., (2002) label these words tier one words. Tier one words are basic words that do not typically require instruction in school for NS but ELL students do require instruction of tier one words. Instructing ELLs on tier one words might be as simple as saying and showing the word and then pointing to a picture that represents the word. Instruction of tier one words might be more involved if the tier one word has multiple meanings. The case study observed how tutors helped at-risk ELLs with vocabulary acquisition and knowing the definitions of “tiers” was helpful. When the data was collected and analyzed, the above explanations helped the researcher decide what tier the words were on that the tutor was helping the ELL student learn. Reviewing and reinforcing vocabulary words is another strategy that particularly benefits ELLs. One way to review and reinforce vocabulary is through read alouds. The strategies used to help ELL students strengthen vocabulary during read alouds will vary depending on the student’s familiarity with the words. For example, tier three words defined by Beck et al. (2002) are words students are unlikely to know and will often need pre-teaching and reinforcement during reading. 53 Reinforcement can also involve having student’s complete self-directed activities in order to practice newly acquired vocabulary. Activities include having students take home word lists and tapes of the words (Carlo et al., 2004). Review and reinforcement were looked for in the observed data. For instance, if a tutor was helping an ELL learn a word, how many times was the word reviewed or reinforced? Was there any relationship between the amount of times a word was reinforced or reviewed in relation to if it was learned by the student? Tutoring As discussed previously, ELLs are not being supported in adolescent classroom settings by teachers due to a lack of resources including training and time constraints. Hence, looking at volunteer tutoring as a feasible alternative is necessary. Most of the research that has been done on the effects of volunteer tutoring programs has been done in elementary schools and is connected to the America Reads Challenge set forth by the Clinton Administration in 1996. The America Reads Challenge pushed for the creation of volunteer tutoring programs that would support a young student’s literacy development. Volunteer tutoring is traditionally conducted by an adult who is not getting paid or may be receiving a small stipend. This review will examine research done on volunteer tutoring and tutoring programs in general in order to see what effect tutoring has on children’s vocabulary acquisition. It is important to note that several tutoring studies include vocabulary measures and interventions as one component of an overall reading focused tutoring program instead of concentrating specifically on vocabulary tutoring. This section will first look at a series of meta-analyses that have been conducted on tutoring programs. Second, specific volunteer tutoring studies that incorporate word learning components will be discussed. Next, some challenges within volunteer tutoring programs will be presented. Then, characteristics of volunteer tutoring programs that achieve more significant results will be 54 laid out. Finally, the limited research that has been conducted on middle and high school volunteer tutoring programs will be discussed. Meta-Analyses of tutoring programs Overall, tutoring programs have had a significant effect on student achievement in elementary schools. Cohen, Kulik, and Kulik (1982) conducted a meta-analysis of 65 studies on tutoring programs and found that overall the programs raised achievement levels for students. The majority of studies analyzed elementary students and all of the studies had to have quantifiable results to be included in the analysis. Cohen et al. (1982) found six features to be associated with higher effect sizes, more than .8 or at least equal to .5, included having a shorter duration of the tutoring program and if the pre-test and post-test measures were locally designed (researcher created) instead of a global (standardized) measure. Wasik and Slavin (1993) went further than Cohen because they looked specifically at five volunteer tutoring programs versus tutoring programs in general. Wasik and Slavin (1993) reviewed five reading volunteer tutoring programs for grades K-1 and found all of the programs reported positive effects on reading. More effective programs in the review were associated with the scope, sequence, and duration of the tutoring session. Wasik (1998) reviewed 17 volunteer tutoring programs for grades K-3 that were part of the America Reads Challenge and found that all of the programs reported being effective in helping kids read, but only five had quantifiable measures. Wasik found that more successful programs had a coordinator, training for tutors, and a specific structure that included word analysis, and had students be active participants in learning. Shanahan (1998) conducted a landmark research synthesis of tutoring programs from 1969-1997 and found that tutoring programs have a positive impact on student achievement. 55 Some meta-analyses, discussed below, focused on specific features of tutoring programs. A more specific review of the context of the tutoring session was done in a review by Elbaum et al. (2000) looked at 29 tutoring programs and found that the most effective programs involved one on one instruction that was explicit. Slavin (2008) made an important comparison between the effect tutoring can have based on who the tutor is in a review of 29, K-5 tutoring programs that were at least 12 weeks in length. Slavin found that although tutoring programs run by certified teachers tended to be more effective, tutoring programs run by volunteers or paraprofessionals were more cost effective. Ritter et al. (2009) provided the most recent meta- analysis on volunteer tutoring programs for elementary and middle school students. The review included 21 studies of tutoring programs for grades K-8. Out of the 21 studies, 15 of the studies were associated with word learning and all but two of the studies had positive effects. A limitation of Ritter et al.’s study was that it did not review any tutoring programs that targeted high school learners which could be a result of there not being any studies to analyze that met the meta- analysis criteria. Another limitation was that Ritter et al. did not include any studies that targeted ELL learners specifically. In fact, none of the meta-analyses targeting or talked about the impact tutoring had on ELL students specifically and only a few reviewed studies done with high school learners. In order to achieve a greater understanding of the impact of tutoring, more studies need to research how tutoring effects specific age groups and learners that have not been as represented in the research. Volunteer Tutoring Programs with Word Learning Components Several studies on volunteer tutoring and elementary students have shown positive effects on vocabulary acquisition and will be discussed below. Jung, Molfese, and Langer (2011) conducted a study on a tutoring program that focused on language comprehension and decoding. 56 Tutors were told to focus on before, during, and after reading strategies in each session. The post test revealed that tutored students increased their ability to decode. Lee, Morrow-Howell, Johnson-Reid, and McCrary (2010) conducted a study on the Experience Corps tutoring program, an AmeriCorps program, for elementary struggling readers. The study was done over a two year period with 883 students in 23 urban classrooms. The students were given pre and post- test measures to judge their standardized reading development and the tutored students outperformed students who had not received tutoring. A Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) was given as a measure of receptive vocabulary and the post test revealed no significant effects. Lee et al. (2010) said this may be a result of the PPVT being a measuring vocabulary terms that were not the direct target words taught in the study. Two specific studies stand out as valuable because they had a structured word learning component in each tutoring session and a specific structure. The first study was done by Moorehart and Karabruick (2009) on a tutoring program in Michigan that took place in six elementary schools. Each tutoring session had a ten minute structured word study. Tutors would introduce 3-6 new words to the tutee in a word bank. The tutor and tutee would discuss the word’s definitions, put the words on flash cards, and look for them in context. In subsequent sessions the words would be reviewed and once the student identified the words six times on their own the word was put on the word powering. When a student got 50 words on their powering, they were able to select a book to take home. Tutor folders included a list of target words and a tracker where tutors would record words the student had learned. A standardized post-test revealed that the students had increased their overall reading abilities by one grade level. In the second study of note, Juel (1996) conducted a study of a volunteer tutoring program run by minimally trained college students to elementary students. Each tutor engaged tutees in 57 seven tutoring activities (e.g. reading literature, writing, letter-sound instruction, word families, and high frequency words) that were associated with high frequency words, letter-sound relationships, word families, and reading build up books. Juel found that the tutoring session was most effective in dyads that scaffolded instruction and used controlled vocabulary materials. The tutor would give just enough information for the student to get the vocabulary word and then the tutor would provide clues or prompts in order for the student to attain the words. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills was given to the students in the Juel (1996) study and they outperformed students that had not been given the tutoring intervention. Three studies measured vocabulary learning specifically and found positive outcomes due to the volunteer tutoring sessions. Fredrick (2003) designed a volunteer tutoring study around the explicit teaching of words. In each elementary tutoring session a specific word learning part would explicitly teach students letter names, letter-sound relationships, and how to figure out word meanings. Pre-test and post-test measures included having students read words in isolation, identify letter sounds, name, and rapidly name letters. The most significant finding of the study was that children could read more words as a result of the tutoring sessions. The post- test outcomes also revealed that students showed marked improvement in their letter sound relationships and ability to recognize sounds in isolation. Second, Vadesy, Jenkins, and Pool (2000) did a study of 23 first graders in a tutoring program compared with 23 first graders who were not enrolled in tutoring. They modeled the tutoring structure from Invernizzi’s, Juel’s, and Rosemary’s study (1996) and it included four components: new book reading, vocabulary work, writing, and familiar book reading. One of the measures the students were tested on was the Woodcock-Johnson exam and it revealed that 15 of the 23 students identified more than 50% of the words compared with only two of the 23 in the control group. Lastly, Baker, Gersten, and 58 Keating (2002) studied the effects of the Start Making a Reader Today (SMART) volunteer tutoring program for K-2. Tutors were minimally trained and required to read tutoring handbooks that suggested the importance of word learning. The handbook said that if children knew letter- sound relationships and words, their reading would benefit. The students were given several word learning measures including the Dolch test, Woodcock Johnson, expressive one word vocabulary test, and rapid naming test. The students improved on their letter sound relationships and word reading. Challenges within Tutoring Programs Even though the majority of effects of tutoring programs are positive, in some cases, tutoring does not work for students. Cunningham and Allington (1994) found that tutoring did not support academic gains when students were taken away from class time and class content. Shanahan and Barr (1995) found that tutoring was not effective if the teacher who the students had for the majority of the day was not meeting high expectations. Velltino et al. (1996) found that if a student did not have phonologically processing skills or a developed working memory prior to receive tutoring sessions, the sessions did not benefit the child. A child’s developmental level matters to the benefits they receive from tutoring. Morris, et al. (1991) found that even though all students in a specific program did progress, it was at different levels and the pacing of a tutoring session needs to be considered. In two other tutoring intervention studies, tutoring was not beneficial for very low achieving readers (Mathes & Fuchs, 1994; Shanahan 1998). Other factors that could affect outcomes of a tutoring intervention program include the socioeconomic status (SES) of the school(s) involved in the intervention, length of intervention, and the experience level of the tutors. A low SES population was used in a study done by Cobb (2000) with 60 children in grades 1-3 from two schools. The study revealed significant 59 differences for students receiving tutoring in grade 1, but there was no significant differences found in grades two or three. One of the limitations that was discussed in Cobb’s (2000) early intervention tutoring intervention was the potential impact that SES had on the study’s outcomes. Cobb discussed how growing up in poverty poses barriers to literacy success in tutoring interventions that are being conducted with either untrained volunteers or first time volunteers. Cobb recommends that a tutoring intervention done in a lower SES school should include in- depth training for the tutors on how to teach children from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Cobb also cited the length of the intervention and the experience of the tutors as a possible reason for low or no effect sizes. The intervention lasted one year and often consisted of brief sessions that were not consecutive and the tutors reported in some of their reflections that they felt inadequate based on their lack of previous experience and understanding of the critical issues of the impact of poverty in school settings. While some researchers say that a tutoring intervention will benefit academic success if it lasted for more than a year (Goldenburg, 1994; Hiebert, 1994), others have pointed out that positive effects can be found in short term interventions lasting for more than 4 weeks and not longer than 18 weeks (Cohen, Kulik, & Kulik, 1982). The challenges presented above are important to be aware of because they explain some of the findings in my current study. Characteristics of Effective Tutoring Programs There are certain characteristics that have been associated with higher effects in elementary tutoring interventions. Ehri, Dreyer, Flugman, and Gross (2007) and Elbaum et al. (2000) found that one-on-one dyads yield higher results. In a similar finding, Shanahan (1998) found that one-on-one teachers or paid professionals produce more substantial tutoring gains than any other dyadic combination, including tutoring by parents, peers, or volunteers. Morrow 60 and Walker (1998) advocated for tutoring sessions to have structure, trained tutors, adequate supplies, and support from the school in order to be effective. Wasik (1998) said that when tutors are given consistent feedback, students benefit academically. Worthy et al. (2003) did a study on two tutoring programs and recommended that programs screen their tutors, have a low tutor to coordinator ratio at the school, and provide explicit training. In short, a successful reading tutoring program needs to reflect intensity, structure, coordination between implementers, extensive training before and during intervention, and careful monitoring of the tutoring sessions during the intervention (Wasik, 1998; Moss, Swartz, Obeidallah, Stewart, & Greene, 2001). The current data on what helps to make tutoring programs successful were useful in how the observational data in my study was coded and discussed. In contrast to needing extensive training, minimal training has been found effective in some tutoring interventions. For example, the SMART program intervention discussed earlier, the volunteer tutors who were minimally trained had a significant impact on reading achievement. The training was simple, lasting one to two hours prior to the intervention beginning. In the training, tutors received 30 minutes of training on reading strategies they could use with the kids and the rest of the training was devoted to logistics. Tutors were encouraged to increase student interest by reading, asking questions, and making the session fun. They were then free to start working with the students and had no additional training during the intervention. The researchers said that even though they did not know exactly what was happening in each session, the overall goal for each tutor was to try to help their students improve in reading. The researchers argue that it may in fact be the positive experience with a caring adult that speaks to the positive results more than structured reading activities. An argument could be made that perhaps the relationship leads tutored students to invest more in 61 their academic interactions and their interactions with their classroom teacher then affects overall academic results. There have been a few other studies conducted that advocate for more structured training of tutors (Shanahan, 1998; Wasik, 1998) in order to have the students attain significant reading gains. Juel (1996) suggested that long term training of tutors by graduate reading educators does impact progress. Invernizzi, Rosemary, Juel, & Richards (1997) had positive tutoring effects when the tutors were directed and supervised by graduates in reading education. Tutoring Interventions with Middle and High School Students With the high school dropout rate increasing, it is important to conduct preventive interventions with student populations who are at risk of not only failing in school, but continuing to have difficulties as a result of school failure. Dynarski and Gleason (1999) reviewed programs that reduced the rate of high school drop outs and identified that the successful programs that helped to reduce the dropout rate were done with middle school students and younger students. The programs that were successful focused on specific students and had targeted goals. Even with the above findings and other researchers like McElrain and Caplan (2001) reporting that schools see great promise in tutoring programs for middle school students, there has been little research that tutoring programs work beyond the early grades and even less support that they work with minimally trained volunteers. There is almost no research available on the effectiveness of tutoring programs with high school students. This is concerning considering that Joftus and Maddox-Dolan (2003) reported that in the U.S., roughly six million secondary students read below grade level and 3,000 students drop out of high school every day. The secondary years provide the last chance for many students to succeed in their demanding courses (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006; Joftus, 2002). 62 Even if a child does graduate, inadequate reading skills can become a key impediment to success in post- secondary education (American Diploma Project, 2004). Students who struggle with reading often lack the prerequisites that would allow them to take more academically challenging coursework that would expose them to wider reading and more challenging vocabulary (An, 2000). Students who read at lower levels have difficulty understanding complex narratives and expository text, such as their science or math books, in high school (Barton, Heidema, & Jordan, 2002). Student’s performance using challenging text is the strongest indicator of whether they are prepared to succeed in college and the workplace (ACT, Inc., 2006). Clearly, these findings make the case for observing a volunteer tutoring interventions to see if it is helping ELL at- risk high school students meet the demands of complex text. As stated above, little research has been done on the effectiveness of tutoring programs but due to accountability standards set by legislation like No Child Left Behind (NCLB), programs that are focused on reading instruction for middle and high schools are being more widely implemented (Deshler et al., 2007). Only a few reviews have been done on the effectiveness of the middle and high school reading programs that are being implemented (Deshler et al., 2007; Slavin et al., 2008) and none of the programs that have been reviewed were tried specifically with ELL students in a volunteer tutoring environment focusing on academic vocabulary acquisition. The programs reviewed by Slavin et al. (2008) were found to be moderately effective since they used cooperative learning techniques; the students were able to work in small groups to master reading skills. Slavin et al. did not review any high school programs that were effective in building ELL academic vocabulary through volunteer tutoring because there were not studies to look at. It would benefit ELLs if more studies looked at how 63 tutoring sessions are currently being structured for ELL learners and what factors contribute to their academic success. This review discussed what is known about the effect of volunteer tutoring among elementary children and vocabulary acquisition. Overall, volunteer tutoring raises elementary student achievement on measures of literacy and vocabulary learning. Tutoring programs that are one- on- one, explicit, structured, and include a word learning component tend to have higher effects. Some tutoring programs do not work based on developmental and contextual factors. Tutors need to be aware of their student’s backgrounds, receive training, and be provided with adequate feedback to help their students develop literacy skills. Theoretical Homebase As stated earlier, my study is grounded in a Vygotskian home base with regard to educational theory. Toward that aim, Moll’s (1990) edited volume of Vygotskian research provides the basis for developing a theoretical orientation grounded in Vygotsky’s theory of learning and the zone of proximal development (ZPD). It’s important to note that although the ZPD has become a popular concept, Vygotsky himself only gave it a nominal amount of attention in his writing. Many other Vygotskian theorists have extended his work, and this has enabled some broader applications of the ZPD to developmental theory which will be discussed below. First, several aspects and applications of Vygotsky’s ZPD will be discussed including its stages, instructional model, context importance, and relevance as a teacher-researcher collaborative tool. The ZPD discussion will be followed by a discussion of how the ZPD was instituted in a few key studies related to tutoring, vocabulary acquisition, and ELL learning. 64 Stages of ZPD Drawing on earlier work (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), Gallimore and Tharp (1990) share an abbreviated four stage model of progression through the ZPD that they developed. The first stage is where the performance is assisted by more capable others. A child has limited understanding at this stage and the teacher offers directions and modeling. Stage two is where performance is assisted by the self and the children carry out a task without assistance from others. They might use self-directed speech in stage two. Stage three is where the performance is developed, automatized, and fossilized. Assistance from adult or self is no longer needed in stage three. Stage four is where deautomatization of performance leads to a recursion of the ZPD. The child might have to relearn a concept if it becomes deautomatized. For example, a teacher introduces the word “infer” to a child. The child does not have prior knowledge of the word and the teacher models the word through examples and definitions (stage one). The child begins to use the word infer during the school day reading without being prompted by the teacher. Before using the word, the child might repeat the definition of infer to himself (stage two). The child regularly uses the word in class discussions and in their writing automatically (stage three). The child goes on summer vacation, forgets the meaning of the word infer, and has to relearn the word in the fall (stage four). In stage four, the word became deautomatized and Vygotsky would say that the child never learned the word’s concept, rather he formed an understanding of the word as a pseudo-concept. The goal of the ZPD is for the child to eventually learn the word’s concept and not become deautomatized. Instructional Model There are several ways the ZPD has been used as an instructional model which will be discussed below. Hedgegaard (1990) discusses how the ZPD can be applied as a basis for 65 instruction. Her arguments are illustrated through an experimental teaching project that took place in a Danish elementary school for students in third through fifth grade. Hedgegaard based her project on an underlying assumption of Vygotsky’s ZPD, the idea that “psychological development and instruction are socially embedded” (1990, p. 349). The ZPD instructional model used by Hedgegaard (1990) had instructors teach scientific concepts to children so that the concepts would eventually become everyday knowledge for the child. Scientific concepts were selected for the project if they were “considered important by curriculum planners” (Hedgegaard, 1990, p. 350) and if the teachers could relate them to everyday concepts in order to provide the children with new skills and the possibility of eventually using the scientific concepts as everyday concepts. For instance, teaching the evolution of a polar bear was considered an important scientific concept and students were challenged to relate this concept with what they already knew about evolution. The design of Hedgegaard’s (1990) study on ZPD instruction followed six primary principles that included: (1) taking the child into consideration; (2) relating instruction to the child’s life; (3) relating content to bigger themes being taught; (4) motivation and interest in content must be developed by children; (5) developing children’s capacity for modeling; and (6) integrating knowledge with performance in other subjects. The study resulted in qualitative changes in children’s ability to solve problems connected with the evolution of animals. The teaching experiment advocates for the use of the ZPD as a tool for class instruction and “differed from traditional instruction in that children were constantly and deliberately forced to act” (Hedgegaard, 1990, p. 369). 66 Context of ZPD Like Vygotsky, Tudge (1990) emphasized the importance of context in the ZPD. Context is defined as the environment where the ZPD instruction happens, such as school. The context is also determined by the level of capability of the adult or more capable peer. Development within the ZPD will only occur if the interaction the child has is with a person who is more capable. Based on this argument, Vygotsky (1999) asserted that children with disabilities should be mainstreamed with “normal” children in schools in order for their development to benefit from the social interaction. If children with disabilities are placed in an environment with less capable peers, they will regress. Tudge argues that it is essential to examine the social environments and type of instruction all children are receiving, regardless of whether they are “handicapped” in any way. He says “development, far from being teleological or unidirectional, must be viewed as context-dependent” (Tudge, 1990, p. 158). Teacher/Researcher Collaborative Tool McNamee (1990) offers an entire chapter in Moll (1990) on how she applied the ZPD within an inner city setting in order to promote literacy development. She developed a ZPD with the teachers and community center involved in the study in order to promote the literacy development of the children in Head Start programs and day care centers. The community center that McNamee worked with wanted her to help them make changes that they could eventually carry out on their own. She said that this stipulation “was a beautiful articulation of what Vygotsky had in mind for change in the ZPD” (McNamee, 1990, p. 289). The center wanted help, but wanted to become more independent in leading and controlling their interactions. McNamee positioned herself as the “expert” in the study. The teachers and community center were positioned as the students or less capable peers. The ZPD was built between the teachers, 67 community center, and McNamee through collaborative planning, constant written feedback given by McNamee, and modeled instruction of teaching practices through paired teaching experiences. McNamee (1990) writes, “The ZPD is a concept that explains how thinking that is initially carried out among people in groups becomes reorganized, with individuals taking over more control and direction of their own thinking” (p. 288). ZPD in Tutoring The Cohen et al. (1982) piece is an extensive study on tutoring. The meta-analysis independently evaluates 65 school tutoring program and found tutoring to effectively improve students’ academic success and attitudes about schooling. Some aspects of the meta- analysis are of particular relevance to my study, including: the effects the tutoring had on academics, the guidelines used when selecting studies to analyze, the variables that described each study, and how the study measured effects. Additionally, the Cohen study is relevant to my study on volunteer tutoring because it is related to Vygotskian ideas which will be discussed below. Cohen et al. (1982) is related to Vygotskian ideas because the meta- analysis on tutoring demonstrates how social interactions matters to learning. The meta-analysis found that students’ academic performance improved and their attitude toward a particular concept was more positive as a result of interacting with a more capable peer or teacher. The analysis found that the more successful tutoring sessions were structured and that they paid attention to giving students information that was novel but not so challenging that the student would shut down. The tutoring sessions that had the most significant results were based on an individualized teaching method between humans vs. a computerized program or programmed instruction. In 45 out of the 52 achievement studies in the meta- analysis, tutoring was the favored method of instruction over 68 conventional instruction when examination scores were judged. In short, Cohen et al. (1982) provides evidence in support of the Vygotskian belief that social interaction develops learning. ZPD in Vocabulary Development Any research study in the area of vocabulary must be firmly grounded in a particular conception of how to teach ELLs vocabulary using Vygotskian principles. Harris et al. (2011) lay out a developmental perspective of vocabulary and vocabulary strategies for elementary- aged children but argue that the principles they introduce “enhance vocabulary development for all children” (p. 49). Harris et al. (2011) argued that the current isolated methods for teaching vocabulary are not aligned with how vocabulary develops incrementally through context. They say, “The current methods are unethical to 40 years of research on early word learning” (Harris et al., 2011, p. 49). The authors present an instructional model of vocabulary teaching that reflects how vocabulary is developed, as well as the ideal environment for instruction. Below, I will discuss the developmental perspective described by Harris et al. (2011) as it is related to Vygotsky. The six principles Harris et al. (2011) suggest teachers should be using in their classrooms, and the environment they feel is ideal for vocabulary learning will be discussed. Connections between the author’s model of vocabulary development, my Vygotskian theoretical home base, and the present study will be addressed. Harris et al. (2011) represent an argument that word learning happens when vocabulary is taught through social interactions which relates directly to Vygotsky’s theory of learning. Harris et al. (2011) write research points us in the direction of natural interactions as the source of vocabulary learning…as children engage in play with literacy tools, the likelihood the vocabulary 69 will ‘stick’ is heightened when children’s engagement and motivation for learning new words is high. Embedding new words in activities that children want to do recreate the conditions by which vocabulary learning takes place (p 60). Harris et al. (2011) is essentially saying teachers should be instructing vocabulary through a child’s ZPD. A teacher needs to present words to children, have them engage with the words independently in active ways, and eventually the child will learn the word. Three main stages comprise the continuum of the vocabulary development model as described by Harris et al. (2011). First, children find the sounds and words in language. Before vocabulary can be learned, a child needs to be able to segment and store sounds that make up words. The process of segmentation and sound differentiation typically happens when the child is an infant. The child uses a variety of cues, provided through social context, and is able to recognize different stresses of sounds and frequently used words. The authors note that knowing the sounds will help children build their vocabulary and reading skills later. Eventually “[s]ensitivity to common stress patterns (will) help children to pronounce unfamiliar words in the text correctly” (Harris et al., 2011, p. 50). The second stage of vocabulary learning is demonstrated when the child begins to both recognize sound patterns and know that sound patterns have meaning, they turn into words. For instance, words like Mommy and Daddy are known to the child and stored by the child even if the child cannot yet say the words themselves. Learning the meanings of words is a lengthy process and the child needs exposure to words in varied context in order to discern a word’s range of application and eventually be able to use it herself. During the second phase, “embedding words in sentences is crucial to illustrate word meaning and at the same time (it) influences the learning of grammar” (Harris, et al., 2011, p. 51). The third phase of vocabulary development is about knowing that many word types are 70 needed for vocabulary, grammar, and narrative. Harris et al. (2011) state that, “while verbs and spatial-relational terms are more difficult than concrete nouns for children to acquire, they are necessary if children are to comprehend and produce complex sentences” (p. 51). Parts of speech can be presented to children in sentences and in real world context. When children have an understanding of word parts, they will be able to combine vocabulary into sentences and narratives. Vygotsky would agree that while there are stages of development, progression through stages of development, vocabulary or otherwise, occur in a gradual manner and are dependent on a child’s context. Rarely does an ability that is entirely absent at one stage make a sudden appearance and social context plays the central role in cognitive growth. With the understanding that learning precedes development, someone could be operating at different stages in different contexts. In each of the stages Harris et al. (2011) presented, social context is a key factor to development. The cues that a child needs in stage one in order to be able to segment and store sounds are provided by their social context. In stage two, a child will only be able to know that sound patterns turn into words and words have meaning if they are in a social environment where words are presented in various contexts and embedded in sentences by caregivers. The third stage, knowing that many word types are needed for vocabulary, grammar, and narrative, will happen if children are presented with parts of speech in sentences and in real world context by others. In addition to the three phases of vocabulary development, Harris et al. (2011) delineated six principles of teaching that need to happen in order for children to learn words. The principles are related closely to Hedgegaard’s (1990) double move instruction principles which further prove the argument that vocabulary instruction will benefit from ZPD instruction. The first 71 principle is that frequency matters. Children will learn the words that they hear the most. The second principle is that instructors need to make instruction interesting. Children will learn words for things and events that interest them. Thirdly, the instruction should be responsive context rather than passive context. The children should be engaged in the conversation and respond to the word learning through negotiated conversations. The fourth principle is that the instruction should focus on meaning and the kids should be learning the words through meaningful context. Fifth, clarity is necessary in word learning instruction. Children need clear information about word meaning. Finally, the sixth principle is that the instructor needs to remember that word-learning and grammatical developments are reciprocal processes. Harris et al. (2011) states, “Children learn vocabulary through grammar and grammar through vocabulary” (p.58). As mentioned earlier, Hedgegaard’s (1990) double move instruction principles reflect Harris et al. (2011) principles because they too involve giving clear information, independent practice, motivating the child, and giving the child control of learning, The above principles, aligned with ZPD instruction, serve as a guide to how researchers can hold word learning to a high standard and help children develop vocabulary. The Tharp and Gallimore (1988) model of ZPD progression also complements the idea that vocabulary will be developed gradually through principles of good teaching vs. a child simply arriving at the knowledge of a word without assistance. Gallimore and Tharp (1990) write, “[t]he development of any performance capacity in the individual represents a changing relationship between self-regulation and social regulation. Gradually, overtime, a child requires less performance assistance, as the capacity for self-regulation increases” (p. 184). This theory of teaching, assisting learners so that they will eventually be able to self-regulate, complements Harris et al.’s (2011) suggested pedagogical principals for teaching vocabulary. A child will 72 learn vocabulary words if practitioners are mindful that how they are teaching children is just as important as what the child learns. Harris et al. (2011) writes, “[a]dults who take turns, share periods of joint focus, and express positive affect when interacting…provide children with the scaffolding needed to facilitate language and cognitive growth” (p. 54). The goal of the ZPD stages of progression is for a learning concept to eventually become automatized by the child much like the goal of learning vocabulary is that the child really knows the word. Harris et al. (2011) concludes, “[t]o claim that children really know a word, we must show that they have not only acquired a minimal grasp of the word but can also transfer the word to new context, and retain the word and its meaning overtime” (p. 58). Drawing from cognitive theory, Harris et al. (2011) explains the role of the environment in helping children develop vocabulary. Specifically, Harris’s ideas about the use of play to learn vocabulary are Vygotskian. Harris et al. (2011) argues, “[c]onversations that take place between adults and children in the context of a playful activity, and that build on children’s interest offer children new lexical concepts that are more likely to be retained that unbidden verbal explanations” (p. 56). Vygotsky, as discussed in the Moll (1990) piece, believed that play is an essential part of both language development and a child’s understanding of the external world. During play, information is transmitted and vocabulary is internalized through language. In a playful context, a child observes, listens to speech, and practices through imitation as caregivers guide, correct, and provide challenge. Through child- centered play, the child takes on different roles and tries out different language uses in order to go from external regulation to internal regulation. A child becomes more competent and regulates their own learning processes through play. Harris et al. (2011) makes the same argument about how vocabulary learning takes place. Harris et al. (2011) says that vocabulary learning happens in the course of natural interactions 73 and children should be allowed “to explore the meaning of words via playful interaction” (p. 58). A playful context could be “storybook reading, conversation between parents or teachers and children, guided play with adults, or free play between children or children and adults” (p. Harris et al., 2011, p. 59). As for the notion of the ZPD in vocabulary instruction, there are nuances to it worth considering. For Vygotsky, words are a meditational means, so he would be more concerned with the ways in which learning new words enables new forms of culturally valued activity. So he might think of vocabulary as an important aspect of, for example, apprenticeship into a disciplinary community (i.e. knowing the names of different muscles for a physical therapist). I doubt that Vygotsky would agree with a view of vocabulary development that views a child’s vocabulary as a stable, measurable construct that is not keyed to unique contexts. However, as a pedagogical tool, Vygotsky saw the ZPD as evidence in support of how to teach learning concepts through the value of play, experimentation, and “insightful imitation” as meditational tools for learners. Therefore, it supports approaches to vocabulary instruction that seek multiple applications of new words across meaningful and varied contexts, that argue for cohesive, unified curricular units, and that implicitly refute the notions of “fast mapping” that (mis)guided much of our theoretical understanding of how kids learn new words for several decades. In those respects, the ZPD is definitely a helpful way to think about what good instruction looks like no matter what the goal of that instruction might be. ZPD with ELLs As my study examines English Language Learners (ELLs) it is important to have an understanding of how the ZPD works with ELL populations. August and Shanahan (2006) 74 compiled an edited volume of scholarship about how ELLs develop their reading and writing skills based on a report conducted by the National Literacy Panel on Language- Minority Children and Youth. Critical topics about ELLs are covered including demographics, development of literacy, and beneficial instructional contexts. The main principles of the critical topics and how the critical topics are related to Vygotsky will be discussed. In her review, August (2006) found that most teachers whom have three or more ELL students in their classrooms are certified teachers, but they have no training in working with ELL students. This finding mirrors what Tudge (1990) explained about the important of context in the ZPD. A student will progress through their ZPD only if the adult that is supporting them is capable. With a lack of teacher training, ELL students are regressing. In terms of services, August cited a study done by the Development Associates (2003) about the percentage and types of services ELL students receive. The Development Associates (2003) found that “…12% of ELL students receive no services, 36% receive some special language services, and 52% receive extensive services” (p. 21). Some services were defined as instruction that supports the regular instruction they are receiving in mainstream classrooms. Extensive services are defined as having an ELL student spend a substantial portion of their day in English as a Second Language (ESL) class and have at least one subject area taught with a specially designed curriculum and approach. Lesaux et al. (2006) discuss the development of literacy in ELL learners. They base their discussion on an extensive review of studies done on ELL learners. A key finding from the studies reveal that development of a student’s L1 can influence and facilitate development of their L2 which reflects Vygotsky’s language argument that L1 acquisition is related to L2 acquisition. Other findings revealed that ELL learners have a lack of oral language proficiency 75 (receptive and expressive), have a short term memory of the content and need to develop a working memory of content, and that building long term memory with sight word vocabulary is important for word reading and text comprehension . The review found “that reading readiness, including measures of phonological skills, predicted aspects of language- minority students later reading development regardless of whether the measures were in the student’s first or second language” (Lesaux et al., 2006, p. 36) . Another relevant finding was that word reading and spelling is highly correlated with reading development. Lesaux et al. (2006) report that ELL students with a large repository of high frequency and academic relevant words are better able to process written text compared with students without a repertoire. These studies were criticized because they did not look at older ELL students, did not address text level skills, and were not clear on the instructional content that worked for ELLs. These critiques call for studies that include older ELL students and samples of both ELL students and native English speakers that have similar academic ability. Lesaux et al. (2006) suggest more studies should be done on older ELL learners involving text level skills and recommend a multifactorial approach could help disentangle the learners, text, context, and instructional factors. August et al. (2005) reviewed research on instructional techniques related to literacy and language. Findings from effective classrooms and schools found that schools that have positive student outcomes for ELLs promoted the active involvement of students, scaffolded instruction, and used collaborative/cooperative learning. The findings, I would argue, represent that effective ELL support in classrooms and schools involve Vygotskian principles. The students were encouraged to be active agents, teachers presented information through assistance first, and learning resulted from human interaction. 76 August et al. (2006) discussed a review done by the National Research Panel, which looked at 45 studies on teaching vocabulary skills to native speakers where reading comprehension improved in the majority of studies. Only three experimental studies were found on vocabulary and ELL learners and all three yielded positive effects. August et al. (2006) conclude, “…that although these results are insufficient to prove that the same instructional routines found to benefit native speakers are equally effective with English-language learners, they in no way contradict the idea” (p. 145). The review reported that bilingual education was found to have a positive effect on English reading outcomes and knowing how to read in the first language (L1) benefited an ELL acquiring reading skills in their second language (L2) which aligns with Vygotsky’s argument that L1 development greatly influences development in L2. Instructional techniques that worked included using picture cues, identifying and clarifying differences, consolidating text knowledge through summary, and providing extra practice reading words, sentences and stories. Teaching students learning strategies, such as how to organize their thoughts and scaffolding instruction was effective. The instructional techniques known to work for adolescent ELLs are related to Hedgegaard’s (1990) ZPD double move instruction. As explained earlier, ZPD double move instruction is when a teacher gives a child multiple examples, and connections to make the concept more concrete. The child learns the concepts because they are able to explore concepts in active ways with the teacher’s help and eventually on their own through practice. The instructional techniques above worked because ELL students were given support from teachers through double move like instruction. August et al. (2006) recommend that experimental or quasi experimental designs should be used to further research on instructional techniques that specifically work for ELLs. My case study design looking at how volunteer tutors are interacting 77 with at-risk adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions will further research on using the ZPD as an instructional tool. ZPD in a Vocabulary Intervention for ELL students Lesaux et al. (2010) evaluated the implementation and effectiveness of an academic vocabulary program. This empirical work was important to discuss because it deals with vocabulary learning, an ELL adolescent population, and the principles that guided the study mirror my own theoretical home base. The study evaluated was the Academic Language Instruction for All Students program (ALIAS), which was designed for use in mainstream middle school classrooms that had a high proportion of ELL students. ALIAS consisted of 8 two week units and each 8 day cycle included a variety of whole group, small group, and independent activities designed to promote deep processing through opportunities for listening, speaking, reading, and writing with words. The primary goal for this particular study of 476 sixth grade students (346 ELL and 130 native English) and their teachers, from seven middle schools in an urban school district in the U.S., was to generate new insights related to vocabulary instruction by evaluating the effects of a program that was designed to bolster students vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. First, the study’s methodology and findings will be discussed. Connections will then be made between the study’s theoretical underpinnings and my own Vygotskian theoretical lens. Finally, the limitations of the study will be discussed with regards to my own study. The Lesaux et al. (2010) team viewed vocabulary development similarly to the study conducted by Harris et al. (2011). Lesaux et al. (2010) say the components of “effective (reading) comprehension necessarily draws on vocabulary knowledge; once words are decoded accurately, the reader must grasp the word meanings to comprehend clauses, prepositions, and 78 paragraphs” (p. 197). Similarly, the vocabulary stages described by Harris et al. (2011) argue that students first are able to accurately decode words, understand word meanings, and only then will the child be able to start to identify word types and grammatical structures. Both studies also emphasized the context in which students learn vocabulary words which further points to using the Vygotsky theory of learning to study vocabulary acquisition. The study’s vocabulary frames were that “knowledge of a word…is thought to develop incrementally over time with students gaining additional info about a word with each meaningful, contextualized encounter with it” (Lesaux et al., 2010, p.197). The ALIAS program gave students frequent exposure to words, created the units around student interest, was interactive, focused on meaning, provided clear information, and went beyond the word by attaching it to reading, writing, and discussion. All of the ALIAS lesson components mirror the six principles Harris et al. (2011) lay out as instructional principles of word learning which are Vygotskian by nature. The guiding principles of the Lesaux et al. (2010) framework mirror a Vygotskian framework by using the aspects of a ZPD within each tutoring session. The researchers wanted to balance direct teaching with teaching word learning strategies to equip the students with the cognitive skills they would need to learn the words independently. In essence, the study had teachers go through the four stages of the ZPD developed by Tharp and Gallimore (1988). The teacher would directly teach the word and offer word learning strategies (stage one). The children would then complete activities where they would recognize target words, write sentences with words in them, and practice using target words independently in activities like crossword puzzles (stage two). The words are then used in different context by students such as mock interviews and debates where using the words become more automatized (stage three). Specific words were retaught to the students based on student assessments (stage four). Just like 79 the ZPD should allow students to be active agents in the learning process, each ALIAS lesson was designed “to promote active processing of target word meanings” (Lesaux et al., 2010, p. 199). Lesaux et al. (2010) demonstrate Vygotskian principles within the intervention model. Firstly, the intervention model was aligned with how Vygotsky understood the ZPD as a construct that applied to a dyad of learner and expert. It was a representation of the developmental potential within the learner that could be unlocked through the facilitation of an “expert mentor” who has already internalized the cultural and practical knowledge that is valued insofar as it reflects shared cultural goals. Each 8 day cycle in the intervention model included activities facilitated by an “expert mentor” that provided deep processing through opportunities for students to listen, speak, read, and write with words. Secondly, each teacher involved within the study also took part in a ZPD progression as part of their training that was similar to how McNamee (1990) applied the ZPD to promote literacy development. Each teacher met with a program specialist once a month in order to progress along a ZPD for developing intervention implementation. The meetings followed an organic discussion based format designed to be supportive and based on teacher’s implementation needs. The program specialist helped the intervention teacher develop their skills in a social context. Lastly, the target words used in the intervention were selected much like Hedgegaard (1990) selected target words in her study using Vygotsky’s ZPD principle. Words were selected by Hedgegaard (1990) if they were considered important to the curriculum and if they could be connected to everyday concepts that the kids knew. Words were selected by Lesaux et al. (2010) if they represented words worth teaching and knowing across academic disciplines. The words appeared in both text and were on the academic word list (AWL; Coxhead 2000) but occurred more rarely in oral conversation and narrative 80 texts. Vygotsky, as discussed in Moll (1990), called these type of words the “scientific” concepts of schooling The Lesaux et al. (2010) shared the view of vocabulary development argued for in this proposal that word learning is developed incrementally overtime with each meaningful, contextualized encounter a student has with the word. They used pedagogical principles similar to ones advocated by Harris et al (2011) that promote active processing and collaborative learning. ELL students learned academic vocabulary in the study as a result of being able to move through the stages of their ZPD. 81 CHAPTER 3 METHODS This chapter describes the research approach I have adopted to investigate volunteer tutoring and its effects on adolescent ELLs’ vocabulary acquisition. First, I provide the rationale for utilizing qualitative research and a case study design as a form of qualitative inquiry. Next, I explain my role as a researcher, positionality, and its impact on the way I conducted the study. Then, I depict the study’s site and participants, including how tutors and ELL students will be selected. The procedures I used to collect and analyze the data are subsequently detailed. Finally, I delineate the various strategies I employed to address bias and attend to ethical concerns that may arise while conducting this study. Qualitative Research and a Case Study Design I chose a qualitative approach for this study for several compelling reasons. Specifically, a qualitative approach is warranted when the nature of research requires exploration (Stake, 1995). Qualitative research questions often begin with how or what, so the researcher can gain and in depth understanding of what is going on relative to the topic (Patton, 1987; Seidman, 1991). For the current study I explored one-on-one tutoring interactions with at-risk adolescent ELL students by asking the following how questions: (a) How do volunteer tutors interact in one- on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk adolescent ELLs? and (b) How are volunteer tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition with adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions?. Second, a qualitative study allows the researcher to explore a phenomena, such as feelings or thought processes that are difficult to extract or learn about through conventional research methods (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). For the present study, I explored the participant’s perceptions and lived experiences (Jones, Torres, & Arminio, 2006) of supporting adolescent ELL students in 82 one-on-one tutoring sessions. Third, qualitative research methods are the best approach when studying phenomena in their natural settings (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003), and when striving to understand social processes in context (Esterberg, 2002). The current study observed one-on-one tutoring sessions with adolescent ELLs in order to understand the context. Fourth, qualitative methods emphasize the researcher’s role as active participant in the study (Creswell, 2005). For the present study, I, the researcher, was the key instrument in data collection, and the interpreter of data findings (Stake, 1995). Qualitative research methods used in this study included: purposeful sampling, semi-structured interviews, and systematic and concurrent data collection and analysis procedures. Moreover, the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to analyze data and discover how tutors were interacting in one-on-one tutoring sessions with adolescent ELLs. Qualitative case study research served as the main methodology for this study. There are many well-known case study researchers, the most prominent of whom include Robert K. Yin, Robert E. Stake, and Sharon B. Merriam, all of whom have written extensively about case study research, and have suggested techniques for organizing and conducting such research successfully. For the purposes of this dissertation research, I relied primarily on definitions offered by modern case study methodologist Merriam (1988), Stake (1995), and Yin (2009). Stake (1995) described case study methodology as a strategy of inquiry in which the researcher explores in depth a program, event, activity, or process of one or more individuals. Cases are bounded by time and activity, and researchers collect detailed information using a variety of data collection procedures over a sustained period of time. For this study, the phenomenon under investigation is one-on-one tutoring. The case for the current study were three volunteer tutors supporting at-risk adolescent ELLs from an Urban Charter School in the Mid-Atlantic region. 83 Case study researchers collect detailed information using a variety of data collection procedures over a sustained period of time. For this study, I collected data through observations and interviews, tutoring reflection logs, and reviewed documents that were used in the tutoring sessions. After the data were collected, it was coded for emergent themes. Another component of case studies is the unit of analysis, defined as the area of focus of the study (Merriam, 1988; Yin, 2009). For this study, this unit of analysis was the tutors in the study because they are the major entity being studied. For the first question, the tutor’s interactions were observed and for the second research question vocabulary interactions were focused on. I chose to use a case study design because I wanted to look through the lens of three individual tutors that were working in the same school setting during the same time period. Yin (2014) defines a case study as an up-close, in depth, and detailed examination of a subject of study (the case), as well as its related contextual conditions. My case, or subject of study, was volunteer tutoring with an at-risk population. The definition of case study research according to Hartley (2004) is that it “consists of a detailed investigation, often with data collected over a period of time, of phenomena, within their context,” with the aim being “to provide an analysis of the context and processes which illuminate the theoretical issues being studied” (p. 323). Furthermore, a case study, as defined by Thomas (2011), is an analysis of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, or systems that are studied in a holistic way using one or more methods. Choosing to look at one tutoring project, in one school site, gave me a chance to collect multiple forms of data that helped to paint a more comprehensive picture of the interactions I observed. Additionally, a qualitative case study approach was appropriate because it enabled me to observe the tutoring sessions in a less obtrusive way. I observed the tutoring sessions in a natural school setting rather than manipulating behaviors or conducting an intervention. 84 Although the study attempted to capture the tutoring sessions “as they naturally occurred,” it was understood that the presence of the researcher was still felt. Another rationale for this case study design involves how it will contribute to the body of qualitative research that examines how at-risk secondary ELLs are being supported in United States classrooms. Scholarly research has generally overlooked focusing on what support staff, like volunteer tutors, are doing to support at-risk secondary ELLs (August & Hakuta, 2007; Snow, Griffin & Burns, 1998). This will be the first case study that examines at-risk adolescent ELLs tutoring and vocabulary acquisition experiences through the lens of volunteer tutoring sessions. Moreover, my study is particularly relevant because at this time volunteer tutors are being placed in middle and high schools by school districts or charter schools to help at-risk students and it would be helpful to know how they are supporting at-risk ELL learners. It will also be helpful to understand how vocabulary is being introduced to at-risk populations by tutors in one-on-one tutoring sessions considering what we know about how important it is for students to understand academic vocabulary in order to comprehend content area text (Coxhead, 2000; Purves, 1990). Common criticisms of the case study as a form of inquiry include that a case study lacks methodological rigor and generalizable findings (Yin, 1994). There are a number of ways I included methodological rigor in my study. First, I asked questions throughout the study such as: 1) Do the data collection methods maximize the chance to collect a full range of information that will answer my research questions?; 2) What checks are in place to ensure that the discourse patterns and information I am gathering is being accurately interpreted?; and 3) Do the data collection methods produce appropriate information?. Second, I wanted to make sure that the information that I gathered was transparent and explicit. This involved checking with my 85 dissertation committee in order to make sure that I was presenting information simply and clearly. Third, I addressed methodological rigor by systematically coding my data. I created codes that stood for types of interactions that I was either looking for in each tutoring session, such as vocabulary transactions, or for interactions that started to become recognizable across tutoring sessions. For example, a systematic code was created for things like tutors connecting to tutees lives or for instances when the tutor used the student’s first language in a session. Systematically coding the data gave me a chance to look for reoccurring patterns within and across tutoring interactions and it set up parameters that allowed me to look at the data in a more consistent way. I applied the codes and was able to carefully scrutinize the data as a result. Finally, I attempted to make sure I was collecting data in a consistent way throughout the study. For instance, each tutor was observed during the same days, timeframes, and in the same tutoring environments. The same interview format, reflection form, and guidelines were also used for each tutor and every tutor filled out a reflection form after each session. Moreover, I neither generalize my findings nor claim my study’s sample to be representative of all volunteer tutors or secondary at-risk ELLs. Role of the Researcher and Positionality In this section, I will first discuss my previous experiences and how they are tied to my interest in conducting the study. Next, I will list how my qualifications position me as a researcher in positive and negative ways. Then, I will discuss my role as a researcher and how I attempted to act during the study. Finally, I will give my final reflections on conducting the qualitative case study in relation to my positionality. My interest in the work of volunteer tutors in classrooms started eight years ago. In 2007, I worked as a project manager for City Year Greater Philadelphia, primarily managing service in 86 high school classrooms. City Year is an Ameri-Corps National Service program for young people, 17-24, who contribute 1700 hours of educational service in under resourced schools. Service consists of keeping track of students attendance, behavior, and providing tutoring to students. City Year corps members work with at-risk students in order to help alleviate the drop- out crisis in the United States and they are considered volunteers because they receive a stipend, not a salary for their work . As part of City Year, I became aware of the achievement gaps at-risk students were experiencing in high schools, and that volunteer tutoring, provided by the City Year Corps members, was an integral part of the school systems intervention plan to help struggling students. In particular, I observed how volunteer tutors can influence a student’s academic experience in a myriad of ways. Through my informal observations of tutoring sessions and conversations with the City Year volunteer tutors about their experiences, I gained an informed, yet incomplete, understanding of the impact tutors were having. Overall, my experiences with City Year confirmed the need to look more closely at the impact volunteer tutors are having with at-risk secondary students. After City Year, I started a graduate program at Temple University. As part of my coursework, I took the required credits necessary to earn a Program Specialist Certificate in teaching ELLs. My interest in researching at-risk secondary ELLs in this study came from that certification experience. As part of the coursework, I was required to observe and teach several different ELL students. What I began to notice with the at-risk adolescent ELLs who I worked with or observed was that they were either getting no support or very little support from the school environment in order to succeed academically. The ELL learners were especially struggling to comprehend content-area class texts and would become frustrated when they did not know the meaning of several words that they were required to understand. This is because 87 many content area teachers in middle or high schools do not have the time or resources to support at-risk adolescent ELLs and researchers would benefit from looking at how support staff, such as volunteer tutors, can support them. Thus, I want to specifically understand how volunteer tutors are helping ELLs with vocabulary acquisition because I know from my ELL program specialist work that at-risk adolescent ELLs struggle with vocabulary acquisition that enables comprehension of content area academic texts. The data collected in the study that focuses on vocabulary acquisition may provide new information on how vocabulary learning is being valued or devalued in one-on-one adolescent settings. This information may help to influence how future volunteer tutoring programs and vocabulary interventions for ELLs are designed and implemented. Positionality There are several aspects of my background that influenced my positionality in the study. My English as a Second Language (ESL) Program Specialist Certification coursework provided theory and several practicum experiences where I worked directly with ELL students in individual and small group settings. In this sense, I believe my ESL certification advantageously positioned me to understand the inner workings of a tutoring session. For instance, I have experience with creating tutoring lesson plans that included direct, indirect, and task based learning. My ESL program specialist certification has also enabled me to work with ELL learners internationally. From my experiences helping ELL students in China, Peru, and Ethiopia, I am positioned advantageously because I know what it is like to be a learner of a language in another culture. In addition, my certification experiences allowed me to empathize with the challenges and successes tutors face when working with ELLs. For example, I am familiar with how 88 frustrating it can be for tutors to not be able to communicate a concept effectively and how rewarding it can be when a student is able to connect with a concept. Additionally, my work in the field and in graduate school has prepared me to design meaningful interview questions, included in this dissertation, that are relevant to my research questions. While my experiences as a full-time educator, former City Year project manager, reading specialist, ESL Program Specialist, and graduate student all influenced my positionality in the case study, my experiences as an educator, project manager, and reading specialist were particularly influential. I have four years of experience as a full-time educator in K-12 settings. As a full-time educator, I have extensive experience planning and implementing lessons, managing classroom behavior, and creating classroom environments. As a result, I am able to describe what I saw in the observations or heard in the interviews through the lens of an experienced educator. Being a City Year Project Manager helped expose me to the power of volunteer tutoring, but it may have also biased my ability to look at the volunteer tutors in the study independently without having pre-conceived notions of what tutoring is based on my work with City Year. In 2007, I received my reading specialist certification. As a reading specialist, I am interested in what specific literacy-based instructional practices support reading comprehension in at-risk populations. As a result, I am emphasizing how the tutors in the study are helping at-risk adolescent ELLs acquire vocabulary. If I instead was a mathematician, I may have designed my second research question around how the tutors were providing math instruction. In short, I recognize that my qualifications positioned me in positive ways but may also pre-dispose me to bias, regarding practices and focus which will represent one of this study’s limitations. 89 My actions during the study reflected the role of a non-participant observer. As a non- participant observer I wanted to enter a social system and observe events, activities, and interactions with an aim of gaining a direct understanding of a phenomenon in its natural context (Liu & Maitlis, 2014). For this reason, I chose to audiotape sessions and take field notes in an area that attempted to separate the tutors and tutees from me. This involved choosing a seating location that was not directly beside the tutors/tutees and putting materials in a chair that was between the tutees/tutors in order to create a boundary. Moreover, I did not interact directly with the tutors or learners during the sessions. I know that it was impossible for the tutor or tutee to be unaware of my presence, but I am hoping that they were able to interact within the session like they would have acted if I were not present. By creating physical boundaries, not talking during sessions, and choosing an audio recorder that was small and required pushing a silent button to begin recording, I tried to limit the effect of my presence. The tutors were also informed that my presence was strictly to observe and that I was not there to judge their performance in tutoring sessions. I believe that positioning myself in this way allowed the tutors and tutees to act more candid manner during their tutoring sessions and speak more frankly in the semi-structured and formal interviews. Reflections This section describes my final reflections on engaging in this qualitative case study research project. I discuss the methodological decisions that yielded intended outcomes as well as those that produced unexpected or undesirable results. Additionally, I trace my growth as a researcher from participating in this research. Overall, I think the most successful aspect of the study was being able to observe the volunteer tutors in an unrestricted environment. The school site, tutoring coordinator, and 90 teachers I worked with in the study allowed me full access to the classrooms and tutoring sessions. This enabled me to really become a part of the research site which allowed the tutors and students to become comfortable with my presence. I feel that this level of familiarity enabled the tutors and students to conduct their one-on-one sessions as they would have if I was not there which added to the findings authenticity. Additionally, another successful element of the study was collecting different forms of data. Being able to use my observation notes, field notes, interviews, and the reflection logs that tutors filled out after each session really made a difference in how I was able to tell the story of the tutoring interactions. With multiple forms of data collection, I was able to provide evidence in the findings section that came from many different avenues. Although I am satisfied with many elements of this study, I regret that I contributed to the body of literature that overlooks the impact of gender, specific subject content, and student perceptions of the tutoring experiences. In retrospect, I would have taken the impact of the tutor’s gender on their interactions and examined how specific subject areas affected the tutoring interactions. During the course of the study, I noticed that the tutoring interactions tended to be different based on what subject was being presented. I also noticed that some of the tutor’s interactions may have been associated with how they identified with their own gender and the students gender. Since the above mentioned elements were not the focus of my study, I did not explore them extensively but feel that by exploring gender roles and specific subject interactions more context could have been provided to the study’s findings. I would have also incorporated a way for students to give input into how they felt the tutoring session impacted their learning and how they felt the tutor interacted with them. 91 Another modification I would have made if I were conducting a similar study in the future would be to ask the tutors to talk more about their sessions directly after they happened. In the present study, tutors would briefly be able to debrief with me in-between sessions and used their tutoring reflection logs as a debrief tool. I feel that if tutors would have been given more of a chance to debrief directly after the session, they would have been able to articulate more specifically how they felt they interacted in the sessions with the students and how it affected the outcome of the sessions. My Growth as a Researcher In conducting this study, I learned not only about the phenomenon which I was examining but also about myself as a researcher. I struggled at times with my role as a non- participant observer. It was hard as an educator to observe moments in the tutoring sessions when the tutor was struggling to figure out how to convey information to their students not to jump in and try to help. It was also difficult to not give the tutors feedback at the end of the session or suggestions. At the beginning of the study the ESL teacher would look at me expectantly, assuming I was there to observe and also give feedback. Once I explained to her that my role was solely to observe the interactions as they happened with interfering or giving feedback she understood why I was not getting involved. I kept on reminding myself that if I interfered with the sessions or gave feedback to the tutors after, I would be altering what type of interactions I was trying to capture. Additionally, It was hard to not engage with the tutors during pre interviews or in informal interviews about vocabulary instruction. For the second research question, it was important to be able to understand how the tutors were helping the students acquire vocabulary without influencing the tutor’s instructional methods in sessions. If I would have asked tutors a 92 lot about their instructional choices in regards to vocabulary or perceptions about vocabulary, it may have influenced how they approached vocabulary in their tutoring sessions. For this reason, I did not ask the tutors directly about vocabulary until the post interviews. Another growth point as a researcher was realizing how difficult it is just to coordinate the logistics and approvals for the study. It is one thing to know what you want to study but actually having to find a site to conduct the study and get all the approvals you need is in itself its own journey. After months of meetings with different school sites and organizations that had tutoring programs, completing the Institutional Review Board process, and making sure all of the consent forms were signed I developed a new appreciation for what a researcher has to go through in order to conduct a study. There are so many people that have to give you the green light to move forward in the research process and you also have to know a lot of people in order to move your research ahead. For instance, I needed to have one of my colleagues help me translate one of the consent letters into Spanish in order for the consent letters to be given out in time for the study to begin. Another thing I learned was about how hard it is to decide how to dissect the data in a study. It would have been easy to look at so many different avenues that were happening in the tutoring sessions and I found that I had to really make sure I kept my research questions by me at all times. I would actually write them both at the top of my observation notes prior to every session I observed. It was also a learning experience working with open and a-priori codes. Once an open code would emerge, the journey of applying it to the data would take a lot of time and thoughtfulness. It was my first time a-priori coding for the question on vocabulary acquisition and I found that the parameters of placing data within the prior codes worked well at certain points but there were many other things that were happening with vocabulary acquisition outside 93 of the prior codes. For this reason, I would have to keep additional data notes that did not fit as neatly within the prior coding boundaries. For example, one of the instructional techniques that tutors were using a lot to teach vocabulary involved creating or showing a visual reference which was not something that I was originally looking for. Through reflection on this study, another insight I have had concerns my identity as a researcher. As my career as a practitioner-researcher evolves, I aspire to remain in conversation with both practitioners and researchers. The disconnect between research and practice became visible to me through this study. In the literature, the idealized portrait of a tutoring program does not match up with tutoring programs that are happening at school sites that have a lack of funding, time, and resources. Furthermore, the ways in which the literature recommend that vocabulary should be instructed is not being translated to the practitioners in the field that are trying to support at-risk students who wrestle with academic text. Site and Population This section describes the study’s site and population. After describing the site, I will outline the selection criteria for at-risk ELL secondary students and tutors who will participate in the tutoring sessions. I also explain the rationale for my site selection. The site for this study was an urban charter school, located in the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania public schools currently serve 42,542 ELLs that speak 175 different languages. Spanish is the most frequently spoken L1 among the ELL population. Every school district and charter school is required under Title 22, Chapter 4, Section 4.26 of the Curriculum Regulations to provide a program for every student who is ELL. In order to comply, school districts must provide ELL students with a planned program of instruction that is appropriate to student’s development and instructional level. The charter school campus that was selected used the 94 service of volunteer tutors as part of their documented program of support to help ELLs. I chose this site because currently, 19% of the school’s population is comprised of ELL students and they were instituting a one-on-one volunteer tutoring program for seven weeks in order to help their ELL population. The charter school campus included a middle school, high school, and Cyber school. Purposeful Sampling Purposeful sampling was used for the study. The logic and power of using purposeful sampling according to Patton (1990) “lies in selecting information rich cases for study in depth. Information rich cases are those from which one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of research, thus the term purposeful sampling” (p. 169) The purposeful sample for this case study included three volunteer tutors and 34 at-risk secondary ELLs who identify themselves as Hispanic. All of the tutors applied to and were selected for the volunteer tutoring program prior to the study. In addition to this small group of tutors and ELL students in the study, the sample includes two faculty members in the building who work directly with the ELL students who were tutored and who provided direction and guidance to the tutors who were observed. One of the faculty members is English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in the building and her room was used for tutoring sessions with high school ELL students. The other faculty member is an English teacher in the building who teaches some of the ESL students in a mainstream class setting and would provide material and direction for the tutors to use in some of their sessions with his students. I also included the ESL site coordinator at the school. She coordinated the tutoring program and coordinates the services at the school campus for all ELL students. Tutors 95 Volunteer tutors were recruited for the volunteer tutoring program through flyers, informational sessions, and internet marketing. The three tutors in the study were selected from a larger pool of applicants. There were five tutors that were working at the charter school. The three tutors were selected because there tutoring schedule fit with my ability to conduct observations. Applicants most often applied and were screened by the ESL coordinator at the school prior to being accepted. There were 15 applicants that applied for the volunteer tutoring program. The ESL coordinator selected the volunteer tutors based on if they were in the field of education and had up to date clearances. The coordinator was also more willing to accept applicants that would be open to helping students with literacy and math skills. Tutors were accepted more enthusiastically if they had a second language background, preferably in Spanish. The three tutors that I observed in the tutoring program were their last semester of coursework at a local university before they would begin their student teaching. All three of the tutors were majoring in Early Childhood Education. Two of the tutors had a background working with ELL learners and were also identified as ELL learners when they were attending elementary school. All of the tutors had second language backgrounds and one of the tutors had a basic knowledge of Spanish. Each of the tutors backgrounds are explained more fully in the next chapter. Students The ELL students were selected by the ESL coordinator to participate in the tutoring program. The coordinator selected students that were part of the Cyber School or high school on the campus. The ages of the students ranged from 13 to 17 years old. There were a total of 34 students involved in the tutoring project. Out of the 34 students involved, 22 were female and 12 were male. Each of the 34 students had at least one session with the volunteer tutors and some had two or more sessions with the tutors. All of the students involved in the study identified 96 themselves as Hispanic. All ELL students were considered at- risk by the definition provided in Chapter 2. Each ELL student that was tutored throughout the study has taken a language assessment test that ranks the ELLs language ability according to six levels. The ESL coordinator at the school gives the students a World Class Design and Instructional Assessment (WIDA) and also has them complete a writing sample. The participants who worked with tutors at the Cyber school were at a level “five” or “six”. A level “five” or “six”, according to the WIDA assessment, are able to navigate the Cyber school curriculum and carry on more in-depth conversations with the tutor. They need support understanding academic English. The students who were tutored at the high school in this study were identified as Level “two” or “three”. A level “two” or “three” ELL learner, according to the WIDA assessment, has a basic understanding of conversational English but needs support with reading and more cognitively challenging forms English. A Level “two” or “three” ELL learner was able to have simple conversations with the tutor, and was enrolled in content area classes. The students at the Cyber School were higher level ELLs because they had to be able to navigate the Cyber School curriculum independently. Before students could be admitted to the Cyber School, they had to take an additional language test to demonstrate their ability to comprehend English in print. Data Collection This section details the data collection methods this case study employed as well as the rationale undergirding these choices. Observations, interviews, and document analysis constituted the studies’ primary sources of evidence. I explain how this data collection approach deepened my understanding of how volunteer tutors are interacting with at-risk ELLs in tutoring sessions and how tutors are helping tutees with vocabulary acquisition. 97 Green, Camilli, and Elmore (2006), echoing Yin (2009), stated that carefully conducted case study benefits from having multiple sources of evidence, which ensure that the study is as robust as possible. In a case study, it is important to converge sources of data, also known as triangulation, as a means to ensure comprehensive results that reflect the participants’ understandings as accurately as possible. Yin (2009) and Stake (2000) concur that triangulation is crucial to performing a case study reliably. The additional sources of data, allow case study researchers to create a story that allows the phenomena to be looked at in a comprehensive way. Based on the scope of this research, which focused on looking at the social context of one-on- one tutoring, I selected observations as the primary data collection vehicle, and then thickened the data with interviews, tutor reflection logs, and document analysis. Audio Observations As a non-participant observer, I observed tutoring sessions and audio-taped each session without participating. Each volunteer tutor was observed working with the same groups of at-risk secondary ELL students throughout the study. The three volunteer tutors were observed separately on the same days each week and they would be observed during their regularly scheduled tutoring blocks. Each session varied in length depending on the student’s needs and the time that the tutor had available. The environment of each session is explained in detail in the next chapter. Each of the volunteer tutors worked one-on-one with students during their tutoring session time frames and throughout the seven weeks. As a result, each tutor would see many of the same students for multiple sessions. In this way, the case study included three volunteer tutors being observed in a consistent schedule over seven weeks. All tutoring sessions were audio taped at the school site and the observations were coded by the researcher. During each observation, I also took field notes in an attempt to capture the 98 interaction of each tutoring session. My method for taking field notes aligned with Burgess’s (1991) idea that field notes are created when observing a culture, setting, or social situation that help the researcher remember and record the behavior, activities, events, and other features of the setting being observed. Field notes are meant to help the researcher produce meaning and understanding of the phenomenon being studied. To answer my first research question, I would take field notes about the interactions in general. I would record moments in the interactions that I wanted to remember and that were connected to the open codes I was formulating. For my second research question, particular detail was paid to any reference the tutor or ELL student made to vocabulary acquisition. Observational notes were taken to about how vocabulary instruction was being approached and what tutors and students do as they learn new words. For instance, notes were taken on the type of vocabulary words focused on and whether the tutor initiated the vocabulary instruction or the student initiated the vocabulary learning. Notes were taken on the types of interactions that were occurring between the tutor and tutee. For example, if the interaction was more tutors guided, input-output, student driven, notes were taken to capture the session. Notes were also taken to capture what the audio-tape could not such as environmental factors and non-verbal cues. The notes that were taken, along with the audio taped sessions, provided the data that enabled me to look for patterns and establish codes. Interviews Interviews were conducted with the tutors, faculty, and the ESL coordinator at the school site. I used the semi-structured interview approach (Merriam, 2002) and a uniform set of open ended questions (Esterberg, 2002). Esterberg (2002) refers to in-depth interviews as semi- structured, describing the process as less rigid than structured interviews, and allowing for a freer exchange between the interviewer and interviewee. Open-ended questions, according to 99 Esterberg (2002), allowed for a pattern of general and specific questions which made the interview more conversational. Each tutor was interviewed once before the study began and once after the study concluded using a semi- structured interview format. Two faculty members and the ESL coordinator were interviewed once at the end of the study using a semi-structured interview format as well. All of the semi-structured interviews were transcribed. The semi- structured interview schedule is included in Table 1. The semi-structured interviews provided information that helped to get a better understanding of the background of the tutors, faculty, and ESL coordinator. For instance, the data gained from the semi-structured interviews helped explain how tutors thought about planning for their sessions, how the school supported ELL learners, and what perceptions different people involved in the study had about the tutoring sessions and vocabulary instruction. The aim of the semi-structured interviews with the faculty and administration was to elicit information about how at-risk secondary ELLs are being supported in the school site and in content-area classrooms. The interviews with the faculty and administration also included questions about how the faculty and ESL coordinator interacted with the volunteer tutors involved in the study. The semi-structured interview questions for the two faculty members and ESL coordinator are included in the Appendix E and F. Table 1: Semi-structured Interview Schedule Semi Structured Interviewee Date of Interview Duration Pete Pre:10/1/2014 Post:12/28/2014 40 minutes 60 minutes Hannah Pre: 10/2/2014 Post: 12/27/2014 40 minutes 60 minutes Molly Pre: 10/2/2014 Post:1/3/2015 40 minutes 60 minutes ESL teacher 1/7/2015 40 minutes Mainstream Teacher 1/7/2015 40 minutes 100 Informal interviews took place during the study with the volunteer tutors. Informal interviews are aligned with participant observation and it is when the researcher talks to participants without any structured interview questions (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). Informal Interviews gave me a chance to add in some insight and perspectives from the tutor about a session. The informal interviews would usually happen right after a session or when the tutor had a break. Such interviews focused on understanding the tutor’s actions in the tutoring sessions and their interpretations of the tutoring sessions. The informal interviews gave me the opportunity to check in with the tutor about aspects of the sessions I just observed. The informal interviews usually occurred in between sessions with students and lasted for only a few moments. Responses from the informal interviews were added directly into the field notes for the particular session that the informal interview had occurred after. Some examples of general questions I would ask during my informal interviews included: How did you think that session went? and Would you have done anything differently?. Information gained from interviews will help to explain certain interactions in the observed tutoring sessions. Merriam (2002) argues, “[t]here are multiple constructions and interpretations of reality that are in flux and that change over time. Qualitative researchers are interested in understanding what those interpretations are at a particular point in time and in a particular context” (pp. 3-4). Conducting regular informal and the semi-structured interviews throughout the study provided an understanding of participant’s interpretations of tutoring at different points in time throughout the seven weeks of observations. ESL coordinator 1/7/2015 90 minutes Table 1, continued 101 Documents Although interviews and observation constituted the majority of this study’s data, I also reviewed several types of documents. Documents that were collected included tutoring notebooks, materials, plans, or notes the tutors made prior, during, or after their tutoring sessions. For example, I collected one of the tutor’s notebooks that they used as a tool of instruction during every session and I collected three samples of reading documents the high school ELL students were asked to comprehend. Documents that were reviewed included the students’ content area Calculus Binders, ESL National Geographic workbook, and a Social Studies worksheet one student was asked to complete by his social studies teacher. Web designed lessons were reviewed at the Cyber School and the formatting of lectures, tests, and study guides. This analysis helped me understand how the tutors thought about planning their tutoring sessions or interacting in the sessions. It also helped me understand the academic vocabulary that students are encountering in their content area classrooms. Finally, I examined the general schedules of the students at the high school and Cyber School, the student handbook at the school to gain a sense of the daily routines and expectations of the students. I also examined the application materials each tutor had to fill out in order to work at the school which helped me understand what clearances and experiences they had. Reflections I collected tutor reflections about each tutoring session. Every tutor was asked to fill out a tutoring reflection sheet after each session. A copy of the tutoring reflection sheet is included in the Appendix. The reflection sheet, included in Appendix I, provided data about the tutor’s perspectives on each session and was used to help further explain certain findings. The reflection 102 sheet allowed me to investigate the participant’s understandings of what happened in the tutoring session, including what they felt went well and what was challenging. Data Analysis This study used the constant comparative method for the data analysis of my observations for research question one. Glaser’s and Strauss’s (1973) methodology involves a continuous and systematic process of data collection and analysis. Glaser and Strauss (1973) contend that “the constant comparative method is concerned with generating and possibly suggesting (but not provisionally testing) many categories, properties, and hypotheses about general problems” (p. 104). This procedure generates theories that are closely linked to data and will help me investigate how the learning interactions were associated with Vygotsky’s social learning theory and concept of ZPD. Throughout the entire data collection process, I recorded three notebooks of field notes and 12 memos, which helped me identify emerging patterns and themes which then guided further data collection. I would memo after each day of data collection, using my field notes and emerging codes to help guide my memo process. According to Bailey (2006), writing memos is writing notes to oneself regarding the coding and reflecting on the data. The memos could serve to operationalize definitions, pose questions, pose hypothesis about the data. An example of a memo is included in Appendix H. This inductive method of audio recording the observations, taking field notes, and writing memos “facilitates the generation of theories of process, sequence, and change pertaining to organizations, positions, and social interaction” (Glaser & Strauss, 1973, p. 114), furthermore this method served as a useful approach to understanding the tutoring session interactions throughout the study. This investigation followed a recursive rather than linear process (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) because it was important to look back and across interactions in order to make 103 overall connections. I would listen to the audio tapes, reread my field notes and the memos in order to make overall connections to my research questions and coding process which is explained below. Coding The nine transcribed semi-structured interviews, 87 pages of typed field notes, audio- taped sessions, informal interviews, and documents I collected provided a comprehensive portrait of the tutoring sessions and needed to be coded. I applied different coding processes to each of my research questions. Below, I will describe the coding process that happened with the first research question and then the second research question. After the coding processes are described, I will briefly introduce the emerging themes that resulted from the coding process. The first research question followed the data analysis and open coding procedures suggested by Creswell (2005) and Esterberg (2002). Specifically, Esterberg (2002) suggests “getting intimate with data”, and says that the main objective of immersing yourself in the transcripts is too “load up your memory” with the collected data (p. 157). Esterberg (2002) suggested that open coding is a process where “you work intensively with your data, line by line, identifying themes and categories that seem of interest” (p. 158). Furthermore, Creswell (2009) mandated the traditional approach in the social sciences that allows the codes to emerge during the data analysis (p. 187).I went through all of my data and coded it according to what seemed to stand out in relation to the question I was trying to answer. I began my open coding process by going through all of the collected data and looked for patterns. I started by coding my audio recordings and field notes. I then coded the interviews tutor reflections, and documents. There were 32 open codes that I initially used to go through my audio-recordings, field notes, interviews, and tutor reflections in order to answer my first 104 research question about how the tutors were interacting in each session. The open codes included things like when the tutor gave positive reinforcement, strategies, or checked for understanding. Each of the open codes that I initially used to answer my first research question are defined and included in Appendix J. To answer the second research question, I used ‘a-priori’ coding. A-Priori coding is when the researcher establishes codes prior to the study based on a previous researcher’s codebook or theories (Crabtree & Miller, 1999). My a-priori codes came from previous researcher’s theories on vocabulary instruction, discussed in my literature review. Applying the a-priori codes gave me a chance to discuss the research based vocabulary instruction that the tutors were or were not using in the sessions. The a-priori codes were established based on vocabulary instruction research from Harris (2012) and Blachowicz & Fischer (2000). Harris (2012) introduced six principles of vocabulary instruction and three of the principles; frequency matters, responsive context is used vs. passive context, and clarity is necessary were turned into a- priori code questions that were applied to the data. Blachowicz & Fischer (2000) identified four main principles for appropriate vocabulary instruction and all four of the principals, personalized word, immersion in words, building on multiple sources of info, and active participants, became a-priori code questions that were applied to the data. For example, one of the a-priori codes was: Does the tutor use a responsive or passive context when they teach a vocabulary word? A list of all the a-priori codes is listed in next chapter. Once the data from this research was examined thoroughly through the open coding and a-priori coding process, I reviewed the codes for emerging themes in the data. This research study followed Creswell’s (2009) six steps during the data analysis process. The steps are being 105 presented in linear order, but it is important to note that Creswell described “an interactive practice” to analysis. That is, there is a recursive element to following these steps, the process is not linear order of analysis. Step 1: Organize and prepare the data for analysis (Creswell, 2009, p. 185). During this step, I reviewed the audio tapes from observations and interviews and transferred into word document transcripts. I reviewed the observational notes and memos and transferred into word documents. I also reviewed and organized the tutoring reflections and documents from the observations. Step 2: Read through the data (Creswell, 2009, p. 185). I reflected on the overall meaning of the data to get a general sense of the information and ideas that were being presented by the participants and the session. Step 3: Begin detailed analysis with the coding process (Creswell, 2009, p. 186). I followed Creswell’s procedure of organizing the material into segments. I did this by taking the text data and segmenting sentences into categories. I then labeled those categories with terms that came from open or a- priori code language. Step 4: Use the coding process to generate a description of the setting or people as well as categories for these for analysis. (Creswell, 2009, p. 189). I used this process to generate codes for the descriptions, which led to generalizing a small number of categories or themes. Then, I analyzed the themes that emerged gathered examples from the various cases that depicted each theme. 106 Step 5: Advance how the description of the themes will be represented in the qualitative narrative (Creswell, 2009, p. 189). For this step, I wove emergent themes into narrative passages, so that the findings emerged logically from the data. Step 6: Interpret the meaning of the data (Creswell, 2009, p. 189), Creswell recognizes that a researcher’s own background play just as important part to the meaning making process as a researcher’s fidelity to a theoretical lens. During my own interpretation process, my work in educational and tutoring settings influenced my understandings of the session’s interactions. Additionally, to convey the sessions accurately, I focused on specifically what happened with the tutoring sessions and what the tutor’s reflected on after the session had completed. The themes that emerged from this study came directly from my awareness of the healthy tension between my own biases and the data. Research Steps The research conducted for this study followed a uniform protocol to ensure that the observations, interviews, document analysis, and tutor reflections yielded data consistent with the study’s goals: 1. Participants were invited to the study by the researcher and were informed of the risks involved. 2. Pre-interviews (semi-structured) were conducted with the tutors. 3. Observations were conducted and audio-taped over a seven week period. Each tutor was observed on the same days and times throughout the study. 4. Tutors were required to fill out a Reflection Sheet after each session was completed. 107 5. After each of the tutoring session observational days, a memo was created in order reflect on the observational sessions in regards to the data and research questions. 6. Interviews (semi-structured) were conducted with two faculty members at the school who had students involved in the tutoring sessions and the ESL coordinator who organizes services for the ELL students at the school, including the volunteer tutoring service. 7. Follow up interviews (semi-structured) were conducted with each of the tutors. 8. The data was reviewed by the researcher. 9. The researcher coded the data for emergent themes. Ensuring the Trustworthiness of the Findings Throughout the study, I employed a variety of procedures to minimize researcher bias and safeguard the study’s credibility. This was important because as a qualitative researcher I am taking an active role in the collection and interpretation of other’s meaning making and to be credible, I have to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings. To ensure trustworthiness, I employed strategies by renowned qualitative researchers. The procedures that will be discussed below include reflexivity, member checks, data saturation, triangulation, and rich, thick description. Each procedure will be defined and then I will explain how each procedure was carried out in my study. Reflexivity I am defining practicing reflexivity as the process of examining oneself as a researcher and the research relationship in order to see how my own “conceptual baggage” affects my research. Merriam (2002) suggest reflexivity is “engaging critical self-reflection by the researcher regarding assumptions, biases, and the relationship to the study which may affect 108 investigation” (p. 31). I practiced reflexivity in my interview process by thinking about why I selected and worded questions in certain ways. For example, the first question I asked the tutors and teachers was in relation to their educational background and experiences. In reflecting on this, I realize that I might have positioned that question first because I thought it was important to know their background in order to understand the context of how they answered every other question. This led me to realize that I believe your background experiences in education may affect what a person will do as a practitioner. I also thought about the relationship I had to the people I interviewed for the study and how that relationship dynamic affected their responses to my questions. Being reflective throughout the process also meant that after every set of field notes throughout the seven weeks of tutoring, a memo would be written in order for me to reflect on the research itself and my reactions to it. Practicing reflexivity helped to cultivate a constant awareness of how my own experiences with or beliefs about tutoring, education, and ELLs were potentially causing bias in the study. Member Checks A member check, also known as informant feedback or respondent validation, is a technique used by researchers to increase the accuracy and credibility of data (Creswell, 1994). Merriam (2002) defines it as “taking data and interpretations back to the people from whom the data were derived, and verifying its plausibility (p. 31). Thus, throughout my data collection and analysis procedures, I consulted the tutors and faculty participants in order to clarify ambiguities and to double check my interpretations, so that my findings represented the perspectives of the study’s participants rather than the researcher’s (Merriam, 1998). During interviews with participants, I would summarize or restate what the respondent had said in order for the respondent to determine accuracy. I would also cross check interpretations I had made in my 109 field notes about sessions with the tutors in order to gain a more accurate picture of the session interaction. In the interviews with faculty and the ESL administrator, I would restate the answer they had given to each question in order to make sure that they were able to verify their answer. Data Saturation In this study, the rule of saturation (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) is being followed when thinking about the sample size and the length of the study. The rule is that the sample size can be considered saturated when the collection of new data does not shed any further light on the issue under investigation. This case study is using a small sample because it enabled each tutor to be observed at least 20 times over the course of the study. A larger study in a shorter time frame would not allow for multiple observations of tutoring sessions considering that I am the only researcher collecting data. This study aligns with the idea that a small study, with “modest claims” might achieve saturation quicker than a study that is aiming to describe a process that spans disciplines (Charmaz, 2006). The credibility of data saturation in regards to the length of my study needs to be considered. Merriam (2002) explains that although no specific guidelines can dictate what constitutes an adequate length of time or number of observations, “the data and emerging findings must feel saturated” (p. 26). Observation data collection lasted for seven weeks. In order to reach a point of “saturation” in my study, each tutor was observed multiple times every week on the same days and times. Each tutor was observed conducting at least 20 one-on-one sessions over the seven weeks. Moreover, conducting interviews pre- and post-observations extended and deepened my engagement in the data collection process. Additionally, each tutor’s individual reflection after every session provided a more extensive understanding of what each tutor though happened in each of their one-on-one interactions. 110 Triangulation Triangulation, defined as using multiple forms of data to confirm emerging findings (Merriam, 2002, Prasad, 2005; Stake, 1995; Yin, 2009), assisted me in precisely depicting and interpreting the study’s findings. Merriam (2002) asserts that in qualitative research, “it is important to understand the perspectives of those involved, uncover the complexity of human behavior in context, and present a holistic interpretation of what is happening” (p. 25). Stake (1995) cautioned qualitative researchers against narrow thinking, and instead suggested that researchers learn to understand their research as their participants are understanding instead of imposing their own assumptions. In qualitative research, these protocols come under the name of, “triangulation” (Stake, 1995, p. 109). I utilized numerous data collection methods, such as observations, interviews, and document analysis throughout this study. Thus, I was able to check what a tutor said in an interview against my observations of how the tutor interacted in the session. I was also able to check observational triangulations and interview data along-side the tutors materials and reflections about sessions. These procedures promoted the study’s credibility because they provided reasons behind why a tutor might have made a certain choice in a session or they confirmed that an interaction or form of vocabulary instruction was a pattern. An additional triangulation strategy I used involved requesting the same information from different participants. This triangulation strategy enabled me to make comparisons between and across the tutoring sessions conducted by the three tutors. Rich, Thick Description Rich, thick description involves describing a phenomenon in enough detail so a researcher can begin to evaluate the extent to which the conclusions drawn are transferable to other times, settings, situations, and people (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Merriam (2002) 111 encourages, “providing enough rich, thick description to contextualize the study, such that readers will be able to determine the extent to which their situation matches the research context (p. 31). Overall, this study offers thick, rich description of how volunteer tutoring sessions are being conducted with at-risk ELL learners, including what volunteer tutors are doing or not doing in each session to promote vocabulary acquisition in one urban charter school campus. In order to offer rich, thick description I observed each session as well as having each session audio-taped. I would record notes that were related to the setting of the sessions and interactions between the tutor and student that provided more detail to the reader in order for them to be able to have a detailed picture of what was happening in the sessions. For example, instead of writing a thin description such as, “the tutor brought their notebook” I would write a thick description: “the tutor brought their spiral bound notebook to the session, opened it up between themselves and the student and recorded the students name at the top of the notebook page and what the student was working on.” Providing detailed descriptions will allow readers, especially educators affiliated with volunteer tutoring, to determine whether this case study’s sample and context sufficiently resembles their own and thus decide whether this study’s findings can be applied to their individual situations. Ethical Issues There were undeniably ethical issues that I needed to respond to prior to, during and after the case studies’ completion. Kvale (1996) contends that rather than being part of a distinct phase of the research process, ethical issues emerge throughout the investigation. Kvale highlights ethical matters that a researcher should consider in the seven stages of the research process: thematizing, designing, interview situation, transcription, analysis, verification and reporting. In 112 undertaking this study, I will employ several strategies to respond to these issues so as to conduct research in an ethical manner. Three of the strategies I used are described below. The first strategy I employed was making sure the design of my study was ethical. Prior to conducting the study, I gained approval from the Institutional Review Board at Temple University. I informed the participants of the study’s purpose. In addition, I required all participants to sign and informed consent form before I conducted any interviews or observations. To protect the participants from avoidable harm, I explained that they could withdraw from the study at any point or decline to answer any questions I pose in an interview. Further, I explained to the volunteer tutors that their responses would not affect any performance reviews. The consent form template is included in Appendix A, B, and C. The second strategy I employed was reporting the data in a way that protected participants. This study uses pseudonyms to protect the identity of the participants and school site. I made extensive efforts to protect the participants’ confidentiality by storing all of my field notes, interview transcripts, and other data in a locked filing cabinet and on a password protected computer. The third strategy I used was during the interviews and observations. It concerned my relationship with the participants. Merriam (2002) argues that ethical dilemmas arising in the data collection and dissemination often concern the relationship between the researcher and participant. During the interviews, I would restate information that the tutor or faculty member had said to make sure that the information was verified by the participant being interviewed and not being interpreted by me. During the observations, I wrote down notes about what was happening and made sure that I questioned the tutors directly after the session if I needed to make verify certain interactions or make sure that I was not interpreting the session differently. 113 Delimitations and Limitations of this Study There are limitations and delimitations to this study. Although the study was conducted with three different tutors who worked with at-risk ELL adolescents, the study focused on data collected from the tutors, teachers who had students directly involved, and the ESL coordinator. Insight was not gained from other teachers in the building, students, parents, or the principal. A larger sample could have given additional insight into the overall building profile, or tutoring interactions, by adding information according to different understandings and experiences. The scope of this study is limited to research in one school site and therefore, results should not be applied to similar contexts. The school participating in this dissertation research included three tutors, two teachers, one ESL coordinator, and the ELL students that were involved in the sessions. The data collected focused on a very specific population within the school and there were no comparisons made to the general population. In other words, the results would have been different if the study would have focused on observing tutoring sessions across the entire school population. The students that participated in the study were also grouped into one category, at-risk ELL adolescent students. The results would have been different if the study had separated the at-risk ELLs into categories according to gender, level of English proficiency, or specific age groups. An additional limitation to this study proved to be the interview and reflection data collection process. Since information obtained during the interviews and tutor reflection sheets largely depended on what the tutor or interviewee was willing to share, the nature of their information was limited to his or her own lived experiences. Patton (2002) stated that perceptual data are in the eye of the beholder. However, this study’s triangulation of data helped verify results, and helped to support the accuracy mined out of the data collection process. 114 There are delimitations. That is, how the study was narrowed in scope (Creswell, 2003). Having conducted case study research in only one school site could be viewed as a delimitation. Although perspectives could be gained about how the tutors are interacting with adolescent ELL student in one-on-one sessions in the school, it is important to remember that one urban charter school could vary greatly from another urban charter school. For this reason, speculation that this study’s results would be similar to another school should be discouraged. Nevertheless, the study’s intensive investigation and depth of inquiry with each tutoring session observation will yield a richer and more nuanced portrait than a study using a larger sample would. This proposed study is still important to the field because it is trying to understand a particular phenomenon; in this sense, though not broadly generalizable, the study’s findings will provide insight into similar events and experiences. Another delimitation of the study was the timeframe of data collection. Due to the structure of the tutoring program being observed, the school calendar, and the ELLs’ availability to be tutored, observations needed to be conducted over a seven week time period. If observations could have been conducted over a longer period of time, it would have allowed for a longitudinal discussion of the data where sessions could have been looked at overtime. Nevertheless, being able to observe each tutor at least 20 times in the seven weeks, collecting reflection sheets from the tutor after each session, reviewing documents that were used in the sessions, conducting interviews with the tutors, two teachers, and one ESL coordinator within a limited time frame provided sufficient data to answer the research questions. 115 Summary Chapter 3 outlined the methodology for this study, and the ways in which these decisions anchored the research design and process of analysis. The rationale for using a qualitative case study design methodology was discussed. This chapter also provided the rationale for the methodological decisions for this study. The methodology and methods helped to illuminate the participants, site, and context involved in the study. The chapter concluded with a discussion of the strategies that were used to ensure the trustworthiness of findings. Chapter 4 presents a further description of the case. Chapter 5 represents the results of the study. Chapter 6 discusses the findings, draws conclusions based on an examination of study results and review of literature in the field, discusses the implications of the study for practice, and makes recommendations for further research. 116 CHAPTER 4 DESCRIPTION OF THE CASE Introduction This chapter describes the charter school environment, the settings where the tutoring took place, and each tutor’s characteristics. First, a brief biographical sketch of each of the tutors will be offered to illustrate their background experiences related to education and tutoring. Second, the charter school environment will be described. Finally, the three settings of the tutoring sessions will be described. It is important to give a description of the case because my first research question focuses on the nature of interactions between volunteer tutors and at risk ELLs. The nature of interactions that this study describes are connected to the tutor’s background experiences, charter school site, and tutoring environment. This connection will become evident in the results section of the paper. Description of the Tutors The three tutors shared similarities and differences. Each of the tutors is completing the same educational preparation program at a local university and they had all completed field work placement hours in at-risk environments. Additionally, each of the three tutors attended elementary and high school in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area. The three tutors differed in gender, ethnic background, tutoring experiences, and academic strengths. The nature of these differences will be explained below in each of their profiles. 117 Pete Pete is a twenty-one year old male student in his senior year at an urban university. Pete is enrolled in the Early Childhood Education program. He used to be enrolled in the secondary education program, but switched because he thought he could have more of an impact with younger students as a male role model. He went to school in the suburbs of a large city, was tutored as a child, and has extensive tutoring experiences with siblings and other family members. Some of his tutoring work up to this point has been with ELLs and he has worked with a variety of age levels. He is a Korean-American and is the oldest child in his family. His academic strengths are in English and Math, up to Algebra 2. Pete wanted to be a part of the tutoring project at the school because it gave him a chance to work in a high school environment and he had time in his schedule. He felt like it is really important for a tutor to be personable and patient. Pete said that he wanted to give his students a reason to be in the session and tries to connect what they are working on to the larger world. (Pre- Interview, 10-1-2014) Molly Molly is twenty-two year old female student in her senior year at an urban university. Molly is enrolled in the Early Childhood Education program. She went to school in the suburbs of a large city. Her tutoring experience aligns with her job as a nanny where she works an average of three hours a day on math and science with three boys at various age levels. Her work with ELLs comes from a recent field experience she had at a bilingual school where 95% of the students identified as Hispanic. Molly has four years of high school Spanish and used her language background in her work in the practicum experience. Molly is Irish-American and is the younger of two siblings. Her academic strengths are in Math, Science, and Reading. Molly wanted to be a part of the tutoring project to gain more experience working with ELL learners in 118 a one-on-one secondary environment. She believed that a tutor needed to teach in a variety of different ways and that they need to be patient. (Pre- Interview, 10-2-2014) Hannah Hannah is a twenty-one year old female student in her senior year at an urban university. Hannah is enrolled in the Early Childhood Education program. She went to school in the suburbs of a large city and was labeled as an ELL learner until middle school. She is Russian- American, was adopted as a child, and is the youngest of four children. This was Hannah’s first tutoring experience and her background with working with ELLs extends to her field experience where she works with young ELL Asian and Hispanic learners in an urban pre-school environment. Her academic strengths are in English and History. Hannah wanted to be a part of the tutoring experience in order to work in a one-on-one environment with adolescent ELLs. She feels that she is good at being patient in a session and she tries to let her students know that they can persevere and get the work done. Hannah feels that she is able to emphasize with her students because she was also an ELL.(Pre- Interview, 10-2-2014) Charter School Environment The charter school campus consists of a middle, high school, Cyber school, and college. There are 928 students and 19% of the students are identified as ELLs and 96% of the school population identifies as Hispanic. There are four ESL teachers on the campus and one ESL coordinator. Every summer there is a training institute held for new teachers that introduce them to the culture and policies of the school. During this institute, the ESL coordinator presents a two hour workshop to new staff and answers questions about ELLs in a one hour time block. During the school year, the ESL coordinator holds regular meetings with the ESL teachers in the high 119 school building on the charter school campus and invites content area teachers in order to help the ELL students succeed in both ELL classes and mainstream classes. There are several support systems in place for ELL students at the school. There is an active home and school partnership that will check in with families if a student is absent or if the family needs important information translated. The ESL coordinator conducts an extensive placement process for new ELL students entering the charter school before building their individual schedule. The coordinator first finds out from the student what their language, education, and background is. The coordinator then gives the students the World Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) placement test and asks them to submit a writing sample. Tutoring Settings Cyber School The Cyber School is located in a separate building on the campus and there are middle and high school students enrolled in the Cyber School program. Each student at the Cyber School follows their own prescribed curriculum and our each given a computer to use to access their schoolwork. It is called a Cyber School because the coursework is on-line as well as the classes. Students still report to the Cyber School during the school day in order to work on their on-line course work at the Cyber School site. The students receive a weekly agenda of lessons and work they need to complete. At times, students are required to log into live lessons given by an on-line instructor or they need to complete an assessment in a given time frame. Teachers provide written and oral feedback to students. The written feedback is in the form of typed notes that are placed right beside the work they have completed in the Cyber School curriculum and 120 the oral feedback is given to students at meetings the students have with their instructors once a week. The lessons students partake in before practicing and demonstrating knowledge are given on-line where teaching examples and explanations are provided. Hannah and Pete worked in the Cyber School setting in the mornings. The tutoring sessions would take place, for the most part, in a separate room from the main Cyber School classroom area. Hannah and Pete would work in the same room at a conference table. The sessions began at 8:10a.m and the principal of the school or another staff member would either bring students to the sessions or announce that the tutors were available and students would come over to the tutoring room. The length of each session would vary depending on the student’s needs and the time that the tutor had available. Usually, each of the tutors had two or three sessions in the morning. The students were encouraged, not required, to participate in the tutoring sessions by the faculty and staff at the Cyber School. Most of the sessions at the Cyber School focused on helping the students complete or understand Math concepts and a few sessions focused on Reading, Writing, or History. Each tutoring session was a one-on-one interaction between the tutor and the student. High School Content Seminar Class The high school is separated from the Cyber School building. The high school follows a nine period bell schedule and each student receives and individual schedule. The high school follows an inclusive curriculum for ELL students meaning that the students will receive ESL classes if they are identified as a level one or two. The rest of their schedule will be with the general population and they take regular content level classes. Once and ELL student is identified as a level three or higher, all of their classes are scheduled with the general population. The ESL teachers at the school teach English classes for students that are level one and two 121 learners. The ESL teachers will also have a built in resource period for level one and two ELL learners so that the learners can get support on the work they are receiving in the general curriculum. Hannah and Pete also had a session in the high school for one class period after they would finish at the Cyber School. The sessions would take place in an ELL teacher’s classroom during her prep. The ELL teacher would be in the room while the sessions were occurring. ELL students would come from their content area seminar class to work one-on-one with Hannah and Pete. Hannah would sit at one set of desks on one side of the room and Pete would sit at a set of desks on the other side. The content area teacher sent the same students to work with Pete and Hannah throughout the seven weeks. The sessions would last for 45 minutes and were English/Reading focused. Each of the sessions were one-on-one interactions between the tutor and student. If one of the students was absent, Hannah or Pete would allow the other person to still have a one-on-one interaction and would work on something else. The ESL teacher who was in her room during the sessions would at times join the session for a bit. Usually this happened if the tutor asked the teacher for support or if the student asked the teacher for support. The teacher would also interject if she felt that the work provided by the content teacher needed to be clarified. High School Resource Room Class Molly would work in a resource room pull in environment for her first session. A resource room is where ELL students have the chance to work on their content area assignments or catch up on their ESL classwork. The content area assignments usually focused on work the students were finishing in their math, science, or social studies classes. Sometimes they would use the resource period to work on assignments for their ESL course or activities associated with 122 thinking about college. The time period for the resource room class was 50 minutes. Molly would usually have one to two sessions during this time frame. Each tutoring session was a one- on-one interaction between the tutor and student. The ESL teacher who ran the resource room class would direct Molly to certain students at the beginning of the class and she would tell Molly what the work goals should be. If the teacher was not sure of the work the students needed to do, she would have Molly circulate and ask students what they needed support with. There was a lot of code switching in the classroom between English and Spanish. Code switching is when the students would talk in Spanish and then switch to talking in English. High School ESL Level one and two classes For Molly’s second pull in class, she worked with the same teacher. The content was language focused and included literature, vocabulary, and grammar exercises. The ESL teacher would start every class with a grammar or vocabulary focused warm up and then they would complete three or four activities related to Reading, Writing, or researching. The students were encouraged to speak in English throughout the class. The tutoring session would be a one-on-one interaction between the tutor and student. The teacher would brief Molly on the agenda of the day and she would direct Molly to one student she wanted her to work with during the activities. The classroom management was more challenging in this classroom and Molly would work to help her student to stay on task. She would usually be able to have one session in this class period. There was a lot of code switching between English and Spanish in the class. 123 CHAPTER 5 RESEARCH FINDINGS There were two research questions proposed in this study: 3) How do volunteer tutors interact in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk adolescent ELLs? 4) How are volunteer tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition with adolescent ELLs in one-on- one tutoring sessions? The research findings that this chapter reports are based on analysis of the following data sources: observations, semi-structured interviews, tutor reflection logs, and the field notes of the researchers taken during observations. Question 1: How do volunteer tutors interact in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk secondary ELLs? Six themes were created based upon my data analysis for question one. Below each theme will be listed and defined briefly. Each theme will be presented with evidence from the data that answers each research question. A comprehensive list and explanation of all the themes is included in Appendix K. While the themes are reported as being discrete there are some cases where more than one theme was demonstrated in an interaction. For instance, a tutor could demonstrate modeling within a session at one point and later on in the session the tutor could demonstrate being an encourager. Further, participants’ interactions in observations or responses in interviews and on reflection sheets at times addressed more than one theme. In those cases, the data is described 124 where it fits most logically. Below each theme will be further discussed and evidence to support the findings will be presented. The order that themes are being presented in represents the order that each theme was analyzed using the coded data for the first question. There was no other particular method of choosing when each theme was discussed because it is important that each theme is considered of equal relevance when considering how the tutors were interacting with students in sessions. The purpose of the study was to explore how tutors were interacting in sessions vs. to find out what interaction methods they used the most or the least and so it the nature of data collection and the organization of the findings is meant to introduce each theme separately and in no particular order. The themes are discussed for the second question according to how the literature was discussed in Chapter 2. The themes that addressed the first research question will be introduced. Then, the themes that related to the second research question will be detailed. All of the themes will be examined through the lens of each individual tutor. 1. Tutors as Models – The tutors first showed the students how to do something in the session or the tutors would show the students how to think about something before they would ask the students to independently practice a skill. 2. Tutors as Encouragers –The tutors praised students and encourage the students in session interactions. 3. Tutors as Partners –The tutors negotiated, shared authority, and collaborated with tutors, teachers, and other students in the sessions. 4. Tutors as Strategists –The tutors gave the students strategies on how to organize content and approach learning in the sessions. They would provide strategies that could be used as tools in order to work through a learning concept. 125 5. Tutors as Facilitators –Tutors checked for understanding in the sessions and then facilitated how each session would go based on what they saw each student needed. 6. Tutors as Translators –Tutors used the students’ first language and broke down English words or concepts in the sessions. Tutors as Models. The tutors interacted with students using modeling in one-on-one sessions. Modeling is being defined as the tutors first showing the students how to do something in the session or the tutors would show the students how to think about something before they would ask the students to independently practice a skill. Modeling was identified by all of the tutors in their final interviews as a tool they all recognized they used in sessions. Molly referred to modeling when she talked about helping one student understand the concept of intercepts in Math. She said, “I explained to her how to find the y-intercept and modeled with a simple example and she suddenly completely understood and was able to complete the rest of the worksheet with ease” (Post Interview, 1-3-2014). Pete referred to modeling when he talked about how he ran each session. He said, “I would model in each one-on-one interaction and part of modeling was bringing my pen and notebook to each session” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). Hannah attributes her modeling to knowing the material. She said, “If I really knew the concept we were working on, I was able to model more confidently and my students would be able to do the work independently when it was time” ( Post-Interview, 12-27-2014). Although modeling was used in many ways, there is one key way that each of the tutors demonstrated modeling throughout their sessions; they would model for students how to go about answering questions in order to demonstrate comprehension in reading and math on 126 multiple choice assessments. Below, examples of how each tutor modeled answering comprehension questions in sessions are shared. Molly Several of the students Molly worked with would come to her tutoring sessions in hopes of preparing for an exam they had coming up. Throughout these sessions, Molly would choose to model for how to find an answer or navigate an exam. For example, during a session where Molly was helping a student with prepping for the SAT exam, Molly modeled for the student how to go through each answer choice to pick an answer. Molly would look at the passage and then look back at the answer. During this process, she would explain to the student what she was doing in order to decide what answer she would go with (Observation, 12-1-2015). The field notes taken during this session reflect how the modeling interaction affected the session: The student that Molly is working with today seems really nervous and unsure about Taking the SAT exam this week. The student looked at the SAT Prep book and her eyes got really big she started to talk in Spanish in exasperation. Molly noticed this and chose to sit down with the SAT prep book and start gently guiding the student how to think about answering a question. The student watched Molly model how she would read through each answer choice in order to pick out the one she thought was the best answer. The student’s shoulders relaxed and she started to ask questions and seemed relax enough in order to interact with the text instead of feeling daunted by it. (Field Notes, 12-1-2015) 127 In the reflection log that Molly filled out at the end of the session, she referred to how modeling how to navigate the reading passages seemed to support the session. Molly wrote, “This session was challenging to the student and a little frustrating. The student is nervous for the test, especially if it is all in English. When I would model reading the passages and explain them, the student understood a lot better” (Reflection Log, 12-1-2015). Hannah Like Molly, Hannah would have several students come to her sessions in order to work with content that was helping them get prepared for taking an upcoming standardized test. The students would typically bring a reading passage that had comprehension questions attached to it and would ask Hannah to help them figure out how to complete the questions associated with the reading. During these sessions, Hannah would use modeling in order to demonstrate for the student how to read a text in order to find information. Below is an example of how her method of modeling would happen in a session. Hannah was helping a student understand an article about the man who invented Hoover Vacuums. The article was in interview format and the student told Hannah that he needed to answer the questions that were at the end of the article. Hannah made a decision to model how to accomplish the task. She first modeled reading over the questions and then went back to the beginning of the article and read it out loud after asking the student if he wanted to listen to her read or read the article on his own. When reading the article, Hannah would stop to enunciate, track, and think aloud about how what she was reading might fit into one of the questions being asked at the end of the reading. Hannah modeled how to read for information on two of the questions and then asked the student to use the strategy in order to answer the remaining three questions. The student practiced what Hannah had just modeled and she would reiterate any 128 modeling techniques that the student did not remember as they worked to complete the article (Observation, 11-10-2015). The field notes taken in this session further explain how Hannah’s modeling was a part of the tutoring interaction: Hannah is working with a lower-level ELL learner at the high school for the second time. He has brought an article about Hoover Vacuums to the session with questions and told Hannah that his teacher told him to read and answer the questions for the article. Hannah looks at the article and says, “Oh my gosh” as she explores the dense text presented. It looks like she is trying to figure out how to move the session forward even though she feels like the material is too hard for her student. Hannah decides to use modeling in the interaction. She takes the article into her hands and positions it between her and the student. Hannah then begins reading all the questions out loud before she goes back to the beginning of the article, asks the student if they want to read or listen to her read, and then begins reading. During the reading, she models how to stop, enunciate, and thinks aloud about how the questions could be answered by what she is reading. (Field Notes, 11-10-2014) In her reflection log Hannah felt that the session went well due to the modeling method she used. Hannah writes, “The session went better than my first session which makes me super happy because I did not think he got much out of the first session we had together. Today, we did a different method where I would model reading to him and summarizing before having him try it” (Reflection Log, 11-10-2014). 129 Pete Unlike Molly and Hannah, Pete would model how to answer math comprehension questions rather than reading comprehension questions for students. Many of Pete’s sessions involved working with students at the Cyber School on a variety of Math skills. Students would come to a session with Pete and need help working through an end of a lesson assessment. The assessments would typically have a Math problem and four possible answer choices from which the student would pick the best answer choice. Below is an example of how Pete chose to model how to work through a Math question in order to answer assessment questions. Pete was working with a student at the Cyber School on a lesson assessment based on geometric angles. The computer lesson would present a question and four possible answer choices. The student started out guessing what answer may be right. Pete chose to model working out the problem in his notebook first in order to avoid a guessing game and instead modeled the process of finding the answer in his notebook first and then went back to the computer screen to see if it matched with any choices. After a few questions were modeled in this way the student started to write the problem down first, work it out, and then see if their answer matched any of the computer screen options (Observation, 11-14-2014). The field notes explain further: Pete is having a repeat session with a student at the Cyber School. The student is trying to hurry through and finish a math assessment. The student looks at the first problem and the first four answer choices and just takes a guess. Pete’s eyes get big and he immediately has the student stop looking at the screen and instead has him focus on observing another process of answering a question. Pete models this process, writing 130 down the problem in a notebook first and then working it out before going back to the computer screen to see if any of the options work. The student seems a bit frustrated at the time that Pete is taking to model but he changes his tune when Pete’s process yields a right answer. The student begins problem number three by writing down the problem on the notebook. (Field Notes, 11-14-2014) In Pete’s reflection log of the session, he said “This was the second time I have worked with this student and he rushes through problems and has a hard time staying on task. I wanted him to stay on task and explain the concepts behind each procedure of his math problem” (Reflection Log, 11-14-2014). Even though Pete did not call it modeling, it is apparent based on the actions Pete took during the session that he used a modeling technique to help the student think more about the procedures of math and not rush to answer problems on the assessment. There are differences in how the tutors would model. Molly was working with a higher level ELL student and she chose to model how to dissect the questions but did not concentrate on modeling how to read the text. Hannah, who was working with a lower level ELL, chose to model how to read the text, questions, and how to find the answers using the text. It appears that the tutors decided their level of modeling based upon the level of language proficiency the student’s had. Pete’s modeling demonstrated for student’s how they could check to make sure the answer they were going to pick for the math question was right. He was not modeling how to figure out what the question was or what it was asking like Hannah and Molly. Pete was modeling how to find the right answer by creating a problem based on the question being asked which required the student having background knowledge. By modeling, the tutors were providing a cognitive support to help students learn which has been cited as an effective teaching practice (Rosenshine, 2012). 131 Having background knowledge was an embedded requirement in all of the tutor’s modeling techniques. Hannah modeled how you had to use the background of a text to answer a question. Molly modeled how you had to have a background understanding of how questions were worded in order to be able to pick the right answers. Pete modeled how you could figure out the right answer to a Math multiple choice question if you were able to create a problem out of the question being asked which required background knowledge. In this way, all of the tutors were using different modeling techniques but they were also demonstrating the importance of having background knowledge. By modeling how background knowledge is used to answer comprehension questions the tutors were demonstrating one of the aspects of the SIOP model (McIntyre et al., 2010) which was discussed in Chapter 2 as a method used to teach ELLs. The positive connection between how having background knowledge increases academic performance and reading comprehension has been documented in the reviewed literature (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Green & Lynch-Brown, 2002) and the tutors were modeling in their interactions how background knowledge supports learning outcomes. Tutors as Encouragers. The tutors interacted as encouragers in their one-on-one sessions. Encouraging is being defined as praising students and encouraging the students in session interactions to complete work or feel better about their abilities. All tutors would encourage their students in sessions. Two of the tutors, Hannah and Pete consciously talked about how giving encouragement was important. Hannah really thought about being positive and encouraging is her sessions. She said in her pre interview, “Well, the first thing I think my ELL students will benefit from knowing is to try and never give up. I really want to give my students a lot of time and support with what we are talking about” (Pre-Interview, 10-2-2014). Even before she started tutoring students, Hannah 132 wanted to support and cheer on her student’s success. In her post interview she stated, “The tutor needs to have set the high expectation in a session. The tutor needs to be able to get across the message to the student that they can do their work, think about the future, and that they can get their current assignment done” (Post-Interview, 12-27-2014). Pete made a similar statement about high expectations in his post interview. He said, “Setting high expectations for me are telling the student that whatever they are working on, they can get done and get through it” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). Even though there is evidence showing how she would cheer her students on as they were working together, Molly did not directly talk about how she was trying to encourage students in a session. There was one key type of session where tutors demonstrated being encouragers for their students: challenging sessions. A challenging session is being defined as a session where students struggled with the English content, did not have the background knowledge needed in order to complete a task, or when they needed to complete more work than time allowed. The tutors would find ways to encourage their students to forge ahead when they might otherwise have become frustrated. An example of how each tutor acted as an encourager in a challenging session will be shown below. Molly For Molly, being an encourager in a session was evident especially when the student either struggled with a concept or could not understand something due to the student’s language level. When the student would demonstrate signs of being frustrated, Molly would emphasize and encourage. In one session, Molly was placed with the lowest level ELL in a class that needed help understanding how to set up problems in order to complete an algebraic equation. The student began to get frustrated when she could not explain in English or understand the English 133 Molly was using to explain the concept. In order to encourage the student to keep going in the session, Molly began praising the student’s understanding of concepts even if the student was demonstrating their understanding using Spanish. Molly encouraged the student to communicate in any way she knew how and the student stayed in the session and was able to demonstrate the ability to line up variables in a math equation by the end of the session (Observation, 11-10- 2015). The field notes show this interaction: Molly is working with a student on completing an algebra worksheet on equations. The student did not want to come to the session and the teacher told Molly that this is the lowest level ELL student, explaining that she is still learning the alphabet. Molly looks at the students’ work and starts to help her by showing her how to write an equation as she talks in English. The student seems to start to get overwhelmed in the session, she takes a deep breath and Molly sees this and chooses to encourage the student in the session by even starting to use some Spanish she knows in order to make the student more comfortable. Molly also attempts to understand what the student is trying to say, even if they were talking in Spanish. (Field Notes, 11-10-2015) In the reflection log of the session, Molly talked about how the student progressed during the session but did not mention encouraging her to continue trying. Molly said, “The student needed a lot more assistance at the beginning of the session and by the end of the session, she knew how to write each problem over top of each other” (Reflection Log, 11-10-2015). Molly was aware that the student made progress during the session and it is evident from the data that this progress was related to how Molly chose to be an encourager for her student and believe she could make progress. 134 Hannah Hannah, unlike Molly, consciously viewed herself as an encourager and made it a point to become a cheerleader in her sessions when students seemed frustrated or made self- deprecating comments. She also chose to be an encourager in order to build up a student’s self- confidence. In one session, Hannah was working with a student who needed to make up a lot of work at the Cyber School. The student was daunted by the amount of work they needed to do and the student was also making comments about being lazy, not reading the right way, and how she gets bad grades (Observation, 11-17-2014). The field notes further explain this interaction: Hannah is working with a student on trying to make up missed work. The student plops down her computer and says that she is lazy and doesn’t know how she will get caught up. Hannah does not acknowledge the student’s self-deprecating remark. Hannah chooses to tell the student that she is on the right track trying to get the work done and that hopefully, they can make it through everything. Throughout the session, the student makes comments about reading to fast, getting F’s, and not being able to write answers properly. Repeatedly, Hannah cheers the student on; telling her that it is okay if she reads fast, that she can do the work, and write responses. As a result, the student sits up a little straighter and they begin writing out the answers on an assessment and get through three lessons, receiving an 88% on the assessment when she said she usually gets a 70. (Field Notes, 11-17-2014) Hannah continued cheering former students even in her reflection log. She wrote, “I think my student felt very accomplished and happy about catching up! She’s a very bright student; she 135 just needs to find time to complete her work. She did a really good job” (Reflection Noters, 11- 17-2014). Because Hannah chose to act as a cheerleader, her student benefited. Pete While Molly and Hannah demonstrated being a cheerleader and offered encouragement throughout their sessions, Pete would concentrate on acting as an encourager specifically during the independent practice part of many of his Math sessions. For example, in one Math focused session, Pete was working with a student on how to rationalize binomial radical expressions. The student was working with Pete for over an hour and was starting to try to apply the concept on her own. When she did not get the right answer on the first problem, Pete had to encourage her to do more problems by letting her know how close she had gotten to the right answer. The student was encouraged and decided to try one more (Observation, 11-17-2014). The field notes show this interaction further: Pete’s student just had a “Bing” moment where she connected how the numbers cancel out when she is rationalizing binomial expressions. Pete has been tutoring her on this concept for the past hour. The student is confident enough to try her own problem. She gets the wrong answer and seems frustrated enough to quit. Pete, seeing this, goes back to her work and shows her all of the parts she got right in the problem by circling them and telling her, you got this. The student is encouraged enough to do one more practice problem and she gets it right, puts both hands in the air, and says, Yes! (Field Notes, 11- 17- 2014) Pete wrote in his reflection log, “I thought this session went well. I was encouraged that my student didn’t give up on her work. She was persistent and persevered.” As a goal for future 136 sessions with the student, Pete said, “I would like to help her develop more confidence that she can do Math” (Reflection Log, 11-17-2014). Pete encouraged the student in the session to push through and she did. He was her cheerleader and then she was able to cheer for herself. All of the tutors encouraged their students to move forward. They affirmed their belief in the student’s abilities and thus created a positive tutoring experience. In terms of the literature, the tutors were demonstrating the socio-educational model of learning (Gardner 1985, 2000) which means that they created an environment that motivated their ELL students and provided a positive learning experience because they encouraged students. The fact that all of the tutors continued to encourage their students when things became frustrating is important. It demonstrates that they all had the ability to remain positive in a frustrating moment which helped their students have a positive experience at the end of the session. Tutors as Partners. The tutors interacted as partners in their sessions. Partnership was defined when tutors negotiated, shared authority, and collaborated with students, teachers, and other students in the sessions. It was evident in pre- and post- interviews with tutors that establishing a partnership with not only students, but other stakeholders was important. Molly reflected, “I would ask the teacher for support in order to figure out how to help the students who were having difficulty understanding English” (Post-Interview, 1-3-2015). Pete commented in his pre interview, “I think I would want everyone on the same page; teachers, tutors, and students. I think it would be good if we could decide where we want the students to be together” (Pre-Interview, 10-1-2014). In his post interview, Pete explained, “A benefit of tutoring was helping students connect the dots” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). In her pre-interview Hannah commented, “I wouldn’t want my students to think that they were looking up to me. I would want them to look at me as 137 someone who was trying to help them out. I would also have an attitude that we can work through what they bring to the session together. I would seek support”(Pre- Interview, 10-2- 2014). In her post interview, Hannah said, “I liked being able to learn with the students and it was nice having Pete to ask questions about material I was unfamiliar with” (Post-Interview, 12- 27-2014). The tutors chose to build a partnership with students, teachers, and each other. One key way that all of the tutors demonstrated building a partnership with others was by sharing authority and collaborating. The tutors would ask other tutors or a teacher for help. They would also ask the students to help explain a concept to them or let the students know that they were learning the material right along with the student. Below is an example from each tutor on how they demonstrated establishing a partnership in the tutoring session in order to help the students. Molly Molly chose to collaborate with her students and share authority in several of her sessions. Molly was conducting many other one-on-one sessions within the context of a pull-in environment where the teacher was present and other students. The pull-in environment, as discussed in the previous chapter, was a classroom space that Molly became a part of. She would conduct one-on-one tutoring sessions within the larger context of a resource room and ESL class that was supported by an ESL teacher. Sometimes, the students that were present in the class would also be working on the same material that Molly was working in a one-on-one session. Below is an example that demonstrates how Molly partnered with other people in the room as she was conducting a session. Molly was working with a student on calculus terms, specifically how to find the range, domain, and radiant. The student told Molly that she had a quiz on the concepts in the next class 138 and Molly tried to help the student even though she had not worked with the calculus terms for a long time. Molly asked the student to see her binder, told her she has not worked with calculus since 11th grade, and then resorted to asking another student in the class to explain the concepts in order to help Molly understand how to help the student. Molly was eventually able to help her student complete a few problems but told the student that she should check with her teacher on whether the problems are right (Observation, 11-21-2014). The field notes explain further: A student Molly has worked with before comes right over at the beginning of the class period to have a one-on-one session. The student asks Molly to help her figure out her calculus homework. Molly is not fazed by having to work on Calculus. She told me earlier that she was always good at Math and the teacher tends to send over all the kids that need help on Math to her. Today, however Molly looks at the work involving radiant and she realizes that she does not remember how to do the problems. She tells the student that she has not used this type of Math since 11th grade. At this point, Molly chooses to function more as a partner in the session. She has the student get their math binder out and then she has the student walk her through how the teacher explained the concepts. Molly then calls over another student who has the same course to collaborate on the worksheet. At the end of the session, Molly was to help her student understand more things about her Math work as a result of being willing to collaborate. Even though Molly wasn’t 100% confident about the material, her student left one step ahead because Molly refreshed her understanding by partnering with others. (Field Notes, 11-21-2014) 139 In her reflection log, Molly wrote, “This was challenging because it was hard for me to remember a lot of the math work the student was doing. We were able to work through a lot of the work together and figure out how to solve the problems. (Reflection Log, 11-21-2014) Although Molly did not explicitly say that she “partnered” with the student, she demonstrated through her actions in the session and in her reflection log that the reason she was able to help the student move forward was because she worked together with the student. She also did not mention asking another student for support but the decision to do so in the session enabled her and the student to work together. Hannah Unlike Molly, Hannah conducted the majority of her one-on-one tutoring sessions in a pull-out environment. The pull-out environment, as explained in the previous chapter, was a separate room within the Cyber School or High School where the tutors would meet one-on-one with their students. Hannah and Pete would work in the same room with their students and the students would come to the tutoring room from their larger class. Hannah used the proximity to Pete in several of her math focused sessions as an opportunity to collaborate in order to help her students. Below is an example of how Hannah would ask Pete for support in a session. Hannah was working with a student she had worked with in a previous session. The student told Hannah he needed help understanding angles and Hannah asked Pete for support. Pete gave Hannah support in the form of a notebook resource page that he created about angles. Hannah used the notes as a tool to move her student through the session. At one point in the session, she again asked Pete for a quick definition of an adjacent angle in order to make sure that she was not leading the student in the wrong direction (Observation, 11-24-2014). 140 The field notes explain further: Hannah is working with a student on angles today. She has worked with him before and they share a comfortable greeting. When the student explains what he needs to learn, Hannah does not hesitate. She looks over at Pete, who is working with another student on a Math concept and asks him how she can help the student understand angles. Without hesitating, Pete hands Hannah his notebook, turned to a page where he has drafted out a definition of each angle and an example. The angle resource becomes the centerpiece of the session and Hannah uses it as a base. She also continues to use Pete as a collaborator in the session, asking him to help her define “adjacent” in a way the student would understand. (Field Notes, 11-24-2014) Hannah wrote in her reflection log, “I thought the session went really well. We worked on math, specifically finding the area of rectangles and learning about adjacent and interior/exterior angles” (Reflection Log, 11-14-2014). Although Hannah did not specifically reflect on collaborating with Pete during the session, she reflected that the session went well. It is obvious from the observation and field notes that the student was able to understand angles based on the resources provided by Pete that Hannah sought out. Pete Whereas Molly tended to partner with the teacher or other students and Hannah would collaborate directly with Pete, Pete tended to collaborate and share authority directly with his students in sessions. Below is an example of how Pete would partner. Pete was working on factoring with a student in a session. Pete choose to start the session by asking questions and offered options of how they could work together to solve the problems. 141 The student and Pete discussed which option would work best to solve the problem. Once they agreed on the method they went to work to get the answer, the session progresses (Observation, 12-19-2014). The field notes explain further: Pete is working with a student he has worked with previously. The student comfortably takes a seat beside Pete and begins explaining how he needs help on long division and multiplying factors. Pete nods as the student demonstrates the concepts he understands and doesn’t. Because the student is able to articulate his needs and understandings, Pete chooses to offer the student a few different options they could use for solving the problems instead of simply deciding on a method for the student. Together, Pete and the student decide what method to use and begin working through the first problem. (Field notes, 12-19-2014) In his reflection log, Pete wrote, “I taught the student a tree method and a factoring method of multiplication. Through these short lessons, my student was more confident with his math skills which enabled him to complete his coursework more efficiently. We had positive outlooks in the session because we were productive” (Reflection Log, 12-19-2014). Pete does not mention directly in his reflection log that he chose to collaborate or partner with his student. He noticed that the session had a positive outcome and used the word “we” in conjunction with productivity. The partnership transaction Pete encouraged at the beginning of the session obviously allowed for both the student and Pete to be productive in the session. 142 The ability to be a partner instead of being an authority figure in sessions may have helped the tutors develop stronger relationship with their students and teachers within the building. One of the ESL teachers that observed many of the tutoring interactions said: The tutors that work with the ELLs were friendly and respectful and they gently guided the students through the content. They were really receptive to the students and therefore earned the students respect. It is really important for the urban ELLs that the tutors develop rapport, respect with the students. It is really important that the student did not view the tutor as another authority figure. (Interview, 1-7-2014) The tutors established the ability to develop partnerships within their sessions and this enabled them to make learning more about having a social interaction which aligns with Vygotsky’s (1978) social learning theory. The social learning theory says that a person learns if they are taught by a more capable adult in an environment of social interaction. The tutors established this type of environment through partnerships which allowed learning to happen. Tutors as Strategists. The tutors interacted as strategists in their sessions meaning they gave the students strategies on how to organize content and approach learning in the sessions. They would provide strategies that could be used as tools in order to work through a learning concept. Each tutor would draw from their own learning experiences in order to give the students strategies in sessions. Some of the strategies that the tutors used were not always aligned with how the students approached their work. For instance, the tutor’s would copy down Math problems on their notebooks to work them out and many of the students were used to doing mental math in order to solve problems. In one of the examples shown below, Hannah used 143 learning strategies that worked for her as an ELL which did not have the same success with the ELL she was working with in a session. All three of the tutors were able to articulate their own learning experiences prior to conducting tutoring sessions but only two of the tutors recognized verbally in post-interview questions how their own learning experiences helped them come up with strategies for their students. In her pre-interview, Hannah said, “I came to the U.S. from Russia and was in full ESL support until middle school and I have learned fast that the school district I grew up in was a good one” (Pre-Interview, 10-2-2014). This demonstrates Hannah’s awareness of her own background and she recognizes this further in her final interview as it relates to giving students strategies. She said, “I used strategies that I had learned through all my years in school. For instance, I would use the five paragraph essay. I guess that in the sessions I knew I was comfortable that I knew the materials the kids brought or that I could learn it with them. I would always think that I could tutor for my students, probably because I learned it before”(Post- Interview, 12-28-2014). In Pete’s pre-interview, he said, “I grew up in the suburbs and have been tutoring ELL students for a while. I also had tutors growing up so I know how tutoring works from a student’s perspective” (Pre-Interview, 10-1-2014). Pete was aware of how his own learning background would end up influencing how he tutored students. This was even more evident in his final interview. Pete said, “I was knowledgeable of the content and understanding of students. I tried to bring a lot of conceptual knowledge to the sessions. I was trying to build a foundation and because of this, I had to strengthen my own skills and their skills” (Post- Interview, 12-28-2014). The other tutor, Molly, would use her own learning experiences to come up with strategies in sessions but was not reflective about it after sessions. She said in her pre-interview, 144 “I went to school in the suburbs and currently tutor three boys that I nanny on Science and Math for about 3 hours every day” (Pre-Interview, 10-2-2014). Molly was aware of her learning background but did not reflect on how the learning experiences she had developed helped her give strategies during a tutoring session. As will be evidenced below, the strategies that Molly demonstrated for her students were unintentional. Molly would inadvertently, unknowingly demonstrate a strategy in her sessions through the way she interacted with the material and the student would observe and learn from how she would organize and work with learning material in order to move forward. The ability for Molly to be able to give strategies unintentionally could have been a result of the fact that the tutor’s never had a session planned. They responded to what the students brought in and did not have any beforehand preparation which made them rely on their own background knowledge of concepts and ability to remember strategies that they used themselves as learners. Molly As stated above, Molly would indirectly provide strategies to her students in sessions just by the way she would interact with the material. She was being a strategist because she was not trying to model a technique for her student. She was trying to strategize how to tackle the assignment that presented itself in the session and reverted to using learning methods that she herself had learned to apply to reading work. Below is an example from one session where Molly gave her student several reading strategies unintentionally. There is some overlap in the interaction where it might seem like Molly is modeling versus providing strategies. Based on the definitions provided earlier in the chapter, Molly is being a strategist because she is providing tools to her student in the session (tracking, scanning text, graphic organizer) versus modeling for them how to think about information. 145 Molly was working with a student in order to help them complete a Social Studies assignment. The student told Molly that he needed to read a passage and answer the questions. Molly helped the student through what she did vs. what she said in the session. In order to complete the worksheet, Molly first demonstrated the importance of reading the passage and she kept her place in the reading by tracking. She then used the page number next to the question to help her locate the information for the first question (Observation, 11-7-2014). The field notes explain further: Molly was working with a student she has tutored before. The first time she worked with him, he needed to complete a lot of work in his English workbook because his teacher was going to be grading it the next day. He was in a similar predicament during this session which leads me to think that he might wait until the last minute to get things done. He told Molly that he had to complete the Social Studies assignment by the next class period and that he had no idea how to do it. Molly took the social studies worksheet into her hands and looked it over along with the questions that went with it. The student watched Molly as she scanned the assignment first and then began to read question one out loud as she tracked under each word of the question. She then flipped the paper back to the text, skimmed the text with her eyes and finger and underlined the information that she thinks will help them answer question one. The student must have paid attention to the process Molly went through in order to find the information needed for question 1because after they discussed the answer, he started using the same strategies to work on question two. Later on in the session, when the student seemed frustrated with the text complexity, Molly created a graphic organizer that the student ended up using in order to complete their work. (Field Notes, 11-7-2014) 146 In her reflection log, Molly said, “The session was a little challenging because the worksheet was pretty difficult (Reflection Log, 11-7-2014). She does not mention any of the strategies she demonstrated in the session such as tracking or creating the graphic organizer even though these are all strategies that happened in the session. It is clear that she came into the session and demonstrated tracking, reading for information, and organizing reading content into a graphic organizer. Even though she did not identify any of the strategies as helping her to move the student ahead in the session, she consistently used them. Hannah Hannah, as referenced in the beginning of this section, demonstrated giving student’s strategies from her own learning experiences purposefully. Due to the fact that Hannah was identified as an ELL learner in elementary school, some of the strategies she gave the ELL students were based on her own experience as an ELL. It is important to note that Hannah would sometimes give an ELL student a strategy that worked for her and then find out that she would have to change the strategy or disregard it based on the ELL learner she was working with. Below is an example of how Hannah would demonstrate being a strategist in sessions. Hannah was working with a lower level ELL learner at the high school. The student had brought a reading passage to the session and told Hannah that he needed to be able to read the passage and answer some questions at the end of the passage. The student told Hannah he couldn’t read well and Hannah told him that she understood because she was an ELL and suggested that he reads slower. The student struggled through a few sentences in the reading passage. Hannah stopped him and told him that when she was an ELL, she would stop and look up any words she did not know in the dictionary and then proceeded to get a dictionary from the classroom and started to help the student look things up. The student continued to struggle with 147 looking things up in the dictionary and Hannah realized that they did not have much time left in the session. She abandoned the dictionary strategy and the method of having him read aloud. Instead, she began reading aloud to the student, stopping to ask him questions and break things down. The session ended without the student completing the assignment (Observation, 11-3- 2014). The field notes explain further: Today is Hannah’s first session with a lower level ELL learner at the high school. He has brought reading materials with him from a seminar class that is working to get him prepared to take a standardized tests in English. The student is very open with Hannah, telling her that his English is not good and that he has trouble reading. She empathizes with him and attempts to connect by telling him that she was an ELL student. Hannah decides to use strategies from her background as an ELL learner to try and help the student. She tells him to read the passage slower and has him use a dictionary to look up any word he does not know. The student continues to struggle and quietly starts to look down at his paper like he is 8 years old and his mom is trying to make him eat his peas and he doesn’t want to. Hannah sees this quiet frustration and decides to change up the strategies she is using. In the remaining time within the session Hannah chooses to read the passage to the student and then stops to break down the reading and discuss it with him. This new strategy seems to work better for the student. (Field Notes, 11-3-2014) In her reflection log of the session, Hannah said, “It was difficult because my student had a hard time understanding so we repeated a lot of the reading and tried different methods where he might understand best. It went okay; I’m not sure how much he got out of it. I felt like I couldn’t help enough and wish I could have done more” (Reflection Log, 11-3-2014). Hannah 148 obviously recognizes that she tried to use different strategies in the session and also realized that in this case, the strategies that worked for her as an ELL did not help the student in her session progress. The strategy that she did decide to use, a read aloud of the material, has been associated positively with ELL reading comprehension success (Coady, 1997; Houk, 2005; Stahl, Richek, & Vandevier, 1991) and has also been associated with helping students to develop greater vocabulary development (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). Pete Pete, in contrast with Hannah, had a lot of success right away in his tutoring sessions using strategies from his own learning experiences. He would have a conversation with students about how he would approach material if he was the student and many of the strategies he provided helped his students’ progress. Below is an example of Pete being a strategist in a writing focused sessions. Pete was working with a student at the Cyber School who is a higher level ELL student who continued to need support when writing in English. Pete decided to provide strategies to the student as if he was writing the piece. Pete told the student that if he was writing the response he would reread the sentence, see if he needed to add any pauses, and brainstorm thoughts out loud. Further along in the session, Pete told the student what he likes to do before he writes a new sentence in the paragraph. He said that he likes to read the sentence before just to make sure the new sentence makes sense. The student began to start implementing the strategies Pete had introduced and finished the written responses by the end of class (Observation, 11-3-2014). The field notes explain further: 149 Today Pete was working with a learner on their social studies response journals at the Cyber School. The student was talkative and demonstrated a large English oral vocabulary. As Pete started helping the student with their written assignment and he started giving strategies in relation to what he noticed the paper currently lacked commas and connectedness. Pete gave the student strategies that he prefaced by telling the student that they are strategies that he himself uses. (Field Notes, 11-3-2014) Pete wrote in his reflection log, “He had difficulties writing explanations. He seemed unsure most of the time when he was writing his responses. When writing, the student didn’t use contractions to indicate possession. He also had a tendency to write run on sentences and rely on spell check. By the end of the session, the student was more specific by using labels and improving diction. I liked that the student never gave up and responded to my assistance positively” (Reflection Log, 11-3-2014). Pete chose to use strategies that had worked for him in his learning experience to help his student progress in the session and in this case, the strategies he chose to share worked. Tutors as Facilitators. The tutors acted as facilitators in their tutoring sessions. Facilitation is being defined as the ability to organize the structure of a session in order to meet an academic goal. At times, this goal was decided based upon work that the student needed to complete. For instance, a student at the Cyber School or high school would come to a session and need to complete a project or a lesson that they were behind in. The tutor would then look over the work that needed to be completed and set a goal with the student on what was manageable to get done in one tutoring session. In other cases, the tutor would decide that the student they were working with needed to 150 know something fundamental before they could work on the assignment they brought to the session and then this would become the goal. Below, three examples will be shown. Two examples with demonstrate how two of the tutors, Hannah and Pete, would act as facilitators by choosing not to follow the original agenda of the session in order to help their students gain access to a fundamental skill. The third example will show how Molly’s facilitation in a session enabled the original learning goal to be met. In all of the examples, the facilitation choices that each tutor made would help the students move forward academically. The tutors would not talk about being a facilitator directly but each of them made mention of how it was important for them to organize a session and have a structure in mind. Pete said in his pre-interview, “I think you need to greet a person, have a structure in mind you want to use with students. It is important to be patient, consistent, and understanding of situations too. If a student doesn’t understand the subject, it is important that you are cautious on how you approach that gap”(Pre-Interview, 10-1-2014). It is obvious from Pete’s comments that he recognized that being a tutor for him was about being able to structure or organizes a session. It was also about being able to recognize when a student was struggling with in a session and being able to approach the session accordingly. In Hannah’s pre-interview, she also talked about wanting to make sure she understood what her students needed and then organize the session accordingly. She said, “I really want to see the students basic knowledge in the session and I don’t want to make assumptions. I want to give my students ways to apply what they are learning”(Pre-Interview, 10-2-2014). Molly paid attention to how having an agenda and being able to follow it proved to being an effective session. She said in her final interview, “A tutoring session tended to be most effective if a student brought specific work they needed to do or if the 151 teacher assigned them specific work and I was able to guide them through it” (Post-Interview, 1- 3-2015). The students almost always brought specific work to the session and if they did not bring specific work to the session the tutor would go through all of the student’s subjects with the student to see if they needed support. The tutoring sessions did not function as homework help. The students that came to the sessions tended to be behind in their coursework so the sessions provided them with a chance to work on actual classwork in a one-on-one environment. The ESL coordinator said, “I want tutors to be able to fill the gaps. To be content based tutoring specialist that are able to pull apart assignments” (Interview, 1-7-2015). The above comments are important to pay attention to because it mirrors the examples that will be shown below. Two of the tutors discussed that it was important for them to find out where the student was at during the session first without trying to just do the work that was presented and both of the tutors facilitated many of their sessions according to this premise. Molly was different in her style. While she did demonstrate facilitation skills in her sessions, her facilitation was about getting through the work that the student brought to the session and less about seeing what fundamentals they were lacking. Molly In Molly’s sessions, facilitation was sometimes used to keep her student on task when the classroom environment had become chaotic or disruptive. Below is an example of when Molly would become a facilitator in order to help keep her student on task. Molly is working with a student in the same room where an ESL class is meeting. The teacher has prepped Molly before the class started on the learning objectives that she wanted 152 Molly to work on with the student during the tutoring session. The objectives are aligned with what the entire class is working on. The classroom environment is loud and several students are not focused on the learning objectives. Molly facilitates continued learning for her student by reading the directions for each task out loud and checking each section as the student moves through the task. She does not call attention to the classroom environment and uses oral directions and conversation to keep session progressing (Observation, 11-17-2014). The field notes explain further: Molly is working with a student on reading comprehension questions for a biographical story the entire class is reading about Emily Dickenson. The class is not focused on academic content today and there are a series of conversations happening in Spanish as the teacher attempts to give directives and manage the room in English and Spanish. Molly is not showing that she is affected by the disruptive room. She instead becomes much more verbal in her directives to the student she is working with. Molly continues to facilitate learning by moving the student through each section of the written tasks, answering the students questions, and checking for understanding. (Field Notes, 11-17- 2014) In her reflection log of the session Molly writes, “The session went well. The student completed her work efficiently and was able to understand how Emily Dickinson lived her life. She was shocked that someone could stay in her house her whole life” (Reflection Log, 11-17- 2014). Molly did not mention having to facilitate a learning environment in this session but she does mention the challenge of working in a pull in environment in her final interview. She said, “Some of the kids in the class were a little out of control and I think the teacher focused on being 153 their friend sometimes and it was hard for her to get control of the class. This made me realize how important it is to show the students from the beginning that you are in charge and expect respect from them.” This reflection helps explain her facilitation skills in the example that was shared. Molly demonstrated through her directives and ability to keep the session moving even with a potential distracting classroom atmosphere. For Molly, once an expectation was set in a session that certain work needed to be completed, facilitating the completion of the work regardless of distractions was really important. Hannah Hannah would facilitate a session based upon what the student needed to get done but also what skill Hannah thought it was important enough to stop the session for in order to go over. Below is an example of how Hannah facilitated a session in order to teach a fundamental concept. Below is an example of how Hannah facilitated a session in order to teach a fundamental concept. Hannah was working with a middle school student at the Cyber School on a Math lesson that involved picking the right angle. In order to understand what angle to pick, the student had to have the background knowledge of the properties of angles. Hannah noticed that the student needed to have more background information on angles in order to answer the questions so she decided to more the session in another direction. Hannah moved away from the computer lesson and conducted a mini-lesson with the student about the properties of angles (Observation, 12-1-2015). The field notes explain further: Hannah is working with a student today on Math concepts at the Cyber School. The student needs to pick the correct angle choice from a list of four angles when prompted 154 by a description of angle properties. The goal of the session is to complete all the questions. After the first couple questions, Hannah ask the student if they understand the properties of angles or if they are just guessing. The student admits to making guesses and not knowing the properties. Hannah decides to change the direction of the session. She has the student leave the computer lesson and works with the student instead on understanding the properties of angles. At the end of the session, the student had not completed the computer session but was able to demonstrate a greater knowledge of angles and base angles based on the review session Hannah had decided to facilitate. (Field Notes, 12-1-2015) In the reflection log of the session, Hannah said: We worked on Math, specifically learning about adjacent and interior/exterior angles. I created alternative problems for both sections for him to ensure he knew what he was learning. I felt really confident that he understood it, and I think he felt happy as well and was confident to move on (Reflection Log, 12-1-2014). Hannah demonstrates from the example above that her ability to stop a session in order to facilitate the learning of fundamental concepts helped her student feel confident about the Math skill. Pete Like Hannah, Pete would facilitate the agenda of a session based less on what the student brought to the session to complete and more on the background knowledge the student demonstrated as the session progressed. In several sessions, Pete would realize the student needed work on a fundamental skill and would choose to stop the session in order to tackle the 155 fundamental skill before continuing with the planned agenda. The planned agenda for instance would be that the student wanted to get the work done for one of their Math lessons at the beginning of the session but as the session progressed, Pete would realize that they were missing a fundamental skill. Pete would choose to not worry about the student completely finishing the math lesson and shift the focus of the session to making sure they understood a skill that they needed to eventually be able to complete the Math lesson. Below is an example of Pete’s facilitation skills within a lesson. Pete is working with a student at the Cyber School on multiple binominals and rationalizing radical functions and expressions. The student has brought their laptop and told Pete that they are trying to complete one of their lessons. Pete begins working with the student on the lesson and then stops the lesson when he discovers that the student is having trouble with the algebraic FOIL method. Pete asks the student if they understand the FOIL method and the student tells him that they don’t. Pete decides to facilitate the rest of the session using a new agenda that is based on teaching the student the FOIL method (Observation, 11-17-2014). The field notes explain further: Pete is working with a new student today on rationalizing binomial expressions. The student slumps in their seat and seems unsure about how to interact with Pete or the material. Pete realizes her hesitation and begins asking her questions in regards to what she knows and doesn’t know. As a result, Pete gleans that she does not know how to use the FOIL method and he decides to facilitate the session in a new direction aligned with helping her understand the process of FOIL. As a result, the student made progress on obtaining some fundamental Math concepts by the end of session. (Field notes, 11-17- 2014) 156 In his reflection log, Pete recognizes that his influence made a difference in the session. He writes, “I found the student to be unsure when answering questions, especially about fundamentals, such as mental math. Nevertheless, I was content with the fact that she was persistent and persevered. I think she was overwhelmed at first, but eventually saw that I was picky about fundamentals because Math builds on them” (Reflection Log, 11-17-2014). The student might have been content if Pete would have just had them struggle through the work they brought. Pete did not do that and the student followed his facilitation choices to work on fundamentals first. By facilitating sessions around teaching fundamentals, the tutors were demonstrating giving explicit instruction of mechanics which was recommended by Short (2002) as a good way to teach ELLs in the content areas. Molly’s facilitation choices to move some of her sessions forward in a disruptive environment could be related to what some of the tutor’s might have experienced in Cobb’s (2000) study which listed low SES as a potential impact of the study’s outcomes. In Molly’s case, she was still able to move the student forward in the session despite the disruptive environment that could have been related to the school’s low SES standing. Tutors as Translators. This section of the narrative will describe how the tutors interacted with the adolescent first and second language acquisition of ELLs in one-on-one sessions. Tutors became translators when they used the students’ first language and broke down English words or concepts in the sessions. The tutors would function as translators in two important ways. First, two tutors would use the students first language or visuals to help students connect to English content in the session. Hannah and Molly chose to use what limited Spanish they knew to help direct students within their sessions and make the students more comfortable with English concepts. Molly and Hannah recognized the benefit of embracing the student’s first language, even in a limited way, 157 in their final interviews. Molly said, “I have little experience with Spanish, not a lot, but speaking in Spanglish felt silly to me and I thought they might make fun of me, but it was actually helpful to them. The students were actually excited when I would say something in Spanish because they felt they were teaching them as I was teaching them” (Post-Interview, 1-3- 2015). Hannah said, “I found that when I used simpler language or anytime I was able to throw Spanish into my session, even though I really don’t know hardly any at all, even using a little bit helped. Sometimes I would use a broader Spanish term to define something or be able to use words that were similar in Spanish; general words in Spanish that would help them connect with English concepts” (Post-Interview, 12-27-2014). Second, all of the tutors would function as translators based on how they would rephrase, simplify, and break down content in the sessions. In regards to simplifying material for students, each of the tutors mentioned this either in there pre or post interviews. Pete said in his post interview, “With my higher level ELLs in the Cyber School, I didn’t really have to rephrase my language that much, but with my lower level ELL students at the high school, I used a lot of rephrasing” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). Hannah said in her post-interview, “I would use a lot of different strategies with my lower level ELLs at the high school. I would rephrase, read to them, and after reading I would summarize what was read back to them. If I felt the ELL was not giving enough of a summary, I would ask them a simpler question” (Post-Interview, 12-27- 2014). Molly said in her post interview, “It was very different working with ELL students and I enjoyed it a lot. It made it easier to communicate with them when I would over-exaggerate my speech and talk with my hands a lot. I focused mainly on reading the directions to them and telling them in my words” (Post-Interview, 1-3-2015). Below, examples of how the tutors were translators in their sessions will be shared. First, examples of how Hannah and Molly would use 158 Spanish in sessions will be discussed and then an example of how each of the tutors would translate content in a session by breaking it down, simplifying, or rephrasing with be shared. Molly Molly would translate content and connect with some of her students by using their first language, Spanish. This type of Spanish to English translation would tend to happen towards the beginning of a session when Molly was helping her students with gaining access to new material. Below is an example of how Molly would use Spanish in order for her students to connect with English concepts. Molly is working with a student on calculus concepts. This is the first time Molly has met with the student and the student has brought a computer translator to the session in order to help her and Molly communicate. The student and Molly work through the session using the translation device and Molly also decides to translate some of the English terms into Spanish as well. By the end of the session, the student leaves with a greater understanding of Calculus terms (Observation, 11-10-2014). The field notes explain further: Today Molly is working with a student on Math concepts. The student is timid about communicating with Molly in the session and has brought her computer translator to the session. Molly begins working with the student and maybe because the student acknowledged their struggle with understanding, Molly uses translation strategies in the session. She lets the student use Spanish when they need to and Molly uses the Spanish term “Mas” to explain something in Math was bigger and then uses the word “menos” to indicate that subtraction was necessary later in the session. In both cases when Molly used the Spanish word to help the student connect with the English content, the student connected immediately with the concept and also seemed to open up to Molly. Once they 159 saw that Molly was able to use Spanish to help them, they started being more open minded to understanding English. (Field Notes, 11-10-2014) In her reflection log of the session Molly writes, “The student struggled with her English, but had a lot of understanding with math concepts. The computer translator helped us a lot with communication, especially with math terms.” Molly does not mention her own influence in the session with helping the student move forward by using Spanish terms even though it is evident that this helped the session progress. She does make reference to how being able to interact with the translation tool in the session made a difference. Molly would use the translation computer program as an additional strategy to help her student understand and English concept. Molly would also use the translation strategies of breaking things down, simplifying, or rephrasing English content in order for her ELL students to connect to concepts in a session. Below is an example of how Molly demonstrated translation through simplification. Molly is helping a student complete a project about animals for their ESL class. The student is unsure about how to do the assignment and tells Molly that she does not understand the English directions. Molly chooses to use translation strategies in the session. She reads the directions to the student, breaks them down into simple conversational phrases and then uses a pencil to draw out a picture that explains the directions she just gave orally. The student moves forward with the project by the end of the session (Observation, 11-24-2014). The field notes explain further: Molly is working with a student today that she has worked with before. The student likes be really social in the class and enjoys talking in Spanish during the sessions and using English terms that she knows. Today she is working with Molly on an animal project that she is going to 160 have to present in English to her class at the end of the week. The student Tells Molly that she does not understand the English directions in the assignment and Molly begins using translation strategies. She reads the English directions, rewords them into simpler language, and draws a picture of what the directions are saying to do. As a result, the student decides on an animal to do her presentation on and finds two facts and a picture that she can share with the class about her animal. (Field Notes, 11-24-2014) Molly wrote in her reflection log, “The session went well, the student completed a lot of work she did not do on the animal presentation.” Although Molly does not mention using any translation strategies in her reflection log, it is obvious that her ability to break down English directions for her student helped the student progress in the session. Hannah Like Molly, Hannah would use Spanish terms when she was working with some of her students at the high school. The students she would work with at the high school were lower level ELL students and would usually bring content associated with reading comprehension to the session. Below is an example of how she would help the student translate the English content by navigating it with a Spanish term. Hannah is working with a student for the second time at the high school. The student has brought a reading passage and questions that she has to answer in English. Hannah begins to help the student navigate through the text heavy passage and Hannah thought it was important to stop and see if the student understood the English term, bigger. Hannah translated the English term by using the Spanish word for bigger, grande. As a result of this splash of Spanish in the session, the student was able to connect more with the text and understand what a comprehension question was asking for (Observation, 12-8-2015). The field notes explain further: 161 Hannah is working with a student today for the second time at the high school. The student has brought a Keystone practice test to the session and the student actually thought that it was a real test that she had to take so she was frustrated immediately. Once Hannah reassured her that it was only a practice test, the session continued but the student was having trouble understanding what the assignment was about or how she was supposed to answer the questions. Hannah got a positive reaction from the student when she used the Spanish word, Grande, in order to explain the English concept of bigger. It is the only time in the session that the student smiled and seemed to engage more with the information she brought to the session. (Field Notes, 12-8-2015) In the reflection log of the session Hannah commented on the challenge of the session and how she tried to use different strategies. She does not specifically mention using the student’s first language as a strategy but as evidenced above, translation in the session happened and seemed to make a difference in the student’s attitude towards the material. Hannah said, “I think the session was challenging for my student because she knows such limited amounts of English. I was having a hard time trying to think of strategies to get her to understand what was being read and what she had to do for the teacher” (Reflection Log, 12-8-2015). In some of her other sessions, Hannah would demonstrate translation strategies in how she would break down the material for her students. Below is an example of how Hannah would translate by breaking down an English concept for her student. Hannah is working with a student on understanding a Social studies lesson. The social studies lesson deals with German history and Hannah decides to help the student understand some of the English content through a variety of translation strategies. Hannah uses hand gestures to explain the content of the story and provides the student with a synonym and an antonym of a comprehension question. At the end of 162 the session, the student had completed all the questions associated with the passage (Observation, 11-10-2014). The field notes explain further: Today Hannah is working with a student on their Social Studies content. The student told Hannah that she needs to complete the comprehension questions associated with the passage and that she didn’t really understand some of the reading passage. Hannah starts the session by reading the passage out loud to the student and then she decides to translate what she is reading by using hand gestures. It almost feels like Hannah is conducting a Reader’s Theatre. She is acting out the story with the gestures she is using; making the English words come to life. When the student and Hannah begin working on the questions that go along with the passage, Hannah does not just read the question as it is stated. She reads the question, simplifies it by putting it into easier language or attaching the concept to a synonym or antonym. By the end of the session, the student has completed all of the questions associated with the reading passage and she left the session smiling. (Field Notes, 11-14-2014) In the reflection log of the session, Hannah recognized how she used different strategies that helped translate the English content. She writes, “The session went quick but went well. My student came to the session with a specific unit that she needed help with. All she needed was better clarifications and rephrasing of some of the English to understand the questions or passages. She left happy and I was happy to have helped” (Reflection Log, 11-14-2014). It is obvious from the above example how Hannah became a translator within the session by being able to clarify, break down, and rephrases English concepts. 163 Pete As stated previously, Pete did not use Spanish to help his students understand concepts in English. He did translate English content in the session by simplifying it for his students. Below is an example of how Pete would use translation strategies. Pete is helping a student today on her Math coursework. The work involved radicals and exponents. The student has a hard time understanding the English terms exponents, bases and powers, and multiplying positive and negative numbers. The student also needed support understanding the relationship between radicals and exponents. Pete used a variety of translation strategies to support the session. He introduced each concept by drawing it on his notebook and then uses the drawing to support what he was explaining orally. At the end of the session, the student was able to demonstrate their understanding of the Math concepts by completing problems on their own (Observation Notes, 11-10-2014). The field notes explain further: Pete is just starting a session with a student about radicals and exponents. At first, the Student is unresponsive to Pete’s prompts but then her face lights up when she understands something so Pete proceeds with the session using her facial expressions as a way to gauge if she understands or needs more instruction on a concept. Pete realizes that the student is having trouble with some of the English terminology/content. He begins translating some of the English concepts by drawing visuals on his notebook. He draws the visual and explains that he is drawing out the meaning of the Math concept. Towards the end of the session, the student was able to solve problems on her own and draw out the pictures that explained the concepts. (Field Notes, 11-10-2014) 164 In his reflection log, Pete said: I was overwhelmed at the beginning of the session because I realized that the student did not have a very strong foundational knowledge of English Math concepts and their relation to each other. The idea I emphasized most was the relationship between radicals and exponents. I also had to explain the terms related to exponents, bases and powers, as well as multiplying positive and negative numbers. At the end of the session, I think we both felt accomplished. I was proud of my student for being persistent and willing to learn (Reflection Log, 11-10-2014). Pete took the time to translate several English Math concepts in the session in order for his student to have success. He broke down concepts and showed their relationships and meanings through guided visuals. In Chapter 2, the benefits of bilingual education was discussed using a study conducted by O’Garcia and Barlett (2007). Two of the tutors demonstrated through their translation interactions that it benefited their students when they would use words from the students L1 to help them connect to concepts in their L2. Furthermore, the translation abilities that all of the tutors demonstrated, either by using the students L1 or breaking concepts down, aligns with a Vygotskian concept set forth by Lantolf & Thorne (2007) that new levels of development will be reached if students are taught by other’s who have mastered the task. All of the tutors identified as English being their L1 and because of this mastery of the language, they were able to become translators for their students. In the findings presented above, 6 themes were discussed that explained how tutors interacted in one-on-one sessions with their ELL adolescent students. Findings for the second 165 research question will be presented below and they are based on how each of the three tutors helped their students develop vocabulary in each session. Question #2: How are volunteer tutors supporting vocabulary acquisition with secondary ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions? There were three themes that were identified as a result of “a- priori” coding the data. “A- priori” coding, as identified in the methods section, resulted from vocabulary learning trends that were present in Chapter 2. Below is a brief description and definition of each theme. 1. Tutors supported vocabulary acquisition indirectly –The tutors helped students acquire vocabulary words throughout a session but did not explicitly plan a vocabulary teaching time. 2. Tutors supported the vocabulary acquisition of general academic words –The type of words that the tutors helped the students acquire were usually academic vocabulary words that helped the student understand a concept or how to complete a task. 3. Tutors used instructional techniques to support vocabulary acquisition –Tutors would help students understand vocabulary concepts by breaking down the vocabulary word into a simple definition, finding specific definitions, using a responsive context, personalizing word learning, or visuals. Tutors supported vocabulary indirectly. This section of the narrative will describe how the tutors supported student’s vocabulary acquisition by looking at way instruction happened in the sessions. In the literature review, vocabulary instruction was discussed mainly in terms of direct instruction or indirect instruction. Direct instruction involves explicit teaching of vocabulary words/definitions. For instance, words are taught from a designated vocabulary list or words are picked out of a reading passage and taught to the student before the student reads the passage. Indirect instruction is learning words 166 through exposure, conversations, reading independently, or being read to (Beck, 2002; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985). It was found in the literature review that direct instruction is really important to eventual acquisition (Beck, McKeown, & McCaslin, 1983; Schatz & Baldwin, 1986). Incidental or indirect instruction is important as well but did not yield the same results as studies where direct instruction was used as well as indirect instruction (Marmolejo, 1990; Ouellette, 2006). This particular study attempted to explore how volunteer tutors were supporting vocabulary acquisition in their tutoring sessions. Where the tutors setting a time aside in their sessions to cover vocabulary? Did the tutors extensively go over vocabulary words or did they give minimal definitions and only cover words that happened as a result of the context of the session? The tutors were observed in their everyday tutoring sessions with students and were not given specific training or goals to accomplish with the students from the tutoring coordinator. The tutors were told to work with the materials the students brought to the sessions. In effect, the tutors were able to decide their own structure, goals, and agenda for the session based on the materials the students brought. The tutors were also not asked in either their pre interview or during informal interviews during the course of the study to talk about vocabulary perceptions or instructional methods. This was a choice made by the researcher in an effort to not influence any choices the tutor’s were making in regards to vocabulary acquisition during the course of the study. Tutors support of vocabulary Throughout the course of the study 64 tutoring sessions were observed. Each tutor was observed conducting at least 20 sessions. At the completion of the study Molly had been observed 20 times, Hannah 23 times, and Pete was observed 21 times. Out of the 64 total number 167 of sessions, indirect vocabulary instruction happened 209 times and not once did the tutors ever teach the vocabulary explicitly. Meaning that the tutors did not set aside a particular time in their session to go over words directly or bring in vocabulary materials that they thought the students would benefit from knowing. The tutors would support vocabulary learning within the session if a word came up in the context of material that was being covered in the session. Below, the ways in which vocabulary was taught indirectly will be discussed. A complete list of the vocabulary words that were introduced by the tutors will be included in Appendix G. During several tutoring sessions, vocabulary was supported as a result of the tutor and student engaging with written reading material. Specifically, there were 82 times over the course of the tutoring sessions that tutors would define a vocabulary word for a student because it was in the written context of material brought to the session. The tutor would be helping the student work through material the student had brought to the session and during the course of working with the material, vocabulary words would be defined because they came up in the natural context of the session. For instance, Molly was working with a student on a social studies worksheet during a session where the student had to complete questions associated with a reading passage about India. During the course of reading the passage with the student, Molly stopped three times in order to address vocabulary. She gave the student quick oral definitions of the words trade route and motives. The quick definition was given based on Molly’s own background knowledge. For the words spices, Molly gave a synonym of the word and used hand gestures to model putting spices on food in order to help her student get the definition. In all the above examples, the vocabulary instruction lasted for 30-60 seconds and then the session continued and the words were not covered again (Observation Notes, 11-17-2014). All of the 168 above examples are additional reasons why the vocabulary instruction the tutors gave was implicit and not explicit. Similarly, Hannah was working with a student on their history lesson and stopped during the reading passage three times to introduce the words discrimination, rigorous, and banned. All of the words were quickly defined by Hannah using her own background knowledge of the words. She would say the word out loud once and then give a one sentence definition from her own vocabulary lexicon. For instance, she would say, “Discrimination –that means that a person is being treated unfairly.” Hannah spent 5-10 seconds defining the words orally for the student. She did not ask the student to use the words in another context and the words were not reviewed again. When the student and Hannah moved onto the question part of the lesson, Hannah defined the words since and then by giving the student a synonym/antonym of the words. Hannah chose to define these words for the student in reference to how knowing what they meant would help the student answer the questions correctly. The student was not asked to repeat the definition of the words or use them (Observation Notes, 11-10-2014). Additionally, Pete was working with a student on an informational reading passage designed to get the student ready to take the Keystone exam. Pete stopped the reading to define the words patent, progress, and sophisticated. For progress and sophisticated, Pete shared quick oral definitions that lasted 5-10 seconds that came from his own background and for the word patent; he first checked with a teacher that was close by to make sure he had the definition correct and then defined it by telling the student a story about someone that had a patent on new shoes. The example he gave for the word patent took 30-60 seconds and he asked the student if they understood what the word meant. The student responded, yes, and Pete continued with the 169 session. The words that Pete introduced were not reviewed at any point in the session (Observation Notes, 11-10-2014). One hundred and eleven times a math concept was defined that was needed to understand the context of the lesson as it progressed. For instance, a student came to a session with Pete and brought their Math lesson with them to work on. During the lesson, Pete defined the word fractions, turbulence, and difference for the student by showing the student visuals of both concepts on his notebook. Each visual demonstration would take 30-60 seconds and Pete would ask the student if they were following his explanation orally. The student was not asked to immediately demonstrate an understanding of the concepts but the student demonstrated their understanding of each of the concepts in the problems they had to complete in the independent practice part of the session (Observation Notes, 12-12-2014). In a session devoted to helping a student with calculus, Molly used the terms sign, cosign, aptitude, and vertical shift throughout the session that involved completing a worksheet. She would use the term and then quickly ask the student to define it in order to check and see if the student understood the concept. If a student demonstrated they knew the definition of the term, Molly would then use it freely in her explanations. If a student was unclear about a definition, Molly would explain it further by talking about what it was orally as well as showing it in action on the worksheet. Each explanation took about 30 seconds and then Molly would continue with the session. In the independent practice part of the session, the student would demonstrate their knowledge of the terms Molly went over with her prompting them. She would ask them to show her how to set up a problem using sign, cosign, aptitude, and vertical shift (11-21-2014). In one of Hannah’s sessions, a student was working on Math coursework associated with angles. Hannah defined the word interior, exterior, and corresponding angle as the content came 170 up in the session. She would compare and contrast the different angles for the student using visuals. She spent 1-2 minutes comparing and contrasting the angles. The terms were used orally and she did not write down the terms beside the angles that served as the terms definitions. Hannah then spent 1-2 minutes having the student think about using tricks associated with the words themselves to remember the vocabulary. She told them to use the little word “in” in interior to remember it was an inside angle. She told them to think about the word exit when thinking about exterior to remember the angles were outside. At the end of the session the student was able to demonstrate in their independent practice that they had an understanding of the angles. The student was not asked to use the terms orally (Observation Notes, 12-1-2014). Sometimes a vocabulary word would be introduced by a tutor because it was a word they were using in conversation. This happened 16 times during the course of observations. For instance, Pete was talking with a student about the upcoming winter season and they began talking about hunting. As a result, the student learned what deviation and spread means when it comes to hunting. Pete did not realize that the students did not know what the terms meant. The student asked Pete what the words meant and then Pete stopped to define each word while making pretend deer antlers in order to demonstrate each word. The talk lasted 2 to 3 minutes and the student did not use the terms (Observation Notes, 12-5-2014). In another conversation, Pete was using the word vague in a session to talk about how the student did not want to make their writing vague. The student did not know what it meant so Pete defined it by giving a synonym to the student. Pete told the student that vague meant “unclear” and the student demonstrated that they understood now by shaking their head. Later on in the session Pete would use the word vague and unclear together in order to reiterate the definition he gave the student. The student was able to demonstrate his understanding of the word by changing his writing to be 171 more specific whenever Pete would tell him it was vague (Observation Notes, 11-24-2014). The words introduced as part of conversation are included in Table 2. In all the examples shared above, the tutors would help the students acquire vocabulary as it resulted in the context of the session. Each of the tutors made references to teaching vocabulary in their post interviews. Pete said, “It was important to point out words in context” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). Hannah said, “For me, vocabulary gives a deeper meaning to whatever you are learning about”(Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). Hannah’s comment connects to research done by Chall and Jacobs (2003) (1996) about how knowing more words helps students understand the overall text and the deeper meaning of that text. Molly talked about how she would approach vocabulary if the students asked about a word. She said, “When a student would stop and ask me what a word meant, I would give synonyms and talk with my hands a lot to act out what I was explaining” (Post Interview, 1-3-2015). Two of tutors did make references in their post interview comments to teaching vocabulary differently, in a more direct approach. Hannah said, “In the beginning of the tutoring sessions, I would use the dictionary with students to look up words but there was such limited time that I would just define the word quickly. Looking back, it was a lot more important to give the students the dictionary strategy consistently”(Post-Interview, 12-27-2014). Pete said, “Having a thesaurus would have been helpful, using real world examples, translations, pictures, and teaching students more about context clues” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). In Appendix G, a list of the words that were taught to the students, how they were taught, and the kinds of words that were taught is provided. 172 Type of Words Taught This section of the narrative describes what types of words that the tutors would choose to define in each session based on the concept being covered or the context of the session. In the literature review, the importance of introducing academic vocabulary to ELL students was discussed. Academic vocabulary was defined as being a component of academic English which is used in academic settings, academic text, and is crucial for academic success (Corson, 1997; Cunningham & Moore, 1993; Nation & Kyongho, 1995; Scarcella, 2003). The idea presented in the literature review was that many ELLs have an understanding of basic English vocabulary but need support with general academic terms found in many mainstream textbooks (Beck, McKeown, Kucan, 2002; Graves, 2002, 2006; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). This study wanted to see what types of words were being introduced by the tutors. During every session, the vocabulary words that tutors helped students acquire were recorded as well as the context of the word and how the tutor helped the student understand the word. The vocabulary words were then coded into three categories. The first category was coded as words that were introduced from written context, meaning the words that were introduced directly from written material the student brought to the session. The second category was coded as signal words that were introduced to help students understand an academic concept. The third category was coded as conversational terms the tutors would introduce as part of their conversational pattern with students. It was found once the words were put into categories that many of the words the tutors chose to define words that were general purpose academic words and sometimes they would define low frequency exotic words. Many of the tutors would also define words that would be considered tier one (everyday) words (Beck, 2002) if the word was needed to help understand a larger concept. The word list in Appendix G show the different 173 categories of words that the tutors introduced throughout their sessions. The words will be in the order in which they were observed. Beside each word is what category the word was coded in as well as if it was a general academic word, low-frequency exotic, or tier one everyday word. There were ten words that were introduced by the tutors multiple times. The words that were repeated across sessions by the same or different tutors were percent, and, sum, tone, synonym, expression, whole, prism, units, product. All of the above words that were repeated by the tutors within or across sessions are in the category of signal words. Most of the repeated words are also associated to Math. Pete made reference to signal words in his final interview. He said, “In Math there were a lot of signal words. I would explain the signal words and write them out in numerical form. At the high school, the signal words that might help them on the standardized test were in context”(Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). In another comment, Pete specifically talked about helping one of his students through a session once he defined the word percent. He said: I was working with a student on absolute value and distance problems and he had a hard time converting fractions. I broke down the word percent and that really helped him. I opened up the vocabulary terms of Math and then would ask why am I converting this fraction and I went through it step by step. I might not use the words but I would use a demo. For example, I would show the terms part and whole. Knowing the vocabulary helps, you don’t have to have it but it helps to know it in order to get Math concepts, it provides greater access to the fundamentals (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). The words that Pete chose to introduce are aligned with the definition of general academic vocabulary. 174 The tutors never mentioned having an understanding of basic versus academic words, yet the majority of words that they chose to define where general academic words. As stated previously, tutors were not instructed specifically on what type of words to help their students acquire so the words that were covered in the session resulted from the tutor or student initiative. The finding that most of the words that were introduced were academic unintentionally supported one of the challenges that faced ELL students at the school site. A mainstream teacher at the school site said, “The biggest challenge facing adolescent ELLs is developing academic vocabulary as they are still working on the day to day vocabulary of English.” Similarly, an ESL teacher at the school site commented. “It would be awesome if the tutors could incorporate vocab or use the vocab we were using in class. The ELL students Basic Vocabulary is really high but their Academic vocabulary is not” (Interview, 1-7-2015). These suggestions or preferences for vocabulary acquisition were never shared with the tutors and the tutors did not ask for support on how to teach vocabulary. The instructional method and technique tutors were using to teach vocabulary. This section of the narrative describes how the tutors were supporting vocabulary acquisition through instructional methods that were reviewed in the literature. Several successful strategies for teaching vocabulary was discussed in the literature review including teaching students the specific meanings of words (Fisher et al., 1996), using a responsive context with the students when helping them with vocabulary acquisition (Harris, 2002), helping students recognize and pronounce words (Ehri, 2005), and personalizing word knowledge (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000) by letting students pick out vocabulary they wanted defined. In this study, I wanted to explore the techniques the tutors were using in their sessions to teach vocabulary. The techniques that came out of the literature review and that are listed above 175 were used as a-priori codes during data collection. During observations when a vocabulary word was introduced, the technique the tutor used to introduce the word was also recorded. Below, each of the techniques will be discussed in relation to what was found as a result of the data analysis. It was found that the tutors taught the specific meanings of four words in the study. The four words are included in Table 2. This type of specific definition acquisition usually involved a tutor using a tool, like a dictionary, in order to define a word. For example, Pete was helping a student work on a Math lesson and one of the multiple choice questions the student had to answer used the term overstated. The student asked what the term meant and Pete decided that instead of defining the term for the student to direct the student to look up the word independently. The student looked up overstated using Google and then the session proceeded. On 205 occasions tutors would define the word according to their own background knowledge but not specifically look up the word in through a dictionary or other word source. For example, Hannah was helping a student with a reading passage and she stopped to define the word device. Hannah told the student that a device was something that a person could use in order to help them accomplish a task. The passage was about household cleaning devices. Hannah asked the student if they understood what the word device meant and the student verbally said yes. The student was not asked to use the word device or demonstrate their understanding later in the session (Observation Notes, 11-3-2014). Tutors may have chosen words from the context that were usually academic in nature and also easier for them to define considering that they rarely used a dictionary in order to define the word. The second technique that was coded regarded whether or not the tutor used a responsive context to teach vocabulary. In 46 out of 209 instances tutors would introduce a word and the 176 student would have to either respond orally that they understood what the word meant or they would have to demonstrate an understanding of the word in their independent practice. For example, Molly is working with a student on a Math lesson. Molly introduces the words horizontal, vertical, and reflection. Molly explains each of the terms in relation to the chart the student has brought to complete in the session. After Molly explains each term while referencing the chart, she has the student demonstrate their understanding of each of the terms in relation to the chart and questions that are being asked. The student has to demonstrate they have an understanding of horizontal and vertical multiple times because they have to plot points for multiple questions (Observation Notes, 11-21-2014). Table 3 includes the 46 words that required a responsive context. There were 63 occasions when a vocabulary word was introduced and the tutor did not ask the student to respond in any way. For example, Pete was explaining literary concepts to a student in a session before they partook in a read aloud. In his explanation he defined summarize, narrative, character, conflict, settings. Pete did not ask the student if they understood what each of the elements were before, during, or after his explanation and the student did not offer comment or questions about the terms. After Pete was done defining the terms, they commenced with reading the chapter of a Goosebumps series book (Observation Notes, 11-17-2014). The words that were introduced without student response and with student response are included in Table 3. The third technique that was coded regarded if the tutor helped the students pronounce or recognize the vocabulary words. The pronunciation of certain vocabulary words happened intentionally six times and was a result of the student asking the tutor directly to help them pronounce or spell a word. For instance, Hannah was working with a student on a Math focused 177 session and the student asked Hannah to pronounce the word, prism. Hannah defined the word for the student and then she showed them a picture that defined the word. The student did not practice pronouncing the word on their own (Observation Notes, 12-1-2014). Tutors did pronounce every word they introduced to the students by way of saying the word out loud but it was not asked for specifically by the students and the tutors did not tell orally declare that they were going to first pronounce the word and then define it. The tutors never asked the students to pronounce the words that they introduced. The words that were pronounced are included in Table 2. There was not a lot of evidence that tutors helped students to recognize certain words. At points, the tutors would tell the students that at a word was important and that they should remember it. For instance, Pete introduced the word units to a student in a Math session and then would make reference and bring up the word continuously in every session he had with the student whenever the student would finish a problem because they would need to label the problem in units. Pete was attempting to help the student put the vocabulary word into his lexicon in order to remember a fundamental Math process (Observation Notes, 11-3-2014). The tutors never cold called on the student about recognizing a word. For example, they would never day to a student, “What is that word?” If a word they had defined for a student came up in context. Some of the student’s recognition of words would be tested because they would have to show they understood a word in order to answer a question or complete a problem in their independent practice. The fourth technique that was coded was if the tutor personalized word knowledge for students. This was when the student asked the tutor about a word that they wanted defined and the tutor defined the word. There were 11 times when the tutors personalized a word for students 178 because the student asked for the definition. For instance, Molly explained the word study to a student after they asked about it. Molly told them that study meant what the student would do before taking a test. She gestured opening up a book and pretending she was studying it. The student showed Molly that she understood what the word meant by saying, “Ahhh, yeah, I got it. I have to study for a test I have 7th period” (Observation Notes, 11-7-2014). Hannah personalized the word cord for one of her students after he asked to have the word defined by using the classroom environment. They were reading a passage to help the student prepare for the Keystone exam and the student asked Hannah what the word cord meant. She stopped the reading and defined the term by taking the student over to a cord that was plugged into the wall and pointed to the cord, labeling it for the student. The student’s eyes got big and he told Hannah, “Ahhh, okay, cord” (Observation Notes, 11-3-2014). The tutors in the examples above did not have to check for understanding with the students about the words they helped personalize for the students. Maybe it was because the students asked about the words, but they would also verbally let the tutor know if they understood the word without prompting. The words that were personalized are included in Table 2. In addition to the above mentioned techniques, the tutors used drawings repeatedly when defining concepts. In the literature review, it was discussed that students need words to be presented in a variety of contexts (Beck & McKeown, 1983, 2002) and it was found that the tutors would often present written or spoken words in the context of a visual. The tutors would use visuals or create their own drawings of words 64 times out of the 209 words that they helped students acquire throughout the study. For example, Pete was teaching his student the word coarse in relation to how one of the character’s in a reading passage was being described. In order to help the student understand the word, Pete drew a picture of a man with a coarse beard. 179 The student immediately showed recognition of the word in relation to the drawing and humorously felt his own non-existent whiskers (Observation Notes, 12-1-2014). In another example, Hannah was helping one of her students with a geography lesson and the student needed to understand Russia in definition and location. Hannah defined it as being a country and then used the visual map in the room to show the student exactly where Russia was at. The student then had to demonstrate that knowledge later on in how they answered questions related to the lesson (Observation Notes, 12-8-2014). Molly used pictures that were present as part of a workbook lesson about different jobs that people have to help a student understand the terms assistant principal and librarian. Later on in the session, the student had to match the terms with the pictures in order to demonstrate understanding (Observation Notes, 11-3-2014). The words that were introduced using visuals are included in Table 2. In their post interviews, two tutors were aware of how they used drawings as a technique. Molly said, “Sometimes drawings would help them (ex. Brick- I drew a house and then bricks on the side to show what brick meant)” (Post-Interview, 1-3-2015). Hannah said: A lot of times in order to motivate the students, I would say, let’s look at the picture. This is good for ELLs but even if the student was not an ELL, I would still probably use the picture. This was a really good technique, especially if the language is too complicated. Pictures help them get math too. Pictures can be a type of vocabulary (Post-Interview, 12- 27-2014). Pete did not directly talk about using pictures but demonstrated the technique in several sessions. He did mention that he would always try to break things down and show examples to his 180 students. In several sessions the way Pete would show an example or break things down was by showing a visual example of a term on his notebook. This Chapter discussed the findings of the research in relation to the first research question and the second research question. Below are Tables 2 and 3 that provide further information about the words that were introduced by tutors and how they were introduced. In the next Chapter, Implications of the Findings and Recommendations for future research will be discussed. Table 2: How words were introduced Words introduced through conversation Words that were personalized Words that were shown using visuals/drawings Words that were defined using a dictionary or on- line tool Words that were pronounced 1. hunting 2. deviation 3. plug it in 4. vague 5. PhD 6. coefficient 7. exponent 8. conceptually 9. spread 10. Abraham Lincoln 11. summarize 12. narrative 13. character 14. conflict 15. settings 16. whole 1. study 2. cord 3. PhD 4. death penalty 5. thinking 6. flipping 7. engine 8.rival 9. shy 10. statistician 11. dawn 1. vacuum 2. cord 3. librarian 4. assistant principal 5. gun 6. study 7. square roots 8. sushi roll 9. shape 10. starting point 11. boundary 12. sign 13.cosign 14.brackets 15. range 16. graph 17. negative angle 18. reflection 19. flipping 20. giggle 21. brink 22. FOIL method 23. ruins 24. sediment 1. sizemigram 2. RBI 3. ream 4. hoodlums 1. predominately 2. adjacent 3. prism 4. dawn 5. course 6. Renee 181 25. wrist 26. tore 27. motor 28. engine 29. descending 30. ascending 31. like terms 32. trinomial 33. coefficient 34. whole 35. parts 36. ratio 37. amplitude 38. horizontal 39. reflection 40. vertical 41. corresponding angles 42. adjacent 43. sign 44. cosign 45. amplitude 47. vertical shift 48. eraser 49. stanza 50. exterior 51. cubic yards 52. cube 53. course 54. narrative 55. hanging box 56. middle school 57. hunting 58. trapezoid 59. square angles 60. square angles 61. Russia 62. turbulence 63. fractions Table 2, continued 182 Table 3: Words in Responsive Context vs. Not Responsive Context Words that tutors asked students to respond or engage with either orally or in independent practice Words that tutors introduced but did not ask for a student response or check for understanding 1. horizontal 2. vertical 3. reflection 4. absolute value 5. device 6. vacuum 7. cord 8. expression 9. trade routes 10. discrimination 11. banned 12. engineer 13. range 14. graph 15. constant 16. ratio 17. ruins 18. tone 19. percent 20. amplitude 21. rival 22. confiscate 23. sign 24. cosign 25. aptitude 26. surface area 27. Russia 28. vegetation 29. LCD 30. resolve 31. overstated 32. multiply 33. distribute 34. study 35. shape 36. boundary 37. starting point 38. brackets 39. negative angle 40. like terms 1. Numerical Expression 2. Contraction 3. Product 4. PhD 5. Least common multiple 6. Meaning 7. Divisible 8. And 9. Units 10. Sum 11. Product 12. Quotient 13. Add 14. Number form 15. Units 16. Gathering 17. Tinkering 18. Librarian 19. Assistant principal 20. Gun 21. Gesture 22. Death penalty 23. Variable 24. Product 25. Hundredth 26. And 27. Spices 28. Conceptually 29. Exponent 30. Square roots 31. Rigorous 32. Since 33. Then 34. On 35. An 36. Plug it in 37. Character 38. Diversity 39. Summarize 40. Narrative 183 41. extraordinary 42. RBI 43. highest exponent 44. positive 45. FOIL 46. whole 41. Character 42. Conflict 43. Setting 44. Sushi Roll 45. Stymied 46. Obtuse 47. Engineer 48. Specialize 49. Patent 50. Progress 51. Sophisticated 52. Reflection 53. Flipping 54. Giggle 55. Brink 56. Directly 57. Civil 58. Beijing 59. Coefficient 60. Area 61. Synonym 62. negative 63. sediment 64. quotation marks 65. theme 66. thesis 67. main headings 68. events 69. text organization 70. wrist 71. tore 72. motor 73. engine 74. mood 75. counselor 76. descending 77. ascending 78. like terms 79. trinomial 80. co-efficient 81. stanza 82. poem 83. fit in 84. parts 85. transitive property 86. therefore Table 3, continued 184 87. ratio 88. whole 89. horizontal 90. reflection 91. vertical 92. radiant 93. predominately 94. constant 95. military 96. corresponding angle 97. adjacent 98. summarize 99. narrative 100. conflict 101. settings 102. vague 103. interesting 104. Vertical shift 105. Shy 106. Eraser 107. Stanza 108. Won 109. Winning 110. This 111. That 112. Statistician 113. Renee 114. Rheam 115. Interior 116. Exterior 117. Prism 118. Cubic yards 119. Cube 120. Listing factors 121. Dawn 122. Course 123. Narrative 124. Sucking the poison out of a baby 125. Hanging box 126. Pause 127. After 128. Upon 129. Withdrew 130. Because 131. Differs 132. After Table 3, continued 185 133. Comma 134. Again 135. Hoodlums 136. Dexterous 137. Criticize 138. Perception 139. Trust 140. Middle/elementary school 141. Hunting 142. Deviation 143. Spread 144. Greenhouse effect 145. Strategy 146. Abraham Lincoln 147. Rectangle 148. Trapezoid 149. Square angles 150.Vapor 151. Regala 152. Thousandth 153. Present progressive 154. May 155. Able to 156. Success 157. Idioms 158. Turbulence 159. earthquake 160. Difference 161. Absolute value 162. More 163. Sizemigram Table 3, continued 186 CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND CONCLUSIONS This qualitative case study has explored how volunteer tutors interact in one-on-one sessions with adolescent ELLs. It has also determined the extant and strategies volunteer tutors used in sessions to support vocabulary acquisition. By examining the tutoring interactions and vocabulary acquisition in sessions, this study’s findings have implications for practice and theory. In this Chapter, first I summarize the answers to the research questions. Findings are then related to the literature revealing how this study builds on and informs both. Moreover, I make recommendations for volunteer tutoring programs and one-on-one work with adolescent ELLs. Finally, I propose directions for future research before drawing conclusions from this study’s findings. Question 1: How do volunteer tutors interact in one-on-one tutoring sessions with at-risk adolescent ELLs? The answer to this question is that tutors were able to interact in each session as independent agents. Being and independent agent meant that the tutors were able to decide their own methods, strategies, and agenda of sessions. The ESL teacher who observed the tutors in sessions commented, “The tutors were not afraid to jump right in”(Interview, 1-7-2015). They were not monitored or told to follow a specific agenda and this allowed for their interactions to rely on their own motivation, background knowledge, and temperament. Each tutor was able to interact with their students in a one-on-one session and throughout the course of the study it was found that the tutors demonstrated 6 consistent ways of interacting. So, although the tutors were not trained to conduct their sessions in the same ways or interact with students according to 187 certain guidelines, they all tended to follow the same patterns of interacting. This could have been a result of the tutors having a strong basic academic background and that they had been exposed to three years of theory and practice in an urban college education program which provided them with skills that they translated in their sessions. It may have also been a result of the tutors working with the same population of students in the same environments. All of the tutors worked with their students in a one-on-one session which gave them the chance to help their students learn through social interaction. Because the student’s in the session were adolescents, the tutors might have interacted in ways that gave the students more responsibility for deciding the content of the session and outcome. The tutors had autonomy in their sessions so they might have gave their students more autonomy. For the tutors, the focus of their interactions was not about helping the students get a better grade; it was about helping their students understand fundamental academics and ways of learning. In this way, the tutoring interaction was less about getting a grade and more about learning skills. The tutors interacted as helpers versus dictators. The nature of the interactions mirrored Vygotsky’s (1978) social learning theory which is that learning results from social interactions and the environments that humans are exposed to. Within each tutoring interaction, there was also evidence that the tutors did in fact move their students through a ZPD progression towards learning. The ZPD, as discussed in Chapter 2, is a Vygotskian (1978) principle which suggests that the adult helps a student progress through their ZPD by introducing new information and allowing the student to interact with new information in a variety of meaningful contexts. Eventually, the student learns the new information and is able to interact with the world. 188 The six themes that defined the nature of the social interactions which happened between tutors and students were either direct or indirect. This means that sometimes the tutors were aware of their interactions and at other times, they acted according to one of the themes without reflecting on it later in an interview or their tutoring reflection log. The tutors were models, encouragers, partners, strategists, facilitators, and translators. All of the themes were presented as findings in Chapter 5 and below each of the themes will be discussed. Tutors as Models. Each of the tutors would model for students and they were all aware of modeling. Maybe their awareness of modeling came from the fact that all of the tutors were enrolled in their third year of a pre-service educational program that discussed modeling as a pedagogical tool of good teaching. The modeling interaction seemed to also be a natural part of the ZPD interaction the tutors and student were able to have in one-on-one sessions. To progress along the ZPD a more capable adult offers a goal, the child receives orientation, reaches the goal, is offered another one, and then tackles that independently or with the help of the adult (Blanc, 1990). In this case, the orientation that the tutors gave to their students consistently involved modeling. The fact that they all modeled how to answer multiple choice questions is interesting considering the high stakes testing culture that teachers and students face in public schools. Many of the materials that the students would bring to a session would be in a test taking format. Math problems and reading passages had multiple choice questions with them and the students would be asked to write written responses in a brief constructed response format. One mainstream teacher at the school who sent students regularly to tutoring from his sophomore seminar class talked about the material. He said “The Sophomore Seminar class is designed to assess student’s needs in regard to their Keystone performance. We use Acuity on line 189 assessment to build individualized work to help students with the types of questions with which they struggle most”(Interview, 1-7-2015). The tutors were modeling in their sessions how to choose the best answers when given different choices; they were modeling how to take test well. The tutors were not told to help their students learn how to take test well. The tutors were told to help students with the material they brought to a session. Additionally, the ability of tutors modeling how to answer multiple choice questions did not come from training they received to become a tutor. This understanding of how to model test taking strategies came from their own experience taking test in their own educational journey. The tutoring coordinator commented: The seminar class that we pulled high school ELLs from for tutoring was geared toward helping our students with the state assessments and that class happens all year. We know that the test is an artificial barrier to entry into different academic worlds and opportunities but we also know we need to give our students these skills. We can’t ignore that they need to know how to take a test. The mainstream teacher that we worked with to get students is the head of the English department. The seminar teachers get overwhelmed and tutors gave a chance for individualized instruction (Interview, 1-7- 2015). The fact that the sessions reflected modeling in regards to helping ELL learners learn how to take test can be connected to literature that found ELLs currently score 20 to 50% points below L1 learners on standardized tests (Abedi & Dietal, 2004; Government Accountability Office, 2006). In the current culture of standardized testing, the school site was trying to prepare their ELL learners to perform better on the test and this translated into the everyday course material they were interacting with in their content classes. 190 Tutors as Encouragers. The tutors encouraged their students during difficult sessions and as a result, the student progressed academically. Two of the tutors, Hannah and Pete, recognized that part of their role was to be an encourager. Molly did not explicitly say that she encouraged her students during difficult sessions but demonstrated it in her interactions. Pete chose to encourage students when they took a risk and tried something on their own. He encouraged in the part of learning when the student is attempting to take a concept and internalize it for themselves. Pete recognized that when a student decides to try something on their own, they need an encourager. Hannah and Molly waited until the student demonstrated signs of frustration before they would become a cheerleader. In a one-on-one interaction, the tutor was able to cheer on and encourage their student more specifically. The tutors would personalize the encouragement for their students and this made a positive difference in how the students progressed in their academics and academic attitude. The ESL coordinator at the school felt that giving encouragement to the ELL students was one of the most important ways the tutors could interact. She said, “I think that the tutors need to understand that the students might not have an appetite for what they are taught. The tutor might have to help the child buy into education every day” (Interview, 1-7-2015). When a tutor became an encourager for their students, it also shifted the relationship the tutors had with their students to a new level of caring. The encouragement that was shown in session’s mirrors the socio-educational model of supporting ELL’s that was discussed in the literature by Gardner (1985, 2000). As encouragers, the tutors were practicing the socio- educational model by creating an environment designed to motivate their ELL students and promoting a positive learning environment. 191 Tutors as Partners. The fact that each of the tutors built partnerships within their sessions is an important finding. Hannah, at times, did not have enough background knowledge or recall to teach a skill and she knew this. Instead of leading a student in the wrong direction, she partnered with a fellow tutor to make sure she was able to give her student the right information. Hannah commented, “Working together provided a meaningful learning experience for the student in the sense that if I did not know something they would teach me and vice versa. I also had Pete to help me explain something if I had trouble which was a great resource” (Post-Interview, 12-27, 2015). Molly would partner with teachers or other students to make sure she was able to get her students the right information. Pete chose to partner directly with his students in order to give them more autonomy. Partnering became a way of communicating to the students that the academic experience does not have to be a self-propelled journey. By partnering, the tutors were providing a message to their students that learning comes from social interaction. Another study that was discussed in the literature demonstrated how collaboration leads to forms of ZPD progression (McNamee, 1990). The tutors demonstrated how they themselves could learn new concepts and ways of teaching as a result of asking a more capable person within a session. Sometimes this person was a fellow tutor, teacher, another student, or the student that was in the session. The partnership that tutors formed in their sessions also speaks to how they aimed to share authority and responsibility for learning in their sessions. The ESL teacher that observed the students in sessions noticed this partnership interaction. She said, “The tutors that work with the ELLs are friendly and respectful and they gently guide the students through the content. They were really receptive to the students and therefore earned the students respect”(Interview, 1-7- 192 2015). Partnering versus dictating helped the adolescent ELLs feel more comfortable and therefore they opened up more to the tutor and the content. Tutors as Strategists. The finding that tutors interacted as strategists in the sessions is tied to the learning experiences they each brought to the sessions because none of the tutors received training or strategies from the tutoring site itself. Thus, all of the strategies the tutors gave students resulted from their own academic expertise and learning experiences. The tutors strategized based on what they knew. Hannah was and ELL learner as a child, so she used strategies from this experience. Molly’s strategies came from years of practice being a learner. Molly knew how to break down a math problem and a reading passage because she had been doing it for years in educational settings that taught her to be learner. She gave her student’s these strategies without even realizing it because being a learner was second nature. Pete gave strategies for organizing work for his students and this came from his own background in school having to write papers and set up math problems. Pete reflected, “I have also had experiences where I tutored Korean immigrants and siblings where I have had to complete similar tasks using effective strategies” (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). A big reason the tutors were able to provide strategies to their students may have been a result of their own educational background. An ESL teacher that observed some of the tutoring sessions said, “I was really impressed with the tutors. They brought a lot of strong academic knowledge into the building and into their sessions” (Interview, 1-7-2015). The tutors had received a suburban education at different high performing public schools in Pennsylvania. Two of the tutors had experience with either being identified as an ELL or tested for the ELL program. Each of the tutors was in their third year of an urban education program that was 193 preparing them as pre-service teachers. All three of the tutors also had experience helping other learners prior to becoming a tutor at the school site. Their previous work with learners influenced the strategies they were able to give students in their sessions and they were able to give these strategies because the tutoring coordinator trusted them to use their own devices in order to reach the students. I think the tutoring coordinator assumed that a variety of strategies were being given to the students. She said in an interview, “The tutor needs to be an educator and understand that not every child is created equal. They have to try different things with different children”(Interview, 1-7-2015). Even though she did not tell the tutors to use different strategies, she believed that they should be using strategies in sessions and they were. Tutors as Facilitators. The tutors demonstrated the capability to facilitate a session. Molly did not allow the outside environment to interfere with her sessions. Pete and Hannah were not afraid to take charge in a session and move it in a direction away from the original material if they noticed that the student needed a fundamental skill. The tutors were facilitators and advocates. Each tutor wanted their student to get stronger academically and became an advocate for their students through the facilitation choices they made. An ESL teacher who observed the tutors in some of their sessions said, “The tutors were able to recognize challenges and problems and then adapt.” The ability of the tutors to facilitate within the session could also be a result of their background experiences. Molly and Pete had previous experiences facilitating tutoring sessions for different ages as well as being part of work environments that required facilitation. All three 194 of the tutors were required as part of their coursework in education to plan and facilitate learning activities in different field experiences and practicums. Tutors as Translators. Two of the tutors had limited Spanish background and would use simple Spanish phrases in their sessions to help communicate an academic term to their students or to direct them to complete a task. In every session where Molly and Hannah chose to use Spanish terms, students demonstrated more attention and understanding. Molly and Hannah were demonstrating traits of bi-lingual education when they used Spanish in their session to help translate concepts which was found in the literature to be an effective practice for ELLs (O’Garcia & Barlett, 2007). The ESL teacher noticed this about the tutor’s interactions and commented, “It is great to know the language for quick issues. Even if you can explain the directions in Spanish it just helps so much”(Interview, 1-7-2015). Additionally, all of the tutors functioned as oral translators for their students. They would simplify directions, questions, and reading passages for their students. By being willing and able to break down concepts and simplify, the tutors could help their students understand how to work with a concept. They were able to make the learning experience more like an understandable conversation. The student could talk to the tutor and ask a question, something they could not do in a written context or in a larger class. A mainstream teacher at the school said: ELL students need support in their spoken English so that they feel comfortable speaking up and advocating for themselves. They also need to be provided with one-on-one time 195 with adults in their school day to facilitate a level of comfort needed for them to be able to reach out with a question when they struggle in class (Interview, 1-7-2015). When tutors provided translation in their sessions, they provided a chance for the ELLs to connect to the material and with the tutor more. The ESL coordinator said, “Nothing beats a one- on-one tutoring session. In a one-on-one students’ have a chance to bear their souls more. They will be able to tell the tutor that they really don’t get something or confide that they don’t understand what the teacher is saying and they are not going to do this in a bigger group” (Interview, 1-7-2015). The ability for tutors to act as translators in their sessions provided their students with a message of caring. They were telling their students through the acts of translation that they understood that reading, writing, and speaking in a second language was challenging. Translating in a session built a bridge for their students between either their 1st and 2nd language or it built bridges between written and spoken English. Question 2: How do volunteer tutors support at-risk ELL students’ vocabulary acquisition in one-on-one sessions? Vocabulary acquisition was not a top priority for the tutors in their sessions. Vocabulary was supported in a session if it was needed to understand another academic concept. It was never the focus of a session and the tutors never spent a long time working on helping their students understand words. The tutors supported student’s vocabulary acquisition indirectly in their tutoring sessions. This means that the tutors did not directly look for specific ways or time to teach vocabulary words to their students. They would define certain words in the context of material the student had brought to the session to work with. They were in fact using a “context only” approach to help student’s acquire vocabulary (Jenkins, Matlock, & Slocum, 1989). 196 The indirect form of vocabulary learning could have been tied to a number of factors. The tutors could have felt that they did not have the time to plan for a specific vocabulary learning segment in their tutoring sessions. They might have also not been aware of a general word list that would have been appropriate to introduce to their students during sessions. The tutors did not meet consistently with the same students in every session so they might not have felt that it would have worked trying to have a structured vocabulary learning time built into the sessions because they did not know what their session was going to consist of until their student arrived. The tutors could have also believed strongly that teaching vocabulary in context was the best way to learn new words. The tutors would introduce different types of words to students; mainly the words they introduced were tier two, general academic words that came directly from the written material that the students brought to the sessions to work with. tier two, general academic words were words that require instruction; they are not typically in a student’s every day vocabulary (Beck & McKeown, 2002). The tutors would also introduce words to students in the oral conversations they would have with them about the academic content or life outside of school. The students would tend to ask the tutors for the definitions of words that the tutors would use in conversations during the sessions. The tutors would choose to define words for students that they thought the student either needed for comprehension or it was a word that the student would need to know for the long term in their academic career. Many of the words that the tutor would define within the context of written material would eventually help the students comprehend the text which supports a positive relationship between reading and vocabulary cited in several important studies (Davis, 1942; Just & Carpenter; 1987, Whipple, 1925). The types of words that the tutors would define 197 for students were coded as signal words in the study. Signal words, discussed in chapter 5, were words that helped to unlock an academic concept. For example, one signal word that the tutors defined for students was the word and in relation to what it meant within a math word problem. Signal words were also the only words that the tutors would repeatedly define within or across sessions. Two instructional techniques, visuals and responsive context, were used frequently by tutors to help define words in sessions. The tutors would have the student respond in different ways that they understood the definition of a word. Mostly, the responsive context would be an oral recognition from the student that they understood the word or the student would have to demonstrate an understanding when they would have to work out a problem themselves or answer a question independently. This instructional technique demonstrates an aspect of the social learning theory; students were active agents in the learning process (Blanc, 1990). It was discussed in the literature that ELLs benefit from being given visual aids that support vocabulary learning in August et al., 2005 and the tutors demonstrated this in many of their sessions when a vocabulary word was discussed in context. This finding also contrasts the findings in the study by Anderson and Roit (1996) where it was found that vocabulary words were being taught without graphics and pictures. Less consistent techniques that the tutors demonstrated were teaching specific meanings of words, personalizing word knowledge, and having students pronounce or recognize words. The students felt comfortable enough in sessions to ask the tutors for certain definitions of words and they would also ask the tutors to pronounce a few words. The tutors rarely initiated a student personalizing word knowledge. For instance, a tutor rarely asked a student, “What words in this passage do you want defined? Or, Are there any vocabulary words you want to work on 198 knowing?” Tutors would also not concentrate on recognizing or pronouncing vocabulary words for students unless a student asked them to pronounce a word. The research says that at-risk students do not know as many words as non-at-risk students and have not been taught meta-cognitive skills for word learning (Stroller & Grabe, 1995). This was apparent in my study. The students never demonstrated in an observable way their ability to figure out things like context clues, they did demonstrate the ability to point out the word they did not know and ask the tutor for support to pronounce that particular word. The tutors rarely had students complete any word learning tasks such as reading the words aloud or associating the words (synonyms) which according to Graves (1984, 1985, 1986) is required to help a student develop vocabulary. On the rare occasions when tutors would have students engage in a word learning tasks it was to look up the meaning of a word through and on-line or in class dictionary. Vygotsky (1978) believes a student will know a word if they learn it in a social context with more capable adults and then internalize it through the ZPD. The tutors did introduce words to their students in a social context but they did not have the students internalize the words. The students were not asked to use the words themselves or apply the words to different context unless the word was part of the larger concept that was being covered in the session. Connections to the literature Tutoring Connections In Shanahan (1998), higher effect sizes were found in studies where tutors were paid professionals or teachers. Although the three tutors in the study were not certified teachers or paid professionals it made a difference that all three were attending an urban university enrolled in a College of Education. This afforded them the experience of already having several classes 199 about how to teach as well as having in school experiences with a variety of students. The tutors were able to guide their students through several academic concepts and help the students attain understanding because the tutors had a strong academic background and also had a growing background of teaching techniques, experience, and theory. The literature said that tutoring sessions benefit from structure, trained tutors, adequate supplies, and support from the school (Morrow & Walker, 1998). What the tutoring program had was consistency vs. a strict structure. The tutors were not trained by the school but they were expected to show up on certain days and on certain times every week. The school trusted their skills based on the fact that they were being trained in a pre-service teaching program by the local university. The tutors were also trusted to their own devices by the school based on the fact that they had all of their teaching clearances needed. There were no supplies given to the three tutors. They were told to come to tutoring prepared by wearing professional dress and having a notebook and pencil with them. They were instructed to help the students with what the students brought to the session. They had the trust and support of the teachers and administration based on the fact that the ESL Program coordinator brought the tutors into the building and organized their interactions with the staff, teachers, and students. The tutors were able to gain access to their tutoring spaces easily because they had been given picture identification cards. Tutors were also provided with maps of the school campus and directions on where to report to, park, and end their day at a quick pre tutoring orientation. In the literature review, it said that tutors benefit from consistent feedback (Wasik, 1998). The tutors received feedback from the students that they tutored about whether or not the session they had helped the student. The tutors were also told by the ESL teacher that they worked in the room for some sessions that they were really helping and supporting the students. No specific 200 feedback was given to the tutors by anyone in the building and as a non-participant observer, my role was not to provide feedback because I wanted to observe the interactions as they happened without constructing outcomes in any way. If I would have provided feedback to the tutors after their sessions, it might have made them change their instructional choices which would have changed the data. If anything, two tutors, Hannah and Pete, relied on each other within sessions to see if they were approaching a concept in the right way. Molly would ask the ESL teacher for feedback or if she was approaching the content correctly before teaching it because Molly conducted her tutoring sessions in the ESL teacher’s room. The tutors would also debrief with each other between sessions in order to navigate how to approach certain situations. In several cases, the tutors used their own background knowledge, their ability to wrestle with the text, and then gauged if their students were getting concepts by eliciting feedback from them. The literature also said that tutoring programs benefited from screened tutors, low tutor to coordinator ratio, and explicit training (Worthy et al., 2003). The tutors in the Worthy et al., (2003) study were screened according to their educational background and areas of academic strength. Tutors were screened in this study by having to present their clearances, were part of a pre service teacher education program, and knew that there was no pay involved in the tutoring project. The ESL Program director coordinated the tutoring project, setting up schedules for tutors, and letting them know where and who they were working with. There were five tutors working with the coordinator and I observed three of the tutors so there was a low tutor to coordinator ratio. The reason the tutoring project was happening in the building was because the coordinator wanted to give ELL student’s additional support, especially in the weeks leading up to the Keystone Exam. The tutors were not explicitly trained but the coordinator trusted that they 201 could provide adequate instructional support based on their current enrollment in a pre- service teacher education program. Tutors in the study did not seem to think that they needed formal training and felt their own background knowledge and experiences with former tutoring and educational training at their university prepared them to be tutors in the charter school. Pete commented: I felt prepared for the tutoring sessions by writing detailed lesson plans and essays about how standards applied to lessons. This, along with courses constantly drilling the standards has made me almost always think of the standards whenever I teach. I can usually identify which standards I should focus on when working with a student to individualize the lesson to the student’s area of need (Post-Interview, 12-28-2014). Hannah reflected that: Overall, preparedness is really about the mindset you go into tutoring with. Going into it and just making it a goal to try and help out the student as much as possible will take over any nervousness you might have. Asking for help is never a bad thing. (Post- Interview 12-27-2014). They did discuss how they would have liked to have more communication with the teachers and staff in the tutoring sessions that were not a pull in environment with the teacher in the room. They thought more communication on exactly how the student was taught the concepts and a further explanation of what the student was supposed to accomplish would have helped them be able to support the students even more. The literature said that tutoring in low socio economic status (SES) schools should include in depth training for tutors on how to teach children from diverse backgrounds and cultures (Cobb, 2000). There was no in-depth training given at the school. The tutors were given 202 a brief background on the makeup of the school from the coordinator. Each of the three tutors had been exposed and taken classes on how to teach students from diverse backgrounds based on the coursework and fieldwork requirements of their pre service program. Because of this, the tutors came into the tutoring project with an awareness of students in low SES backgrounds that come from diverse backgrounds. The three tutors in the study also used the lens of their own backgrounds in education and with language learning in order to approach their sessions. Tutors did feel like the diverse backgrounds of their learners affected the student’s motivation and success in sessions. The literature review pointed out how the length of a tutoring intervention matters. Goldenburg (1994) said that tutoring programs that lasted as least a year were successful and Cohen, Kulik and Kulik (1983) found that shorter programs lasting from 4-18 weeks were the most successful. This study was 7 weeks in length and the short term allowed for tutors/tutees to build relationships, tutees tended to come to tutoring more during the short term because they wanted to take advantage and knew the tutors were not going to be there forever. The students also knew what days and times the tutors would be in and some of the students would plan for a session and plan their work around knowing this. Tutoring happened with the three tutors on Mondays and Fridays. Two of the tutors, Hannah and Pete, were in the Cyber school location helping students from 8:10 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. The two tutors would then move over to the high school campus were they would work with students in a one on one setting for a 50 minute class period. The students in the one on one setting in the high school environment would receive work from their mainstream teacher. The third tutor, Molly, would come in on Monday and Friday afternoons and she would run two pull in sessions during 50 minute class periods with the ESL teacher present. The first session would be devoted to helping students in a resource room 203 setting with work from their mainstream classes. The second session would involve helping a student with their ESL content work agenda set by the ESL teacher in the room. Towards the end of the tutoring project a few factors inhibited attendance to the Cyber school tutoring. Less students started showing up for tutoring based on other things going on at the school such as field trips, holidays, teacher meetings that caused low attendance. The tutors had to recruit students to come to their sessions towards the end. Maybe a longer term, more structured tutoring program would yield higher academic results but maybe it would also become a source of negativity for the students who “had to” attend. A shorter term intervention that had an open door policy for students to get help with a variety of subjects that they were already working on might help students benefit with certain academic concepts. A shorter intervention was also conducive to the volunteer tutor’s schedule. They were able to help for the seven week time frame at the end of their semester from school and were able to complete the project prior to the holidays. If the intervention would have been longer, more intense or required more intense workloads etc., tutors might not have wanted to complete the project nor had time to commit. In the literature, it was found that tutoring was not as beneficial to low achieving readers and students with low SES by Velltino et al., (1996). There was a connection here between this finding and the current study. In the Cyber School setting, the students had a higher level of reading ability and a higher English level so they were able to connect to more of the concepts and information tutors were presenting. In the high school sessions with lower level ELLs, tutors tended to struggle more and so did students within the sessions. Tutors struggled with how to simplify concepts and had to really be able to break down skills, readings, and back things up because the students at the high school struggled more with English. They had to allow the 204 tutoring session to go at a much slower pace. At the Cyber School this same thing happened, not with low achieving readers, but if Math basic skills had not been mastered. Everyone at the Charter School campus is receiving free and reduced lunch so they are in a lower SES bracket. If lower SES is associated with not having mastered as many basic skills, maybe it makes a case for tutoring not being as beneficial because the students are so far behind in the basics that it makes it really hard for a tutor to catch the student up. I would also say that if lower SES is associated with lower motivation to learn within a tutoring session, it might account for the tutoring sessions being less effective. Theoretical Framework Social interaction mattered in order for the student to gain access to the material they brought to the session. The tutors demonstrated through the nature of interactions several components of Hedgegaard’s (1990) principles of ZPD double move instruction. The principles that the tutors demonstrated included giving their students multiple examples, providing connections, and the tutor had the student practice concepts on their own. Student demonstrated that they reached goals in sessions with tutors based on their independent practice within the session. Understanding was achieved in the moment of the tutoring session, but it was hard to judge if the student reached a point of self-regulation discussed in the literature by Blanc (1990). Observations were only done for seven weeks and the tutoring interactions were observed in moment but the learning gains were not observed longitudinally. In the moment, learning gains were observed but more research would need to be done to see if the student retained information for the long term. The tutoring sessions can be thought about in terms of when a person needs there car jumped. In the moment a person is getting their car jumped, someone explains to them 205 where to put the cables and they put them in the right spots in the moment they are being guided but might not be able to do that again if they needed there car jumped the next day did not have someone there to refresh their memory or reteach. ZPD progression is reached with repeated exposure to the material and if the student was afforded opportunities to practice the content in a variety of context. If the study was longitudinal and if tutors worked with the same students consistently, more conclusions could be drawn about whether or not students were able to reach a point of self-regulation with certain academic concepts as a result of tutoring. In terms of the instruction using the ZPD, it was found that a child moves along their ZPD if the adult is capable (Tudge, 1990). The tutors had a strong academic background in the concepts that the tutee needed support which moved the tutee along the ZPD. It is important to note that even if a tutor had a strong academic background they still had to be able to refresh their memory on what certain skills were and also had to be able to figure out how to best teach those skills to the student in a designated tutoring session. So I would say the idea of being capable meant the tutor was capable in their academic skills and their ability to disseminate and break down information in an understandable way. Tutors that did not feel capable in the content had a harder time helping the tutee but if the tutor practiced partnership, it provided the tutor with a chance to navigate another resource (more knowledgeable person, website, or tool) so that they could learn the concept quickly and become more capable and then move the student along. In rare sessions, a tutor attempted to find information in order to make them capable educators of the materials and they were still unsure. In these cases, the tutor would tell the student that they were not sure of exactly how to do something but they would teach them what they thought it looked like. The tutor would also say they would need to check with the teacher or the tutor would see if another tutor would be able to support learning. In these sessions, the tutor could not 206 help the student progress along their ZPD as effectively which supports Tudge’s (1990) claim that the adult in an interaction needs to be capable. Cohen’s findings in his 1982 landmark tutoring meta-analysis mirror my own study in terms of the social learning theory. My study also demonstrated that because of social interaction, tutoring sessions were more successful if the tutors paid attention to giving students information that was novel but not so challenging that the student would shut down. This was based on the tutor’s ability to translate information in their sessions and also how they would make facilitation choices in their sessions that helped move their student’s forward. The tutors in my study demonstrated this through the nature of their interactions with students. The tutoring results showed more significant results in the Cohen (1982) study if the session involved human vs. computerized instruction that was given in an individual way. My study offers an important comparison to Cohen’s finding in the work that two of the tutors did. Hannah and Pete had several sessions each week with ELL students enrolled in the Cyber school program on the campus and were able to offer human instruction with the material vs. the computerized program. This made a big difference in how much the students progressed on the concepts being taught to them from the computerized learning modules. The tutors were able to take the concepts off the screen and add a conversation to the learning. Recommendations for Practice This study investigated how volunteer tutors were interacting with adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions and how they were supporting vocabulary acquisition. With a clearer understanding of how tutors are interacting with adolescent ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions and how they are supporting vocabulary acquisition, researchers and tutoring coordinators can design and implement more effective volunteer tutoring programs. The study 207 also provides policy makers and educators with a greater understanding of the impact that volunteer tutors are having on an at-risk population. To that end, this section outlines key recommendations that may inform researchers, tutoring coordinators, and policy makers decision making process about how to, implement, design, and monitor volunteer tutoring programs that are working with adolescent ELL students. Implementation The study looked at three volunteer tutors that were part of an unstructured tutoring program. The tutors did not receive any prior training and were considered qualified because they were in a teacher preparation program at an urban university. The tutors demonstrated in interactions with their students that they brought academic background knowledge to their tutoring as well as an understanding that being encouraging was important. The tutors also demonstrated facilitation skills and the ability to form a partnership. All of these interactions took place without support, feedback, or training. These findings support the recommendation that if a tutoring program is going to include minimal training and support, the tutors need to be pre-screened for their ability to wrestle with academic concepts at an adolescent level. They should also be able to demonstrate that they have knowledge and experience working as a tutor previously or be able to demonstrate that they are aware of how to use some teaching strategies within a session. The tutors should be able to function independently as well. They need to be able to demonstrate that they are willing to be flexible, work with many different students, and be able to demonstrate patience when a thing like the schedule of the school day is different, etc. For instance, sometimes the tutors would have to switch rooms, get locked out of their tutoring room, or come in and find out that they would only have a few students to tutor because of a school trip or another event. Additionally, 208 the tutors need demonstrate responsibility. In this study, each of the tutors showed up on time for every session they were scheduled for and were able to navigate their sessions without much direction from anyone but the student. This study’s findings support the recommendation that tutors would benefit from more embedded systems of communication with teachers and the tutoring coordinator at the site. Two of the tutors, Pete and Hannah, made reference to this in an informal interview. They said, “With more communication with teachers, the tutors might have spent less time in the sessions trying to figure out the goal of the assignment and more time embedded in instruction” (12-13-2014). The tutors also struggled at timed with how to communicate with the lower-level ELL students. If the tutors would have been provided with training similar to the training given at the beginning of the year to teachers about how to support ELL students, they might have been able to spend less time trying to find a strategy that worked and more time working a strategy that they had been trained on. The tutors were seldom told that they had been doing a good job by the tutoring coordinator or the teachers at the school. They were thanked for their service but were never given the opportunity to debrief regularly with someone at the site about how their sessions were going. While the tutors did debrief at times with each other, being able to debrief with another point of contact at the school might have given them additional perspectives on their sessions and additional ways of approaching students in their tutoring experiences. The findings of the study support a recommendation that tutoring programs geared towards helping ELL adolescents needs to include more of an emphasis on vocabulary learning. The tutors in this study helped their students attain vocabulary only as it appeared in context and for the most part, did not provide specific definitions of the words. The tutors did not normally have the students use the words that were introduced to them in a session and did not go over any 209 vocabulary words that they introduced at the end of a session. Tutors would benefit students if they were given training on how to teach vocabulary directly in a session and if they were provided with a list of key academic words that they students will most likely see across academic text they encounter. Even if tutors were given simple suggestions to help with vocabulary acquisition such as have the students repeat the word that is introduced and have them write it down in a vocabulary book, go over words you introduced at the end of a session, ask students to bring in some vocabulary words they want to learn, have a pocket dictionary with you and look up words for specific definitions of words to give students. The study found that tutors used visuals to help students acquire vocabulary. Future tutoring programs would benefit from having their tutors use visuals to support vocabulary acquisition. Design The findings of this study support implementing tutoring interactions that are one-on-one in nature for ELL adolescent learners. It would be beneficial if tutors in a similar program were able to be given a consistent space in which to conduct their tutoring sessions. Two of the tutors, Hannah and Pete, conducted their tutoring sessions in the same space and this proved to be beneficial. Although their interactions with students was one-on-one, they were able to ask each other questions about content if needed which helped their one-on-one interactions be more successful. Having a couple of tutors in one room also made the tutors more accountable for their actions in a session and gave the tutors a chance to have someone to debrief with in between sessions. Molly’s interactions also benefited from being in a consistent space because the students in the room Molly worked in got used to having her there and were more open to coming to her for one-on-one sessions because she was part of their environment. With that said, at times it was challenging for Molly to conduct a one-on-one session within the classroom 210 because the other students were being off-task. If a tutoring program wanted tutors to conduct one-on-one sessions in a pull in environment, the tutor would need to have strong facilitation skills, like Molly, in order to keep the session moving forward or the tutor would need to be placed in a more structured classroom environment. The tutors were asked to only bring a notebook to the sessions and something to write with. This enabled the students to feel like they were able to come to tutoring and work on things they needed accomplished vs. coming to tutoring to receive additional work if the tutors would have been given more structured materials to work with. The tutors also did not have to prep or plan for their tutoring sessions which might have proved taxing considering each of the tutors were full-time students and two of them also had jobs outside of their coursework. If the tutoring program would have required a lot of prep or planning time for the tutors, they might not have been as willing to volunteer. Maybe the reason the tutors were able to be a part of the program is because they were required to show up and do the best they could with the knowledge and expertise they already had. Maybe the reason that the students consistently showed up for the sessions is because they knew that the session would not waste their time. They could get help on materials they had to turn in in order to receive a grade from their teacher. The adolescents in this study might not have been as interested in a tutoring session that helped them get better at their English by doing additional work. This finding supports a tutoring program for adolescents that meet them where they are at in regards to material. Monitor As part of the study, all of the tutors were asked to fill out a reflection log after each of their sessions. The reflection log asked them to describe what was covered in the session and how the session went. This proved to be a useful tool when it came to comparing my observation 211 notes and interview notes to the reflection log. Using some type of reflection tool would be useful for tutors in a similar study. It gave them a chance to debrief each tutoring session and it provided for written feedback in the tutor’s perspective. Another recommendation that the study afforded was in regards to students involved in the session. The students in the study were not asked to give feedback in regards to their tutoring experiences and their progress was judged by their actions within sessions as well as the tutoring reflection logs. It would benefit future researchers to implement some type of feedback system that enabled the students to give direct feedback on their tutoring session experiences. This would enable researchers to understand the interactions that were happening in each session specifically from the student’s viewpoint. Recommendations for Future Research There are several recommendations that could be made for future research. The first is that it would benefit the field if a longitudinal study could be conducted on a tutoring program that was helping lower level adolescent ELL learners. This study was a seven week short term study and the levels of English language proficiency that the students had varied. In the sessions where tutors were working with students who had lower level language proficiency, there was a lot more frustration on the student’s part and encouragement that the tutors needed to give. I think if a longer study could be done that looked at a group of tutors working with the same lower level ELL students, the interactions that the tutors would have in the sessions could tell a story for ESL practitioners and content area teachers about the struggle and successes more in depth. 212 In the study, the tutors would work with some of the same students multiple times and although this interaction was not looked at specifically, I think that a future study would benefit from looking at the same tutor working with a few of the same students over a period of time in order to see how repeat interactions affect motivation, comfort, and outcomes of sessions. It would also afford the opportunity to see if students reached a point of self-regulation in some of the learning concepts that were covered repeatedly over time. Another area that could be researched in the future is the motivations and understandings of adolescents in a tutoring session. It was interesting to see how the students who came into the tutoring sessions would at times have their own agendas and understandings of learning. Several times a student would explain why they needed to do something or why they did not have certain skills. The students were very articulate in knowing exactly what either got them on the right path or what experience got them off track academically. I think it would be beneficial to be able to conduct a study that asked at-risk adolescents about these experiences and see if there were any trends that could be discussed or used to benefit future practice. The study did not look at how tutors interacted with specific subjects when working with students but the interaction overall. I think it would be beneficial to look at how tutors interact in different or similar ways in tutoring sessions depending on the subject that is being covered. For instance, do they help students with academic vocabulary more in a math related lesson or in writing focused sessions? Looking at different subject interactions may provide for important comparisons between what subjects adolescent ELLs struggle with more. Future research on how vocabulary is being acquired in tutoring sessions could be conducted in a variety of ways. It would be interesting to conduct a study that asked the tutors about their perceptions on vocabulary learning and how they were taught vocabulary and then 213 see if any of these perceptions or vocabulary teaching strategies was being reinforced in tutoring sessions. Secondly, research could also look at why tutors are picking certain words to define in the tutoring sessions. It would be interesting to see why tutors thought certain words were more important than others to define. Thirdly, vocabulary acquisition could be explored from the student’s perspective. The students could provide feedback about what English words they thought were important to know for school and how the ways they felt they learned vocabulary best. Future research would also benefit by comparing this study to a study that was conducted with tutors that were trained on how to conduct a tutoring session and that were given suggestions on how to teach vocabulary. It would be important to see how the tutors would interact with the students in a more structured tutoring program where they might receive more direction and feedback. Would the sessions be as successful? Would tutors feel like they had to plan more and did not have the time to contribute? Would students appreciate the additional structure to a session or feel like they were attending another class vs. a tutoring session where they could get help on things that were already on their to-do list? Based on the positive sessions that occurred when tutors used even simple Spanish, a recommendation is being made that more practitioners and tutors should use small amounts of and ELL student’s first language in their instruction. More research should be done on a tutoring program that trains the tutors on using first language directives with their ELL students in order to help the student understand academic text in English. With so many ESL teachers and tutors having only a limited knowledge of their ELL student’s first language, providing training on directional vocabulary might make a big difference in the relationship and learning outcomes they are able to achieve with their ELLs. 214 More volunteer tutoring programs also need to be provided to the adolescent ELL population. This could be easily accomplished as part of the regular pre-service teacher coursework that is currently required in several states. Pre-service teachers are required to complete several hours of practicum and field experience hours in educational settings. Why couldn’t part of this field experience requirement include a tutoring practicum with an at-risk adolescent population? It would give the pre-service teachers valuable experience and help the ELL students’ progress. Conclusions This research portrayed the interactions of three tutors in one-on-one sessions with adolescent ELL students. It additionally looked at how the tutors were supporting vocabulary acquisition in the sessions. All of the tutors in the study interacted as models, encouragers, strategists, partners, facilitators, and translators for their students. Their interactions were consistent and resulted from all of the tutors having strong academic background knowledge and the motivation to move their students in the right direction during each session. The tutors interacted as educators in each session and advocates. They were not interacting as the student’s friends or people who did not care about the student’s academic future. Because the tutor’s motivation was to get their student’s to progress academically, they made choices in the sessions to keep their students on task, ask questions in order to increase their own understandings of materials, and the entire tutor’s pushed their students to practice the skills that were being taught independently. They provided the social interaction that helped the students connect to written text. This study additionally looked at how tutors were supporting vocabulary acquisition in their sessions. The tutors supported vocabulary indirectly, introduced mainly general academic 215 words, and used certain techniques that were supported by the literature on vocabulary learning. For the most part, they introduced words out of written context and defined the words using their own background knowledge vs. a source like a dictionary. The tutors did not spend much time introducing vocabulary terms to their students and did not go back and review any vocabulary words that were introduced. The findings on vocabulary underlie the need for tutors to be trained on how to introduce vocabulary words directly as well as indirectly. They would also benefit from being taught vocabulary teaching techniques and from being given a list of general academic words that the students would most likely need to know. The study also provided an important contribution to the effect of Vygotsky’s (1978) social learning theory, specifically the ZPD, as it happened in the one-on-one tutoring session. The tutors in the study had strong academic background knowledge and because of their academic capabilities and knowledge of teaching techniques, they were able to help their students’ progress. 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More than a linguistic reference: the influence of corpus technology on L2 Academic writing. Language Learning & Technology 12(2), 31-49.Zwier, L.J. (2009). Inside reading 2: The academic word list in context. Oxford: Oxford UP. 236 APPENDIX A: AUDIO PERMISSION FORM Project Title: Volunteer Tutors and at-risk secondary ELL learners: The nature of interactions among volunteer tutors and at-risk secondary ELLs in one-on-one tutoring sessions Investigator’s Name: Sarah Edwards Primary Investigator: Dr. Barbara Wasik Department: College of Education/Literacy and Learners. Subject: _______________________________ Date: ____________________________ I give permission to audiotape me. This audiotape will be used only for the following purposes: EDUCATION Audiotapes will be transcribed only for the purposes of research conducted through Temple University. RESEARCH The audiotape will be used as part of a research project at Temple University. I have already given written consent for my participation in this research project. At no time will my name be used. Description: WHEN WILL I BE AUDIOTAPED? I agree to be audiotaped during the time period: From _____ to _____________. HOW LONG WILL THE TAPES BE USED? 237 I give my permission for these tapes to be used: From ____________ to _________________. *The data collected for the purposes of this research study, including any and all audiotapes will be stored for three (3) years after the completion of the study. WHAT IF I CHANGE MY MIND? I understand that I can withdraw my permission at any time. Upon my request, the audiotape (s) will no longer be used. OTHER I understand that I will not be paid for being audio taped or for the use of the audiotapes. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION If I want further information about the audiotape(s), or if I have questions or concerns at any time, I can contact: Investigator’s Name: Sarah Edwards Primary Investigator’s Name: Barbara Wasik/Advisor’s Name: Dr. Barbara Wasik Department: College of Education/Literacies and Learners Institution: Temple University Street Address: 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue City: Philadelphia State: Pennsylvania Zip Code: 19122 Investigator: (724) 954-9044 Primary Investigator: (410)-905-9468 This form will be placed in my records and a copy will be kept by the person(s) named above. A copy will be given to me. 238 Please print Subject’s Name: Date: Address: Phone: Subject’s Signature: ______________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________ Witness Signature Date 239 APPENDIX B: CONSENT FOR PARENTS Project Title: An exploration of the interactions volunteer tutors are having with secondary ELLs in one-one-one tutoring sessions Investigator: Sarah Edwards (contact: 724-954-9044) Affiliation: Temple University, College of Education/Literacies and Learners Primary Investigator/Advisor: Dr. Barbara Wasik (contact: 410-905-9468) Dear Parent or Guardian, My name is Sarah Edwards and I am currently a doctoral student at Temple University, pursuing my Ph.D. in Language Arts Education. My dissertation study is looking to describe the interactions that volunteer tutors are having with secondary English Language Learners in one- on-one tutoring sessions. My advisor, Dr. Barbara Wasik and I would very much like the opportunity to include your child as a participant in the study based on the fact that they are currently being tutored. Students who participate would be video recorded during their regular tutoring sessions and would fill out a reflection after each tutoring session with the support of the volunteer tutor. The observations will not disrupt the tutoring session. The reflections that your child completes will not be shared with anyone else but the researcher (me). It is my hope that participation in this study would be a very enjoyable experience for your child. It is intended to be an opportunity to observe what your child is learning in tutoring sessions. My interest in this study is too find out what your child is learning in their tutoring 240 sessions in order to help inform tutoring interventions that can help other students learn through one-on-one tutoring as well. There are no foreseeable risks to participating in the study. All materials containing information about the study will be maintained for three years in a secure location. Your child’s participation is completely voluntary and he/she may end participation in the study at any time for any reason without penalty or prejudice. The choice to participate or not will not impact your child’s grades or status at school. If you have any questions regarding any aspect of this study, please feel free to contact me via telephone (724) 954-9044 or email: tuc24332@temple.edu or my study advisor Dr. Barbara Wasik via telephone (410) 905-9468. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Your contribution to this project will provide invaluable data needed to help better understand how tutors are supporting students achieve academic success. ______________________________________________________________________________ I _______________________________, have read and understand the above consent form in its entirety and voluntarily agree to have my child participate in the study. I further understand that no monetary compensation is associated with my child’s participation in this study. I assert that I am over the age of eighteen (18). “I understand that if I wish further information regarding my rights as a research subject, I may contact Richard Thorn, Program Manager and Coordinator at Office of the Vice President for Research of Temple University by phoning (215) 707-8757.” Signing your name below indicates that you have read and understand the contents of this Consent Form and that you agree to have your child take part in this study. mailto:tuc24332@temple.edu 241 ______________________________________________________________________________ Child’s Name Parent or Legal Guardian’s Name (please print) Parent or Guardian’s Signature Date ______________________________________________________________________________ Investigator’s Signature 242 APPENDIX C: ASSENT FORM Project Title: An exploration of the interactions volunteer tutors are having with secondary ELLs in one-one-one tutoring sessions Investigator: Sarah Edwards (contact: 724-954-9044) Affiliation: Temple University, College of Education/Literacies and Learners Primary Investigator/Advisor: Dr. Barbara Wasik (contact: 410-905-9468) Dear Participant, My name is Sarah Edwards and I am currently a doctoral student at Temple University, pursuing my Ph.D. in Language Arts Education. My dissertation study is looking to describe the interactions that volunteer tutors are having with secondary English Language Learners in one- on-one tutoring sessions. My advisor, Dr. Barbara Wasik and I would very much like the chance to include you as a participant in the study based on the fact that you are learning English as a second language and are working with a tutor in your high school. Students who participate would be video recorded during their regular tutoring sessions and would fill out a reflection after each tutoring session with the support of the volunteer tutor. The observations will not disrupt the tutoring session. The reflections that you complete will not be shared with anyone else but the researcher (me). It is my hope that participation in this study would be a very enjoyable experience for you. It is intended to be an opportunity to observe what you are learning in tutoring sessions. My interest in this study is too find out what you are learning in your tutoring sessions in order to 243 help inform tutoring interventions that can help you and other students learn through one-on-one tutoring. There are no foreseeable risks to participating in the study. All materials containing information about the study will be maintained for three years in a secure location. Your participation is completely voluntary and you may end participation in the study at any time for any reason without penalty or prejudice. The choice to participate or not will not impact you’re your grades or status at school. If you have any questions regarding any aspect of this study, please feel free to contact me via telephone (724) 954-9044 or email: tuc24332@temple.edu or my study advisor Dr. Barbara Wasik via telephone (410) 905-9468. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Your contribution to this project will provide invaluable data needed to help better understand how tutors are supporting students achieve academic success. ______________________________________________________________________________ I _______________________________, have read and understand the above consent form in its entirety and voluntarily agree to participate in the study. I further understand that no monetary compensation is associated with my participation in this study. I assert that my parent understands the study and has signed a consent form. “I understand that if I wish further information regarding my rights as a research subject, I may contact Richard Thorn, Program Manager and Coordinator at Office of the Vice President for Research of Temple University by phoning (215) 707-8757.” Signing your name below indicates that you have read and understand the contents of this Consent Form and that you agree to have your child take part in this study. mailto:tuc24332@temple.edu 244 ______________________________________________________________________________ Student’s Name Date ______________________________________________________________________________ Investigator’s Signature Date 245 APPENDIX D: CONSENT FORM TEACHERS Project Title: An exploration of the interactions volunteer tutors are having with secondary ELLs in one-one-one tutoring sessions Investigator: Sarah Edwards (contact: 724-954-9044) Affiliation: Temple University, College of Education/Literacies and Learners Primary Investigator/Advisor: Dr. Barbara Wasik (contact: 410-905-9468) Dear Parent or Guardian, My name is Sarah Edwards and I am currently a doctoral student at Temple University, pursuing my Ph.D. in Language Arts Education. My dissertation study is looking to describe the interactions that volunteer tutors are having with secondary English Language Learners in one- on-one tutoring sessions. My advisor, Dr. Barbara Wasik and I would very much like the opportunity to include you as a participant in the study based on your status as a teacher or administrator of a child who met the above criteria. Adults who participate would be interviews by the researcher (me) one time and the interview would last roughly 30 minutes. Your name will never be used as part of the study. There are no foreseeable risks to participating in the study. All materials containing information you provide for the purposes of this study will be maintained for three years in a secure location. Your participation is completely voluntary and you may end participation in the study at any time for any reason without penalty or prejudice. If you have any questions regarding any aspect of this study, please feel free to contact me via telephone (724) 954-9044 or email: tuc24332@temple.edu or my study advisor Dr. mailto:tuc24332@temple.edu 246 Barbara Wasik via telephone (410) 905-9468. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Your contribution to this project will provide invaluable data needed to help better understand how tutors are supporting students achieve academic success. ______________________________________________________________________________ I _______________________________, have read and understand the above consent form in its entirety and voluntarily agree to participate in the study. I further understand that no monetary compensation is associated with my child’s participation in this study. I assert that I am over the age of eighteen (18). “I understand that if I wish further information regarding my rights as a research subject, I may contact Richard Thorn, Program Manager and Coordinator at Office of the Vice President for Research of Temple University by phoning (215) 707-8757.” Signing your name below indicates that you have read and understand the contents of this Consent Form and that you agree to take part in this study. ______________________________________________________________________________ Teacher’s Name Teacher’s Signature Date Investigator’s Signature 247 APPENDIX E: TUTOR INTERVIEW PROTOCOL As you know, this study is about how tutors are interacting in one-on-one tutoring sessions with secondary ELLs. To begin, I’d like you to tell me a little bit about yourself, your own educational background, and why you decided to become a volunteer tutor. Tell me about a typical day as part of the volunteer tutoring program? How were you trained to work with students? Did you receive any particular training to working with ELL students? How do you plan for each tutoring session? What part of the tutoring session do you feel is the most important part? Why? How do you keep track of what the tutee learns? How do you try to build a relationship with your tutee? Do you consider yourself a good tutor? Why or why not? Do you seek support or feedback from anyone else about the tutoring sessions you are conducting? What factors make the tutoring session hard or easy? What do you think are the most important things an ELL student needs to accomplish in order to be successful in high school? What do you think are the most important things an ELL student needs to accomplish in order to be a successful reader in the English Language? What is time in the tutoring session mainly spent on? 248 APPENDIX F: TEACHER INTERVIEW PROTOCOL Tell me a little bit about your teaching background and your current work in the school. What are you responsible for in the school outside of your teaching responsibilities in the school (committees, meetings, etc.)? What is your current teaching schedule? How many students do you have in each class? How do you plan for a typical week? What are the main materials that students use and you use to access information? What type(s) of teaching methods would you say you use the most in your class? How many ELL students do you have in your classes? How do you support ELLs in your classroom? Have you taken any coursework or attended trainings on how to support ELLs? How do you teach vocabulary to your students? Do you teach vocabulary any differently for ELLs? How involved are you with the volunteer tutoring program at the school and the work they do with ELL learners? Are you in communication with the ESL coordinator in the building? How? What, do you feel, are the best accommodations you can provide for ELLs? How do you grade? Do you accommodate for ELLs in your grading procedures? 249 APPENDIX G- WORDS INTRODUCED BY TUTOR 1. numerical expression, signal word, general academic 2. contraction, signal word, general academic 3. product, signal word, general academic 4. PhD, low frequency exotic, academic 5. least common multiple, signal word, general academic 6. meaning, written context, everyday 7. divisible, signal word, general academic 8. brick, written context, everyday 9. and, written context, everyday; general academic-repeat 10. units, signal word, general academic 11. sum, signal word, general academic 12. product, signal word, general academic 13. quotient, signal word, general academic 14. add, signal word, general academic- repeat 15. number form, signal word, general academic 16. absolute value, signal word, general academic 17. device, written context, general academic 18. gathering, written context, general academic 19. vacuum, written context, general academic 20. cord, written context, general academic 21. tinkering, written context, general academic 22. librarian, written context, general academic 23. assistant principal, written context, general academic 24. gun, written context, everday 25. gesture, written context, general academic 26. death penalty ,written context, general academic 27. variable, signal word, general academic 28. multiply, signal word, general academic 29. distribute, signal word, general academic 30. product, signal word, general academic 31. hundredth vs. hundreds signal word, general academic 33. trade routes,written context, general academic 34. motives, signal word, general academic 35. spices,written context, general academic 36. study, written context, general academic 37. conceptually, signal word, general academic 38. exponent, signal word, general academic 39. square units, signal word, general academic 40. discrimination,written context, general academic 41. banned, written context, general academic 42. rigorous,written context, general academic 43. since, signal word, general academic 44. then, signal word, general academic 45. on/an, signal word, general academic 250 46. plug it in (phrase), conversation 47. character, signal word, general academic 48. diversity, written context 49. sushi roll,written context, low frequency 50. stymied, written context, general academic 51. obtuse, signal word, general academic 52. engineer,written context, general academic 53. specialize, signal word, general academic 54. patent, written context, general academic 55. progress, written context, general acdemic 56. sophisticated, written context, academic 57. shape, signal word, general academic 58. starting point,signal word, general academic 59. boundary, signal word, general academic 60. sign, signal word, general academic 61. cosign, signal word, general academic 62. brackets, signal word, general academic 63. range, signal word, general academic 64. graph, signal word, general academic 65. negative angle, signal word, general academic 66. reflection, signal word, general academic 67. flipping,written context,everyday, general academic 68. giggle,written context, everday, general academic 69. brink,written context, general academic 70. directly, signal word, general academic 71. extraordinary,written context, general academic 72. civil, written context, general academic 73. Beijing, written context, low frequency 74. constant, signal word, general academic 75. coefficient, signal word, general academic 76. like terms, signal word, general academic 77. ratio-repeat 78. area, signal word, general academic 79. synonym-repeat 80. FOIL, signal word, general academic 81. sediment, written context, general academic 82. ruins,written context, general academic 83. quotation marks 84. tone- repeat 85. theme, signal word, general academic 86. thesis, signal word, general academic 87. main headings, signal word, general academic 88. events, signal word, general academic 89. text organization, signal word, general academic 90. RBI,written context, low frequency 91. wrist,written context, general academic 251 92. tore,written context, general academic 93. motor vs. engine,written context, general academic 94. mood, signal word, general academic 95. counselor, written context, general academic 96. highest exponent, signal word, general academic 97. positive, signal word, general academic 98. negative, signal word, general academic 99. descending, signal word, general academic 100. ascending, signal word, general academic 101. like terms, signal word, general academic 102. trinomial, signal word, general academic 103. co-efficient, signal word, general academic 104. stanza vs. poem, signal word, general academic 105. fit in, written context, general academic 106. percent- repeat 107. whole-repeat 108.parts, signal word, general academic 109.transitive property, signal word, general academic 110. therefore, signal word, general academic 111.ratio, signal word, general academic 112.amplitude, signal word, general academic 113.horizontal, signal word, general academic 114.reflection, signal word, general academic 115.vertical, signal word, general academic 116.radiant, signal word, general academic 117.predominately, signal word, general academic 118.constant, signal word, general academic 119.military,written context, general academic 120.rival,written context, general academic 121.confiscate,written context, general academic 122.corresponding angles, signal word, general academic 123.adjacent, signal word, general academic 124.summarize, signal word, general academic 125.narrative, signal word, general academic 126.character, signal word, general academic 127.conflict, signal word, general academic 128.settings, signal word, general academic 129.vague, signal word, general academic 130.interesting, written context, general academic 131.sign, signal word, general academic 132.cosign, signal word, general academic 133.alptitude signal word, general academic 134.vertical shift, signal word, general academic 135.shy,written context, general academic 136.eraser,written context, general academic 137.stanza, signal word, general academic 252 138.won vs. winning,written context, general academic 139. this vs. that,written context, general academic 140.statistician,written context, general academic 141.renee, signal word, low frequency 142.lowest common denominator 143. ream,written context, general academic 144. interior signal word, general academic 145.exterior signal word, general academic 146.corresponding angles, signal word, general academic 147. prism-repeat 148.cubic yards, signal word, general academic 148.cube, signal word, general academic 150.surface area, signal word, general academic 151.listing factors, signal word, general academic 152.dawn,written context, general academic 153. course, signal word, general academic 154.narrative, signal word, general academic 155. sucking the poison out of a baby,written context, low frequency 156. hanging box, signal word, general academic 157.pause, signal word, general academic 158.after, signal word, general academic 159.upon, signal word, general academic 160.withdrew, signal word, general academic 161.because, signal word, general academic 162.differs, signal word, general academic 163.after, signal word, general academic 164.comma, signal word, general academic 165.again, signal word, general academic 166.hoodlums,written context, low frequency 167.dexterious,written context, general academic 168.criticize signal word, general academic 169.perception, signal word, general academic 170.trust,written context, general academic 171.middle/elementary school,written context, general academic 172.hunting,conversation, everyday 173.deviation, signal word, general academic 174.spread, signal word, general academic 175.greenhouse effect,written context, general academic 176.strategy, signal word, general academic 177. Abraham Lincoln,written context, low frequency 178. rectangle vs. trapezoid, signal word, general academic 179.squaring angles, signal word, general academic 180.vapor, written context, general academic 181.regala,written context, general academic 182.thousandth signal word, general academic 183.Russia,written context, low frequency 253 184.present progressive,signal word, general academic 185. may signal word, general academic 186.able too signal word, general academic 187.success signal word, general academic 188.Idioms signal word, general academic 189.turbulance,written context, general academic 190.fractions signal word, general academic 191.difference signal word, general academic 192.percent signal word, general academic 193. absolute value signal word, general academic 194. more, signal word, general academic 195. vegetarian,written context, low frequency 196.sizeimigraph,written context, general academic 197.earthquake,written context, general academic 198.rictor scale,written context, low frequency 199.behind the scenes,written context, low frequency 200.movie producer,written context, low frequency 201. dictator,written context, general academic 202. area, signal word, general academic 203. resolve, signal word, general academic 204. conflict, signal word, general academic 205. LCD,written context, general academic 206-209- repeat words 254 APPENDIX H: MEMO EXAMPLE Memo 11 (December 10, 2014) Hannah and Pete were having a conversation about the project. Interesting because Hannah thinks she see the biggest gap in ELL students from a motivational/family environment standpoint and Pete said that he can really tell whether and ELL student is the oldest child. Both of them are using their own experiences as a lens into their student’s interactions. Does what distinguishes them as people and helped them succeed as students or how they are programmed motivationally affect how they interact or choose to understand the student they are working with in a session? It was also interesting to talk about how they structure their session based on what is important for them. Pete says that the concept behind the skill is important to him so he always asks why, tell me how even though he knows some of his students don’t want to answer that or don’t know how too, it is important to him so he will keep asking. Hannah- sometimes it is important to her to just help students get there work done so they can get caught up vs. making sure they have a conceptual understanding. Maybe assumptions drive a tutor- I should look through the data and see if my current codes reflect this. They make assumptions as to what the teacher wants, students need to do, skill level the student should be at, vocabulary they know or don’t know. Tutors test those assumptions depending on the topic and also use whatever their assumption is to gauge an expectation. The tutor thinks/assumes the student is ________________ so they _____________________ as a result. Today I am seeing a lot of environmental factors affecting tutoring. Students are absent, don’t need help or can’t get into programs at the Cyberschool sessions. Vocab Acquisition: Pete does a big gamut of vocab acquisition if you consider him introducing a Math concept as vocabulary. He never tells the student that he is going to teach them a Math vocabulary term but he does teach them the concept which in way is the vocabulary term in action. 255 APPENDIX I: TUTORING REFLECTION LOG Tutoring Reflection Tutor:__________________________________ Date:__________________________________ Student Tutored________________________________ ELL Level (if known)______________________________ 1. Goals of the session?/ Agenda?/ Objectives? 2. How did the session go? What did you work on? Take me through the agenda of the session and what happened in each part. 3. How did the session go? Positives, Challenges, What was learned? How did you feel about it? How do you think the learner felt? 4. Goals for your next session with the learner? 256 APPENDIX J: INITIAL OPEN CODES Positive Reinforcement: The tutor motivated the student to continue working in the session or coached the student in a positive way (the tutor told the student that they could do something. The tutor would give a variety of praise to their students. Praise that encouraged, reassured, and affirmed that they had gotten something right. The praise could be very specific or general. The tutor would provide affirmation to the student during the session that they were on the right track. Strategy Given: The tutors would share strategies with the students. The strategies could be things that the tutor was taught when they were in school or general strategies that they felt would help the learning with a subject or concept. Acknowledgement of Learning: Students would verbally acknowledge that they had learned something as a result of the tutoring session. It was an Aha moment that both the tutor and tutee recognized. Sometimes, less skilled tutors would also have this moment with a more skilled tutor when the more skilled tutor taught. Vocabulary in context (Tutor Directed): Vocabulary that the tutor chose to cover within the context of the session. The vocabulary came from the material that the student had brought to the session to work with the tutor would stop and concentrate on a vocabulary word with the student because they thought it was important to know. The tutor might also stop and ask the students if they knew a word in the context of what they were learning. Vocabulary (Student Directed): Students would ask the tutors what the meaning, pronunciation, and spelling of words were. The words could be in the material of the session or part of the language the tutor was using. Vocabulary (of Instruction): The words were not explained as vocabulary words. They presented as vocabulary words in the context of the material. They were key words that students needed to understand in order to be able to do the overall concept. They were words that gave clues about what the material was asking for. They were also words that the tutor would naturally use in order to explain a concept that ended up becoming vocabulary in the session because the student would need to be able to comprehend the words the tutor was using. 257 Vocabulary and Grammar as Reciprocal Process: Examples in the interactions of where vocabulary and grammar shared the same learning space. Vocabulary in Conversation/Environment: Words that are learned by the tutee/tutor as a result of conversation/session outside of academics Lack of Access: Instances where the tutor demonstrated having Access to information that the students they are tutoring do not have access to (Webster’s, SAT. ACT) Modeling: Tutors model a strategy vs. just sharing or giving it to the students. The students model something that the tutor has done or said in the session. Student Openness: The student is honest and open with the tutors and they have a wiliness to learn or be in the session. The student has an awareness of what they know and don’t know. The student could show empathy to the tutor when the tutor is trying to figure something out. The student might offer excuses about their gaps or demonstrate autonomy. They are willing to ask and answer questions in a session. Tutor Quick Learn: The tutor would have to get familiar with the material. They would have to connect the information to background knowledge they had already received in their own schooling or they would have to learn it in the moment, or reteach themselves as quickly as possible. It was also when the tutor was trying to get a sense of what the student knows or doesn’t know. Tutor Roles (Mediator, Enabler, Guide): The tutor would serve as the learning mediator in the pull in class meaning that because they were working with a particular student, that student’s work got done in spite of classroom management issues happening in the rest of the class (7 examples). The tutor would serve as an enabler for some students who would not have done the work or been able to do the work without the tutor’s support. (5 examples). The tutor would guide the students but still expect the student to make most of the connections. 258 Student Directing: The student would ask about content, life, and says what they get and don’t get in the session. The student could have their own agenda. The student sometimes conducted their own check for understanding. Environment: How the environment of the tutoring session affected the interaction. Tutor Comfort Level: How the tutor knew the material and was able to manipulate it and produce other examples for the students. Teacher Influence: The teacher in the room was interjecting or giving directions to the tutor. The teacher would model language. Breakdown of words, instruction: The tutor would break things into simpler English and help the students reword things. The tutor would share background knowledge, break down concepts, or give students different ways of thinking about things. The tutor would clarify things and have to be able to know how to break things down. The tutor would give think time or use visuals. Input/Output: Examples of a give and take of conversation in the session and when the tutor would have a banter- I do, you do. The tutor would make the tutee an active agent in the learning, an active participant. The tutor and tutee would try to negotiate what was trying to be explained by the concept or themselves. Structure: The structure decided by tutor and tutees. The tutor approach to the session. The routine that a tutor follows in a session. What a tutor doesn’t do in relation to what a possible best practice says to do. Tutor Gives Choice: The tutor asks student what they want to do in a session or the student asks to do something and the tutor gives the green light. 259 Temperament: With what temperament the tutor and sometimes tutee would bring to the sessions. Their temperament might be humorous, laid back, even, flexible, or patient. Patience was when the tutor stuck with the session and tried to have the student not rush. The tutor might also show persistence, meaning they keep the session moving and the student could be persistent as well. Back it up: The tutor had to back up a concept for the student in order for the student to get the larger idea. The tutor recognizes when they have to do this and it is usually done when sessions become more challenging. The tutor shows the student what they got wrong, right. Session as Challenge: The tutor might not know how to adjust or doesn’t want to adjust for language barriers. The student is frustrated in the session and the interaction that occurs as a result of this frustration on part of the tutor and student. Repeat Session Interaction: The connections and demeanors of both tutors and tutees during repeat sessions. The directness of the tutors/tutees in repeat sessions because they know each other. Materials: The materials that are brought or used in the session by the tutors and tutees. The materials include things given by mainstream teacher, ESL teacher, Cyber school curriculum, tutor notebooks and student notebooks, and the opinions tutors and tutees had of certain materials. Materials could be seen as frustrating or interesting. Need for Future: The future connection between content and what they may need to know in future educational environments. Empathy: The tutor would tell tutee that it was okay if they didn’t know how to do something or if they felt that they were bad at a particular skill or entire subject. The tutor would also show empathy by adjusting the session if the student seemed frustrated. 260 Personal Connections: When the tutor or tutee attempted to connect personally in the session. The tutor or tutee might share something from their personal life. The tutor might tell a story or use a real world example for student to get a concept. Check for Understanding (Specific Response): The tutor would have the students demonstrate the newly learned knowledge they were gaining in the session by asking them questions about the content, stopping them throughout the session to cold call them about concepts to see if they understood, and had them demonstrate the knowledge they had just acquired by working independently and showing they had taken in the information and were able to process it independently. Check for Understanding (General Check In, Yes or No): The tutor would ask if the student got something and then when the student said yes, they would move on without asking for explanation. Language: Of Suggestion (What, if…I think you could write) Of Direction (Do this) Of togetherness, social interaction (“You tell me, we could, let’s get this work done) Of tutor (phrases the tutors use all the time, tone, type of talking) Think Alouds: The tutor or student would talk through a problem or concept out loud as they would work in session. They were letting the thoughts that were going on in their minds be verbalized. Humbleness: The tutor would ask for help in order to understand a concept before they taught it too their student. They would say that they were not sure about things, admit they got things wrong, and were open to a variety of tutoring sessions, students, and subject areas. The tutor would also tell the student that the student was smarter than them and that the student did all the work, the tutor was just there. 261 Assumption: The tutors assume that their students know something and this influences interaction. The tutors sometimes test their assumptions with students and will back it up if their assumption is proven wrong. The student could also assume the student knows something. Resource Shared: The tutor gives student a resource or the tutor directs the student towards a resource if they don’t know. The tutor shows the student something in the world Impact of Spanish being used: Result of tutor choosing to let student use Spanish or if the tutor is able to use Spanish a bit, especially as a directional word in the session. Student’s Connection to Tutors: The students showing that they are comfortable with the tutors and used to them. Their attitude to the tutors in positive/negative ways and how that impacts the session. Motivation: Motivation of the session or lack of motivation. The factors that are motivating the tutor and the factors that are motivating the student and what happens as a result. An example would be motivated to just complete the work vs. understand the concept. Student Strategy: How a student approaches learning academics, think alouds, ideas of fairness. 262 APPENDIX K: EMERGING THEMES FOR RESEARCH Q 1 Tutors as Models: Tutors model a technique or strategy vs. just sharing or giving an answer to the students. Modeling is also being defined as when the tutor demonstrates thinking aloud through a concept. They would model their thought process for the students meaning that they would allow the thoughts that were going on in their mind to be verbalized. Tutors as Encouragers: The tutor motivated the student to continue working in the session or coached the student in a positive way. The tutor told that student that they could do something that the student felt they could not do. The tutor would give a variety of praise to their students. The praise would encourage, reassure, or affirm that the student had done something right. The praise could be specific or general. The tutor would provide affirmation to the student during the session that they were on the right track. It was when the tutor acknowledged that the student had learned something or the tutor cheered the student on within the session by telling them how the concept they were learning would come back in the future. Tutors as strategist: The tutors would share learning strategies with the students. The strategies could be things that the tutor used themselves that helped them organize their thoughts or a particular learning concept. The strategies could also be related to general learning strategies that the tutor felt would help the learner understand a concept they were working on (78 examples). The tutor would also come up with strategies about how to teach a concept at the beginning of the session 263 or get familiar with the material quickly. The tutor would also use strategies to figure out what the student did or did not know. Tutor as Partner: There are several ways the tutor demonstrated interacting as a partner with students vs. as an authority figure. Firstly, the tutor was humble. The tutor would ask for help in order to understand a concept before they taught it to their student. The tutor would say they were not sure about things, admit they got things wrong, and were open to a variety of tutoring sessions, students, and subject areas. The tutor would also tell the student was smarter than them and that the student did all the work and the tutor was supporting them. Secondly, the tutor would use a language of togetherness or suggestion in the session. They would use phrases such as “we” and “let’s” or “I think you could” to demonstrate a partnership vs. a dictatorship. Thirdly, the tutor demonstrated a partnership in the empathy they showed students. The tutor would tell the tutee that it was okay if they didn’t know how to do something or felt that they were bad at a particular subject. The tutor would empathize through action and adjust the session if they saw the tutee struggling to understand. Fourthly, a partnership was established through personal connections. Tutors would share something or ask something personal. The tutors connect material to the real world or tell a story to the students in order to help them connect to an idea. Fifthly, the tutor’s temperament reflected an established partnership with the students that was not managing the students behavior or giving the students a grade. Sixth, There were also examples of a give/take conversation. The tutor would make the tutee an active agent in the learning. The tutor/tutee would try to negotiate what was trying to be explained by the concept or themselves. The effect of this Tutor as Partner role resulted in more openness by the students. The student was honest 264 and open with the tutors and they had a wiliness to learn or be in the session. The student would tell the tutor openly what they knew or didn’t know. The student showed the tutor empathy and was willing to ask and answer questions in a session. The student would also ask the tutor about content, life, and say what they got or didn’t get in the session. Tutor as Facilitator: The tutor would facilitate the session in a variety of ways. First, the tutor would give choice to the students. The tutor would ask the students what they wanted to do in a session or the student would ask to do something and the tutor would give the green light. Second, the tutor would recognize when they had to back up a concept for the student in order for the student to get the larger idea. The tutor would usually back up concepts in more challenging sessions and show the student what they got wrong/right. Third, the tutor would facilitate the structure and approach that the session would take. Fourth, the tutor would facilitate within the session by checking for understanding. The tutor would have the students demonstrate the newly learned knowledge they were gaining by asking them questions about the content, stopping them throughout the session to cold call them about concepts to see if they understood, and had them demonstrate the knowledge they had just acquired by having the students work independently to show that they had taken in the information and were able to process it. The tutor would also conduct general check ins with students. They would ask if the student got something right, wait for a yes or no, and if the answer was yes, they would move on without asking the student for an explanation. Lastly, in repeat session, the tutor would facilitate in a more direct way with the language they used and how they structured the session. 265 Tutor as Translator: The tutor would either translate words English words into Spanish or use Spanish words to help the students translate a term or a direction in the session. The tutor would break things down into simpler English and help the students reword things. The tutor would share background knowledge, break down concepts, or give students different ways of thinking about things. The tutor would clarify things, use visuals, to translate concepts.