Assessing Multilingual Learners: A Multi-method Approach to Examining Culture, Identity, and Study Methodology

This work examines the relationship between emergent bilingual (EB) student identities, culture, and home–school dissonance to identify which factors most impact EB students’ success in school and to assess how the research community has measured these factors. To address this, I used a multimethod approach presented in three manuscripts: a statement of the problem (Chapter 1), a quantitative study (Chapter 2), and a systematic review (Chapter 3). Chapter 2 reports a study that explores the correlations between bicultural identity, bilingual identity, and home–school dissonance of college students. My findings support previous research with statistically significant positive correlations among all scales, suggesting that researchers must take both bicultural and bilingual identity into consideration when considering the impact of home–school dissonance on EB students. Chapter 3 is a systematic review of empirical research on the impact of home–school dissonance on EB students’ motivation and academic achievement in K-12 settings. This synthesis assesses the studies’ theoretical framework, specific research methodologies, and language use in both the research design and analysis of results. My findings suggest that language of administration plays a significant role on interpreting the validity of the research findings. Taken together, these three manuscripts support a focus on bilingualism and bilingual identity when designing empirical measures to assess the challenges and success of EB students in school settings, as well as a call for continued research into best practices in conducting effective empirical research with multilingual students