When I re-read my goals statement, I can see that my path has started to broaden and change. I learned a lot during my first year in the Ph.D. program at George Mason University. The program helped me realize that I can make a great impact on linguistically and culturally diverse children, their families, and their teachers with a strong foundation in educational theories and issues. Through this analytic essay, I will attempt to describe where I find myself at this point, and where I think I am going.
Academic Goals
My purpose for pursuing a Ph.D. in Education at George Mason University is to enhance my skills and knowledge in the field of young language minority children’s literacy development and teacher education. The coursework over the first year offered an appropriate continuation to addressing my academic goals. My primary specialization is Early Childhood Education (ECE), and I will complete 12 required credits in my specialization by the end of 2016 spring semester. I declared my secondary emphasis in Multilingual/Multicultural Education (MME) and filled out my coursework with this minor area during my second semester. In the future, I will take a course that will provide theory and concepts related to literacy acquisition and development in linguistically diverse young children, which ties directly into my research goals. Furthermore, I will continue to take courses in research methodology to develop my knowledge in research design, data analysis, as well as reporting methods and results.
Research Goals
As mentioned in my initial goal statement, one of major influences on my career was working as an English instructor at KT&G summer camp, which was an intensive outreach program. It was designed for children from low-income families, including linguistically and culturally diverse families. As the number of immigrants in Korea has rapidly increased for the last few decades, children, at least one of whose parents is an immigrant, have become a fast burgeoning part of the student population in Korea. However, it was surprising to see the microcosm of the real world where language and socioeconomic disadvantages cause them to substantially lag behind in language and literacy development in both Korean and English (the most prevailing and powerful foreign language in the country). It was even heartbreaking to find how concerned they were about their incomplete mastery of Korean, which they felt impeded their academic achievement and learning of other additional languages, including English. This discovery prompted me to examine the kind of linguistic and nonlinguistic characteristics of children from multicultural backgrounds may facilitate or impede literacy development and how practitioners in the public and commercial sectors can help socially disadvantaged children not fall behind.
Referring to those reasons, I was excited to work with Dr. Burns and Dr. Kidd whose research emphasize young children’s approaches to learning and language development as well as professional development of pre/in-service teachers working with children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. As a part of my GRA work, I have participated in conducting research on the writing instruction or strategies first- and second-grade teachers employ to promote the young authors from low-income, culturally and linguistically diverse families. I assisted in data collection and transcribed the dialogue between the participants and researchers. While transcribing, I could listen to the teachers’ voices and learned their understanding of children’s writing, strategies they used in writing class, difficulties to teach writing for young children. In the future semesters, I hope to complete coding and analyzing the data, so I can co-author a conference proposal and manuscript for Association of Literacy Educators and Research (ALER) in 2016.
In my second semester, I pursued the research studies related with bilingual children’s home language maintenance and literacy development in Family Research and Practice in ECE (ECED 804) and Second Language Acquisition (EDUC 882). Especially, through ECED 804, I explored home literacy patterns shaped by internal and external forces in Korean-American family members and their children as well as their experience in supporting their children’s bilingual development. Because there are few Korean courses in public school, Korean-American families strongly depend on community language programs for their children’s bilingual development (You, 2005). However, there is little research on the effectiveness of those language programs (Lee, 2002; Shin, 2005).
Luckily, I had chance to participate in StarTalk Summer Institute conducted by Dr. Haley. The program was a part of professional development for Korean native and heritage teachers in the U.S. Through this program, I met Korean native teachers in the Virginia area and listened to their experiences in teaching Korean-English bilingual children in community schools or public schools. New questions have begun to capture my attention, and I feel particularly drawn to the study of what strategies Korean language teachers in the States employ to guide Korea-American children’s biliteracy development as well as what difficulties the teachers have. For future semesters, I plan to develop and conduct a small-scale research on this topic while taking ECED702 Early Writing: Cognition, Language, and Literacy and EDRS812 Qualitative Methods in Educational Research.
Professional Goals
My professional experiences during my first year in doctoral program are directly connected to my research interests. I have worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for Dr. Burns and Dr. Kidd. While participating in their first- and second-grade teacher discussion research project, I learned to collect and organize the data, transcribe interviews as well as engage in preliminary data analysis and code data. I will continue to gain further research skills because I am working for both professors during this academic year of 2015-2016.
In addition to my research experiences, I had teaching assistance experience during 2015 summer session. I assisted Dr. Burns’ master’s level course, ECED 585: Research in Early Childhood Education. In this course, I provided some research data from first- and second-grade teacher discussion project with some general background knowledge of this project. I also helped students analyze and interpret the data and provided feedback on their final project. While pursuing my Ph.D. program, I hope to have more opportunities to have teacher education and professional development experiences, so I can be prepared for my future career.
For the coming semesters, one of my goals is to attend and present at academic conferences like American Educational Research Association (AERA), Association of Literacy Educators and Research (ALER), and Literacy Research Association (LRA). Through attending those conferences, I will learn more about current research in the field of literacy education in early childhood, which is my research interest. Moreover, I can share my research topic with experienced researchers and get some feedback. I will also put some efforts to find a way to connect my coursework with professional and academic activities during the next academic years.
References
Lee, J. S. (2002). The Korean language in America: The role of cultural identity in heritage language learning. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 15, 117-133. doi:10.1080/07098310208666683
Shin, S. J. (2005). Developing in two languages: Korean children in America. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
You, B. K. (2005). Children negotiating Korean American ethnic identity through their heritage language. Bilingual Research Journal, 29, 711-731.