THE NEEDS OF ESD (ENGLISH AS A SECOND DIALECT) STUDENTS AND THOSE OF ESD STUDENTS WITH OTHER SPECIAL NEEDS

by

Ed. Shook

EDSP 9012C – Doug Trevaskis

School of Education

Flinders University

Faculty of Education, Humanities, Law and Theology

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Aim of the Study

There are students in British Columbia, of Aboriginal origin, whose language is a dialect

of English that is different from standard Canadian English. As a result, their progress in school

does not reflect their abilities, nor does it occur naturally (as expected), according to their age.

Within this group there are those whose learning disabilities qualify them for special education.

How can these students best be identified and helped?

Statement of the Problem underlying the Study There is a tremendous gap between the standard of living of Aboriginals and the standard

of living of non-Aboriginal members in Canadian society (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada,

2004). Improving the educational attainment of Aboriginals is thought to be crucial to

improving the Aboriginal standard of living (Fontaine, 2005). The educational attainment of

Aboriginal students has lagged behind that of the non-Aboriginal population in Canada.

Recently the Canadian government has directed one billion dollars to improve the educational

attainment of the Aboriginal community because, without it, Aboriginals would not obtain equity

for another 28 years (Fraser, 2004).

In British Columbia the government is working hard to improve the quality of Aboriginal

education with a number of initiatives including accountability contracts that set goals based on

Aboriginal student achievement, enhancement agreements that School Boards sign with

Aboriginal communities to establish collaborative partnerships, and district reviews that identify

promising practices to assist other districts to improve student achievement (Morin, 2004). At

the same time the Federal government is being called upon to support Aboriginal education by

giving the Band run schools the equivalent structure and support that provincial schools have

(Fontaine, 2005).

One area of concern for both levels of government is how best to support the Aboriginal

students who are considered in need of special education (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada,

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2004; Morin, 2004). In British Columbia, few Aboriginal students are taking English 12 as a

prerequiste to going to college, and of those that do, in 2001, 31 percent passed the final exam as

compared to the 63 percent of the non-Aboriginals who passed. Even fewer take Math 12, and,

in 2001, 5 percent of the Aboriginal students taking the final test passed (British Columbia

Ministry of Education, 2004). In high school, those students who are working at a number of

different grade levels are considered to be in an ungraded program, and these students have a

high drop out rate. Forty-six percent of Aboriginal students in high school are considered to be in

ungraded programs. In addition, students with Special Education designations are all given

Individual Education Programs or I.E.P.s. Students with I.E.P.s often end up leaving school.

Excluding gifted programs, in which Aboriginals students are not represented, fifteen percent of

Aboriginal students are in special education programs. This is nearly four times the rate of non-

Aboriginals students. In School District #87, Stikine, during the 2004/2005 school year, 124 of

178 Aboriginal students were designated as English as a Second Dialect students, while 85

students of the 280 were designated in need of special education. Given the large percentage of

Aboriginal students in ESD and special education, it is important to accurately identify

Aboriginal students in need of these services. One of the aims of the I.E.P. that students receive

is to catch the student up with his classmates and although students can be designated both ESD

and special needs, the ESD program is limited to five years.

In northern communities Aboriginal people believe that schools should impart local

culture and beliefs, while educators see their role as preparing students for the outside world

(Goddard and Foster, 2002). Although the federal government provides funding to promote

language and the provincial government encourages cultural language aides in the classroom, the

teaching of Aboriginal culture in many school districts is inadequate, in part, because there are

difficulties finding Aboriginals able to work in the schools. In School District #87, Stikine, two

of four schools were left without a cultural aide for the 2004-2005 school year. The four

communities within this district represent four different Aboriginal cultures and languages.

School district personnel must relate to several groups of Native people who are distinctively

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different one from another. This serves to complicate policy and administrative procedures,

frustrate curriculum development, and impede communication (Sullivan, 1988).

According to the School District #87 Resource Support for ESL/ESD Students, students

need to develop as citizens, and intellectually, being enabled to achieve the expected learning

outcomes of the provincial curriculum. In this document, specifically, concerning language, it is

stated that: “learning a language means, among other things, learning to use the language to

socialize, learn, query, imagine, and wonder and integrating language with the teaching of

curricular content simultaneously develops students’ language, subject-area knowledge, and

thinking skills”(p. 10). As well, goals are comprehensive, as explained: “English language

proficiency should be considered in broad terms to take account of differences between language

used for social interaction and language used for academic purposes in all content areas” (p.11).

What can school districts do to best meet the needs of these students who, identified as

ESD, are in the process of losing their Aboriginal language? They are isolated and yet lack the

motivation, as they see it, to become ‘white.’

Key Research Questions:

1. What assistance can be offered to best help ESD students cultivate their literacy skills, given

the poverty of assessment strategies?

2. Is there a best, most efficient method to identify and help those students whose problem go

further than ESD e.g., they also require special education?

Research Methods

This study will be restricted to a literature review.

Significance of the Study

This study seeks to examine ESD and special education in Northern Aboriginal

communities. Because of the unique nature of every Band community, specific research is

unavailable in the literature. The study is unique in its selection of topics from the literature in

the attempt to answer the reseach questions, including research on ESL students who are mostly

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living in the United States, studies done with the Alaskan Indians, and special education

research.

Definition Sections

Band: refers to a group of people who live in a community on an Indian reserve. The affairs of

the band are administered by the band council similar to the way in which a city council operates

the business of a city (Campbell, Menzies and Peacock, 2003)

Dialect: according to Random House Webster's CollegeDictionary (1995) “1. a variety of a

language distinguished from other varieties by features of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary

and by its use by a group of speakers set off from others geographically or socially. 2. a

provincial, rural, or socially distinct variety of a language that differs from the standard

language, especially when considered as nonstandard.” (p. 372)

Limitations and Delimitations

One limitation of the study is the relationship of health and poverty and their effects on

education. Further, it does not look at the relationship between Aboriginal rights and funding

formulas that affect Band and provincial schools. There are potential factors, both political and

economic in nature, which may have a profound impact of the delivery of ESD and special

education services to Aboriginal students for which this study cannot account.

Literature Review

Introduction

This literature review is divided into a number of sections. First the study sketches

Canada's educational treatment of Aboriginals from a historical perspective to place the current

situation in context, showing how that treatment is still influencing the way Aboriginal students

are treated today and how it affects them as they try to become literate. Specifically the focus is

on the attitudes that affect ESD (English as a Second Dialect) students, some who will also have

learning deficits. Then it explores theories about language acquisition and how most children

obtain literacy. Scaffolding, with its gender and cultural complexities, is also considered. The

effects of politics on this issue is introduced. Following that is a survey of the selection process

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involving the testing of children to meet the provincial ESD designation. There is an exploration

of the tests that are being used with ESD students, probing their relative merit. Some

suggestions as to what types of assistance that can be offered these students follow.

Historical Background

How and when the indigenous people arrived in North America doesn’t matter. Canadian

Aboriginals are a diverse population, divided into many recognized nations. They developed

their own cultures, each with its distinctive language and traditions. Since the 1996 census, there

has been a rise in their population, from 3.8% to 4.4% of the Canadian population; 1.3 million

people are identified as Aboriginals (Census of Canada, 2001). There are twelve distinctive

Aboriginal language families in Canada.

Along with the arrival of European settlers to North America in the sixteenth century,

came missionaries. They viewed the natives as potential converts. In 1620 an order of

Franciscans began a boarding school in their attempt to convert the Aboriginals. In the 1950s the

modern residential schools were created. Wilson (2000) summarizes the process:

Very young children would enter school as Indians and be whitened by their years there,

the Indian "educated" out of them. They would graduate with English as their language,

Christianity as their faith and a useful trade to take back to their reserves — the product

of a social-engineering partnership between the federal government, which owned the

schools, and the major churches, which ran them. (p. 1)

Many of the Aboriginals believed that these schools were organized cultural genocide.

There are now 86 000 Aboriginals who attended these schools. This represents 6.6% of the

Aboriginal population. Today, these people comprise at least 20%, or a major proportion of the

adult population. As children, despite the trauma they experienced, they rebelled in every way

they could. Desperately trying to hang onto their culture, they ran away, met illegally, and wrote

illegal letters complaining to parents. Carpenter (1991) gives us one painful example:

After a lifetime of beating, going hungry, standing in a corridor on one leg, and

walking in snow with no shoes for speaking Inuvialuktun, and having a heavy, stinging

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paste rubbed on my face, which they did to stop us from expressing our Eskimo custom

of raising our eyebrows for ‘yes’ and wrinkling our noses for ‘no’, I soon lost the ability

to speak my mother tongue. When a language dies, the world it was generated from is

broken too. (p.277)

Churches stopped overseeing the residential schools in 1969. The attitudes that

Aboriginals developed there, as a result of their experiences, have influenced their children in

school today.

Another problem, gender inequality, was introduced by the fur traders. They refused to

do business with First Nations women. Many Aboriginal societies are and always have been

matriarchal. Otway (2004) explains:

In these matriarchal societies, if there was any unequal power to be had, it was had by the

women because they would hold the positions of clan mothers and they were the ones

that made all the major decisions. So they had more say in many of the key areas than

the men. (p.1)

Later, in the Indian Act, this inequality was written into law. It wasn’t until 1960 that

Aboriginals were given voting rights, with the Aboriginal women being discriminated against

under Section 12(1)b of the Indian Act until 1985.

The provincial government of British Columbia refused to even negotiate with the

Aboriginal nations about their land claims. It took a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada on

December 11, 1994, which stated that the provinces, including British Columbia, couldn’t

extinguish Aboriginal title to the land. Both the federal and provincial governments had the duty

to deal with Aboriginal title in good faith.

Under the Canadian constitution, education is a provincial jurisdiction and each province

provides educational services, with the Department of Indian Affairs providing the funding. The

Survey of Contemporary Indians of Canada, Volume II, known as the Hawthorn Report, was

published in 1967. The study, coordinated by H.B. Hawthorn, examined Canadian Aboriginal

peoples’ social, educational, and economic situations. The discussion on education focused

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largely on the inequality and injustice. For the most part, the conditions in 1967 affecting

Aboriginal learners are still relevant today within the context of the public schools. The report

raised the awareness of the dire state of Aboriginal education in Canada. It was in 1972 that the

Chiefs of the National Indian Brotherhood adopted the first written policy on Indian education.

Although there has been some advancement in educational policy, many unresolved issues

regarding Aboriginal education in Canada still remain (Schugurensky, 2002).

When we examine First Nations education historically, a pattern emerges that consists of

a system of education that, for the most part, has been imposed on First Nations students with

blatant disregard for First Nations languages, cultures and collective knowledge and wisdom.

Amir (1992), in touring Canada to study the policy of multiculturalism, found it birthed of

political expediency by the Anglo-oriented majority:

On the one hand, multiculturalism proclaims the cultural equality of the different ethnic

groups; on the other hand, many majority group members and leaders prefer the country

and its society to continue to be Angloculturally oriented and believe that in the long (but

not too long) run it will indeed be so. (p.26)

Khan (1999) contributes another perspective:

Another conflict that has arisen is that many First Nations people do not want to be part

of “ethnic Canada,” since they are not immigrants and they feel that they are not visible

minorities...Many people across Canada feel that First Nations children should be taught

by First Nations Teachers in First Nations schools. (p.3)

In the 1980s a new phase of First Nations education opened up. Band run schools

became fully available to Aboriginal children. These schools were dependent on federal funds,

but the bands were in control of administering the schools, developing curriculum, and hiring

personnel (Khan, 1999).

In 2002 the Assembly of First Nations made recommendations to the federal government

about education. On the website for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (2004) can

be found one such recommendation. Because there is an overrepresentation of First Nations

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students in special education programs in both provincial and territorial schools, there needs to

be an immediate joint investigation into the quality and effectiveness of special education

programs. The purpose is to ensure that First Nations learners are accurately identified and

receiving support and remediation that is effective and relevant to bring about, in the long term,

improved academic success (Quality in First Nations Education, 2002).

The historical treatment of First Nations peoples, by attempting to assimilate them

through the educational system, affects the quality of First Nations education today. It

negatively affects both the attitudes of non-Aboriginals, prejudicing them against the

Aboriginals, and the Aboriginals, prejudicing them against the system. The system of having

educational funding for Aboriginals controlled and dispersed federally to the bands gives

Aboriginal people flexibility in their negotiations with the provincial educational authority. If

the province is unable to satisfy the concerns of the Aboriginals, they can always take the money

and create their own band run school. Under these conditions ESD was implemented as part of

the British Columbia curriculum.

Views of Language and Dialect

Language and thought are entangled. Gleitman and Papafragou (2005) describe the

sketchy nature of language compared to the richness of thought: "If one tried to say all and

exactly what one meant, conversation could not happen; speakers would be lost in thought" (p.

638). It is through the aculturalization process that children select the sound cues that are

important to attend to, repeat and learn. In Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1934/1992),

Kozulin offers these introductory words: "A child's development knows preintellectual speech as

well as nonverbal thought; only with the establishment of interfunctional systemic unity does

thought become verbal, and speech become intellectual." (p. xxxii)

From the child's perspective, the world he or she views in detail includes experiences,

feelings, sounds, images, and impressions. The power of interpretation comes to the child

through the growth of language and culture that affects his or her thoughts. The people with

whom the child shares his or her young life are essential and central to the interpretation of the

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contextual worlds of the child's experience. Language is the foundation, as it is through social

interactions with family and friends that the child's everyday experiences are clarified (Taylor,

1993).

Piaget sought to show that a child's thought is illogical and irrational (Vygotsky,

1934/1992). But, if a child's thought is exclusively syncretic, what makes it possible for him to

adapt? When new information is contradictory and resists assimilation, children try, through

experimentation, to make sense of the new information. As a result of their interpretation they

develop assimilation schemes. Incorporation of new information that invalidates a scheme

provides a need for change or accommodation. The need for internal consistency, or

equilibration, compels children to reorganize assimilation schemes that are contradictory, thereby

building new systems or assimilation schemes. Gleitman and Papafragou (2005) add further

light: "But if one only computes what one must for the combined purposes of linguistic

intelligibility and present communicative purpose, then speakers of different languages, to this

extent, must be thinking differently" (p.644).

This has implications for the language of ESD students. Do any of these Aboriginal

dialects qualify as sufficiently distinct to be language? Are these dialects different enough from

standard Canadian English that the speakers are thinking differently? Fasold (1999) states:

"There are cases around the world of the two logical possibilities: cases in which mutually

unintelligible linguistic varieties belong to the same language and others where mutually

intelligible varieties are separate languages" (p. 1). Fasold suggests that dialects are presupposed

to be corruptions of language. If this is so, then the Aboriginal dialect speaker is handed another

perceived handicap, for which there are extensive teaching implications.

Fillmore (2002), in her experience with Alaskan Aboriginals contributes clarity to the

language/dialect dichotomy:

Dialect Speakers do not see themselves as language learners—at least with respect to

English. They see themselves as English Speakers. They recognize that their English is

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somewhat different, but they may be unaware of how different it is from the standard

variety.

For the most part, these varieties of English are mutually intelligible with Standard

English. Speakers may realize that they don’t understand everything—but they

understand enough so they don’t have to hang on to people’s words or to pay much

attention to how they are saying what they are saying. It’s not that they are

unmotivated—they just don’t need to do more than listen for meaning, and since that

comes easily enough, there is no need to listen for form. If there is no attention to form,

there is little substance for language learning.

Standard English Speakers recognize that there are differences between the variety they

speak and one spoken by the Dialect Speakers, but because they are communicating well

enough there is no reason to make any accommodations in the language they use. To

make the kind of adjustments they are likely to make to L2 learners (second language

learners) would seem patronizing when used with D2 learners (second dialect learners)

(p. 11).

Vygotsky (1934/1992) saw language learning as primarily a social event, with its

natural beginning between parent and child. He sought to specify how higher mental functioning

is a reflection of the individual’s historical, institutional, and cultural setting. Imitation or the

cultural transmission of uniquely human forms of knowledge was his focus. The child’s cultural

development is dependent on interaction with other people first before internalization on an

individual level becomes possible. The means of social interaction, especially speech, is taken

over and internalized by the child, thereby qualitatively heightening the child’s level of

functioning. Social interaction is first provided for the child in the home environment. The

child’s natural and developing abilities are transformed, reorganized or restructured by social

interaction.

Language and its Development: How Children Acquire Literacy

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As members of a literate society young children construct their own literacy. Children

have specialized knowledge of their own literacy (Sulzby & Teale, 1991) and participate in

literacy events from birth (Baghban, 1984;Taylor, 1983; Wells, 1986). They do so through

social interaction, a reciprocal activity vital for the development of their thinking processes and

literacy (Vygotsky, 1978). What is known generally about a child's early or emergent literacy

has relevancy to the experience of the Aboriginal child.

Oral language acquisition research of the 1960s and 1970s, in exploring children’s

strategies in learning language, found that children actively generate and test hypotheses (James,

1990). As problem solvers they not only imitate but construct language. Children may respond

to written language as they do oral language. There is a normal course of development for

children learning to read and write, potentially with a typical developmental sequence,

conventions, and time frames.

As young children become literate they extend their language facility from listening and

speaking to reading and writing (Taylor, 1983). Whereas speech fits words to the context of the

real world, written language uses words to construct the context as necessary to achieve meaning

(Wells, 1986). Schon’s (1983) description of the adult reflective practitioner may be equally

applied to the child’s experimentation with language.

In each instance, the practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement,

or confusion in a situation, which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the

phenomena before him, and on the prior understandings, which have been implicit

in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new

understanding of the phenomena and a change in the situation. (p. 68)

The discovery that children can, as suggested here, actively participate in literacy events

from birth is in sharp contrast to the assumption commonly held prior to the 1920s that only

through formal school instruction could children's literacy be developed (Teale & Sulzby, 1986).

The research into the study of emergent literacy--the literacy of young children--has taken

decades to initiate. Evidence that children could read at a very young age without the benefit of

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school instruction (Durkin, 1966) helped to define emergent literacy (Clay, 1972), thus

facilitating its research. Marie Clay (1972; 1975), who sought to find out what children do

when they read and write, found more individual variation than strict developmental sequence.

Ferreiro (1984; 1986; 1990) explored children's experimentation with written language and

confirmed the problem solving approach children use. Social interaction (Vygotsky, 1978) has

been recognized as vital for the development of children's thinking processes and literacy.

A teacher-as-researcher, Ashton-Warner (1963) reported her use of key vocabulary to

motivate rural Maori children to read and write and demonstrated that younger children

experienced emerging literacy. To teach reading and writing she made use of powerful first

words, that were remembered because they had intense personal meaning for a child: “The

pictures are already there in the child’s mind, individual, and emotionally equipped” (p. 176).

Those very personal or organic words, captions to the mind’s pictures, provided the child with a

means to write autobiographically. According to Ashton-Warner, “a child’s writing is his own

affair…. The more it means to him the more value it is to him. And it means everything to

him…. It is the unbroken line of thought that we cultivate so carefully in our own writing and

conversation” (p. 54).

Harste, Burke and Woodward (1982) assume that written language grows and develops

like oral language—in that both are social and meaningful. Moving from an understanding of

what language can do—its semantic and pragmatic aspects, they can consider how it is formed—

the syntactic and graphophonemic aspects. Its meaning, both for oneself and others, gives

impetus for the search to discover how it is formed.

Because language is a sociolinguistic process it has a linguistic component (who

produces the language and for whom?), a situational component (where is the language found?),

and a cultural component (from which culture does the language originate?). The context of

language helps children to discover regularities in language and establish generalizations about

its use.

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Reading and writing are but a natural extension of oral language learning, in that children

negotiate, test hypotheses, and fine tune their language by its further use (James, 1990). They

conduct experiments. In appreciating its complexity children coordinate pragmatics (suitability),

semantics (meaning), syntax (cohesive aspects), and graphics (placeholders). Definitive

sequencing is impossible in a child’s emerging literacy as so many factors work together (Clay,

1975).

A sensitive measure of the child’s intellectual abilities is not what the child can achieve

alone, but instead what problem solving a child can achieve in cooperation with an adult. ZPD,

“the zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1934/1992, p. xxxv) is that place where the

child’s empirically rich but spontaneous concepts require the systematic and logical adult

reasoning and assistance. It is the potential or the difference between the child’s independent

problem solving and that possible with adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable

peers. As the strength of adult scientific logic compensates for the weaknesses of spontaneous

reasoning, the solution of this cooperative effort is integrated into the child’s own reasoning.

This socially guided imitation, that begins for the child at home, is meaningful to intellectual

advancement. “Culturally sanctioned symbolic systems are remodeled into individual verbal

thought” (Vygotsky, 1934/1992, p.xxxvi). This “inner speech” (intrapsychological mental

functions) allows the child to do independently what first demanded adult (i.e., parental) support.

It becomes an internal tool of self-regulation and reflection. Vygotsky (1978) explains: “The

most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the

purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical

activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge” (p. 24). The

result then, for the child, with the help of parents and other adults, is the appropriation of an

increasingly differentiated and sophisticated set of social tools.

According to Vygotsky (1934/1992), every function in a child’s cultural development

appears socially, within the family, before it can be internalized. It is interaction in the social

setting of the family that begets this internalization. In his effort to understand the relationship

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between consciousness and culture, he investigated “specifically how human consciousness and

functioning is raised to higher levels through the successful transmission of culturally developed

mediational means of thought” (Fowler, 1994, pp. 4-5).

One aspect of children’s cultural development Vygotsky (1934/1992) discusses is their

acquisition of scientific concepts. To gain conscious control over a concept, children practice

skills spontaneously and unconsciously (Mason & Sinha, 1992). Scientific concepts, originating

in the structured and specialized classroom instruction impose upon the child’s logically defined

concepts, whereas the spontaneous concepts are the child’s own reflections on everyday

experiences. Vygotsky (1934/1992) argued that those scientific concepts must undergo

substantial development before assimilation can occur and this is dependent on the child’s

general ability to comprehend concepts. Spontaneous concepts then, work their way “up”

toward greater abstractness, permitting scientific concepts to work their way “downward” to

greater concreteness. The dynamic interaction, or dialectic, between the child’s spontaneous and

society’s scientific concepts produces a series of “failed”, yet increasingly adequate concepts.

Scientific concepts restructure and uplift the spontaneous, supplying a systematic framework.

Vygotsky (1934/1992) believed that learning begins in social interaction, making

possible the appropriation of culturally developed skills and functions. Social processes become

internalized and determine our thinking processes. He explains that “the development of

‘theoretical’ or ‘ideal’ mediation must be considered in the context of the subject’s real, practical

relations with reality, in the context of that which actually determines the origin, the

development, and the content of mental activity” (p. xlvii). He envisioned the mind as a set of

abilities that are both contextually and culturally specific. In Ashton-Warner’s (1963) words,

“education, fundamentally, is the increase of the percentage of the conscious in relation to the

unconscious” (p. 207).

Scaffolding

Other researchers share Vygotsky’s (1934/1992) respect for social interaction in an

individual’s learning. The implication for language learning through adult-child interaction is

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tremendous, as explained by the concept of scaffolding (Harste, Woodward & Burke, 1984).

The term implies that the adult is in charge, simplifying, manipulating, or structuring the

environment for the benefit of the child’s learning. There is a qualitative difference between

adult-child speech interactions and those interactions among adults. Children’s sentences are

shorter and the adult expands and elaborates on children’s responses. Loss of meaning is the

only reason to correct deviations. The adult is able to facilitate the child’s acquisition of

language by determining the language structures best used for any given child.

Bruner and Haste (1987) describes the scaffolding process whereby the child may be

helped to communicate more effectively by peers, siblings, parents, and teachers, in a variety of

situations. In the process of problem-solving, parents challenge the child’s cognitive approach

through pacing. Cultural values may be transmitted through scaffolding e.g., when playing a

game parents convey the notion that it is desirable to win the game. Older siblings can show

younger ones such things as how to tease or comfort-another type of scaffolding. Mothers

discuss and give structure to the feeling states of children—found to occur more often with girls

than boys. As children interact with their mothers, they are exposed to their mothers’

perspective and direction of interest, and taught how to take turns. Gender-marked language is

learned through the mother’s scaffolding. Scaffolding thus takes several forms, for example,

early correction of utterances, pacing of problem solving, shaping appropriate and increasingly

sophisticated language use with distinctions according to gender.

Berko-Gleason’s (1989) research examines the intricacies of social interaction and its

effect on language learning. She found that the little nods and “uh-huhs” characteristic of adult

conversations are not supplied by children, and may, in the scaffolding process, constitute a plea

for simplification on the part of the adult. The adult must monitor the success of the

conversation. She uncovered sex-role appropriateness of particular speech patterns. While men

more commonly use “swear” terms, women are more likely to say “Oh dear!, my goodness!,

thank you, and good-bye”. She found that fathers tend to use more imperatives and insulting

terms with sons and endearing terms with daughters. Fathers used specific lexical terms more

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often than mothers e.g., “wrench” instead of “that turn thing”. Fathers interrupt their children

more often than mothers, and are more demanding conversational partners than mothers. There

are implications here for the type of scaffolding provided by fathers and mothers to their sons

and daughters and its relationship, although indirect, to their literacy learning.

Further to the inquiry of Berko-Gleason (1989), Hoff-Ginsberg (1994) considered the

effects that socioeconomic status (SES) and birth order have on a child’s oral language

development. She found that SES was associated with differences in lexical development.

Children of college-educated mothers used larger object-label vocabularies compared to children

of high school educated mothers. While first-born children had the advantage in syntax and

lexical development, later born children were advantaged in conversational skill.

Dyson (1990) stresses the need to add the horizontal to the vertical dimension of

scaffolding. It is important for adults to respond to young children’s diverse intentions in

literacy activities without diminishing the necessity of adult guidance. This provides the

greatest challenge to teachers, as parents know their children well.

The scaffolding of concepts important to literacy were the focus of Snow and Ninio

(1986). In examining the mother-child interaction during picture-book reading, they look at the

“contracts of literacy”, or those rules related to the use of books and the meaning of texts, that

children learn during that specific type of interaction. Mothers’ speech increases in complexity

during book reading but nevertheless the experience is a very productive one. Snow and Ninio

question what participation in such interaction teaches children about literacy. A book

physically invites contemplation (looking at), rather than action (eating). Typically during

labeling sessions the mother supplies the name for the picture if the child is unable to. In this

way a ritualized dialogue is established. With repeated readings the focus changes—so that the

child is exposed to more complex, elaborate, and decontextualized language than can result from

any other kind of interaction. This may be the source of the child’s ability to understand and

subsequently produce the decontextualized language of reading and writing.

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The scaffolding made available to the child by the mother during the joint activity of

picture-book reading is not available when the child faces a written text alone. The mother

knows the child’s life activities, language control, and preferences almost as well as her own.

She can therefore merge both their experiences as she simultaneously introduces the book. She

can allow the book to influence the thoughts of its “readers” so that the child learns that the book

is symbolic, that is, not real, but a representation of what is real. Children first learn to read a

picture-book—to say a word that matches a picture. Later they will say words that match the

written word. They learn to see the point of reading, taking the adult’s lead. Mothers begin with

“what” and “where” questions to elicit descriptions, but go on to “how”, “what then”, and “why”

questions to develop event sequences, motives, and consequences. Children model parents’

reading strategies.

Snow and Ninio (1986) indicate that it is decontexualized language rather than print itself

that gives children difficulty when they are learning to read. Literacy includes the ability to

create and comprehend realities supported entirely by language and illustration.

Heath (1986) reiterates this theme as she questions how children are affected by early

language experience in order to successfully separate things of the imagination from those of

life. Successful readers and writers engage the text by using past experience related to the

current text, to test the text’s future development; they predict and infer. Just as writers create

texts through imagination, readers must interpret them in the same way. Heath identifies those

oral language habits that allow readers to become interpreters or imaginers. She draws upon her

extensive ethnographic research in Trackton, a ”black” community, Roadville, a “white”

community, and the mainstream communities of the Piedmont Carolinas (1983). She reported,

for the purpose of contrast, an excerpt from a parent-child sustained interaction from each

community.

No opportunity is afforded the children from Trackton and Roadville to recombine

ideas—to interpret, to imagine. The Trackton child is not taken seriously as a conversational

partner, and the Roadville child is expected always to give an accurate recount of the event being

19

discussed, minus any imaginative element. But for the child from the mainstream community,

the only one destined to succeed in school, a narrative was encouraged and challenged. The

parents demanded more details, description of emotion, clarification etc., and they verified the

child’s account of dramatic play, complete with imaginative and interpretive elements. Not only

was this child frequently encouraged to talk, but she was able to provide information not known

to her parents, by recreating her common experiences for example, at birthdays and play school.

Adding further to the possible worlds children from the mainstream community were

permitted to create through their narratives, Bruner (1984) talks of the appeal of reading in the

possible worlds text can penetrate. Children are better prepared through imaginative

opportunities, through projection into future worlds. We must recognize the cultural differences

that bear upon children’s early experiences, to permit variable degrees of multiplying images,

and synthesizing past images and experiences to make new ones. As well, the extent to which

children’s narratives are examined by parents for form and function will influence children’s

preparedness for texts.

An outstanding in-depth study of the social interaction, the scaffolding available to young

children both at home and school resides in Wells’ (1986) longitudinal study which compared

the language of home and school. Children’s language development had to be understood in the

context of interaction. The original sample of 128 children represent 128 families willing to

participate, randomly selected from Health Department Records. Family backgrounds, boys,

girls, and season of birth were all equally represented. Observations made every three months, at

a playroom at the university, included testing the child’s comprehension and their ability to

imitate sentences in a simple story. Information about the home environment and childrearing

was sought from the parents when the child was three and one half years old. Quantitative

analysis, Wells found, had to be balanced by the “embeddedness of conversation in the texture of

everyday life” (p. 15).

Children’s language development had to be understood in the context of interaction.

Wells found that communication is an opportunity to negotiate, collaborate, and reciprocate

20

about intended meaning, as child and adult share an activity with the same objects and events.

Parents credit their children with having intention and support their conversation, allowing the

child partnership. Children actively construct their own hypotheses and modify them. As part of

this process, children are able to teach adults how to talk so as to make learning easy for them.

Shared interest and involvement in events of everyday life are what “teaches” the child the way

of the adult. When treated as equal partners in conversation, children are helped to talk and to

learn through talk, modifying their internal model of the world. Wells demonstrated that the

quality of utterance was very different at home and at school. Children speak less at school,

responding more to teacher questions and requests, with speech narrowed in its range of

meanings and fragmentary in a grammatical sense. The equality children enjoyed in

conversation at home was fundamental to their emerging literacy.

Politics and Language

Eakle (2003) suggests that literacy events should be relevant to the life of the student.

High-quality language programs are intended to meet the educational and/or special needs of all

students and especially other language minority students (Jia-ling and Jiminez, 2003).

Unfortunately, the teaching of literacy skills are often assigned to teachers with little or no

second-language training or knowledge of student languages and cultures (Eakle, 2003).

Ultimately, the situation is complicated. From the resource One Book, One School (1989)

comes this statement: “The status of language in education is largely a political issue, and is

closely dependent on the directions of linguistic policy, national priorities concerning language,

and the degree of availability or openness of society to linguistic differences” (p. 20). This

statement concurs with the work of Amir (1992).

Fillmore (2002) offers her insights:

Consider the usual sentiments and attitudes that standard English speakers have toward

speakers of non-standard dialects—these are revealed in the way they interact, what they

say, how they treat the students…. the process of acquiring such language is complicated

psychologically, politically, and emotionally:

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Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property

of the speaker’s (i.e., here, the learner’s) intentions; it is populated—overpopulated—

with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and

accents, it is a difficult and complicated process…”

Learning Standard English then puts kids into the position of having to decide whether

they want to be like the people who despise them, who look down on them, and who do

not believe that they are worthwhile or worthy! (p. 4)

There are 33 different Aboriginal languages in British Columbia, many of which are

becoming extinct. The rapid loss of Aboriginal languages has a negative effect on emotional

and social well-being, by impeding the transmission of important family values, weakening

family cohesion, and harming one's sense of self (Jia-ling & Jimenez, 2003).

While all dialects of a language are linguistically legitimate, some dialects are marked

socially by a greater prestige (Fasold, 1999; Gasser, 2003; Scott, 2004). Kublu and Mallon

(1999) state that ".... Studies have suggested that many fluently bilingual people shift their

personalities (or shall we say their culture) as they shift languages" (p. 2).

The opening declaration, that education is one important method for perpetuating a

culture, is found in the paper Quality in First Nations Education (2002) posted on the Indian and

Northern Affairs Canada website. English As A Second Dialect students are those children

whose dialect of English is sufficiently different from standard Canadian English as to restrict

their academic progress so that their school progress is not commensurate with their age and

abilities. This group includes First Nations students.

Although ESD students are in many ways different than ESL learners, the Ministry of

Education (2001) identifies them as ESL learners on the Ministry website:

Although a great deal of work is being done to revive and maintain the cultural and

linguistic foundations of First Nations peoples, it is sometimes forgotten that First

Nations students may require specific English language support at school. At the same

time, there is a need to provide culturally relevant resources to support First Nations

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students' language learning (e.g., resources about First Nations cultures, written in

English). ESL programming for First Nations students should also take account of and

complement other Aboriginal Education programs with a cultural focus that may have

been developed for these students.(p. 1)

Many of these Aboriginal students attend school in remote communities, on reserves,

where they use an English dialect for their communication. Fillmore (2002) summarizes:

In the case of American Natives, there are dialects of English that developed several

generations ago, when the grandparents and great-grandparents of the present school

children were taken from their families and placed in boarding schools where English

was the only language used. (p.1)

Young children see the relationship between language and culture (Harste, Burke and

Woodward, 1982) as demonstrated by data produced by four-year-olds in a preschool program.

In contrast to the scribbles which look undeniably English was the Arabic sample, using a lot

more dots, about which the author remarked,”...but you can't read it, because it is in Arabic” (p.

107). A sample from an Isreali child had the predictable look of Hebrew. These children

showed expectations for print and a developing print awareness involving cognitive and

linguistic decisions they made within the sociolinguistic context of their early written language

environments.

Teaching Implications

How do Aboriginals see their English being designated? Do they see it as being

categorized as inadequate? Nonstandard dialects are legitimate linguistically, but they tend to be

unacceptable to society's elite; most often nonstandard dialects are spoken by the less educated

and the poor (Scott, 2004). Discouraging the use of nonstandard dialects in the formal situations

and the writing opportunities characteristic of the school environment can lead to the death of the

nonstandard dialects (Gasser, 2003). Is this the assimilation suggested by Amir (1992)?

How best then to teach ESD is the question, especially when there are potentially very

strong lingering attitudes from the time parents attended residential schools? How are these

23

attitudes translated to the students as they are assigned and taught as ESD students because their

language is thought to be inadequate? Attitude can be a major factor in learning.

Simply changing the name, calling ESD (English as a Second Dialect) instead English as

Skills Development, as teachers do in the Campbell River and Sooke School Districts, can help

parents’ and students’ attitudes toward the program. But even if the districts try to mask ESD

this way, as if it were a problem, changing the program is a provincial responsibility. An

important question to ask is, How can more neutral conditions be created in which children can

learn standard English (Fillmore, 2002)? If it is thought to be a skills development, then the

school districts can use this to support Aboriginal Bands to increase preschool children’s skill

development, according to one recommendation by Sullivan (1988), which refers to the need to

improve the preschool and early school language capabilities of Native children.

A two-way communication problem could exist between teacher and student. Scott

(2004) outlines one of the student’s problems:

Constantly being misunderstood eventually affects a person’s self-esteem. Those with

lowered self-esteem tend to perform poorly when being watched, as they are sensitive to

possible negative reactions. They may become quiet and passive so as not to draw

attention to themselves. (p. 5)

Aboriginal students are often described as unresponsive, passive, and quiet, behaviors which

stem from the survival technique of thinking things through before actually trying them

(Charlie, 2001). This quiet, seemingly passive response by many Aboriginal children is

becoming a problem in the school setting and in the assessment setting as well. Aboriginal

students' lack of eye contact is often interpreted as not paying attention and not learning, when

they've actually been taught to look straight in a person's eyes to challenge the speaker (Nickels

and Piquemal, 2005). Not only can Aboriginal children be characterized as hesitant to speak, but

their short responses often lack important details. Their work as well may be very slow and even

fearfully executed, in the attempt to avoid error (Sattler, 1990). Considering their past history,

short and deliberate responses were most appropriate to stimulus in the bush (Charlie, 2001).

24

There, making even a small error could be critical to survival. Careful and measured responses

were essential. In the classroom, on the other hand, if it is looked on as a problem, this passivity

becomes something the teacher needs to correct or overcome. But if this quality is instead

perceived positively, the educator can lengthen his or her waiting time in anticipation of a

response to provide better and more complete feedback that will accommodate and support the

learner. Test designers can design tests so that there is less emphasis on results secured under the

pressure of time measurement. Unless educators understand that Aboriginal people have a

different set of cultural imperatives, they will likely continue to misinterpret their actions, and

susequently impose harmful remedies (Nickels & Piquemal, 2005).

It is important to value the rich culture and heritage that Aboriginal students bring to the

classroom, and these can be shared with other students (Teicher, 2005). Realistically, teachers

must supply relevant prior knowledge that students are lacking or, be willing to accept flawed

comprehension. Providing culturally relevant instruction and materials can offer the critical link

between prior knowledge and texts that students must read (Baca & Cervantes, 1991;

McEachern, 1990). The challenge in this task is summarized by Corrie (1995), who says:

At times, schools provide disembedded learning, which means that children are required

to think in an abstract way about discrete pieces of knowledge. Disembedded or

decontextualized learning makes the learning process harder for most children, and

difficulties may be compounded in cross-cultural settings. Research shows that some

Aboriginal children are alienated by the disembedded nature of school learning because

they cannnot make meaningful links to their existing knowledge” (p. 263).

Teachers should include teaching strategies that incorporate Aboriginal culture and

learning styles (Kanu, 2002). Using culturally relevant reading material is beneficial to

improving reading comprehension (Labercane & McEachern, 1995). This can be done by

creating locally produced reading material or rewriting traditional material to be culturally

relevant. Ashton-Warner (1963) pioneered the use of key vocabulary. Using reading materials

that relate to children's lives, such as students' names and oral histories, that can be developed

25

into big books and predictable books, helps children appreciate that literature is experience

written down (Reyhner, 2001). Classroom activities should match cultural norms and

assignments should require group interaction (Bazron, Osher & Fleishman, 2005). The teacher

and school should invite the use of the Aboriginal culture and dialect and/or language, displaying

students work samples, welcoming the native language in discussions, and opening the

curriculum and school to traditional knowledge.

The Whole Language philosophy is compatible with the way Aboriginals learn at home

(Froese, 1990; Kasten, 1992). Whole language puts a heavy burden on teachers to plan and

organize, but to alleviate this, teachers can thoughtfully supplement basal programs with

materials that are suitable to the needs and interests of their students (Reyhner, 2001). Thematic

units can be build around Aboriginal background to focus student comprehension and interest

(Reyhner, 1993). Teachers should use clear direct language, while providing concrete examples

to offer scaffolding for the students about their assigned tasks (Kanu, 2002). The classroom

atmosphere needs to be supportive to increase the oral participation of Aboriginal students.

Teachers need to talk to parents directly rather than using written communications (Bazron,

Oshner & Fleischman, 2005). They need to have a collaborative orientation in order to work

closely with other teachers, teacher aides, and other cultural aides, to improve their

communication with the parents and the community in culturally and linguistically relevant ways

(Fowler & Hopper, 1998). Teachers need to have an attitude of respect for cultural differences,

know the cultural resources, and be able to tap them to enhance the learning process (Pewewardy

& Hammer, 2003).

We need to seek to work from the standpoint of adding to the child's repertoire, rather

than correcting the child's language (Wheeler and Swords, 2002). Rather than eradication of

their dialect or acceptance of the dialect in regular school work, the best approach in ESD

teaching is choosing to add language proficiency in standard English and give the student the

ability to meet linguistic demands in a variety of settings. In the school setting the student is

expected to be able to communicate in a variety of ways from informal to written formal

26

language. Using their particular dialect and grammar rules as a basis to teach formal English

rules provides the student with a framework in which they can evaluate both languages and it

also helps them acquire new language ideas. Then their language usage varies according to the

circumstances. Being different does not equate with being deficient because children should

have the opportunity to learn that fluency in different genres is an asset.

Each district chose a means of intervention varying from pull out to an integration model

(Government of British Columbia, Ministry of Education, English as a Second Language, 1997).

Language for ESD students needs to be taught in a way that allows students to advance in their

Standard English level of competence, as compared to Standard English speakers. The best

teaching methods and strategies so far have not changed the usage of Aboriginal dialects. There

is a need to add the teaching of standard formal school language to their existing language skills.

Native bands must be given the resources to implement some of the strategies that the Sullivan

Report (1988) suggests to take the Aboriginal people out of the cycle of poverty. These actions

include improving the language capabilities of Native children during their pre-school and early

school years, enhancing the parenting skills of Native adults, encouraging Native adults to attain

advanced levels of basic education, and improving the health, social, and economic

circumstances of First Nations people, both as ends in themselves, and because of their potential

positive impact upon the learning of Native children (Sullivan, 1988).

Most teachers of Aboriginals are non-Aboriginals. In Canada the Aboriginal population

is evenly distributed across the country. Teachers in Canada can expect to teach Aboriginal

students, and British Columbia has the second largest Aboriginal population (Labercane &

McEachern, 1995). What this means is that teachers in British Columbia need to be able to

engage their Aboriginal students in a culturally sensitive and authentic way in order to engage

them in learning, especially giving Aboriginal students a chance to know how their culture

constructs its own knowledge (Ignas, 2004). One aspect of Aboriginal communities is their

cooperative and collaborative learning styles. Teachers need to be well versed in using these

27

styles (Kanu, 2002) and in including Aboriginal language teachers, Elders, and aides in their

classrooms (Antone, 2003).

Teacher education programs, especially those teaching special education, need to increase

the recognition of Aboriginal languages (Sharing Our Success, 2004) and place student teachers

in Aboriginal communities. Further, Aboriginal support workers should be given opportunities

to acquire teaching credentials (Sharing Our Success, 2004). Baca and Amato (1989) suggest

that teachers should have linguistic courses and ESL training in order to be more effective.

Teachers need to be able to write and adapt curriculum to fit with local customs by drawing on

the “repositories of knowledge” that may be overlooked by western science and curricula

(Lomawaima & Tsianina-McCarty, 2003) For example, using Aboriginal beading designs (with

permission), math concepts can be taught. They also need to be trained on the best techniques

for non-biased assessment for linguistically different students and in designing Individual

Education Plans (I.E.P. s) for these students. They also need to work effectively with parents

and the community (Baca & Amato, 1989).

ESD Education and Special Education

What about students who are identified as not only being ESD students, but also needing

further special education interventions? How are these children identified? Those tests which

are normally used to identify special needs in children are usually difficult to come by. First,

ESD students, by definition, are functioning at least two grades below the expected level, as are

those children needing assistance. Secondly, because they are behind, how does the

evaluator/teacher know whether or not the problem is defined by ESD alone or is also caused by

a learning difficulty? Plus, if ESD is being taught, using the best teaching strategies, is extra

help in Special Education going to make a difference? McLoughlin and Lewis (2001) helps to

clarify the dilemma:

The controversy over the nature of intelligence has affected assessment practices

used with students with disabilities. One debate centres on whether intelligence is one

entity or is made up of a set of factors. Some tests attempt to address a variety of factors

28

that comprise intelligence; these factors are then analyzed to identify individual strengths

and weaknesses within the global set of abilities that make up intellectual performance.

(p.5)

Intelligence may be changeable, a product of the interaction between people and their

environment (McLoughlin and Lewis, 2001).

It is impossible for the mind to take into account the myriad of information that comes to

it all the time through the environment without employing strategies and processes that simplify

this information to make sense of it. Being successful at school is only one part of the human

experience. That is what the intelligence tests focus on. Intelligence tests are instrumental in

determining whether a student is eligible for funding for Special Education. The biggest

challenge when an ESD student is tested is to determine whether or not his or her learning deficit

is separate from the language with which the child has come to school. Determining this may be

very difficult. Validity of standardized tests is always subject to question, especially when those

demands made of the measure are for a linguistically different group than the test has been

normed for – such as ESD Aboriginal students. Tests must be validated for the purpose for

which they are used (Tippeconnic & Faircloth, 2002). Collier (1995) states:

Central to that student’s acquisition of language are all of the surrounding social and

cultural processes occurring through everyday life within the student’s past, present and

future, in all contexts-home, school, community, and the broader society. For example,

sociocultural processes at work in second language acquisition may include individual

student variables such as self-esteem or anxiety or other affective factors” (p. 2).

McLoughin and Lewis (2001) tells us that: “Educational assessment of students with disabilities

now incorporates procedures that analyze the environment, as well as the person’s abilities” (p.

6). The process of prereferral should include adaptations by the classroom teacher in

consultation with colleagues as a first step in student assistance and assessment (Baca &

Valenzuela, 1994). Part of the ESD screening probably should include an assessment of

students' interactions outside the classroom. Giving a specific example of that interaction from

29

Aboriginal culture, Feurer (1993) states: “Children themselves chose or changed their teaching

relatives, as well as started or ended their personal learning situations as desired” and “...... a six-

year-old girl would be expected to care for an aging grandmother or her younger siblings” (p.

88). Without knowledge of this, how can teachers accurately recommend students for further

educational assessment?

In considering the need for special services the evaluator should take into account what

Figueroa (1992) says:

Educational assessment inevitably involves judgments and interpretations made within

the frames of reference of the parties concerned. It is especially prone to bias in cross-

cultural situations, where the different frames of reference, and in ethnicist or racist

situations where the assumptions held by those who control the assessment procedures

or the assumptions built into those procedures might by stereotyped, misapplied,

distorted or entirely fallacious” (p. 401).

It is worth looking at how other countries work with dialects. There are many different

dialects in China. Although people may not be able to understand each other’s dialect they learn

to speak, read, and write the same language, which is standard Mandarin. This may give us a

clear message as to how we can best educate our second dialect speakers. This would involve

not trying to change the dialect of the speakers but teaching them a new language, to speak, read,

and write at a high level of competence.

According to Brice (2001) in order “....to diagnose an English language learner with a

communication disorder requires that symptoms of the disorder be present in both languages or

dialects” (p.5-6). There are many examples of Aboriginal students receiving speech services

before schooling because the language of their home, their English dialect, is grammatically

different than Standard English. Even before this is the possibility that there are sound

differences in that dialect. The child may have learned a different ‘r’ sound, or have dropped the

sound of certain letters, making their speech difficult to understand. Because these students have

already been identified as having speech or developmental delays, this assessment is often

30

accepted and continued when they go to school. The first question the school personnel should

ask is, Do the members of his community have trouble understanding him? If they do not, then

does he actually have a language or developmental problem? If it is a dialect problem, the most

appropriate intervention for the child would be based on the second language acquisition model,

not on speech or developmental delay.

Some of the students who have a special needs designation and are categorized as ESD are

not functioning at a low level because they have learning disabilities, but because they have a

cultural bias against the school system. To improve the cultural conditions in which their

schools operate, will also increase their desire to expand their language capacity. There are

many examples of schools trying to do this. It is important that researchers continue to work to

find out what practices within school culture facilitate this type of student. Epstein and Xu

(2003) underline the positive: “Improved attitudes that respect and include Aboriginal culture

and languages in education and a more friendly sociocultural learning environment for them

have .resulted in a number of initiatives” (p. 14). They also point out a grave danger: “....if a

teacher underestimates a child’s ability because of dialect differences, the child will perform less

well in school” (p. 18).

Assessment

One of the early concerns of ESL/ESD teachers in British Columbia was the lack of

assessment available to accurately select out ESL/ESD special needs students (Naylor, 1994). A

student with an ESL/ESD designation could not, according to Ministry definition, also have a

special education designation. That discrepancy has been corrected. Some urban districts in

British Columbia have been developing screening and placement procedures, but there are no

universal procedures for students throughout the province. ESL teachers are expected to take a

vital role in determining the placement and selection of ESL/ESD students. For the ESL teacher,

this includes adapting the test or tests to fit the students (Government of British Columbia,

1997).

31

Once the teacher has identified a child with a potential learning disability, the child is

referred to the school team. The team then conducts its own assessment and makes

recommendations regarding the student. One of them may be to use further screening tests, as

required by the school district, to determine if the child needs further testing by the district’s

trained psychologist for special education designation. All of the tests used are types of

intelligence tests.

Westwood (1997), in an unpublished lecture writes:

...it is recognized that almost all intelligence tests are biased toward the dominant culture

in which they were prepared. When individuals from minority groups are tested on these

instruments their results may be a very poor reflection of intelligent behaviours valued in

their own group and culture. (p.18).

Verbal tests alone, e.g., the PPVT-R, are an inappropriate estimate of American Indian

children’s cognitive ability, but such tests as the Stanford-Binet: Fourth Edition, the Wechsler

scales, the Draw-A-Man Test, and even the Raven’s Progressive Matrices or the K-ABC, can be

used to estimate the cognitive skills of Indian children (Sattler, 1990). An illustrative instance, in

a study done by Sattler and Altes (1984), a discrepancy was found in the scores on two tests

when they examined typically developing three-to-six-year old bilingual Latin children. These

children were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) and the McCarthy

Perceptual Performance Scale. They found that for the PPVT-R, whether administered in

English or Spanish, scores were far below those of the norms, while all of the children were

estimated to have normal intelligence based on their McCarthy scores. The PPVT-R, used

extensively for first school screening in British Columbia, may produce similar discrepancies

with Aboriginal ESD students. Better testing instruments are being developed to improve the

identification of at risk students. Examples are the Bilingual Verbal Ability Test or the Planning,

Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive Processing Cognitive Assessment. Educators need to

be continually examining the literature to find appropriate tests.

32

For Aboriginal students, the vocabulary and grammar of the home, can be extensively

different than their school vocabulary. At home conversation might be about family, relatives,

and bush or camp experiences, while at school their dialogue might be about abstract concepts.

Each band, because of geographic circumstances, history, culture, and customs would have their

own distinct dialect. When it is abstract concepts that are being tested, the result is an

underestimation of students' knowledge (Kester & Pena, 2002). Test standardization, both for

screening purposes and legitimate assessment, may be impossible. Educators need to be willing

to look at authentic and performance-based measures, which allows students to demonstrate

performance tasks, to compliment standardized testing results (Tippeconnie III & Faircloth,

2002).

The statement by Healy (1990) about intelligence testing is pertinent to Aboriginals and

their schooling. She says “No matter how hard test-makers try, it is almost impossible to test

“intelligence” without including factors that are improved by attendance at school--not the least

of which is test sophistication.” (p.38). School attendance by Aboriginals is often poor. In

addition there are a number of other known factors that affect IQ scores. They have large

families. Children from small families score higher on these tests. There is often much

unemployment and reservations are economically depressed. These factors correlate with lower

scores. Poor nutrition, whether because of economic factors, or because of the switch from

traditional to modern foods, also correlates with poor scores.

This bolder statement by Healy (1990) realistically discredits the use of intelligence testing

at all:

It should also become apparent that the parts of the brain storing information and producing

high IQ test scores are essentially separate systems from those enabling people to

organize, plan, follow through, express themselves accurately, and use the facts they have

absorbed. These latter areas, probably an even more important source of “intelligence,”

are the ones the tests don’t tap-- and the ones most in jeopardy for children growing up in

today’s culture. (p.40).

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Darder (1991) points out that “The utilization of intelligence testing in the schools historically

has played an insidious role in the perpetuation of underachievement among bicultural students”

(p.13). While Figueroa (1992) suggests:

Any judgment of low attainment naturally tends to curtail the educational career of those

so judged. Especially in the early stages of schooling if assessment procedures suffer

from cultural, linguistic, ethnicist or racist bias, they are likely to have damaging long-term

effects....”(p.401).

These thoughts need to be taken into account when provincial auditors ask for scores from these

tests to determine if an individual is eligible for a special education designation. The special

education administration need to state explicitly when standardized test scores are inappropriate

and what procedures instead the assessment personnel should undertake to insure a valid

assessment process (Baca & Valenzuela, 1994). Even though test evaluators put qualifications

around the interpretation of the scores they do weigh heavily in the designation consideration for

all students. Justice Murray was reported by McLaren (2000) to have ruled “Systematic

discrimination involves the concept that the application of uniform standards, common rules and

treatment of people who are not the same constitutes a form of discrimination” (p.1). Tests of

this type are improving all the time and are being made with less inherent bias. Educators still

need, however, to monitor the influence of culture and language on the referral and assessment

(Tippeconnie III & Faircloth, 2002). Some day they may be more useful in determining

placement and programming for potential Aboriginal Special Education students.

How can school curriculums be adapted to meet the needs of these children when teachers

and curriculum writers know little about their minority cultures and how can teachers

individualize their instructional strategies without consideration of culture (Morris, Sather &

Scull, 1978)? They go on to suggest teachers identify teaching strategies used at home and in the

community to help bridge the gap between the culture of the home and the school. It is possible

to teach students correct mainstream English without attacking the child’s home culture? The

34

empahasis should be turned from the negative – rejection of a culture, to the positive -- what

needs to be learned (Cortes, 1978).

Learning occurs as an individual interacts with his environment. That individual learns

both from the interaction with the environment in response to his or her knowledge and stage in

the developmental process. School provides a specialized environment for learning. The teacher

can best start by knowing the child -- his or her strengths and weaknesses, his knowledge, his

likes and dislikes, culture, and language, and from a stance of respect, begin to teach the child.

Currently, in the case of ESD Aboriginal children, the teacher, the school staff and district staff

have to prove to the students, the parents, and the Band that they want to work together in a

climate of respect, or conditions won’t improve. The special education that students receive

needs to be unique to special education and different than the ESD intervention (Cook &

Schirmer, 2003).

A formative ecological approach to assessment and assignment to Special Education

placement must take place. Assessment needs to go beyond psychoeducational considerations

and take into account the child's entire learning environment (Cummins, 1991). This would

consider the student in the context of the classroom, school, family, and community. Student

performance would be compared to his peers in all areas and be evaluated by many individuals.

Consideration must take into account how the child is being taught, and the culture of the

classroom and the school, and whether or not it is appropriate in meeting the individual needs of

that student. The educators must know the language and other academic needs of the students

and explicitly plan to meet them through assessment and instruction.

Aboriginal students in British Columbia are overrepresented in behavioral classes

(Morin, 2004). Research has shown that approximately 91% of students in behavioral programs

have speech and language difficulties, indicating that speech and language therapy is required in

order to diagnose and provide needed intervention for behavioral students (Heneker, 2005). In

another study (Chen and Bullock, 2004), it was found that structured, cooperative learning

35

activities helped students to develop social skills that were reinforced by their peers. Secondly,

the teaching of specific social skills, based on the students' strengths, was also effective.

The literature shows promise for behavioral students in the area of peer tutoring.

Subject matter is first learned by the tutors, and they then learn how to tutor by learning how to

communicate with their peers. Finally, in the process, they learn about learning (Kanu, 2002). It

is possible that this peer learning might have a close fit to the Aboriginal learning through

observation (Gartner & Riessman, 1993). Ryan, Reid & Epstein (2003), after reviewing the

studies on peer tutoring and cross-age tutoring, have proven large academic gains across subjects

and state that teachers need to become knowledgeable in these teaching strategies. Other

strategies in peer related activities such as peer assessment, peer modeling, and peer

reinforcement are still in need of study before they become implemented in behavior classes.

Along with peer tutoring, it might add to the responsiveness of the Aboriginal students to have

Aboriginal aides and Elders working with these students (Wotherspoon & Schissel, 1998).

Direct instruction engages students academically and gives them opportunities to practice their

newly acquired skills (Landrum, Tankersly & Kauffman, 2003). All of these strategies should be

taking place with teachers who care about, accept, and welcome the Aboriginal student and

culture (Cummins, 1989; Pewewardy & Hammer, 2003). Studies should be undertaken to

determine what age is most appropriate for English as a Second Dialect teaching, because, under

present directives, it is only offered to the student for 5 years. Is it better to intervene in the early

grades to prevent problems, or is it of greater benefit to the students to have the intervention take

place during the middle years, when they are more likely to have conflicts with authorities

(Levy, 2001). Some other ideas that might help, gathered by Wotherspoon and Schissel (1998),

recommendations made by Aboriginal students, are for schools to be less punitive about time

requirements, show more tolerance toward misconduct (working kindly to rectify the problem),

incorporate discussions about racism and discrimination into the regular curriculum, and provide

breakfast and lunch programs to meet the students' immediate needs.

36

Aboriginals students have twice the percentage of non-Aboriginals in the Special

Education classification of learning disabilities (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2004).

A positive attitude and self-concept are ingredients that promote academic achievement, and

again, respect for the language and culture of the student with learning problems helps achieve

this (Cummins, 1991). Collaborative work with the home and community, such as in the form of

a shared literacy program, can increase school learning and improve behavior (Cummins, 1989).

Parents should be encouraged to be active in promoting their children’s academic progress.

Teachers need to be able to tap into the parents' knowledge and resources and bring them into the

schools (Cummins, 1989). Some Aboriginal parents see the literacy acquisition that schools

offer as taking away from their own culture and rather part of the assimilation process (Reyhner,

2001). While the classroom teacher remains the student's primary teacher the special education

teacher is developing curricular modifications, programs and material so that the student can

fully participate in the classroom activities (Baca & Valenzuela, 1994). In the specia education

setting the teacher is using a multiple of assessment strategies to identify students' strengths and

weaknesses. These interventions will actively value the student's interests, culture, language,

and background (Baca & Valenzuela, 1994). Strategies used should be those that are research

based and have been proven to work.

All teachers in the Yukon are required to have a course in the philosophical foundations

of education within the culture of the Yukon First Nations people. Simon Fraser University

allows students who have taken Aboriginal language courses to apply the credit to their teacher

training. That type of course should be required of all teachers of First Nations students in

British Columbia as well. When companies approach Bands to use their natural resources, they

sign contracts that stipulate the percentage of Aboriginals to be employed as labourers and as

management. Targets are set to increase the number of Aboriginal employees and training is

provided. These companies actively seek Aboriginal employees. This is an excellent example

for school districts to follow.

37

Analysis, Interpretation, Discussion of the Findings of the Literature

What assistance can be offered to best help ESD students cultivate their literacy skills,

given the poverty of assessment strategies? was the first of the research questions. Given that

poverty of assessment strategies, reinforced by this literature review, a key emphasis is careful

consideration of the students themselves. Taking time to find out the strengths and weaknesses

of a particular student in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing requires also

taking into account that learner's age, personality, interests, language learning style,

communication needs, and the degree to which that student is integrated into the community

featuring the language to be attained.

To the second question, Is there a best, most efficient method to identify and help those

students whose problem go further than ESD e.g., they also require special education?, there is

no easy answer. It is important to determine both the oral and literacy levels of the student's

language and the nature and extent of his or her disability. There is much that a teacher can do.

By purposing to guide and facilitate, rather than control student learning, teachers can create an

atmosphere where genuine dialogue between student and teacher, in both oral and written

modalities becomes a reality. In such an environment peers can collaborate, use language

meaningfully, and even participate in curriculum planning. There are many successful

teaching/learning strategies that should be taught. These include the teacher modeling and the

student practicing self-monitoring, making associations, repeated reading, finding ways to

generalize, using step by step prompts, all with the teacher giving frequent feedback. These and

other strategies that have proven to work with other special education students will help them to

improve, if they are done within a culturally sensitive classroom. Finally, the teacher serves the

students well by using specialized teaching strategies, applying reinforcement, using behaviour

management, by providing practice, and by attending to the students' self-concepts.

Summary

With the aim of identifying and helping ESD students who may also have a need for

special education, the following questions were posed:

38

What assistance can be offered to best help ESD students cultivate their literacy skills, given

the poverty of assessment strategies?

Is there a best, most efficient method to identify and help those students whose problem go

further than ESD e.g., they also require special education?

The pursuit of the answers to these questions revealed that there are still many important

questions to ask in the pursuit of good teaching and authentic learning. For the sake of these

students, what is the optimum level or age at which to implement the ESD program? What

model of ESD works most effectively – pulling out students, working in small groups, or

integration within the classroom? Is there an ideal combination among these possibilities? What

is the best model for students with both ESD and special education designations? How is the

individual student doing in comparison to his classmates? What is working, and benefiting him

educationally speaking? What is not? Many different assessment techniques should be used,

including curriculum-based assessment, criterion-references measures, interviews, reviewing

records, observations, rating scales, test/retest measurement, and work samples. At present there

is no one right way, but there are many assessment strategies like those just listed that, when

used together, can take the place of standardized tests. All of these assessment techniques, and

more, should be used and reviewed by the Special Education teacher in order to know where to

start in teaching the child and monitoring the progress along the way. The teacher(s) of ESD

students should be willing to learn the subtleties of the dialect so that they may use that dialect to

teach the higher level concepts, all the time remembering that these students understand English

and don’t see the need to learn it at a deeper level. It is up to the teacher to motivate the students.

The teacher needs the teaching skills to do this. It is not what the child can do alone, but what a

child can do with adult help that is a sensitive and significant standard for a child’s intellectual

capabilities (Vygotsky, 1934/1992). It is the effective application of research findings in a range

of diverse contexts and schools that will ultimately benefit those students who need to learn

standard English (Christian, 2000). Special Education isn’t a different type of teaching; it is

good teaching done with individuals.

39

Building language for Aboriginal language learners in the Special Education context

demands sensitivity to culture and language. It demands good teaching. Children are motivated

to learn a language because the language is needed to express something important to use it; it's

meaningful (Genesee, 1997). Both ESD students and those in Special Education classes, need

dedicated teachers who are willing to develop materials, who are sufficiently trained in

linguistics to work from the children’s dialect, and who are culturally sensitive. These are the

teachers who can meet their needs.

40

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THE NEEDS OF ESD (ENGLISH AS A SECOND DIALECT) STUDENTS AND THOSE OF ESD STUDENTS WITH OTHER SPECIAL NEEDS

48

by

Ed. Shook

EDSP 9012C – Doug Trevaskis

School of Education

Flinders University

Faculty of Education, Humanities, Law and Theology