Inside IES Research

April is National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month! As part of the IES 20th Anniversary celebration, we are highlighting NCER’s investments in field-initiated research. In this guest blog, Drs. Doré LaForett and Ximena Franco-Jenkins (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) and Adam Winsler (George Mason University) discuss their IES-funded exploration study, some challenges they encountered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how their study contributes to supporting multilingual students.

The BEE Project

Our IES-funded study, called the Bilingualism, Education, and Excellence (BEE) project, was born out of a research partnership initiated by a principal of a Spanish-English dual-language (DLE) elementary school. She noticed that student engagement in DLE classrooms seemed to differ depending on the student’s home language and the language of instruction. This got us thinking about how we as a field know very little about what goes on in two-way immersion (TWI) classrooms in terms of teacher language use, student-teacher relationships, student engagement, and learning outcomes for students who speak Spanish or English at home. Therefore, we were excited for the opportunity to dig deeper into links between language of instruction and academic outcomes for students in a relatively new immigrant community like North Carolina. Specifically, we were interested in whether and how the amount of instruction in English and Spanish is related to improvements in student academic outcomes in English and Spanish.

We conducted extensive individual direct student assessments at the beginning and end of the school year, as well as intensive classroom observations to assess both language of instruction and student on-task engagement during both English and Spanish instruction. Although we are still analyzing the data, preliminary findings suggest that language model (90% Spanish/10% English vs. 50% Spanish/50% English), type of 50/50 model used (switching language of instruction mid-day vs alternating days), and initial student language proficiency all matter for student engagement and academic outcomes assessed in English and Spanish. For some outcomes, students with low language proficiency had lower average spring scores when in the 50/50 model compared with students in the 90/10 model. In contrast, students with high language proficiency had higher average spring scores when in the 50/50 model compared with the 90/10 model. In addition, students who speak mostly English at home have a hard time staying engaged on the Spanish day in 50/50 alternate programs.

Impact of COVID-19 on Our Research and Pivots Made

Although we are excited about these findings, like many other studies, we encountered challenges with conducting our study when the pandemic hit. While some studies may have been able to pivot and resume data collection using a remote platform, we had to pause data collection activities during spring 2020 and the 2020-21 school year given our study design and the context in which our research was being conducted. For instance, we used gold-standard, English/Spanish, parallel direct assessments of children which required it to be in person since on-line versions were not available. Also, classroom- and student-level observations were not possible when instruction was remote because, for example, cameras were turned off or there was a lack of access to remote or hybrid learning platforms, due to issues such as contactless video recording technologies that prioritize the talk of only one individual in the classroom rather than the entire class or do not allow for focused observations of individual student behavior.

Therefore, our top priority was maintaining our partnerships with the school districts during the ‘sleeper year.’ We kept in touch and followed our partners’ lead as to when and how we could resume. Meanwhile, we tried to understand what school districts were doing for DLE instruction (in-person, hybrid, remote) during the pandemic. The research team found it necessary to shift tasks during the pandemic, and our efforts were centered on data management and dissemination activities. Once schools started to reopen in 2021-22, our team continued to be patient and flexible to address the health and visitor regulations of the various school districts. In the end, we had one year of data pre-pandemic, one pandemic year without spring data, and one year of data post-pandemic.

Despite these challenges, we used this opportunity to gather information about the learning experiences of students enrolled in the final year of our study, who had been exposed to remote or hybrid learning during the 2020-21 school year. So, when schools reopened in fall 2021, we asked our schools about what instruction was like during the pandemic, and we also asked teachers and parents what they thought about dual language progress during the 2020-21 school year. Teachers were more likely to report that students made good gains in their language skills over that year compared to parents. Further, parents who reported greater English-speaking learning opportunities during remote instruction tended to speak primarily English at home and have more education. Parents who reported that their child had difficulties participating in remote instruction due to technology tended to speak more Spanish at home and have less education.

These findings show how inequities in the home environment, such as those experienced during the pandemic, may have reduced learning opportunities for some students in DLE programs. This is particularly noteworthy because the social experience of language learning is critical in DLE programs, so reduced opportunities to speak in English and Spanish—particularly for students who are not yet fully bilingual or do not live in bilingual homes, can really undermine the goals of DLE programs. These reduced learning opportunities also give us pause as we consider how best to test for cohort effects, choose appropriate procedures for dealing with the missing data, and proceed cautiously with generalizing findings.

A Focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Our research is grounded in the cultural mismatch theory, where DLE programs are hypothesized to produce greater alignment or match with English learners’ (ELs’) home environments compared to non-DLE programs. By design, DLE programs that support heritage languages seek to promote bilingualism, bi-literacy, and biculturalism which bolster ELs’ social capital, increase academic performance and reduce the achievement gap for ELs. Thus, effective DLE programs are examples of anti-racist policies and practices. However, some have suggested that DLE programs may be conferring more benefits for White, native English speakers (that is, the Matthew effect, where the rich get richer) compared to the students whose heritage language and culture is being elevated in DLE programs. This is especially concerning given our data showing a potential exacerbation of the Matthew effect during the pandemic due to a variety of factors (lack of access to technology, less-educated families struggling to support their children during remote instruction) suggesting not only learning loss but also language loss. Our research is attempting to open the black box of DLE programs in such classrooms and examine whether experiences, engagement, and outcomes are similar across language backgrounds. We hope that information from our study about the intersection of language proficiency and language of instruction will facilitate decisions regarding how students are assigned to different language models and ultimately support equitable learning opportunities for students attending DLE programs.

Ximena Franco-Jenkins is an Advanced Research Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Adam Winsler is an Associate Chair Professor at George Mason University.

Doré R. LaForett is an Advanced Research Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This blog was produced by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), Program Officer for the English Learners Portfolio, NCER.

This year, Inside IES Research is publishing a series of blogs showcasing a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. In this guest blog, Dr. Young-Suk Kim, professor and Senior Associate Dean in the School of Education, University of California, Irvine, shares how her experiences and her work contribute to a better understanding of the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in education.

How have your background and experiences shaped your scholarship and career?

My research seeks to understand how reading and writing develop and how to best support this development for children from various backgrounds. I work on theory building and develop and evaluate effective teaching approaches toward this aim. Three salient aspects of my background and experiences have shaped my scholarship and career.

The first is that my mother does not know how to read or write. My mother is one of the most resilient and hard-working people I know. However, like many females of her generation in South Korea in the 1940s, her widowed mother could not afford education for my mother or her sister. Growing up, I observed firsthand the impact of illiteracy on her life from daily inconveniences such as getting lost because she could not read bus routes to a broader impact on her personal development over time. Second, my teaching experience in the United States also had a direct impact on my choice of career. I taught students, the majority of whom were ethnic minorities, in a highly diverse metropolitan city. I learned about their lives as children of immigrants. I also observed their language use and development and their development of reading and writing skills. I became curious and wanted to understand mechanisms underlying the development of language and literacy skills and effective ways to support their development.

Another important part of the fabric of my experience is that I am a first-generation immigrant who came to the United States as an adult. This allowed me to approach literacy development from a cross-linguistic view, not a US- or Anglo-centric view. Although I conduct my primary lines of work with children in the US from diverse linguistic, cultural, and economic backgrounds, I also conduct studies with children learning to read and write in languages other than English outside of the US context (for example, South Korea, China, South America, Africa) to expand our understanding of language-general and language-specific principles of literacy acquisition.

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and to improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

There is a great need for the science of teaching reading. The science of reading has received substantial attention in recent years, and we need a better understanding of the science of teaching reading, which includes knowledge of current teaching practices in the classroom and best teaching practices that are feasible, usable, and scalable in classroom contexts. Popular media articles, such as this one from the National Public Radio, have drawn public attention to reading instruction in classrooms. While valuable, they do not provide a comprehensive and precise picture about what really goes on in the classroom, and we do not have systematic data about how reading is taught and how to create conditions that support successful reading instruction. Carefully developed instructional programs implemented in well-controlled environments have shown measurable effects on language and literacy skills. However, less is known about how to make them usable and scalable in school contexts for various populations in the United States, including monolingual and multilingual children, typically developing children and exceptional children, and children who are from underserved areas.

Another important part of the science of teaching reading is research on establishing bidirectional communications between the communities of research and practice. In the field of reading and writing, there is a critical gap between research and teaching practices, and addressing this gap requires knowledge brokering. Making education research relevant for diverse communities of students and families requires systematic efforts and research on knowledge brokering as well as factors that influence one’s choice of teaching reading, conditions that support public understanding of science, and effective ways to build two-way communication channels.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

Who we are is shaped by the fabric of our life experiences and history and what we are endowed with. I believe that the effect of our life experiences and endowment is moderated by our own actions, especially self-reflections. I have two thoughts on self-reflections at the personal level. The first one is recognizing strengths of our prior experiences and work. Being a nonnative speaker of English and an immigrant learning US culture and norms presented tremendous challenges, and there were countless days that I bemoaned the challenges. However, upon reflection, I recognize that these are invaluable and indispensable assets to me as a person and for my career in education research—I have an appreciation of immigrants’ challenges and lives, and their roles in society, and have an appreciation of who I am as a multilingual and multicultural human being.

A second related point is intentionally and actively resisting harmful effects of racial strife. As an Asian female who has lived in different parts of the United States, I have experienced a fair share of microaggressions and blatant racial discrimination. These experiences had a negative impact on me, as they would on others. While not discounting the well-documented and profound negative consequences and systemic structures associated with racial strife, we have a choice of channeling such negative experiences in positive ways and for personal growth. I am not suggesting that the burden for structural equity is on individuals. Instead, I have observed deleterious effects of these experiences on individuals including myself. Turning them into positive transformative power requires careful and intentional reflections.

How does your research contribute to a better understanding of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in education?

I believe that my work contributes to defining diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education in a broad way. My work with students from linguistically diverse backgrounds has contributed to understanding language-general and language-specific principles of literacy acquisition. I believe that this expands the idea of DEI beyond how it is discussed in US contexts, which tends to focus on race and ethnicity.

I also conduct research on the mitigation and prevention of reading and writing difficulties. It is estimated that anywhere between 5 and 10 percent of the population have reading and writing difficulties and addressing their educational needs is an important task in education. This line of work behooves us to broaden our understanding of DEI to students of different learning profiles.

How can the broader education research community better support the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups?

Supporting the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups requires serious attention to the research education pipeline. IES’s training programs are a fantastic way of achieving this goal. We also need to consider other aspects of the education pipeline. For example, systematic funding opportunities for undergraduate research training would be highly beneficial, particularly for individuals from underrepresented groups, who tend to have less exposure to research experiences. Given such opportunities, undergraduate students can be supported for their research experiences under the guidance of researchers, and this will help unveil the mystery of research for them and open up opportunities for pursuing careers related to educational research.  

Produced by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), program officer for the English Learners Portfolio at NCER.

This year, Inside IES Research is featuring a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we interviewed Dr. María S. Carlo, associate professor at University of South Florida, about her career journey and the need for more research on bilingualism. Dr. Carlo is the PI of an IES grant that compares bilingual and monolingual methods of explicit vocabulary instruction for Spanish-speaking English learners, as well as another IES grant exploring instructional strategies intended to help English learners learn the meanings of new words.

How have your background and experiences shaped your scholarship and career?

My memories of childhood are tagged by language. Language is a marker for where I lived, who my friends were, and my feelings toward school. My interest in bilingualism stems from life-long experiences managing my personal and academic identity through the use of Spanish and English.

In a graduate school course on applied and basic cognitive development, my instructors Dr. Keith Rayner and Dr. Alexander Pollatsek told us that we would be learning the scientific explanations for everything our grandmothers could already tell us about human cognition. My anxiety about the course rose because I was convinced that my grandmother, who had not been to college, had nothing to say about human cognition. About a year later, I explained to my mom a study I was doing testing the belief that academic skills can transfer across languages in ways that support the development of the second language. Perhaps sensing that I was sounding a little too impressed with myself, my mother looked at me and said, “Well, your grandmother could have told you that!”  And then she told me a story.

Upon hearing that I was having difficulty learning to read in English, my grandmother got on an airplane for the first time in her life and travelled from Puerto Rico to New Jersey to teach me how to read. She brought with her a cartilla fonética (phonetic primer) that she had used with her five children. Her rationale: “You need to teach her to read in Spanish first before teaching her to read in English.”  As my mom tells it, I was reading English perfectly after my grandmother’s intervention. This, and other experiences with language, have shaped my interest in the role of the mother tongue in second language development. 

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and to improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

I think that one of the problems we face in studying bilingualism is that we really have not figured out exactly how to measure bilingualism. I often find myself having to rely on measures that were normed on monolingual speakers of Spanish and English, and that I believe, often fail to fully capture how bilingual experience impacts performance in each language. One important theoretical assumption about bilingual language processing is that bilinguals never “turn off” a language. We assume that both languages are always simultaneously active and thus susceptible to each other’s influence through bottom-up processes. I believe this has profound implications on language measurement as it can impact everything from item response times to judgements about the plausibility of item distractors.

I think we need measures that are based on a model of the expert bilingual and that are sensitive to the changes individuals experience in language as they move from the novice bilingual state to the expert bilingual state. But to get there, I think we need more research that helps us understand what expert bilingual performance looks like. Some of the most influential concepts guiding our understanding of the development of reading among monolingual children have emerged from research on fluent adult monolingual readers. In education, we are understandably preoccupied with the progress of the beginner. But I think there is much that we can understand about the beginner from looking at the expert. So, if I had a magic wand, I would ensure programmatic support to study expert bilingualism.  

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

My perception is that young scholars from underrepresented groups do their work feeling a high sense of urgency to transform education to better serve their communities. I tell them that it is true that their work is urgently needed, but that they need to take the long view. My doctoral advisor, Dr. James M. Royer of the Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, encouraged us to think of our work not as single studies but as a series of studies. It is hard to take the long view when you are constantly having to sell your work for being innovative and cutting edge. The process of securing research funding is an example of a context in which innovation is paramount. One of the conversations I have had with young scholars (and with myself) is about making the distinction between innovation (which leads to change) and novelty. I think that we serve our transformative goals better when we identify small changes in our research approach that allow us to move knowledge forward. I believe that these increments in knowledge across an entire community of scholars seeking to advance equity and inclusion inevitably leads to innovation.

How does your research contribute to a better understanding of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in education?

I try to take a bilingual perspective when I study the English development of English learners. One can study the English development of English learners by measuring progress on English measures exclusively, but researchers who take a bilingual or multilingual perspective have shown that you gain a great deal of explanatory power when you choose not to ignore the other half of students’ language repertoire. My hope is that the work I do advances the idea that a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens is integral to producing high quality rigorous research. 

How can the broader education research community better support the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups?

Dr. Royer made me a part of his lab long before I was admitted into the department. He needed a research assistant who was proficient in Spanish and English to help him develop a series of listening and reading comprehension tests using a test development technique he had developed called the Sentence Verification Technique. I had recently completed my BA in psychology without ever working as an undergraduate research assistant. I had no real sense of what psychology research entailed or that it could offer me a career. The day I joined his lab he gave me a desk and a computer and added my name to list of lab members on the door. My socialization into a research career started that day. I was allowed to be fully immersed into the experience. I was invited to lab meetings, to guest talks, to proseminars. I eventually applied and was admitted to the doctoral program in educational psychology.

I share this story to make the point that many others have made before me, that the work of increasing access to academia by members of minoritized groups needs to start long before graduate school admission. We need to open our academic space to young people who may not be able to articulate why they wish to be in that space. I don’t think I would have pursued a doctoral program otherwise. 

Dr. María S. Carlo is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida in the Department of Child and Family Studies. Dr. Carlo specializes in bilingualism and literacy development in children and adults. Her research focuses on the cognitive processes underlying reading in a second language and in understanding the cross-language transfer of reading skills and how it affects the development of such skills. She is also interested in generating educational interventions that support first- and second-language development, particularly around vocabulary.

This blog was produced by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), program officer for the English Learner Portfolio at NCER.

This year, Inside IES Research is featuring a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we interviewed Dr. Aída Walqui, director of the IES-funded National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners at WestEd about her career journey and language equity for minoritized populations.

How have your background and experiences shaped your scholarship and career?

My background has been a tremendous influence. I was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up the first child of a modest, hard-working, politically involved, and well-educated family. From very early on, issues of language, education, and discrimination—and the way in which diverse groups were perceived—have been central in my life.

My father was born in the Peruvian jungle, and he grew up in Lima speaking Spanish. Through family conversations at the dinner table and other experiences, I became aware that Peruvian society was deeply segregated by ethnic and linguistic boundaries. For example, as a little girl, I did not understand why it was good for me to study German in a German school, where my emergent German was viewed as wonderful, and not something that negatively impacted my first language, Spanish. . . while the children in the Highlands, where we vacationed, were admonished for speaking Quechua, their native language. Their native language was considered almost an illness that needed to be eradicated, and their emergent Spanish was derided as imperfect.

Although my parents were not linguists, they explained that the language was just an excuse—the real issues were political, social, and economic control. I realized that the children who spoke Quechua were just as talented. But for them, learning Spanish was mandatory. Society saw it as the only thing to be proud of. My father also helped me understand that language was not just used for purposes of communication, but also to classify or package people—which impedes learning who people are as individuals. And that the experience of education itself had a lot to do with this.

Overall, I have had an immensely rich intellectual life. I owe my family, my late husband, and colleagues around the world for making it possible for me to live and work in many contexts, including working in Andean intercultural, bilingual education, teaching Spanish as a second language for the Peruvian Ministry of Education, teaching in Alisal High School in Salinas, CA for six intense and rewarding years, as well as living and working in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. I’ve noticed the same patterns in all these places. The languages are different, but the patterns are the same: the dismissal of populations that had been minoritized due to language issues, the enormous contribution language minority populations play in these nations, and that additional languages are assets that help you learn.

I’ve become even more determined upon realizing the incredible potential that people have. As a Latina in the United States, I have focused on developing the incredible resource of Spanish that Latinos have, while also developing English at the same level of proficiency.

Success depends on educators and those who support them envisioning the richness of these people, and by extension the richness they can provide to society. It is only looking at the seeds of time that I can say that change is possible. While sociolinguistic discrimination still exists in Peru, tremendous positive changes have also occurred. In the United States, we have similarly made strides, but still have a long way to go. In education, it is important to follow Gramsci’s old advice: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and to improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

We must coherently put together examples of what is possible. For example, our Center colleagues are working on policy levers such as how to integrate English learner development with subject matter courses to strengthen the education of English learners.

In the classroom, in the past, we have been singularly worried about how well English learners are using language, how to construct grammatical sentences, how to make those sentences correct, and so forth. In reality, the focus needs to be on multiple learning modalities as well as the subject matter, critical understanding, and the ability to express ideas—language—related to the content. That is, multiple forms of learning all matter in the moment, not just one.

We all need to know how to use language well, but we also need to simultaneously learn the content and critical thinking that language brings to life, not just grammatical labels or how you conjugate verbs.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

I would say that above all, it is essential for emerging scholars from minoritized groups to know what about education research or development is specifically important to them, and how they intend to contribute to their field, to society, and to the improvement of the groups they represent.

Knowing where your passion resides brings more than just constant direction to scholarly efforts. During difficult moments, it will sustain those efforts. Embrace educational causes you care for, even if they don’t always seem important or popular. Think through them, research them, and communicate them, time and time again, in increasingly more potent ways.

Finally, it is essential to cultivate critical dialogue with colleagues to re-examine ideas, advance proposals, and gain sight into how synergetic efforts can advance the societal educational impact of immensely talented but minoritized groups.

Dr. Aída Walqui directs the National Research and Development Center for Improving the Education of English Learners in Secondary Schools at WestEd where she started and developed one of its signature programs, the Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) initiative. QTEL focuses on the development of the expertise of teachers and educational leaders to support elementary and secondary English Learners’ conceptual, analytic, and language practices in disciplinary subject matter areas. Her main area of interest and research is teacher expertise in multilingual academic contexts and how to promote its growth across the continuum of teacher professional development. In 2016 on the 50th anniversary of the International TESOL Association Dr. Walqui was selected as one of the 50 most influential researchers in the last 50 years in the field of English Language teaching.

This blog post was produced by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), program officer for the English Learner Portfolio at NCER.

As we return from our celebration of Independence Day, we also want to celebrate the efforts and dedication of the learners and educators who participate in adult literacy’s integrated English literacy and civics education. This important, but sometimes forgotten, aspect of adult education opens opportunities for learners and creates an engaged, informed citizenry.

What is “integrated civics” in adult education?

Under Title II of the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), integrated English literacy and civics education refers to services for adult English language learners, including professionals with degrees and credentials in their native countries, to build their English language skills—foundational and more advanced—to support their roles as parents, workers, and citizens in the United States. These courses must include English literacy instruction and “instruction on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and civic participation and may include workforce training.”

Are there specific curricula for these programs?

Although WIOA defined what had and could be included in this form of adult education, it did not specify how to include it. Nor did WIOA mandate a particular curriculum or instructional practices. Thus, programs offering these courses may leverage resources from multiple sources and design approaches to meet their communities’ needs.

Luckily, both the Office of Career, Adult, and Technical Education (OCATE, U.S. Department of Education) and the U.S. Citizen and Immigrations Services (USCIS, Department of Homeland Security) have developed resources and standards to help educators.

• OCTAE -- English Language Proficiency Standards for Adult Education
• USCIS – Guide to the Adult Citizenship Education Content Standards and Foundation Skills

Though multiple guides, online education resources, and other teaching materials are available, the evidence base and promise of these is not always apparent.  

Is IES supporting research in this area?

In FY21, IES awarded a research grant, Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support (CILIA-T), to Dr. Aydin Durgunoglu (University of Minnesota). She and her team of researchers and educators are developing and pilot testing a curriculum that aims to strengthen English language proficiency, knowledge of U.S. history and civics, and digital literacy. This project, which is part of the CREATE Adult Skills Research Network, is the first field-initiated research project IES has funded for adult English learners or adult civics.

Why is integrating language and civics important?

A fundamental instructional practice in adult education is to link instruction to activities and goals highly relevant to the adult learner. For refugees, immigrants, and others new to the United States, becoming a citizen and being able to communicate with others are both highly relevant goals and both daunting tasks. By blending the two, these courses may help adults persist longer and gain knowledge in skills in multiple domains concurrently.

Dr. Durgunglu notes—

I don’t think conversational skills are enough for refugees or immigrants as they learn to navigate in their new communities. To be participatory citizens, they need “academic” English, especially about rights and responsibilities. To really belong to a community, individuals need to know their rights so that they are not exploited and know their responsibilities such as voting and participating in the community activities. Knowing how the system works help people contribute to different type of the decision-making processes, from selecting schoolbooks to selecting a president.

On a personal note, as a naturalized citizen who learned about U.S. history and civics and then took the citizenship exam, these topics really helped me understand the American psyche, such as the individualistic streak that goes back to the pioneers, why government’s role in social services is so controversial in this country, and why one state can be so different from another. Having experienced censorship and autocratic governments, I have a lot of respect for the principle of checks and balances and am aware how fragile democracy and individual rights can really be if not protected dearly.

Where can people learn more?

To learn more about CILIA-T, visit the ABE Teaching & Learning Advancement Systems article: Civics/History Curriculum: An Introduction to the CILIA-T Curriculum Project.

To learn more about the CREATE Adult Skills Research Network, please visit the network lead’s site.

For additional resources, visit the U.S. Department of Education’s LINCS website, which includes items about civics education, English language learners, and other topics relevant to adult education.

For additional information and resources about the citizenship test and courses, visit the USCIS Citizenship Resource Center.

Written by Meredith Larson (meredith.larson@ed.gov), adult education research analyst and program officer for the CREATE Adult Skills Research Network.