Investigating the characteristics and efficacy of the Learning in Two Languages Program: A Research and development initiative

Teachers in the Learning in Two Languages (LTL) Program at the UCLA Lab School in conjunction with UCLA researchers will be conducting a fully comprehensive research and development initiative on the LTL program to describe, evaluate and improve the program over the next few years. The project aims to critically examine the language, academic, cognitive, social and cultural factors that the program hopes to foster in students. As part of this project, teacher and student classroom interactions will be regularly observed, and students’ Spanish/English and academic skills, as well as their social and cognitive perspectives will be regularly measured using assessments, observations and interviews. Other stakeholders in the program will also be formatively surveyed for their perspectives on the LTL program (these include program teachers, other Lab School teachers and staff, parents of program children and those parents with children throughout the school). New this school year: as part of the project’s aims to assess children’s social integration across the LTL and English-only classrooms, we will be asking children a series of questions about who they like to play with at school and observing peer interactions in and out of the classroom. The friendship questions will be asked in a private setting (CONNECT research office) to maintain confidentiality. Collecting this information will allow us to determine children’s social groups and the extent to which these vary systematically across gender, language (i.e., English, Spanish), and classroom contexts (i.e., LTL vs. English-only). As parents have already signed the UCLA Lab School blanket consent form, they are not required to sign any additional forms at this time. Later, if we include an investigation of the home-school connection we will ask for additional consent from parents. Additionally, if in the blanket consent form parents gave us permission to do so, children may be videotaped while they are engaged in lessons. Any questions about this study should be directed to Norma Silva at the Lab School (310-825-1557 or nsilva@labschool.ucla.edu) or Dr. Alison Bailey (310-825-1731 or abailey@gseis.ucla.edu).