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Faculty
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Suzanne Charlton
Lecturer
Multicultural Education, English Language Development Coordinator
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Research
Current Projects:
In collaboration with the Spanish and Chicano/Latino Studies Department, Dr. Charlton is developing an international BCLAD study program which would place future bilingual teachers in teacher preparation programs in Mexico for one quarter of their course preparation. With the Leadership Team of Teacher-Experts of the COACH Foreign Language Program, she has published 5 books on practical strategies for instruction and assessment aligned with the National Standards. She co-developed UCI's ELD courses and works witht the cournty and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing on ELD standards and testing. She frequently presents at language conferences throughout California.
With UCLinks and the Department's UCAN research initiatives, she is interested in investigating literacy development and similar questions among Latino children involved in an after school technology based learning project. This research and service project forms an undergraduate component of the University Community Action Network (UCAN), which also incorporates teacher action research projects and UCI faculty and graduate research projects .
Past Projects:
As the origininator of UCI's CLAD program, Dr. Charlton developed student's capacity to conduct ethnographic case studies that were useful to informing action research processes at UCI and elsewhere. Here presentations and publications on Foreign Language, on teaching culture in the FL classroom, Cultural Participation and Research and Authentic Assessment through Portfolios have been part of local and national conference presentations.
Personal Research Interests:
Brain research and how it applies to cognitive development and children's acquisition of first and subsequent languages.
How community service learning and ethnographic inquiry build university students' awareness of children's circumstances and needs and increase their understanding of how children learn, acquire language, and develop academic motivation through play.
How instructional conversations and guided participation, as well as other scaffolding techniques, enable children to advance their learning (in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development).
How community-centered learning programs may bridge the distance between school and the homes of minority children with diverse languages and cultures.
How Latino children's literacy, self-concept, academic motivation, and confidence are affected by mentored, technology-based learning activities.
How the National Foreign Language Standards might be integrated in to classroom instruction and assessment to enhance student second language learning.
How two groups of future bilingual teachers - monolinguals needing additional language (especially oral language) support and native speakers needing additional Spanish literacy support might benefit from home stays in Mexico during which they study and practice teach in content areas.
Useful research results, summaries, or abstracts:
Working papers are under way on several of the above questions (community service learning, the UCAN project, etc).
CPR and Assessment packets have been developed for workshop and institute presentations, as are working papers on rubrics and portfolios in foreign language.
Abstracts on the interactive notebook and an article on cooperative learning are also available.
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