Researcher: Samuel S. David (Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education and Human Development)
Finding effective ways to teach reading comprehension to English learners (ELs) is a critical challenge for educational researchers nationally, and in Minnesota specifically. TRANSLATE is an instructional model designed for ELs performing below grade level, providing teachers with the means to access ELs’ myriad language resources. Qualitative analyses of the TRANSLATE approach have shown that students engaged in TRANSLATE lessons develop new comprehension strategies that capitalize on their home language resources, and an early mixed-methods pilot indicated TRANSLATE students were able to achieve almost an additional year of growth compared to control students. However, TRANSLATE was developed with student populations that differ from those in Minnesota, which has been a center of non-Hispanic refugee and immigrant resettlement since the 1970s. Our research will help Minnesota districts address legally mandated educational benchmarks through differentiated, locally responsive PD and curricular designs that account for the diversity in ELs’ language and cultural backgrounds.
Edward Goetz
Edward G. Goetz is director of CURA and a faculty member at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Ed specializes in housing and local community development planning and policy. His research focuses on issues of race and poverty and how they affect housing policy planning and development. Before coming to the University of Minnesota in 1988, he worked at the mayor's Office of Housing and Economic Development in San Francisco and for several nonprofit community developers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He has served on the board of directors of nonprofit housing agencies in the Twin Cities, and on several regional commissions related to affordable housing and development.
He is the author of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities (Cornell University Press, 2018), New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Cornell University Press, 2013), Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (2003, Urban Institute Press), Shelter Burden: Local Politics and Progressive Housing Policy (1993, Temple University Press), and co-editor of The New Localism: Comparative Urban Politics in a Global Era (1993, Sage Publications).
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