Pre and Post-Surveys

Using Reaser’s (2006) survey as a model, I created a survey using a Likert scale to determine students’ attitudes and self-perceptions about dialects, and the survey was administered at the beginning and end of the study. The pre-survey was piloted with 16 sixth grade students who identified as Latino/a and African American and attended an urban public school in the Northeastern United States. I spoke to the principal, school guidance counselor, and ELA teacher about my study before visiting the classroom and asked questions about how students talked about different varieties of English and if they used terms such as slang, dialect, Ebonics, or African American English. They all were confident that students would understand what I meant by African American English in the survey, but the principal worried they would use the term ghetto to describe this type of English. In the classroom, I introduced myself to the students and told them that I was a researcher working on a big project. Before distributing the survey, I told the students that I was interested in what they think about AAE and asked them if they knew what I meant when I used that particular term. Some of the African American students in the class raised their hands and provided answers such as “the way we talk outside of school” and “the way we sometimes talk informally.” I agreed with students’ definitions and told them “African American English is the way many African Americans might speak that is different from mainstream American English that might be used at school or when at work.” After distributing the pilot pre-survey to the students, I analyzed the data and tallied students’ responses for each statement. I revised the survey by eliminating statements that seemed repetitive or did not address students’ self-perception and adding an “I don’t know” response option (Appendix A). Also, the pilot study asked students specifically about AAE, and the

current survey has been revised to use the terms “mainstream dialect” and “non-mainstream dialect.”

During the pilot of the pre-survey, several students expressed uncertainty on how to respond to some of the prompts because they had mixed feelings. One African American student explained to me that she had two possible responses for a few of the responses and was not sure which answer to choose. Another African American student decided to write a few sentences about why she chose her answer because she was not sure if the response she chose reflected her true opinion. The revisions to the pre-survey aimed to address any confusion that students might encounter and to ensure that every survey item is worded clearly.

After reviewing students’ responses from the pilot of the pre-survey, response items that did not address students’ self-perceptions were deleted. I added definitions of mainstream dialect and non-mainstream dialect to the top of the survey. After piloting the survey, I realized how important it was for the participants to understand what I meant by mainstream and non- mainstream and included examples. If students did not understand the statements about these terms, then it would be difficult to assess their answers. During data collection, I had an initial conversation with students and asked them what they thought I meant by mainstream dialects and non-mainstream dialect, and I included an additional reminder on the survey to make sure that the students had a clear understanding.

The pre-survey was administered in the classroom at the beginning of the study before the participants engaged in the curricular activities and conversations on dialects. The participants put their names on their survey (pre- and post-surveys) so that their pre-and post- responses could be matched. It was important for me to be able to match students’ pre- and post- survey results so that I could describe how self-perceptions changed or remained the same over

the course of the study. The teacher was not able to see the students’ individual responses to the surveys, and I de-identified the surveys using pseudonyms after they were collected. The post- survey included the same statements as the pre-survey, but there was an additional optional section on the post-survey that asked students to identify their race. I looked for quantitative change in the students’ responses over the course of the study for all of the participants. The pre- and post-surveys (see Appendix A) took approximately ten minutes to complete, and students worked individually to complete their survey at the beginning of the class period.

The survey that I created had a total of 20 items, and the items connected to three different foci—students’ sociolinguistic content learning, students’ opinions about their teacher’s role in teaching MAE, and students’ general opinions about mainstream and non-mainstream dialects. Ten of the survey items asked students if they agreed with statements related to sociolinguistic principles. Four survey items asked students to give their perceptions about their teacher’s responsibility to teach MAE and value non-mainstream dialects in the classroom. Lastly, six items asked students to respond to statements about their perceptions of mainstream dialects and non-mainstream dialects.