Ye Shen, an assistant professor at the 91社区 College of Education,
has been awarded two significant research grants. One, a prestigious award from the
American Educational Research Association (AERA) - National Science Foundation (NSF),
and the other from the Language Learning Journal, will fund separate studies examining
heritage language learning.
"My journey began in the classroom as a dual-language immersion teacher, where I witnessed
firsthand the unique challenges bilingual children face, particularly heritage language
learning in immigrant families who are striving to maintain their heritage languages
while succeeding academically in English-dominant contexts," said Shen when asked
about what fuels her passion for this research. "Being a mother to three heritage
language learners has deepened my passion for researching heritage language learning."
"This experience has instilled in me a strong drive to better understand the cognitive,
social, and educational factors that shape heritage language development," said Shen.
"I hope to inform effective pedagogical approaches and policies that support heritage
language maintenance and empower bilingual individuals to preserve their cultural
identities while thriving in the broader community."
The $35,000 supports a two-year study titled "The Unique and Overlapping Contributions of Neurobiological
Reading and Math Networks to Academic Achievement." The study will delve into the
unique and overlapping contributions of neurobiological networks of reading and math
to children's academic achievement in these subject areas. Specifically, the study
investigates how speaking a heritage language influences distinct and overlapping
reading and math networks and their relations to children's academic achievement.
With recent advances in neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), a window was opened to develop a more comprehensive understanding
of the neural mechanisms underlying reading and mathematics processing. By comparing
heritage language and monolingual learners, this research can lead to a more nuanced
understanding of the impact of different language experiences on reading, mathematics,
and academic achievement.
This research can inform the development of educational interventions and policies
that consider students' unique linguistic and cultural experiences, highlighting its
importance. Early predictions of low reading and math achievement risk are crucial
to providing insights into which children might benefit from educational intervention.
For example, by identifying neural mechanisms underlying reading and math abilities
in heritage language learners, targeted interventions can be developed to support
these students' academic pursuits.
The study will utilize a large-scale, nationally representative sample from the Adolescent
Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study funded by the National Institute of Health
(NIH). It involved a prospective longitudinal study starting with children aged nine
to ten and following them for 10 years. The ABCD study includes a diverse sample of
nearly 12,000 youth nationwide, measuring children's brain development. Using this
dataset, Shen will seek to provide a national landscape of children's reading and
math brain networks from diverse groups of learners.
The $10,000 Language Learning Early Career Research grant will fund a project titled
"Unraveling the Influence of Chinese Character Writing versus Pinyin Typing on Word
Reading for Chinese Heritage Language Learners (CHLLs)," examining the relations between
different writing experiences and CHLLs' word-reading skills in both Chinese and English.
The research is guided by the Transfer Integration Hypothesis proposed by Shen, postulating
that reading and writing are intertwined processes that develop in tandem and mutually
influence each other across languages.
The study will examine the differential impacts of Chinese character writing and Pinyin
typing on word reading among CHLLs in both languages, which has yet to be explicitly
explored in any study to date. As character writing requires decoding at a visual
orthographic level, and Pinyin typing entails decoding at a phonological level, the
knowledge gained in this study will be essential for fostering strong word-reading
abilities in this population. Shen is partnering with the Tampa Bay Chinese School
to collect data on CHLLs in elementary schools.