This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Sandra Butvilofsky, Chiu-Hui Wu, Bobbie Kabuto, Susan Hopewell, Curtis Acosta, Aliya M. Zafar, Ruth Fielding, Volodymyr Kulyk, Brian Devlin, and Kuchah Kuchah.
(2013). Estimating the Impact of the Massachusetts English Immersion Law on Limited English Proficient Students' Reading Achievement, Educational Policy. The large number of limited English proficient (LEP) children in U.S. schools and the uncertainty about the impact of bilingual education versus English immersion on their achievement warrant rigorous investigation of the effects of "English immersion laws." We estimated the impact of "Question 2", the Massachusetts English immersion law, and explored whether programs provided to LEP students before and after "Question 2" imparted different language and reading skills. The results suggested that "Question 2" had no substantial effect on third-grade LEP students' reading achievement; there was suggestive evidence that pre- and post-"Question 2" programs might attach emphasis to different subskills. [More] Descriptors: Reading Achievement, Program Effectiveness, Reading Skills, Bilingual Education
(2016). Applying Information and Communication Technologies to Language Teaching and Research: An Overview, Research-publishing.net. Currently, there is an international change in education that includes the development of new learning programmes and policies, such as (a) bilingual education programmes, (b) the Bologna process, with an emphasis on a more autonomous way of learning, or (c) the systematic evaluation and assessment of students and educational results. These changes in the educational situation require changing the way we learn, think and behave. Thus have emerged several new scenarios and environments for teaching and learning, such as blended learning, e-learning, ubiquitous learning or incidental learning. All these new approaches put the focus on learners and are intended to adapt to their needs and limitations. It seems that the easiest way to implement these new approaches is to apply Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to teaching and/or learning. This is the main assumption underlying the research in important language teaching and learning areas, such as Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL). This chapter (as well as this whole volume) tries to show how this goal is currently being achieved. [For the complete volume, "New Perspectives on Teaching and Working with Languages in the Digital Era," see ED565799.] [More] Descriptors: Information Technology, Second Language Instruction, Second Language Learning, English (Second Language)
(2011). The Status and Future of Bilingual Education for Remote Indigenous Students in the Northern Territory, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. This article analyses the status and future of bilingual education programs using Indigenous languages and English in remote Northern Territory schools. It explains why this educational approach is so contested at present, resulting in an unresolved situation which can best be regarded as an uneasy compromise on the ground and a stalemate at higher levels of political decision making. If the bilingual education approach was better understood by the current NT Government, there would a strong impetus now to "refine" and effectively implement a model of schooling that is appropriate for students in remote areas. Instead, current politicians debunk the bilingual approach, thereby robbing schools and literacy plans of any momentum and distracting attention away from the work that needs to be done. Meanwhile, student attendance rates have fallen away to worryingly low levels (Dickson, 2010). The current regime may well resolve the impasse, but in the absence of any meaningful, open negotiation the future looks uncertain. It is too soon to judge the cost of this uncertainty, but it may well result in further alienation and the emergence of non-government alternatives. [More] Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Attendance, Bilingual Education Programs, Bilingualism
(2016). Are Teachers Ready for CLIL? Evidence from a European Study, European Journal of Teacher Education. This article presents the outcomes of a European study on the main training needs which pre- and in-service teachers, teacher trainers, and coordinators consider they have in order to adapt to a bilingual education model. The macro-study has designed, validated and administered four sets of questionnaires to 706 informants across the whole of Europe, which have allowed a detailed diagnosis of language teachers' training needs in terms of linguistic and intercultural competence, theoretical and methodological aspects based on the new options associated to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), teaching materials and resources, and ongoing professional development. After framing the topic against the backdrop of prior investigations, the article expounds on the research design of the study and outlines its main findings in relation to the afore-mentioned fields of interest. A detailed diagnosis of where we currently stand in this process of preparation for CLIL models in Europe is provided and within- and across-cohort comparison is carried out in terms of a series of intervening variables. The ultimate aim is to base decisions regarding language degrees and teacher training courses on empirically grounded guidelines in order to guarantee a success-prone implementation of CLIL in our continent, country and region. [More] Descriptors: Educational Needs, Bilingual Education, Questionnaires, Language Teachers
(2016). Taking a Value-Oriented Perspective of Biliterate Families, Multicultural Education. The focus of this article is on how translanguaging, which is defined as a language practice that transcends formal language boundaries, was used as a linguistic tool and resource for expressing thoughts, emotions, and understandings of and around English and Spanish texts. Focusing on translanguaging as a medium for learning, the authors begin the process of valuing two students, Thomas and Melissa, as developing bilingual and biliterate learners who have linguistic strengths. The implications of such a perspective emphasize the concept of bilingualism as a resource not only in speaking but also in reading, regardless of the languages of the texts (Faltis, 2013; Hornberger, 2003; Ruiz, 1984). The concept and practice of translanguaging has reverberated across the field of bilingual education, and researchers document its use within both oral (Garcia, 2009) and written (Makar, 2012; Velasco & Garcia, 2014) contexts. While this may be the case, less focus has been placed on this bilingual language practice within families. The languages families use for purposes of communicating when reading and discussing texts have the potential to support the bilingual oral reading performances of their children. In this research, the authors investigate how translanguaging mediated the social construction of knowledge about reading. [More] Descriptors: Bilingualism, Bilingual Education, Family Literacy, Literacy Education
(2011). Educational Decentralization: A Review of Popular Discourse on Chinese-English Bilingual Education, Asia Pacific Journal of Education. Educational decentralization is a worldwide phenomenon, which takes different forms and leads to different outcomes in different socio-economic contexts. Taking Chinese-English bilingual education in Mainland China as an exemplar, this study examines how the decentralization of education has worked in China in the past two decades, and what consequences decentralization has brought about in the country. The analysis reveals that decentralization has created a favourable overall socio-economic and political context for bilingual education to develop, from a local endeavour into a nation-wide undertaking. The analysis also reveals that decentralization has allowed the diversified operation of bilingual programmes at the regional level. However, there has been a visible inconsistency and incoherence between the theoretical underpinnings of the programmes and the practice in schools and classrooms. Such an inconsistency and incoherence may have resulted from a newly reconfigured relation between the central government and local governments, as well as a lack of human or intellectual resources at the regional level, leading to some unintended educational and socio-political outcomes. [More] Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Administrative Organization, Foreign Countries, Bilingualism
(2013). Challenges of Bilingualism in Higher Education: The Experience of the Languages Department at the Universidad Central in Bogotá, Colombia, GIST Education and Learning Research Journal. Many of the actions of Colombia's National Programme for the Development of Foreign Languages (Programa Nacional de Desarrollo de Lenguas Extranjeras–PNDLE) have been carried out in elementary and secondary education, but there is not much information about its impact in institutions of higher education. The aim of this article is to present the initiatives taken as well as the challenges faced by the Languages Department in order to foster bilingualism at "Universidad Central" in Bogota, Colombia. To explain the reasons behind these initiatives, quality indicators for successful bilingual programs were used and the situation at the university in comparison to the indicators is described. It is concluded that the endeavour of graduating bilingual students will not be easy to achieve unless institutions incorporate models of bilingual education as indicators for accreditation and support the labours of languages departments. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Bilingual Education, Bilingual Education Programs, Higher Education
(2013). Pedagogies of Resiliency and Hope in Response to the Criminalization of Latin@ Students, Journal of Language and Literacy Education. Over the last two decades, the criminalization and demonization of Chican@/Latin@ youth has produced policies in the United States that have banned bilingual education, Mexican American Studies in Tucson, and undocumented students in Georgia from attending public universities. Furthermore, hundreds and thousands of youth in the U.S. are criminalized due to inadequate and inhumane immigration policies that violate civil and human rights. Not coincidentally, the prison industrial complex has seen their profits increase exponentially and the convergence of these two phenomena proves to be far from accidental. However, pedagogies of hope and resiliency shine a beacon of optimism for the future in communities that have seen unparalleled regressive political attacks on Chican@/Latin@ youth. This article focuses on the relationship between the political context for Chican@/Latin@ youth and the resiliency and creativity of those who strive for justice, equality and education for liberation in their community. [More] Descriptors: Teaching Methods, Hispanic Americans, Resilience (Psychology), Psychological Patterns
(2016). Students' Use of Their Plurilingual Resources in Australian Schools, Language and Education. Research involving the plurilingualism of young people has begun to focus upon how we must re-conceptualise language learning to acknowledge the language resources of children with plurilingual experiences. This is particularly important in countries like Australia with a traditionally monolingual mindset embedded in policy, education, and the views of much of the community. Growing arguments posit that it is more important to focus on the resourceful use of language than attempts to measure skill, competence, or fluency in one language. In this paper, the movement between languages of children with a range of linguistic repertoires is explored in the Australian context. Data are taken from student and teacher interviews and focus groups with parents across five different primary schools, each with a bilingual education programme. The paper argues that bilingual programmes aimed at monolingual background students can have benefits for more than one kind of plurilingual student. It was found that plurilingual children drew on their home language(s) as a resource in school contexts where other languages were used, showed an increased enjoyment of learning, and developed learning strategies which built on their plurilingual experiences. Additionally, the data showed how teachers in these contexts worked towards expanding their own linguistic repertoires. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Educational Resources, Use Studies, Multilingualism
(2016). Bilingual Identity Negotiation in Practice: Teacher Pedagogy and Classroom Interaction in a Bilingual Programme, Language Learning Journal. This paper discusses how teachers in a bilingual education programme see their pedagogies and interactions influencing student connection to the languages of the bilingual programme. The teacher perception of the classroom is explored because the classroom is one of the principal settings in which the students negotiate their bilingual identities. The students in this study were involved in two classroom settings within the same school in the Australian government school system. One setting was a so-called "bilingual" classroom where two teachers were present–a native French speaker and a native English speaker–who each used their native language in a team-teaching setting; the other was an "immersion" classroom where one native-speaker French teacher conducted the classes entirely in French. The paper explores the teachers' perceptions of their pedagogies and the co-teacher relationship as factors affecting student bilingual identity negotiation within the Bilingual Identity Negotiation Framework (BINF). This framework positions students' bilingual identity negotiation within the three intersecting spheres of socio-cultural connection, interaction and investment. [More] Descriptors: Bilingualism, Self Concept, Foreign Countries, Bilingual Education Programs
(2016). Language Policy in Multilingual Contexts: Revisiting Ruiz's "Language-as-Resource" Orientation, Bilingual Research Journal. In this article, we apply Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation to three international settings: Taiwan, Pakistan, and mainland China. Our guiding question was how different languages (indigenous languages, Chinese, and English) were positioned differently as resources in these contexts. For our analysis, we used Lo Bianco's (2001) elaboration of the language-as-resource framework as our starting point for an examination of early childhood education (Taiwan), political events (Pakistan), and different types of bilingual education (mainland China). Through this analysis, we confirmed the multidimensionality and multiplicity of the language-as-resource orientation (i.e., different languages can be positioned as different types of resources by different groups in society). We also found that additional dimensions might be considered as part of the language-as-resource orientation, such as native-speaker status, time, and space. Finally, we argue for an emphasis on Ruiz's idea of cooperative language planning as an integral part of the language-as-resource orientation. The "multilingualism-as-a-resource" orientation is a step in this direction. [More] Descriptors: Language Planning, Multilingualism, Foreign Countries, Chinese
(2013). Combining Identity and Integration: Comparative Analysis of Schools for Two Minority Groups in Ukraine, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. This article analyses school systems for two of Ukraine's minorities, the Hungarians and the Crimean Tatars with the aim of assessing their success in promoting ethnocultural identity and social integration of the minority youth. I demonstrate that the exclusive instruction in Hungarian ensures the reproduction of group language knowledge and identity among the minority members but perpetuates their inability to communicate in the majority language and thus limits their social mobility. In contrast, the limited scope of education in Crimean Tatar exacerbates the problem of its poor knowledge by the group members and, therefore, vulnerability of their cultural identity. I argue that the introduction of bilingual education is the best way to solve the two groups' educational problems. [More] Descriptors: Minority Groups, Foreign Countries, Self Concept, Social Integration
(2016). English-Medium Instruction in an English-French Bilingual Setting: Issues of Quality and Equity in Cameroon, Comparative Education. Despite its multilingual nature Cameroon's educational system provides for full immersion into either French-medium or English-medium education from the first year schooling. Following political tensions in the early 1990s the country decided to reaffirm its commitment to promote bilingualism in the educational system with the outcome being the implementation of various forms of bilingual education models across the country, including, in recent years, a dramatic rise in the number of children from "Francophone" homes enrolling in English-medium schools. This paper examines this rising interest in English-medium instruction (EMI) in a country where French is still the language of political power and administration and where there is still very little evidence that even "Anglophone" children sufficiently benefit from EMI. Drawing from an analysis of data collected from school children, parents, teachers and a school inspector, this article reveals existing complexities, challenges and possibilities arising from the current trend and presents a holistic picture of the realities of EMI in this immensely multilingual country. [More] Descriptors: Language of Instruction, French, English, Second Language Instruction
(2013). Emergent Bilinguals: Framing Students as Statistical Data?, Bilingual Research Journal. Immigrant youth who are designated as English language learners in American schools–whom we refer to as "emergent bilinguals"–are increasingly framed by numerical calculations. Utilizing the notion of assemblage from actor-network theory (ANT), we trace how emergent bilinguals are discursively constructed by officials, administrators, politicians, and the media through the manipulation and publication of school test scores, district data, and state reports. Drawing upon two overlapping, complementary qualitative studies conducted in New York City, we reveal the ways in which this places burdens on emergent bilinguals and their schools and narrows important discussions of bilingual education pedagogies to ones centered on numerical data. [More] Descriptors: Accountability, Bilingual Education, Second Language Learning, English Language Learners
(2016). Privileging Bilingualism: Using Biliterate Writing Outcomes to Understand Emerging Bilingual Learners' Literacy Achievement, Bilingual Research Journal. Language planning and policy with regard to bilingual education are greatly influenced by the ideologies outlined by Richard Ruiz. In this article, we demonstrate that Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation requires that we use two-language assessments to study how program models are both developing and conserving the languages that students bring to school. We demonstrate through a study of students' writing how scholars might use such assessments to privilege bilingualism and present a more complete understanding of students' biliteracy development that counters the use of bilingualism in service to the hegemony of English, even when the same study includes a comparison of English outcomes of students in paired literacy as compared to students in English-only models. Findings reveal that students in paired literacy are becoming comparably literate in the domain of writing in Spanish and English as measured by a Biliteracy Writing Rubric. Furthermore, when their English language outcomes are compared to those of their peers in English-only contexts, the differences are found to be statistically insignificant. [More] Descriptors: Language Planning, Educational Policy, Bilingual Education, Literacy