This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Douglas VanDerwerken, Alejandro Portes, R. Sergio Guglielmi, Francis Mangubhai, Eileen Dugan Waldschmidt, Fuhui Tong, Michele S. Moses, Beverly J. Irby, Barbara Trudell, and Erika Feinauer.
(2012). The Shaping of Spanish CLIL, Online Submission. ELT (English language teaching) in Spain is witnessing the arrival of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and English is changing from a goal-oriented school subject to a medium of instruction for content subjects. What is taking place in our system is influenced by what has previously happened elsewhere. Two research episodes have contributed to it: the Bangalore Project in India and the Canadian Immersion Program originated at the St Lambert School in Montreal. From the first one we learnt about the notion of task, as an innovative element for curriculum design at that time, and, consequently, about a new type of syllabus: the process syllabus. Task-based approaches and project-work founded its pedagogical principles on this type of syllabus. The Canadian Immersion Program has provided us with, at least, two psycho-pedagogical principles that are paramount in bilingual education: (a) the distinction between basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), and b) the principle of common underlying proficiency. [More] Descriptors: Curriculum Design, Bilingual Education, English (Second Language), Foreign Countries
(2012). Education Reform in Bolivia: Transitions towards Which Future?, Research in Comparative and International Education. This article concerns the impact of educational reforms on young people in Bolivian society as they transition into adulthood, against the backdrop of globalisation and far-reaching structural changes. Ethnicity and cultural capital are linked in complex ways with social stratification in Bolivia. In a pluricultural society, the language of instruction and curricular content are among the most fundamental conditions that determine which social or linguistic groups will be excluded or disadvantaged during formal education. Language and content are particularly significant in identity formation and in the shaping of cultural capital. Each contributes to the formation of specific intercultural skills and opportunities for communication within national or international communities. Additionally, each of these components helps determine which educational paths are open for young people, and which activities they can engage with later in life. In Bolivia, various education reforms have attempted to reshape these parameters. Intercultural Bilingual Education and other key aspects of the reforms will be described along with the historical context in which they emerged. Some conclusions are put forward related to their implementation. [More] Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Foreign Countries, Educational Change, Cultural Capital
(2009). Bilingual Intercultural Education in Indigenous Schools: An Ethnography of Teacher Interpretations of Government Policy, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. This paper explores how teachers' beliefs and practices create spaces for the contestation and innovation of bilingual intercultural education (BIE) policy, a policy of indigenous culture and language revitalization in Peru. Based on ethnographic research, there are two central arguments developed throughout this paper. First, the author argues that unaddressed issues in the definition of BIE policy, namely its top-down design and vague treatment of the intercultural element, contribute to its problematic implementation. Under BIE the school has likely remained a space of exclusion of indigenous languages and cultures. Second, using empirically documented teacher data, the author argues that teachers are central to reproducing inequalities and contesting social structures through the implementation of policy. This paper aims to challenge common assumptions about the limited (passive) role of teachers as policy actors. Although bilingual teachers continue to contest and transform BIE policy in rural schools, their actions have remained unnoticed; thus opportunities for ground-up innovation to reach and transform the official discourse have been missed. This paper places at the center of language and policy research and, in particular, of bilingual education, the urgency to understand local practitioners–beyond the school setting–at the policy level. [More] Descriptors: Language Maintenance, Rural Schools, Multicultural Education, Bilingual Education
(2012). Taking a Closer Look at Latino Parents at One Spanish-English Two-Way Immersion Charter School, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Scholars who work with Latino/as in the USA have long been calling for a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of the US-based Latino population. Two-way Immersion (TWI) bilingual education programmes are an interesting context in which to examine the Latino parent communities in the USA. Overall, the language enrichment nature of TWI programmes attracts diverse parents from across many different demographic groups, and for a variety of reasons. This study uses an innovative application of cluster analysis to examine the parent population at one TWI Spanish-English elementary school. Survey questions asked were: parents' income, educational achievement, ethnicity, language spoken at home, religious affiliation, country of origin and residential distance from the school. Our analyses reveal that parents in our sample can be classified into four distinct groups based on the combinations of included characteristics. Our analyses show the emergence of three Latino parent clusters and one Caucasian parent cluster. These analyses show how accounting for the different social dimensions of these parents' lives simultaneously can provide a more nuanced understanding of the Latino parents at this school. [More] Descriptors: Charter Schools, Parent Attitudes, Bilingual Education, Language Enrichment
(2012). Language Justice for Sign Language Peoples: The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Language Policy. Sign Language Peoples (SLPs) across the world have developed their own languages and visuo-gestural-tactile cultures embodying their collective sense of Deafhood (Ladd 2003). Despite this, most nation-states treat their respective SLPs as disabled individuals, favoring disability benefits, cochlear implants, and mainstream education over language policies fostering native sign languages. This paper argues that sign language policy is necessary for language justice. Based on interviews with SLPs and policy makers in the UK, this paper argues that ideally sign language policy requires a shift in policy discourse away from a disability construction to one recognizing the minority language status of SLPs. However minority language policy support for the formulation of sign language policies hitherto has been very limited. Conversely, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (UN 2007) offers the best hope for sign language policy notwithstanding its disability framing. The CRPD requires states to recognize sign languages and to support sign bilingual education, where appropriate. It employs a human rights approach, and is a potential stepping stone towards the emergence of minority language policies for SLPs. This paper argues that the CRPD offers a regulatory context that could enable a shift in policy discourse towards the eventual promulgation of the minority sign language policy that many Deaf-SLPs have called for. This strategy, as suggested here, offers the best chance of moving from a situation of social injustice for SLPs to one of language justice where full sign language access is promoted. [More] Descriptors: Language Planning, Sign Language, Bilingual Education, Deafness
(2007). The Decline of Bilingual Education: How to Reverse a Troubling Trend?, International Multilingual Research Journal. For decades bilingual education in the United States has faced political adversity to varying degrees. Having survived several waves of English-only activism since the late 1970s, these programs seem unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Research has increasingly demonstrated their superiority to all-English approaches for educating English-language learners (ELLs), as documented by meta-analyses of the literature. Nevertheless, the continued availability of bilingual education in this country for significant numbers of ELLs is now in doubt. This is true in part because of the antibilingual backlash, which most recently took the form of English-only school initiatives adopted by voters in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts. In recent years a new and more formidable threat has emerged: the trend toward high-stakes testing, primarily in English, as mandated by the U.S. federal government's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Despite provisions requiring instructional programs to reflect "scientifically based research," the law provides indirect but powerful incentives to ignore this principle when it comes to ELLs. That is, it encourages schools to abandon native-language instruction in favor of all-English approaches. In this article, the author contends that to reverse the decline of bilingual education, it must be combined with consistent efforts to educate the public about the pedagogical and societal benefits of developing students' native-language skills. There is no escaping the reality that, as long as high-stakes testing continues to drive U.S. education policy, the trend toward all-English programs will continue to accelerate. [More] Descriptors: Federal Legislation, Bilingual Education, Testing, High Stakes Tests
(2012). English Immersion Schools in China: Evidence from Students and Teachers, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Research has demonstrated that second language immersion is an effective means of facilitating primary school students' second language acquisition without undermining their competence in their first language. Despite the rapid growth of Chinese-English bilingual programmes in China, limited empirical research has been conducted thus far by which to evaluate the programme effectiveness in relation to students' academic achievement, their cognitive development and the teaching and learning processes with regard to teacher education. This article presents evidence from several related empirical studies recently conducted in three schools affiliated with the China-Canada-United States English Immersion (CCUEI) project. These studies focus on three broad categories of findings: first, on student academic achievement represented by English (L2), Chinese (L1) and mathematics (both literacy and numeracy); second, on cognitive predictors of English reading and listening achievement of these immersion students; and third, on immersion teachers who teach within the context of Chinese-English bilingual education. These combined results present a complex developmental picture of students' academic achievement and cognitive development; and an insight into the teachers who teach within the context of an aggressive fast growth of Chinese-English bilingual programmes in China. [More] Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Bilingual Education, Learning Processes, Foreign Countries
(2002). English-Only Triumphs, but the Costs are High, Contexts. Explores the issue of English-only versus bilingual education by focusing on whether complete language assimilation is desirable for immigrant children and their families. Discusses the benefits of bilingualism, such as students exhibiting greater self-esteem, the benefits for immigrant families, and advantages for the labor market. Highlights the bilingual education debate. Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Acculturation, Bilingual Education, Bilingual Students
(2008). English and Spanish Acquisition by Hispanic Second Graders in Developmental Bilingual Programs: A 3-Year Longitudinal Randomized Study, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences. The authors studied a longitudinal English intervention in a 70/30 (Spanish/ English) developmental bilingual education (DBE) program (n = 302) and compared this model with a typical-practice, 80/20, late-exit transitional bilingual education program (n = 187) in terms of students' language and literacy acquisition from kindergarten to second grade in an urban school district in southeastern Texas. The findings revealed significant differences (p values less than 0.05) in favor of DBE students on (a) English measures of oral language, preliteracy skills, and reading fluency and comprehension (effect sizes of 0.12 to 0.71) and (b) Spanish measures of letter name and sound, preliteracy skills, and reading comprehension (effect sizes of 0.19 to 0.38). It was concluded that quality English instruction that incorporates direct and focused instruction, context-embedded vocabulary learning, and ongoing professional training in DBE programs is much needed to promote bilingualism and biliteracy. [More] Descriptors: Urban Schools, Reading Comprehension, Reading Fluency, Bilingual Education
(2012). Math and Science Achievement in English Language Learners: Multivariate Latent Growth Modeling of Predictors, Mediators, and Moderators, Journal of Educational Psychology. The effectiveness of various strategies for educating the growing U.S. population of English language learners (ELLs) has attracted a great deal of controversy. Bilingual education theory posits that retention and continued development of native language (L1) skills facilitate academic achievement through two mediating mechanisms. First, L1 proficiency promotes second language (L2) acquisition, which is required to succeed academically. Second, competence in the heritage language positively influences academic achievement by maintaining self-esteem. Both of these meditational chains were tested in a multivariate latent growth model of longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/2000). L1 proficiency was specified to predict distal math and science outcomes through its association with both L2 literacy and self-esteem. In turn, academic self-concept was hypothesized to mediate the self-esteem-academic achievement relation. Home and school characteristics were included as covariates. The full model exhibited excellent fit only in the Hispanic portion of the ELL sample. Consistent with the broader literature, ethnicity appears to serve as an important moderator of the way native language proficiency relates to self-perception, L2 acquisition, and math and science achievement. [More] Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Science Achievement, Bilingual Education, Second Language Learning
(2002). Language-in-Education Policies in the South Pacific: Some Possibilities for Consideration, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Discusses research related to bilingual education as a means of providing background information for policy makers, and then discusses a number of bilingual education models. Suggests separate models of language-in-education policies for the Melanesian, Micronesian/Polynesian parts of the South Pacific and for Fiji. Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Educational Policy, Foreign Countries, Language of Instruction
(2012). Of Gateways and Gatekeepers: Language, Education and Mobility in Francophone Africa, International Journal of Educational Development. Over the past 15 years, a range of alternative education programs have been launched in Burkina Faso. The programs have been developed primarily by international or national NGOs, within a supportive policy space provided by the national government. They aim to respond to the widely recognized inadequacy of the French-language ecoles classiques to provide a meaningful primary education experience for most Burkinabe children. One of the values which these programs all espouse is support for the lived realities of Burkinabe communities, particularly the communities that are least well served by the traditional school system. This value is reflected in, among other things, the use of the learner's mother tongue as a gateway to effective learning. However the influence of the French-dominated educational system is evident in the curriculum choices made in these programs; clearly, success in that system is a crucial step in navigating one's way past the social and economic gatekeepers of success in Burkina Faso. Thus language is seen as both gateway and gatekeeper, depending on its role in facilitating academic success or inhibiting social mobility. This paradoxical allegiance to both local realities and the colonially established education system has led to the development of bilingual education models which are at variance with the models promoted by theorists in the North. This paper examines several of these programs in the context of larger issues of mobility, literacy, language and culture in francophone Africa. [More] Descriptors: Nontraditional Education, Primary Education, Bilingual Education, Nongovernmental Organizations
(2002). Bilingual Interns' Barriers to Becoming Teachers: At What Cost Do We Diversify the Teaching Force?, Bilingual Research Journal. A critical ethnography of three Mexican American bilingual interns examines the barriers that minority individuals face in gaining licensure to teach. These include a salary reduction, a stressful workload, teacher exams, inability to use their bilingual education skills, and mentors with no experience in bilingual education or at the interns' grade level. Recommendations are offered. (Contains 43 references.) Descriptors: Alternative Teacher Certification, Bilingual Teacher Aides, Bilingual Teachers, Criticism
(2012). Determinants in the Choice of Comprehensible Input Strategies in Science Classes, Journal of International Education Research. The Bilingual Education Policy, which was launched in 1974 and revised in 1987, has resulted in the limited exposure of Filipino learners to the English language. This is because the policy reversed previous policies and stipulates that in only two content area subjects, namely, Science and Mathematics is English to be used as medium of instruction. The limited exposure to English has been cited as one of the reasons for the declining proficiency in English of Filipino students since the promulgation of the policy (Gonzales, 1986). On the other hand, the use of English as medium of instruction in cognitively demanding subjects such as science and mathematics has also been given as the reason for the poor showing of students and even teachers themselves in nationwide tests in Science (Maminta, 1985). The overall downtrend in student achievement as evidenced by the poor performance on all of the tests has given rise to two issues concerning the policy. First, is the language for initial literacy and the second is the medium of instruction in science and mathematics. These language issues are crucial in as much as language is the primary vehicle of expression and thought exchange in the classroom. Teaching and learning are in fact language tasks carried out largely by means of verbal interaction between teacher and students (Bellack, et al 1966). The exchange of ideas between students and teachers is largely done through language as they talk about concepts in science, mathematics and other content areas. [More] Descriptors: Bilingual Education, English (Second Language), Interaction, Verbal Communication
(2012). When the Majority Rules: Ballot Initiatives, Race-Conscious Education Policy, and the Public Good, Review of Research in Education. This chapter examines the following central question: How do direct democratic ballot initiatives affect the public good? A second, related question is this: When voters collectively make policy decisions, what responsibilities do researchers have to contribute to informing public deliberation about the relevant issues? In an attempt to answer these questions, the authors investigate how the direct democratic ballot initiative process, increasingly–and controversially–used to allow citizens to make education policy decisions, may serve to enhance or constrain the public good. The education policies affected by ballot initiatives, such as affirmative action and bilingual education, often concern issues of race, civil rights, and equality of educational opportunity. This analysis relies on political philosophy through the lens of deliberative democratic theory, relying in particular on the work of Amy Gutmann and Iris Marion Young. The more theoretical analyses are grounded in data from a recent empirical study on whether deliberative community dialogues on race-conscious policy issues serve to inform the dialogue participants. The aims of this chapter are to provide greater understanding of the education-policy-by-ballot-initiative phenomenon, bring to light the possibilities of "tyranny of the majority" when policies having to do with civil rights are left up to popular vote, and make the case that researchers ought to use their expertise in the service of public information and deliberation and, ultimately, the public good. [More] Descriptors: Politics of Education, Voting, Participative Decision Making, Democracy