This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Elena Izquierdo, Maggie Struck, Marianne Turner, Gwyn Lewis, Russell Cross, Britta Hufeisen, Valerie Sartor, Stephanie Yap, Dana Oprica, and Carrie Rogers.
(2016). Spaces for Learning: Policy and Practice for Indigenous Languages in a Remote Context, Language and Education. Bilingual and Indigenous language and culture programmes have run in remote Australian schools with significant and continuing local support. Developments such as the new national Indigenous languages curriculum offer a further opportunity to broaden and sustain Indigenous language teaching and learning activities in these schools. However, over the last two decades, increasing government attention to poor outcomes on national standardised literacy and numeracy assessments has markedly restricted the scope for Indigenous languages.¬ This paper draws on a model of ideological and implementational spaces to discuss competing discourses in top-down and bottom-up policy. Data from an ethnographic study on education stakeholders in remote locations in Australia's Northern Territory¬ revealed incongruities between local discourses that emphasise bi- and multilingualism, local identity and knowledge and community language maintenance and institutional discourses, which foreground a uniform model of education, with English literacy the dominant measure of educational success.¬ The study also revealed that principals, teachers, and community members in some schools work together to develop vibrant, though often fragile, programmes.¬ In addition to this, community members outside school systems are increasingly finding and taking up the spaces that allow innovative Indigenous language and cultural teaching and learning. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Bilingual Education, Indigenous Knowledge, Ethnography
(2016). Examples of Practice: An Intercultural Approach to Translate Romanian Children's Folklore into Spanish, Intercultural Education. Due to the great number of Romanian pupils in Spanish public school, the local administration organises extra-curricular Romanian courses in order to preserve the Romanian language and culture. This is a way to contribute to build and consolidate a bicultural and bilingual profile of the young people. Besides, it is also an opportunity to align with plurilingual and pluricultural competence established by "The Common European Framework of References for Languages" (2002). Based on the premise that "children's literature is an intercultural instrument", I choose as corpus the Romanian children's folklore represented by games, formula-songs, recital-stories, household words, incantations, riddles and lullabies to translate into Spanish. After the translations, Romanian children had to find similarities and differences between the Romanian and Spanish children's songs, in order to augment the knowledge about both cultures. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Spanish, Translation, Cultural Education
(2001). Towards Trilingual Education, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Highlights the fact that learning a third language in school contexts is a common phenomenon all over the world and poses several questions specifically related to the characteristics of third language acquisition. Considers the relationship between third language acquisition and the research traditions of bilingualism and second language acquisition. Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Bilingualism, Classroom Environment, Language Research
(2016). Narratives in Two Languages: Storytelling of Bilingual Cantonese-English Preschoolers, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare narratives generated by 4-year-old and 5-year-old children who were bilingual in English and Cantonese. Method: The sample included 47 children (23 who were 4 years old and 24 who were 5 years old) living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who spoke both Cantonese and English. The participants spoke and heard predominantly Cantonese in the home. Participants generated a story in English and Cantonese by using a wordless picture book; language order was counterbalanced. Data were transcribed and coded for story grammar, morphosyntactic quality, mean length of utterance in words, and the number of different words. Results: Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed higher story grammar scores in English than in Cantonese, but no other significant main effects of language were observed. Analyses also revealed that older children had higher story grammar, mean length of utterance in words, and morphosyntactic quality scores than younger children in both languages. Hierarchical regressions indicated that Cantonese story grammar predicted English story grammar and Cantonese microstructure predicted English microstructure. However, no correlation was observed between Cantonese and English morphosyntactic quality. Conclusions: The results of this study have implications for speech-language pathologists who collect narratives in Cantonese and English from bilingual preschoolers. The results suggest that there is a possible transfer in narrative abilities between the two languages. [More] Descriptors: Preschool Children, English, Sino Tibetan Languages, Story Telling
(2012). Translanguaging: Origins and Development from School to Street and beyond, Educational Research and Evaluation. The article traces the Welsh origins of "translanguaging" from the 1980s to the recent global use, analysing the development and extension of the term. It suggests that the growing popularity of the term relates to a change in the way bilingualism and multilingualism have ideologically developed not only among academics but also amid changing politics and public understandings about bilingualism. The original pedagogic advantages of a planned use of translanguaging in pedagogy and dual literacy are joined by an extended conceptualisation that perceives translanguaging as a spontaneous, everyday way of making meaning, shaping experiences, and communication by bilinguals. A new conceptualisation of translanguaging is in brain activity where learning is through 2 languages. A tripartite distinction is suggested between classroom translanguaging, universal translanguaging, and neurolinguistic translanguaging. The article concludes with a summary of recent research into translanguaging with suggestions for future research. [More] Descriptors: Bilingualism, Code Switching (Language), Translation, Bilingual Education
(2016). School Leadership for Dual Language Education: A Social Justice Approach, Educational Forum. This article examines how a dual language program can be developed within the framework of social justice leadership. The authors analyzed principal, teacher, and parent interview transcripts as well as field notes and key documents to understand the role of school leadership in creating inclusive dual language programs to close the Latina/o-White achievement gap. Findings suggest the importance of family-teacher support, multiple stakeholder perspectives, teacher recruitment, and ongoing professional development and program evaluation. [More] Descriptors: Bilingual Education Programs, Social Justice, Leadership, Achievement Gap
(2016). Making Space for Multilingualism in Australian Schooling, Language and Education. In this article we introduce the special issue: Language(s) across the curriculum in Australian schools. The special issue includes a focus on English as an additional language in mainstream classes, Indigenous education, heritage languages and foreign languages, and we give background to these different–though frequently overlapping–contexts. By considering context, we seek to demonstrate the timeliness and importance both of the special issue and of a focus on the experiences of students, teachers, parents and members of the community in bilingual and multilingual initiatives. Despite the empirical focus being Australian schools, we understand that the findings may resonate with other setting where monolingual ways of thinking are dominant. We conclude this introductory article by providing the structure and overview of the special issue. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Multilingualism, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning
(2016). Research as Discovery, Teaching as Trust: Developing New Perspectives through Teacher Research, Educational Forum. This paired-format article describes how one of the authors (Rodriguez) undertook a teacher research study of homework in the urban first-grade classroom in which she was a paraprofessional. Her findings influenced her to broaden her perspective on homework. Her graduate professor (Blumenreich) discusses the challenge of supporting a student to make her own discoveries. [More] Descriptors: Teacher Researchers, Trust (Psychology), Homework, Educational Research
(2016). Inclusive Literacy Teaching: Differentiating Approaches in Multilingual Elementary Classrooms. Language and Literacy Series, Teachers College Press. Responding to the need to prepare elementary teachers for the increasing linguistic diversity in schools, this book presents key foundational principles in language and literacy development for linguistically diverse students. Readers see these ideas enacted through the journeys of real students as they progress from 1st through 6th grade. What emerges is both a "big picture" and an "up-close and personal" look at the successes, obstacles, and developmental nuances for students learning to read and write in a new language in inclusive classrooms. Throughout, the authors provide crucial guidance to educators that will support them in taking conscious steps toward creating educational equity for linguistically diverse students. In addition, the book features include: (1) Illuminates the variation among students who have been categorized as English language learners; (2) Provides access to a broad range of research-based approaches in teacher-friendly language; (3) Examines key dilemmas that teachers are likely to encounter in today's classrooms; (4) Avoids recipes or "cookie-cutter" approaches to complex scenarios; and (5) Addresses academic vocabulary and language development, a key barrier to accessing content for students learning English as a new language. [Includes a Foreword by Robert T. Jimenez.] [More] Descriptors: Reading Instruction, Literacy Education, Inclusion, Multilingualism
(2016). The Gentrification of Dual Language Education, Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education. Utah's dual language education (DL) initiative, officially introduced in 2007 and backed by unique state-level planning, is touted as a new "mainstreaming" of DL and is sparking interest across the U.S. Using a critical language policy lens and a mixed method approach, we asked which student groups were positioned discursively and materially to benefit the most from this policy across three types of privilege: white racial privilege, wealth, and English privilege. A critical discourse analysis conducted of five main Utah DL policy texts pointed toward already privileged student groups being discursively targeted for DL participation. Analysis of the demographics of schools housing DL programs between 2005 and 2014 showed a statistically significant drop in access for those without the three forms of privilege under study. We argue these findings are consistent with a larger trend toward the metaphorical "gentrification" of DL by students of more privilege than those it historically served. We discuss our concerns that as the Utah model spreads nationwide, the gentrification process threatens to position DL as the next wave in a broad pattern of inequitably distributed enrichment education within U.S. schools. We recommend steps toward avoiding this inequitable outcome. [More] Descriptors: Mixed Methods Research, Statewide Planning, State Policy, Bilingual Education Programs
(2016). The Needs of Educators in Intercultural and Bilingual Preschools in Chile: A Case Study, International Journal of Multicultural Education. Several studies have examined the lack of or the insufficient preparation of K-12 educators to work in intercultural and bilingual (IBE) schools in Chile, but little is known about the preparation of educators to teach in IBE preschools. Even less is known about teachers' perceptions of their own preparation. This work contributes to a growing body of literature that examines the experiences and practice of second language teachers in Indigenous language education settings from a sociocultural perspective. This qualitative case study focuses on teachers' perceptions of their preparation to teach Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people, in urban IBE preschools in Chile. Three research questions guide this study: What are teachers' perceptions of their needs regarding their preparation to teach Mapudungun in urban IBE preschools? What are the current challenges that teachers face teaching Mapudungun in urban IBE preschools? Which experiences fostered their ability to teach Mapudungun? The findings of this study have implications for the incorporation of more complex notions of Indigenous language learning that are linked directly to Mapuche culture and its sociopolitical context, as well as the inclusion of teachers' experiential knowledge in the preparation of teachers for work in IBE schools. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Preschool Teachers, Bilingual Education, Bilingual Schools
(2001). Bombs or Bilingual Programmes? Dual-Language Immersion, Transformative Education, and Community Building in Macedonia, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Documents a Macedonian/Albanian dual-language immersion program in Macedonia and recommends how to structure bilingual programs that build community between language groups where there exists an unequal power structure between the two languages. Descriptors: Albanian, Bilingual Education Programs, Bilingualism, Foreign Countries
(2016). Evolving Identities among Russian-Born Buriat Mongolian Children in a Chinese Bilingual School, Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. This article addresses identity issues among a specific group of Indigenous youth, young Buriat Mongolian students, born in Russia, who struggled to understand their sense of cultural identity while living and studying in Chinese Inner Mongolia. This qualitative research project employed ethnographic methodology. Sociocultural theory, specifically Bakhtin, was employed to analyse findings. Results indicated that ties to the land, family practices and spiritual practices are significant identity markers for the Buriat youth involved in this study and Buriat parents and elders taught young Buriats about the moral dimensions of living upon Buriat lands. [More] Descriptors: Self Concept, Ethnic Groups, Family Relationship, Chinese
(2001). Instructional Conditions for Trilingual Development, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Outlines a framework for academic language learning that highlights the importance of focusing instructionally on meaning, language, and use. Reviews research that suggests that to develop students' academic language proficiency in bilingual or trilingual contexts, instruction must focus extensively on the processing of comprehensible input. Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Bilingualism, Cognitive Processes, Language Processing
(2001). Towards a Typology of Trilingual Primary Education, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Discusses trilingual primary education, a growing trend in Europe. Develops a typology of trilingual primary education based on three dimensions: (1) the linguistic context in which trilingual education takes place; (2) the linguistic distance between the three language varieties at issue; and (3) the organizational design of the teaching of the three school languages. Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Classroom Environment, Elementary Education, Foreign Countries