In October 2023, a new deaf student, "Zuri," showed up in my second grade classroom. This often happens. Parents move into and out of the district for work, and it is common to get a new student in the middle of the year without warning. Zuri's eyes were wide when she came into the classroom, and she looked scared. Who were all these…

The amount of language input bilingual children receive influences their language acquisition. This three-year quasi-longitudinal study determined the extent home language input influences measures of expressive and receptive English vocabulary among Spanish-English school-age bilingual children. The study also determined whether a relationship…

This action research explores how teachers and students at a private elementary school in Gyeonggi Province perceive the effectiveness of the English-only TEE policy and proposes a revised model tailored to the school's diverse needs. A total of 250 students and 6 teachers participated in the study, with data collected through surveys, interviews,…

Indigenous-language immersion (ILI) is a form of schooling where all, or nearly all, classroom instruction in every subject area is conducted in an Indigenous language. This dissertation comprises three case study comparisons of neighboring pairs of ILI and English-medium school programs. The first case study examines two elementary schools in the…

Additive bilingualism has long been reported as a benefit of immersion education. Nevertheless, the suitability of this form of education and bilingualism for children with special educational needs (SEN) has been much debated. Recent studies show that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), specific speech and language disorder (SSLD), and…

While translanguaging has been adequately researched in various educational sectors, there is scant research at the primary-level English-L2 classroom in the Chinese educational context. Within a monolingual English-only immersion policy favoured by the state in China for many decades now, translanguaging has been a debated issue recently. Within…

Despite Estonia being ranked among the highest performing nations in the world-wide testing of students, these encouraging results are somewhat overshadowed by the challenge to overcome the divided school system with different languages of learning that impacts crucially on students' social, academic and professional paths. The study examines…

Many educators in immersion contexts support a policy of strict separation of languages in the classroom as the ideal model for second language acquisition and are reluctant to make connections between the dominant language, the target language and pupils' home languages. This can result in missed opportunities for drawing on pupils' entire…

This longitudinal study documents a trilingual child's struggle with decoding and word recognition, the remedies sought to help him start reading in his second language (English) while he was in French immersion, and his performance after the intervention on tests of phonological awareness in L1 Romanian, L2 English, and L3 French. The study…

French immersion (FI) programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of growing migration to Canada. In the present mixed-methods study, I explore the perspectives and ideologies of teachers, principals, and central office staff in eight school divisions in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta with respect to…