This article explores recent developments in linguistic choices in education in Zanzibar and examines the arguments for using local languages of instruction (LoI) as a right. The article's analysis is based on a study of a curriculum change in Zanzibar in which English replaced Kiswahili as the LoI in the last two years of primary school in…

There is a growing need for more information regarding the early academic development of preschool-age children who are learning to speak Spanish and English. To achieve this, studies are needed that acknowledge the heterogeneity of language abilities within bilingual preschool children, and that these variations in language abilities may impact…

Whether or not we are teachers, all of us must make sense of language. In doing so, we encounter representations of language, implicit or explicit descriptions which shift over time and are always tied to social and political interests. Teachers' work necessarily depends on these descriptions, which are deeply embedded within their…

The U.S. government encourages the study of critical languages spoken in geographic areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security and the global economy through a variety of discretionary grants and scholarship programs. U.S. students are traditionally underrepresented in the study of these languages; however, many of the nation's K-12…

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), is collecting information about the early educational experiences of a nationally representative sample of children who were in kindergarten or who were of kindergarten age in ungraded classrooms or schools in the 2010-11 school year. The data collection began in…

Previous studies have shown that immersion students tend to speak the majority language during peer interactions, regardless of the language of instruction or their dominant language. Researchers have argued that the societal status of the majority language presents an obstacle to providing equitable support for both languages of instruction. To…

This study examined how emergent bilingual children's English and Spanish proficiencies moderated the relationships between Spanish and English input at home (bilingual home language input [BHLI]) and children's oral language skills in each language. The sample comprised over 1,400 Spanish-dominant kindergartners in California and Texas. BHLI was…

In an effort to become more competitive in the global market, Colombia, as many other Latin American countries, has declared English the dominant foreign language to be taught in schools and universities across the country. To support this measure, in the last 16 years, the government, through its National Ministry of Education, has launched a…

Within dual language education programs, well-structured peer interactions can facilitate the learning of language and curricular content simultaneously. Research has found that even very young bilingual students can engage in peer linguistic mediation to help less proficient classmates participate in small group work. In this article, I analyze…

As early education grows in the United States, in-service professional development in key instructional and interaction skills is a core component of capacity building in early childhood education. In this article, we describe results from an evaluation of the effects of MyTeachingPartner, a web-based system of professional development, on…

In Norway there are two written Norwegian languages, Bokmâl and Nynorsk. Of these two written languages Bokmâl is being used by the majority of the people, and Bokmâl has the highest prestige in the society. This article is about the shift of written language from Nynorsk to Bokmâl among young people in a traditional Nynorsk district in the…

In two case studies of trilingual development in the home, it was not the home languages that were the strongest but the language of the respective daycare centres. This paper investigates, first, how well the trilingual children could separate their daycare language from their home languages. Then it explores the kinds of communicative…

This paper deals with the initial findings from an international research project called "Children Crossing Borders." This study focused on discovering how early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems in five countries (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and the USA) serve the children of recent immigrants and what parents with diverse…

Data from one English-Italian bilingual child (1;10-3;1) are presented in this study which challenge the hypothesis that the consistent realization of overt subjects in English is caused by the emergence of finite verbal morphology in the child's grammar. The argument is made for the emergence of subjects as an independent grammatical property of…

This paper identifies: (a) discourses that shape immigrant parents' and early childhood educators' views of young children's bilingual development, and (b) ways in which these discourses are manifested in the everyday lives of immigrant parents as well as in the practices of early childhood educators. The findings of a study in a mid-size Canadian…