Increasingly, teacher educators are required to prepare teachers for students in mainstream classrooms who are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. Yet, calls for teacher educators to model enactments of curriculum and instruction concerning diversity expected of prospective teachers in U.S. K-12 classrooms have resulted in…

The purpose of this study was to extend a previous investigation of the psychometrics of the "Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Screening Test" (DELV-S) to include pre-kindergarten children (primarily African American and from low-income households). The previous study (Petscher, Connor, & Al Otaiba, 2012) included a…

Drawing upon tenets of Critical Multilingual Language Awareness (CMLA), we analyzed multimodal compositions created by preservice teachers (PSTs) from two institutions to investigate their meaning-making at the nexus of language, identity, and power. Through analysis of PSTs' multimodal compositions, reflective writing about their coursework, and…

Framed within the discussions of the knowledge base for language immersion teachers, this article presents a qualitative case study of a first-year Grade 2 French immersion teacher's enactment of his systemic functional linguistic (SFL) knowledge to position his students in a culturally sustaining genre pedagogy. We examined interactive events and…

Recent studies claim that second language learning influences learner identities. In the light of globalisation, learners of English invest in this powerful language of career and social enhancement, which is simultaneously an investment in their new identities. Learners of English, particularly in EFL countries such as Japan, strive to acquire…

This article offers a critical interpretation of the current trends in instructional models for English language learners in California. We review key instructional models and analyze them from traditional (teacher-centered), progressive (student-centered), and critical orientations (society- and power-centered). These instructional models share…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

Articles in this issue examine (1) the primary sources of variability in reading and language achievement among Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in the United States, (2) the extent to which poor performance at the end of grade 2 is identifiable in developmental trajectories beginning in kindergarten, (3) the relations among core reading…

This case study used a co-creation approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a translational research strategy in supporting early childhood education. How Mapping Educational Specialist Knowhow (MESH) and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) collaborated to enhance the training of volunteers and learning provision for 1,500 refugee children is…

Prompted by UNESCO initiatives on promoting world literacy (UNESCO, 2005, 2014), many countries, including Thailand, have launched language education policies to push literacy development forward. Accordingly, this study seeks to investigate the policies promoting literacy in Thailand and their implementation at the local level. Language education…

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 population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

This volume provides an overview of current issues in English as an International Language (EIL) education and critical intercultural literacy pedagogy. The different chapters are inspired by 'critical interculturality' as a decolonial project that seeks to interrogate the structures, conditions, and mechanisms of colonial power relations that…

The complex notion of the public/private distinction of social spheres has not been systematically investigated in sociolinguistics; particularly in the case of bidialectal kindergarten age children and how they construct their social lives around this distinction in a public environment such as that of school. No simple continuum can clearly…

The ability to flexibly approach the pronunciation of unknown words, or set "for variability", has been shown to contribute to word recognition skills. However, this is the first study that has attempted to teach students strategies for increasing their set for variability. Beginning readers (N = 15) were instructed to correct oral…