Little systematic attention has been paid toward belonging for young children, particularly in contexts of diversity that are regularly part of school settings. Two-Way immersion (TWI) programs provide one educational context ideally suited for exploring the constructs of belonging and inclusion in linguistically and culturally diverse settings.…

The cognate advantage in bilingual children varies in strength across groups and individuals, in particular on receptive measures (e.g. picture-identification). This variation may be due to children's developing ability to benefit from cognates in such tasks, yet longitudinal studies of this phenomenon, especially with older children, are rare.…

Dual language education programs have become increasingly popular among elementary schools across the country. These programs are touted to represent a promise of a more equitable education for children whose parents are immigrants or whose first languages are not English. Nonetheless, these programs are also known to have appeal to monolingual…

Despite an increasing interest in pronunciation instruction in English as a majority language or international "lingua franca," less is known about pronunciation learning in non-English minority languages, especially among child learners. Bilingual education programs provide a unique context to address this research gap, as they involve…

Neoliberal ideology and an overemphasis on generating quick results dehumanizes higher education community engagement by overlooking the multiple roles and identities of boundary spanners, individuals engaged in community-based scholarship. If university-community partnerships are to prosper and be sustained, their human aspect deserves more…

While the challenges that educators faced during the COVID-19 pandemic are widely acknowledged, there is little scholarship that highlights the positive lessons. This manuscript documents the experiences of an individual dual language bilingual education elementary teacher that was a part of a longitudinal qualitative study of United States…

This study evaluates the Dual Language Program (DLP) implemented at a Title I public school in Baltimore City during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. Building on previous research, the DLP's implementation, sustainability, and effects on students' learning outcomes were examined. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the study's second…

This dissertation seeks to illuminate additive significance of the entanglements within a Dual Language Immersion Spanish Science classroom where arts-based pedagogies are employed. Using a theoretical framework that combines Jane Bennett's Vibrant Materialism (2010) and notion of Enchantment (2002) and Gloria Anzaldua's concept of Nepantla…

Using the transactional theory (Rosenblatt, 1995, 2001) and translanguaging pedagogy (García, 2009) as guiding lenses, this study explores how 1st-grade Korean-English bilingual students engage in storytelling and meaning construction using two languages when they encounter one of the chosen wordless picturebooks. The findings indicate that…

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…

This study investigates the practicalities of the instructional language policy and the role that English plays in multilingual classrooms at the lower primary level. The research aims to find answers to the following questions. First, in a multilingual lower primary classroom where some teachers and some pupils do not understand the major local…

Recent research on second language and subject-matter learning calls for moving away from hegemonic monolingual education in U.S. schools and instead making "translanguaging" the norm by supporting bi/multilingual students to use their full linguistic repertoires as they participate in classroom learning (Garcia, Johnson, & Seltzer,…

The participation of multilingual children in minority language immersion programmes is under-researched internationally. The Republic of Ireland (RoI) has become a linguistically and culturally diverse society. In the RoI, parents have the opportunity to educate their child in English-medium or Irish-medium (IM) schools. However, the cohort of…

Language proficiency exams have been used since the development of bilingual education. The purpose of the following case study is to demonstrate how the English and Spanish proficiency exams given to a child for admission into a dual language (Spanish-English) program framed a child in a deficit view and missed the proficiency the child had…

This autoethnography explored how two third-grade dual language teacher partners (English/Spanish) managed challenges such as lack of leadership support, testing pressures, and English hegemony, to help their students grow personally and academically. Autoethnography was chosen as a method because it enables researchers to write evocatively…