This study examined and compared language ideologies and attitudes among dual language program (Spanish-English) graduates regarding their use of Spanish and perceptions of their bilingual education experience through surveys and semi-structured interviews. Drawing from the theory of ideology, data was analyzed using both quantitative and…

Few Spanish language tools are available for assessing important social-emotional learning (SEL) skills. The present study presents evidence of the psychometric properties of a Spanish-language version of SELweb (SELweb-S), a web-based system for assessing children's ability to recognize others' emotions and perspectives, solve social problems,…

Bilingual social workers need specialized training to provide effective mental health services to Spanish-speaking Latinos. Ideally, this training should use the language in which the social workers plan to practice. This article describes an innovative two-semester course offered "in Spanish" that prepared advanced undergraduate and…

Research Findings: This longitudinal study investigated the Spanish vocabulary development of dual-language-learning (DLL) children (N = 150) from Spanish-speaking, low-income, predominantly immigrant homes who were enrolled in a state-funded preschool program that provided instruction in Spanish. Children's Spanish vocabulary trajectories were…

After first discussing the ideologies (standard and monolingual) implicit in language education in the United States, we argue for a necessary ideological shift in the way multiple languages and other forms of semiotic communication are understood, used, and supported in preschool for emergent bilinguals. We present examples from a preschool study…

The effects of birth order have been debated in many disciplines and have been shown to be important for a number of outcomes. However, studies examining the significance of birth order in language development and practices, particularly with regard to minority languages, are few. This article reports on two sets of data collected among Spanish…

This study examined the relationship between Spanish oral reading fluency (ORF) at the end of second grade and students' performance on the third grade ISAT reading test. The major research question guiding this study was: What is the direction and strength of the relationship between performance on the 2nd grade IDEL FLO, a Spanish language ORF…

Maria was a fifth grade student when the authors met her in a study of immigrant child-language brokers. Her family immigrated from a farming community in Mexico to a Chicago suburb where there were limited bilingual resources. Maria's mother did not speak fluent English, and Maria's teachers did not speak Spanish, so Maria often served as a…

Administrators in the Chicago public schools are seeking to strike the right balance between providing guidance and permitting flexibility as they put in place the nation's first state mandate for providing bilingual education to preschoolers. New rules approved by the Illinois state board of education in June flesh out a January 2009 change that…

This article considers immigrants' perspectives on language immersion education. Data are drawn from a longitudinal research project that examined one suburban school district's construction of a two-way immersion (TWI), bilingual education policy. Analyses focus on 18 months of participant observation with six Mexican immigrant families who had…

Bilingual education has taken center stage in Illinois with a new education mandate; many public preschools will be required to offer bilingual education to all three- and four-year-olds who do not speak English. Dual-language (DL) classrooms represent one very promising model in bilingual education that is being used to develop these new…

This article describes an investigation of medical facilities undertaken by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children in a dual-language prekindergarten program in Chicago, Illinois. The article describes the phases of the project and documents the children's involvement in the project through anecdotal reports, photographs, and samples of the children's…

This paper describes the work of, and the problems associated with, the bi-lingual psychologists whom the Chicago public schools employ to serve children who speak little or no English, and the teachers and administrators of the schools in which these children are enrolled. As introduction, the paper briefly sketches the total psychological…

The bilingual situation in Illinois is described briefly, and an outline of the instructional objectives of local bilingual programs is given. The programs are to be: (1) measurable and oriented toward the end-of-year-product, and (2) organized within the guidelines for state-funded bilingual programs. The main part of the report describes the…