The Individual with Disabilities Education Act specifies that families should be include in the special education process and they must provide informed consent. However, families from Spanish-speaking backgrounds, often report barriers to participation. In this study, we provided a forum for Spanish-speaking families to tell their stories using…

In the following study, displaced Puerto Rican mothers and I created and explored a learning space -- culture circles -- that engaged participants in a critical cycle of problem posing, dialogue, and problem solving in relation to their experiences in the receiving Pennsylvania community. Using a qualitative, ethnographic approach, the study drew…

While interest in pedagogical translanguaging has grown, it continues to be an underresearched area of study. The purpose of this study is to better understand student response to the use of strategic and pedagogically informed translanguaging practices in the university-level classroom. This article takes an in-depth look at the coursework and…

This research project sought to explore the influence of English L2 on Spanish L1 in an environment where the L1 (Spanish) is the dominant language. Participants were recruited through voluntary response sampling at the University of Puerto Rico Secondary School (UHS). They completed a language survey on Google Forms that collected general…

Proficient bilinguals use two languages actively, but the contexts in which they do so may differ dramatically. The present study asked what consequences the contexts of language use hold for the way in which cognitive resources modulate language abilities. Three groups of speakers were compared, all of whom were highly proficient Spanish-English…

This paper describes the language policies at 38 institutions of higher education on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. As a commonwealth of the US, Spanish and English hold co-official status on Puerto Rico despite the fact that majority of islanders use Spanish as their first language. Given the colonial status of the island, English has held…

Although it is commonly thought that people who are bilingual have an advantage in the labor market, studies on this topic have not borne out this perception.The literature, in fact, has found an earnings penalty is associated with bilingualism--people who are bilingual often make less than people who are monolingual in similar jobs. This report…

L2 learners' problems with English articles have been linked to learners' L1 and their access to universal semantic features (e.g., definiteness and specificity). Studies suggest that L2 adults rely on their L1 knowledge, while child L2 learners rely more on their access to semantic universals. The present study investigates whether child L2…

The use of subtractive bilingual models in Puerto Rico may influence children's construction of social categorizations. There is a gap in the literature related to linguistics, ethnicity, and systems of education and acculturation of a majority group. The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine the influence of the language of…

The undisputed position of English as the "international language of science" has resulted in a push for its use in college science classrooms in non-English-dominant contexts worldwide. This study uses classroom observation and interviews to examine the use of Spanish and English in college science classrooms at a land-grant university…

Framed within Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation, this article uses data from a college ESL classroom where a translanguaging approach was used for the teaching of a novel. After defining key terms, the article describes the linguistic context of higher education in Puerto Rico and its influence on one instructor's Basic English course. Using…

The objective of this ethnographic case study is to describe in detail one professor's translanguaging practices in an undergraduate science course at an officially bilingual university. The data-set is comprised of ethnographic field notes of 11 observed classes, audio recordings of those classes, an interview with the professor, and artifacts…

Of the multitude of dialects which exemplify the Spanish language, Puerto Rican Spanish has suffered the most severe rejection by language purists and pseudolinguists. The need to take a clear and open look at Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico is preeminent. It is the purpose of this module to clarify some major points of controversy regarding Puerto…