In an effort to deliver practical staff development opportunities to bilingual education teachers and build a support system for them, a peer coaching inservice workshop model was developed. Over a period of one school year, about 40 elementary bilingual and English-as-a-second-language teachers participated in a 6-session workshop series with a…

This report describes a diagnostic instrument designed for school districts to use in assessing the training needs of bilingual staff. The construction and trial administration of the instrument involved several stages. Among these were the development of a pool of subscaled questions, questionnaire forms, and a pool of instrument questions. The…

The belief that bilinguals are an asset to their country is not held by most bilinguals today, much less the general public. This paper describes on-going research into the discovery that many bilinguals conceal their linguistic skill in the home language when in an English-speaking environment, passing as English-speaking monolinguals. Data are…

As bilingual education emerges after the 1974 Lau decision, the additional need to test the language proficiency of bilingual education teachers is recognized. Examination of possible means of validating language proficiency of bilingual education teacher certification candidates shows several alternatives, some desirable and some not. A review of…

University programs to train teachers of bilingual education (BE) and English as a second language (ESL) are expanding and maturing, but much remains to be explored and accomplished. Hundreds of thousands of BE and ESL teachers currently need training to accommodate program staffing needs. Over half the states have developed BE and/or ESL teacher…

Two case studies of language use in bilingual classrooms are presented. The first case study focuses on the functions of the teacher's speech in a twelfth grade civics class. One 50-minute lesson was recorded and transcribed. The two classroom languages, English and Spanish, were coded according to their use for information, elicitation,…

This paper describes the Chinle Primary School Dual Language Project in terms of both the activities of the project and the attitudes and aspirations of its bilingual teachers. Chinle Unified School District (Arizona) enrolls over 4,000 students in 7 schools; 99 percent are American Indians, and 62 percent are considered limited English proficient…

Factors that can both facilitate and restrain the preparation of teachers of learning disabled Hispanics, and areas that should be included in such preparation are identified. Twelve similarities between bilingual education and special education are identified, including the following: specialized populations, specially defined instructional…

This summary of a dissertation reports results of a study of teachers providing bilingual education at a Navajo border town school. History, demography and geography, socioeconomics, and politics all affect cultural knowledge to be taught and teachers must study these subjects. However, teaching Navajo language and culture in a bordertown school…

Vocational education for limited English proficiency (LEP) students at Waubonsee Community College, Illinois, which includes a vocational English as a second language (VESL) course, is described, with examples from the tool training program. With state funding, the Waubonsee's LEP project for vocational education offers short-term, part-time…

Oral history is but one of several methods of examining history, yet it holds powerful implications as a tool of instruction within the bilingual classroom. The most compelling rationale for integrating oral history techniques into bilingual social studies is that generally oral history has remained virtually isolated from most bilingual…

Teachers must consider eight things when they work in a bilingual reading program: each student's level of language development; the teaching method (whether synthetic, analytic, or a combination of the two) appropriate to the students' learning abilities; reading materials, including the degree of Spanish competency required of the teacher, the…

An experimental program in California may offer a potential answer to the nation's acute need for bilingual teachers. In the 1960s and 1970s the number of limited- and non-English-speaking students expanded rapidly, especially among the Hispanic and Asian-Filipino populations. Students with such English-language problems are more likely to drop…

This paper presents a discussion of preparation of teachers to work with disadvantaged children. In developing a curriculum for this group of teachers, emphasis should be placed on interdisciplinary academic preparation, experience, and training. Teachers should learn to be respectful, aware, understanding, democratic and encouraging (among other…

The process of developing and implementing the Graduate Secondary Teacher Education Program (STEP) at Seattle Pacific University (Washington) included five steps: initial conception, establishment of program parameters, development of a working proposal, completion of the review process, and completion of the adoption process. Graduate STEP is a…