Background: Language discussions have historically focused on the power dynamics between dominant and indigenous languages. This has generated discontent and contention on which language should rule the educational sector. The national language policy of South Africa mandates the use of all languages in the educational system. Even though there…

In bilingual children, more so than in monolingual children, comprehension abilities exceed production abilities. While this receptive-expressive gap in bilinguals has been well documented, little is known about its development. The present study tracked growth in the Spanish and English receptive and expressive vocabularies of 52 bilingual…

This article aims to identify the ideologies of school-head teachers towards a mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) policy and analyse how these ideologies influence the implementation of MTB-MLE policy in schools in the context of Nepal. Adopting qualitative ethnographic research, two school-level policy arbiters (head teachers)…

This coda considers how translanguaging discourse is manifested in classrooms. Li Wei and Lin open up spaces of possibility for translanguaging by questioning the order of language. In so doing, the school code assumes its appropriate place as a system of coloniality.

The present study examined the roles that language of assessment, language dominance, and teacher language use during instruction play in Dual Language Learner (DLL) science scores. A total of 255 Head Start DLL children were assessed on equated science assessments in English and Spanish. First overall differences between the two languages were…

Cross-linguistically, monolingual children produce target-like inflected verbs much earlier than they can reliably distinguish between singular and plural subject-verb agreement morphology in comprehension (i.e. Johnson, V., J. de Villiers, and H. Seymour. 2005. "Agreement Without Understanding? The Case of Third Person Singular /s/."…

In the U.S., non-bilingual education designed for English speakers goes by many names--mainstream, regular, normal, English, and others. Drawing from research on discourse, normality, and framing, this conceptual paper examines each of the popular labels for English-medium education in the U.S., and demonstrates their unsuitability. Inspired by…

Ethnographic and discursive approaches to educational language policy (ELP) that explore how policy is appropriated in context are important for understanding policy success/failure in meeting goals of educational equity for language-minoritized students. This study describes how Paraguayan national policy for universal bilingual education…

Background: Although some investigations of phonological development have found that segmental accuracy is comparable in monolingual children and their bilingual peers, there is evidence that language use affects segmental accuracy in both languages. Aims: To investigate the influence of age of first exposure to English and the amount of current…

There has been a rapid proliferation of electronic books in recent years. Given that dual-language books may impose extra cognitive load on children's information processing capacity, we investigated whether multimedia features in e-books (i.e., audio narration and tracking animation) were effective in directing preschoolers' attention to print in…

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…

Researchers have identified inequities in dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) student participation, and with large-scale DLBE expansion, equitable student access is an increasingly important issue. In this study, I used a multimethod, multisite, comparative analysis to critically examine educator discourses addressing student participation…

Simultaneous bilingual education of a child is a dynamic process. Construction of linguistic competences undeniably depends on the conditions of the linguistic environment of the child. This education in a monolingual family, requires the practice of parenting tactics to increase the frequency of the language use in minority, during which,…

Through a Communities of Practice Network Analysis, this research illustrates the ways in which dual language graduates participate in multiple, varied, and overlapping communities of practice across time. Findings highlight that the dual language school as a shared community of practice represents a critical and formative part of participants'…

In an effort to become more competitive in the global market, Colombia, as many other Latin American countries, has declared English the dominant foreign language to be taught in schools and universities across the country. To support this measure, in the last 16 years, the government, through its National Ministry of Education, has launched a…