Drawing on translanguaging and raciolinguistics frameworks in an ethnographic case study, this article contextualizes how young Black American children engage in rich literacy practices to validate their cultural and linguistic identities in an elementary, two-way immersion bilingual program. Findings demonstrated that despite teachers' perceived…

This article presents a basic interpretive qualitative study that examined how two students, a dominant Spanish speaker (Joel) and a dominant English speaker (Carter) used languages during their microinteractions in pair work in a dual language kindergarten classroom. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between language…

This study is framed in Bourdieu's theory of capital, which asserts that the choices we make are usually designed to help us become better off economically; that economic capital is, to some degree, exchangeable with other types of capital (e.g., social and cultural); and that other types of capital can be exchanged for economic capital. The…

In addition to fostering bilingualism and biliteracy for all students, one of the main goals of Two-Way Immersion (TWI) programs is building positive cross-cultural relationships (). This can lead to TWI programs having ambitious goals for the kinds of bridges it can build between students, families, and communities, which is a challenge when the…

At the intersection of social studies and world language curricula are opportunities to explore students' prior learning with vocabulary-rich content designed to support language acquisition goals. "Funds of knowledge" is defined as socio-cultural, economic, and historical knowledge from home and community settings. The instructional…

We examined the effects of classroom bilingual experience in children on an array of cognitive skills. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared with children who spoke English as the native language and who had been exposed to Spanish in the context of dual-immersion schooling for an average of 2 years. The groups were compared on a…

The development of English and Spanish reading and oral language skills from kindergarten to third grade was examined with a sample of 502 Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) enrolled in three instructional programs. The students in the transitional bilingual and dual-language programs had significantly higher scores than the…

This study of 1,338 Spanish-speaking 1st graders examined contextual effects of bilingual programs on reading comprehension and the effect of language of instruction within these contexts. The study included 128 classrooms in 32 schools located in border Texas and in urban Texas and California. These classrooms used either English immersion or…

Two-way immersion (TWI) programs teach English Learners (ELs) and native English speakers in the same classroom using both languages in an immersion approach. Studies suggest that TWI programs result in greater student integration, thus providing a promising alternative for Spanish speaking ELs, who are frequently concentrated in high poverty,…

This study investigated the nature of and factors in the involvement of both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking parents in an elementary school specializing in two-way bilingual education. The researcher observed parents and teachers in interaction, reviewed school documents, and interviewed parents, families, and school staff, some in short…

The study involved (1) a sociolinguistic description of Spanish/English use by 10 children (ages two to three) and eight mothers in two different bilingual preschool contexts (instruction and freeplay), and (2) an experimental attempt to encourage the use of Spanish, using Spanish "immersion" in a freeplay setting. (Author/DS)

This article describes a food and restaurant project undertaken by 6-year-old children in a bilingual school in Mexico City. The teacher who conducted this study illustrates the children's involvement in this investigation through photographs, samples of their work, and explanations.

The results of a longitudinal evaluation of an innovative educational program in bilingual immersion at the San Diego City Schools are presented. The program's goals emphasized the acquisition of communicative proficiency, in English and Spanish, for both native-English-speaking and native-Spanish-speaking students. Using a quasi-experimental…

This study examined the relationships among a set of psychosocial variables (academic competence, physical appearance, self-worth, and motivation) and between the psychosocial variables and academic achievement for 236 third grade and fifth grade native Spanish speakers and native English speakers enrolled in a bilingual immersion program since…