This qualitative study examines strategies used by children in a kindergarten dual language immersion (DLI) class, when enacting and negotiating intersecting social constructions such as ethnicity, social class, and bilingualism. Drawing on data collected during the 2017-2018 academic year, this paper uses an intersectional lens to describe the…

This brief explores the potential of bilingual programs to support access to core content courses for students classified as English Learners (ELs). The most common types of bilingual education programs in Oregon are: (1) dual language: instruction is in English and a partner language, with goals of biliteracy and bilingualism. This is also known…

While translanguaging has been adequately researched in various educational sectors, there is scant research at the primary-level English-L2 classroom in the Chinese educational context. Within a monolingual English-only immersion policy favoured by the state in China for many decades now, translanguaging has been a debated issue recently. Within…

The rising demand for dual-language immersion (DLI) programs, which offer core instruction in two languages from early grades onward, has raised questions about program design and access. We leverage the rapid expansion of DLI schools across the U.S. state of Utah to estimate effects of DLI program availability on the academic achievement of…

Many educators in immersion contexts support a policy of strict separation of languages in the classroom as the ideal model for second language acquisition and are reluctant to make connections between the dominant language, the target language and pupils' home languages. This can result in missed opportunities for drawing on pupils' entire…

We investigated spelling errors in English and Spanish essays by Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. We examined what types of spelling errors students made, whether they made spelling errors that could be due to…

The purpose of this study is to examine the professional development (PD) needs of Chinese dual language immersion program (DLI) educators, particularly the PD supports these teachers receive. This instrumental case study examined the professional learning of four Chinese language DLI teachers through semi-structured interviews and observations of…

This research uses a descriptive quantitative statistical design to examine campus-level results from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR). The focus is on describing the achievement disparities between campuses that implemented Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs and those implementing Dual Language (DL)…

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page sheets on a variety of subjects. The topics for this report on ELs and instructional programs include: (1) Number of States Reporting Bilingual Language Instruction Educational programs: SY 2015-16; (2) Number of States Reporting…

Multilingualism is often associated with advantages for acquiring additional languages. Theoretical approaches explain these advantages by assuming a Common Underlying Proficiency or a Metalinguistic Awareness. At the State Europe School in Berlin, students from different language backgrounds receive instruction in German and a partner language…

Considerable research on the two-way Spanish immersion model of education highlights benefits such as biliteracy, high academic achievement in both languages of instruction, and sociocultural competence for students of various linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds. The desire to gain these 21st century skills has caused a proliferation of dual…

We investigated spelling errors in English and Spanish essays by Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. We examined what types of spelling errors students made, whether they made spelling errors that could be due to…

The current study examined cognitive effects of two pathways of second language (L2) acquisition longitudinally in Chinese speakers learning English in an L2-dominant environment. Thirty-nine participants who attended an intensive 10-week English course (L2-instruction group) were compared to 38 participants who attended regular university courses…

This paper addresses the interactional dynamics of one bilingual, two-way immersion classroom where children came from diverse linguistic, cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Based on an ethnographic discourse analytic study of one kindergarten TWI classroom, I analyze interactional data using participant frameworks as the unit of…

Conceptualizations of language as translanguaging (Otheguy, García, and Reid 2015) help us to render wholeness out of languages and groups of speakers socially constructed as distinct. Yet in practice teachers are still compelled to identify students by dichotomous institutional labels for discrete proficiencies in named languages: identity labels…