The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of first-year teachers, recently graduated from an Alternative Route to Teaching (ART) program and hired to teach within Spanish-English Dual-language Immersion strands at local schools. To do so, recordings and observations of classroom practice, teacher interviews, and supplementary data…

Providing English language instruction has important implications for millions of children nationwide. This Statistics in Brief first discusses differences in the student and school characteristics of kindergartners who participated in instructional programs designed to teach English language skills and students who did not participate in such…

Prior research describes the positive benefits of dual language education as increasing students academic performance in addition to promoting bilingual development. However, these studies have not adequately addressed the tensions that exist in developing Latina/o communities bilingualism. This paper addresses the issue of bilingual development…

An important component of the teacher knowledge base is how aware a teacher is of language, including how it is acquired and best taught. Equally important are teacher beliefs about language or language ideologies. Because this combination of beliefs and awareness guides most pedagogical decisions, our study used explanatory sequential mixed…

Presently, across the nation, immigration headlines grip the public's attention with negative messages, under the assumption that immigrants are stereotyped as either individuals with criminal intent or people who are unpatriotic to the United States. Under this thought, politicians scramble to meet the needs of their state by protecting their…

This three-article dissertation examined how policy choices in three key policy areas -- initial enrollment, service provision, and reclassification -- impact English learner (EL)-classified students. The first article examined the national landscape of state statutes, regulations, and state education agencies' (SEA) guidance that support…

The increase and popularity of dual language (DL) or two-way immersion programs nationally, and specifically in California, is due to the acceptability of bilingual programs that are inclusive of students whose first language is English, and who are typically of a White, middle-class background. This phenomenon can be explained through the idea of…

All Catholic schools face difficulties of one kind or another, some self-made, some inherited. The rise and fall of new school models over the past 15 years remind us that there are no silver bullets to mend these challenges. Instead there are seeds, carefully selected and properly placed, tended and tethered as seedlings, taking root and…

At the time of the demise of bilingual education in California via Proposition 227, Chueng and Drabkin (1999) discussed the unchecked prevalence of poorly run bilingual programs and the apathetic administrators who provided inadequate oversight in terms of ensuring program quality. Proponents of dual language immersion programs hope to avoid this…

Dual language immersion programs are increasing in popularity. Yet little is known about what motivates parents to enroll their children in dual language immersion. The theory of planned behavior posits that behavior is based on attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. The current study was an exploratory evaluation of the…

Although human beings communicate mainly through talking and listening, schools tend to spend little classroom instruction time helping ELLs develop their English oral language skills, writes Wayne E. Wright. In reviewing the research on ELLs' oral language development, Wright concludes that bilingual programs give ELLs the best opportunities to…

Due to the growing status of English as the language of international communication, English immersion programs have been on the rise in China and the rest of the world. Though there has been much discussion on the theoretical and practical characteristics and features of immersion, current models are not adequate for explaining the…

In spring 2019, without controversy or fanfare and without violating the voter mandate of Proposition 203, emergent bilinguals in Arizona were once again granted unrestricted access to dual language bilingual education after nearly 20 years. The policy change was accomplished through a seemingly small piece of legislation that reduced the daily…

This study examines the attitudes of German-speaking pupils towards Sorbian-language education and the problems these pupils indicate as an obstacle to becoming bilingual through educational settings. Based on the research carried out in the Upper Sorbian Grammar School in Bautzen/Budyšin (Germany) combining a statistical survey, in-depth…

Although Dual Language Immersion Education is growing in popularity in the United States, staffing these programs represents one of the greatest challenges for school administrators. Ironically, this is the case even for Spanish-English Dual Language Immersion programs despite the fact that the United States has the second highest number of…