Purpose: This exploratory study investigates the development of oral narrative retell proficiency among Spanish-English emergent bilingual children longitudinally from kindergarten to second grade in Spanish and English as they learned literacy in the 2 languages concurrently. Method: Oral narrative retell assessments were conducted with children…

Bilingual education as a whole has been gentrifying, as more privileged students replace Transnational Language Learners (TLLs) in bilingual education spaces and policies (Valdez et al. in Educ Policy 30(6):849-883, 2016. https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1177/0895904814556750). We argue this is an extension of coloniality (Mignolo in Local histories/global…

The present study aimed to examine the contributions of two separate Pinyin skills and oral vocabulary to Chinese word reading of 70 third graders in a U.S. Mandarin Immersion program where Pinyin was introduced at Grade 3. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that Pinyin initial-final spelling--the skill to spell Chinese syllables using Pinyin…

English learners are entitled to participate meaningfully and equally in educational programs. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes provisions to ensure success for all students, including English learners. However, the federal government does not prescribe specifically how states should meet these provisions; instead, it is the…

Decolonising the languages curriculum is a radical requirement to critically reexamine the way in which the languages curriculum has been formed in any context. It requires the examination of the power dynamics which have led to the dominance of certain languages over others and which languages are and are not accorded resources in schools,…

The 2023 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages was held in Columbus, Ohio on March 9-11. This year's theme, Empathy, Equity, and Empowerment is reflective of the vital work educators do in classrooms every day across the country. The Wikipedia definition of empathy is "the capacity to understand or feel what another…

This article presents findings of a qualitative study about students' language ideologies in a transitional bilingual education (TBE) programme located in the US-Mexico border. Although officially regarded as 'TBE', results show that both ideologies and practices resemble an English monolingual form of education where only the English language is…

Research on stakeholder perspectives in language immersion contexts is relatively new (Padron & Waxman, 2016; Whitacre, 2015). This current qualitative research examined perspectives of stakeholders at a mini-conference for immersion educators and administrators called Conversations in Immersion. The mini-conference encouraged immersion…

Virtual exchange projects have become an effective pedagogical method to support students' development of intercultural language competence. High-immersion experiences in Virtual Reality (VR) may offer an environment which is conducive to developing such competence. This paper reports on a pilot study carried out with two groups of university…

High-quality dual language immersion (DLI) programs can be a key lever to provide every student with a pathway to multilingualism. The Dual Language Immersion Playbooks (DLI Playbooks) provide a roadmap for the creation, design and adoption of policies, processes, programs, and practices that state educational agencies (SEAs), local educational…

This article presents findings of a larger research project regarding effective leadership practices in language immersion programs. The purpose of this study was to discover actions, knowledge, and skills that immersion leaders of successful programs exhibit. Using a basic qualitative model, immersion leaders, teachers, and parents at three…

This study explores parents' reasons for enrolling their children in a Korean dual language immersion (KDLI) program. The research focuses on parents' reasons for choosing a school and a KDLI program, respectively, to examine whether a KDLI offering significantly affects parents' decision to enroll their children in a specific school and to…

The present study examined motivation toward English learning among students at an international school in Japan. The motivation of 112 elementary school students, including those with English and Japanese as an L1, and those bilingual in English and Japanese, was analyzed based on self-determination theory. The results showed a distinction…

Immersion students' language abilities are generally characterized by strong receptive skills (listening, reading) and less developed productive skills (speaking, writing) when compared with L1 speakers of the immersion language (e.g., Allen et al. 1990; Cummins 1998; Harley 1992). In this paper we report results from a six-month mixed-methods…

Teacher training programmes have often ignored the new multilingual paradigm and, consequently, educators may hold some misconceptions about how additional languages are learnt and should be taught in multilingual contexts. A number of recent studies have investigated language teachers' beliefs regarding multilingual education [Arocena-Egaña, E.,…