For decades, research has focused on American Sign Language/English bilingual education for d/Deaf and hard of hearing students whose families used English or ASL. However, a growing population of d/Dhh children come from households where languages other than English (e.g., Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese) are used. In a longitudinal case study, the…

Social support for adolescent mothers, particularly from mother figures, can buffer risks and promote well-being. To date, no longitudinal research has investigated how the dimensions of social support may change during the transition from pregnancy to parenthood for adolescent mothers. This study examined stability and change in dimensions of…

This chapter proposes a conceptual framework that merges intersectionality and policy analysis as an analytical tool to understand the nuanced, multilayered, compounded educational inequality encountered specifically by low-income, Latino Spanish-speaking students in Arizona K-12 public schools as a function of intersecting educational policies.…

This essay traces the bilingual education movement that began in Tucson through the efforts of local teachers, university faculty and educational leaders. It is argued that Mexican Americans and their allies played a crucial role in promoting the merits of bilingual education at the local, state and national levels. Their advocacy of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the way in which items on the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey Revised (WMLS-R) Spanish and English versions function for bilingual children from different ethnic subgroups who speak different dialects of Spanish. Using data from a sample of 324 bilingual Hispanic families and their children living on the…

Understanding the impacts of immigration legislation on Mexican ethnic students who are citizens of the United States is needed. This study investigates how passage of Arizona's antiimmigration law, SB 1070, in 2010 bears upon the schooling experiences of Mexican American high school students. Applying Meyer's Minority Stress Model as the…

This article draws on data from a yearlong case study of a Mexican American ESL teacher's practice in a K-5 school in the southeastern United States. The study examines how the teacher established bilingual interactional space in her ESL pullout class consisting of six 9- to 11-year old students of Mexican descent. The analysis shows the ways in…

The process of learning to read is difficult for many children, and this is especially true for students with learning disabilities (LD). Reading in English becomes even more difficult when a student's home language is not English. For English language learner (ELL) students with LD, acquiring the necessary skills to read fluently is an even…

This article reports the results of a social network analysis (SNA) performed on the mother's primary network of interaction in 15 Mexican American families in the city of El Paso, Texas, the neighbourhood of La Villita, in Chicago, and the city of Lincoln, Nebraska. The goal of this study was to examine potential opportunities for Spanish use by…

"Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) was a landmark decision that was the result of decades of efforts by grassroots activists and civil rights organizations to end legalized segregation. A less well-known effort challenged the extralegal segregation of Mexican American students in the Southwest. I combine original research and research…

This dissertation project represents a 2.5-year ethnographic study in a second-grade bilingual classroom and the homes of seven emergent bilingual children of Mexican-origin. This study examines how educational assessment policies shape the ways in which emergent bilingual children are socialized to express social and academic identities during…

Many young children of Mexican heritage enter U.S. schools with knowledge of two language systems and emergent biliterate abilities. Bilingualism in young children may go unnoticed when instructional practices favor English. This case study describes how Lucía's bilingualism and emergent biliteracy parallel competencies essential to literacy…

We longitudinally investigated parental language context and infants' language experiences in relation to Dominican American and Mexican American infants' vocabularies. Mothers provided information on parental language context, comprising measures of parents' language background (i.e., childhood language) and current language use during interviews…

The cultural equivalence of psychological outcome measures remains a major area of investigation. The current study sought to test the factor structure and factorial invariance of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) with a sample of adult individuals of Mexican descent (N = 923) across nativity status (U.S.- vs. foreign-born), language format…

We examined parental preferences in raising Spanish/English bilingual children. We identified factors influencing their decisions, and the strategies used to promote bilingualism. Focus groups were conducted with Spanish-primary-language parents of children 3 to 7 years old. These groups were audiotaped and transcribed. Three reviewers…