Adult literacy is a pressing policy issue in Canada. Reports reveal immigrant communities as accounting for a relatively large share of the country's population experiencing low reading, writing, numeracy, and information processing skills. This paper explores how Black immigrant women who are adult literacy learners negotiate and reconfigure…

International immigration creates economic, demographic, and cultural shifts worldwide. The process of migration entails steps beginning from the decision to migrate, the migration journey and experiences upon arrival to the host country. Factors such as age at time of migration, traditions, and beliefs of those who migrate inform various aspects…

In this study I indicate that lengthened family interaction time during pandemic lockdowns can afford children significantly more exposure and opportunities to enhance their heritage language, but that this does not diminish the constant dilemma between striving to balance English acquisition and heritage language maintenance. Using…

This article adopts a gendered take on Family Language Policy (FLP) by questioning the way that gender impacts on the issues faced by refugee woman during and after flight. For this reason, the ethnographically informed research addresses the concerns and experiences of mothers and daughters in the Somali community in Bristol, one of the fastest…

Research Findings: Immigrant families who represent a growing share of the early schooling population face unique challenges related to involvement in their children's education. This study examined whether and to what extent home-based parent involvement and parental warmth are associated with the socio-emotional and academic outcomes of children…

Informed by Family Language Policy (FLP) and Community of Practice (CoP) as the main theoretical frameworks, this study explores the characteristics of language practices at the home of a Korean-English bilingual family. In particular, this study examines how a mother creates educational discourse at home and promotes the construction of knowledge…

The influential role of parents has long been acknowledged as a key contributor to children's bilingual development. Parents' home-based informal efforts to foster children's bilingual abilities are described as family language policies (FLPs). The important connection between bilingualism and FLP has been established, but to date there are few…

Since my family came to Canada, family story nights have become our daily practice. Within such moments, I explore how I, as a mother, have been sustaining the Vietnamese language and traditions in my family and how, when transitioning to a new land, this has become the core of our familiar curriculum making (Huber, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2011).…

Despite efforts to adopt inclusive education practices and foster cultural competence in classrooms across the globe, adequate training and shifts in teachers' mindsets frequently seem to lag behind. Studies continue to find that teachers in a variety of contexts hold negative views of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families.…

Environmental sources of variance in the Italian vocabulary and reading skills of bilingual primary school children from immigrant families (or language minority bilingual children (LMBC)) in Italy were investigated, and the LMBC's skill levels were compared to those of their monolingual classmates. A total of 140 children from the first, third,…

Without data on speech accuracy of Vietnamese-English speakers, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are unable to assess accurately this population for speech sound disorders. This study explored the heretofore uninvestigated speech accuracy and use of Vietnamese-English bilingual individuals residing in the USA. Participants included six…

Research Findings: Are family literacy activities linked to gains in preschool-aged dual language learners' (DLLs') societal language vocabulary? To understand connections between literacy activities and vocabulary, we separately considered literacy activities in the respective heritage language and in the societal language, German, and accounted…

Attempts at the definition of multilingualism range from the structuralist interpretation as the coexistence of multiple codes to the critical sociolinguistic efforts to go beyond the idea of languages as fixed entities. The author's purpose is to explore the suitability of Pierre Bourdieu's model of linguistic production and circulation to…

Previous research suggests that increased second language (L2) input at home may not support L2 acquisition in children from migrant backgrounds. In drawing this conclusion, existing work has largely aggregated across family members. This study contrasts the effect of L2 input from older siblings with that from mothers. Participants were 113 child…

We examined factors determining parental success in transmitting heritage language (HL) and literacy in Russian-speaking migrant families of comparable socioeconomic status (SES) in Cyprus, Ireland, Israel and Sweden. A total of 345 Russian speakers completed a questionnaire about their language use and home language practices. Of those, we chose…