This dissertation was an investigation of how students in two-way bilingual immersion (TWBI) programs construct their bilingual identities inside and outside the school setting, highlighting the unique and multifaceted nature of their language development and cultural identity formation. TWBI programs aim to cultivate bilingualism and biliteracy,…

Unlike previous research on participation in mathematics classrooms that focuses on the teacher's role eliciting student talk, the purpose of this dissertation is to study the interactive process through which a teacher connected her reflection and practice, fostering transformations in the culture of participation in a third-grade Spanish…

Reading comprehension performance is predicted by decoding skill and linguistic comprehension (e.g., Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2012; Scarborough, 2001). However, the type of strategies that readers recruit to build a discourse should also contribute to success in first and second language reading comprehension. Sixty-six French…

During a classroom-based study, eight- to ten-year-old students had multiple opportunities to develop their knowledge and understanding about semiotic resources for meaning-making in picturebooks and graphic novels. Instruction during the study included a variety of activities that focussed on a selection of elements of visual art and design, and…

In this article, we analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada. We employ the lenses of plurilingualism and plurilingual competence in the analysis of data from a one-year qualitative study of plurilingualism across the…

French second language education, including the option of one-way French immersion, is mandated for majority-language Anglophone children in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province. Language ideological debates in the province surrounding official English--French bilingualism led us to investigate adolescent majority-language…

French immersion (FI), one of the hallmarks of French as a Second Language education in Canada and mandated in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially English/French bilingual province, is often the target of language ideological debates surrounding its purposes and expected outcomes. Yet, notably absent in FI scholarship has been a focus on the…

The purpose of this outreach program was to promote elementary school students' understanding of human physiology and exercise science. I conducted this outreach event for 421 pre-kindergarten through grade 5 students attending a Spanish-immersion elementary school within a large, urban public school district in Kentucky. To meet the needs of the…

This study explores the cross-linguistic reading strategies that 16 Grade 3-4 French immersion pupils schooled in Saskatchewan used while reading two types of dual-language children's books: translated and integrated. In the first type, the same text appears in both French and English, whereas in the second one, English and French are integrated…

This article focuses on the reported experiences of three focal students who participated in a Spanish/English dual language program in their southern California school district throughout their elementary and middle school years. All three students identify as Mexican-origin and speak Spanish, English, and the Indigenous language of Zapoteco and…

This study is framed in Bourdieu's theory of capital, which asserts that the choices we make are usually designed to help us become better off economically; that economic capital is, to some degree, exchangeable with other types of capital (e.g., social and cultural); and that other types of capital can be exchanged for economic capital. The…

We focus here on the obstacles students face when learning to read in their second language, specifically in contexts where the second language is taught as a school subject or used as a medium of instruction (immersion). Qualitative studies in these areas have highlighted strategy deployment and approaches to constructing meaning as key variables…

This research describes language use by four first-grade students during mathematics and Language Arts instruction in a one-way 50/50 Mandarin immersion classroom. The urban public school was situated in the heart of an African-American community in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Participants were video- and audio-recorded…

There have been sweeping changes in foreign language education in the United States. As the world is experiencing unprecedented globalization, knowledge of a foreign language and familiarity with other cultures have become increasingly important. Public schools are now implementing dual immersion programs to better prepare students for the…

French immersion programs in Saskatchewan have traditionally served to further the goals of additive bilingualism between Canada's two official languages, French and English. Whereas these programs have historically consisted of predominantly Anglophone populations, recent trends in immigration have contributed to the increasingly diverse…