In the context of the Northwest Arkansas (NWA) regional setting, this study examines the effects of the Spanish for Heritage and Native Speakers (SHNS) model from multiple vantage points. Educational capital and biculturation approaches are employed to help theoretically frame post-secondary educational success and ethnic identity, respectively.…

Increasing concern regarding student disengagement and education's role in helping students to navigate the ever-changing realities of a globalized society has focused attention on the importance of 21st century skills. This mixed-methods study investigated whether and how intensely students experienced optimal engagement during a Spanish project…

While elementary teachers do not typically cover the structure and function of DNA, their students can easily understand that organisms have observable traits, that each individual has a unique combination of traits, and that the "recipe" for traits is passed from parent to offspring. The Genetic Science Learning Center has developed and…

Researchers have argued for an orientation to language as a resource that values bilingualism in mathematics classrooms. However, little is known about what mathematics teachers can do to translate a language-as-resource orientation into productive classroom practice. In this study, I analyze video data from two language immersion classrooms to…

Purpose: This qualitative case study explored the best practices of differentiation of Tier 1 instruction within a multi-tiered system of support for English Language Learners who were predominately Spanish speaking. Theoretical Framework: The zone of proximal development theory, cognitive theory, and the affective filter hypothesis guided this…

Even though many post-secondary institutions offer a variety of Hispanic linguistics classes (Hualde 2006; Lipski 2006), research on the pedagogy of Hispanic linguistics is an underdeveloped or non-existent area of the discipline. Courses in Hispanic linguistics can present not only linguistic challenges for non-native speakers of Spanish, but…

The growing demand for Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP) courses at universities in the United States in the last two decades (Klee, 2015) has brought to light the need for more theoretically driven research in this field, which can inform pedagogical decisions and materials design. The present study conceptually replicates Serafini and Torres…

Through the analysis of survey and interview data, we investigated the attitudes and perceptions of 32 multilingual teachers of Spanish in Belize, a code-switching (CS) context where Spanish is in intense contact with English and Belizean Kriol. More specifically, we examined teachers' and students' attitudes toward Spanish and CS and teachers'…

Our first generation children face a loss of heritage in today's public schools. Unfortunately, the assets that one's bilingual ability brings into the classroom are difficult for educators to fully understand. Often this may happen because professionals in the field of education lack the knowledge about the need for children to maintain their…

La Casa de los Colores (the House of Colors) is a feminist organization dedicated to defending human rights, particularly those of the LGBTQ+ community in León, Nicaragua. In 2016 Helen Alfaro, Yova Briones, Ani Guerrero, and Tannia Rizo Lazo, four members of La Casa's leadership team, "Las Coloras," were invited to speak about…

Immersion programs face a variety of challenges that are common to the field, such as lack of materials appropriate for students' language abilities, assessment, teacher recruitment and retention, balancing content and language, and relevant, high quality professional development for teachers. However, within specific micro-contexts, other issues…

This case study focuses on one primarily Latino public primary school in New Jersey that waived the state's bilingual education requirement and implemented a curricular alternative, comprised of bilingual and monolingual English classrooms. A corpus was generated from one-to-one interviews (N = 8) with administrators and teachers, as well as…

Dialogic teaching represents an orientation toward classroom dialogue that surfaces student ideas, allows students to encounter and dialogue with each other's ideas, and privileges divergent understandings. This orientation shows considerable pedagogical promise. Yet, particularly in schools serving economically marginalized and/or linguistically…

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of classroom teachers who participated in a science-focused study abroad during their time as a preservice teacher and to explore how they are using their study abroad experiences in science curriculum planning and in classroom instruction. This study is guided by two research questions: 1)…

The purpose of this article is to counter widespread deficit discourses about Latino parental involvement in their children's education. In particular, we show Latino immigrant parents' views and understandings of curricular and pedagogical practices in elementary school, especially in mathematics. Using data from the Agency and Young Children…