The Bilingual/Bicultural Education Professions Program conducted a needs assessment designed to find out the situation teachers in the Holyoke Public Schools face in their classrooms and what needs they have, in order to improve preservice teacher education. The tools used to determine teacher needs were a demographic questionnaire, an explicit…

Bridges to Business is a dual admissions program between Holyoke Community College (HCC) (Massachusetts) and the School of Management at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass). Established to attract, educate, and graduate linguistic minority students, the FIPSE-funded program addressed the major problems faced by limited English…

This report discusses the activities and outcomes of Project Zenith, which was designed to recruit two cohorts of bilingual graduate students to complete a graduate program with specialized skills in the diagnosis and treatment of communicative disorders in multicultural populations in the public schools. Included in the specialized training is…

The Learn in Beauty Project at Northern Arizona University worked with a consortium of seven Navajo Nation school districts seeking to implement the Dine Language and Culture teaching perspective. This perspective is based on the premises that education is best when it reflects a sense of place; education should be based on the philosophy and…

This report discusses findings from a study that examined issues surrounding the collaborative relationship between Latino paraeducators and the classroom teachers with whom they worked. Specifically, the study examined the types of activities that the paraeducators engaged in, the input they had in classroom instructional activities, the…

This theme issue focuses on issues related to the education of Hispanic Americans. Articles cover educational strategies that address the linguistic and cultural differences of Hispanic Americans, issues related to migrant children and their education, the educational experiences of Hispanic American children, bilingual teacher education programs,…

This study investigated the impact of parents with different language backgrounds on the language acquisition and language competency of their children in the mother tongue, Chinese, and a second language, English, in Singapore. Parents were surveyed on language usage and language materials provided to their children. Exams on vocabulary,…

This study used qualitative research methods to investigate instructional and noninstructional interactions of Hispanic and non-Hispanic teachers with Hispanic American students. Two monolingual non-Hispanic teachers and two bilingual (Spanish and English) teachers at two public elementary schools were participants. The teachers had similar…

Papers reporting research on Spanish second language learning include: "Discourse Features of Spanish Oral Production at the Novice Level" (Rebecca Jo Bearden); "A Discourse Approach to the Assessment of Foreign Language Oral Proficiency" (Dale April Koike, Fanny Hinojosa); "Acquisition of Spanish Definite Articles by English-Speaking Learners of…

Teacher training and development programs must adapt to shifting political, demographic, and program realities. This will require rigorous self-examination. Preparation of personnel to meet the needs of growing populations of language-minority students must include plans to address three distinct teacher audiences: bilingual educators;…

Searching for additional bilingual-crosscultural teachers, the California State University (CSU) system plans to combine teacher education and the CSU International Programs approach. Basic elements of this program are: (1) intensive study of Spanish and immersion in a Spanish-speaking milieu; (2) a living experience in the Mexican culture; (3) a…

Today's linguistically diverse classrooms require teachers who are properly educated to communicate effectively with students, parents, and the larger community. Teacher education programs have the responsibility of preparing teachers with these skills and of responding to the shortage of racial and ethnic minorities within the state of New York's…

Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, developed a course in practical writing skills for bilingual students as a means of reducing the dropout rate among vocational students, the largest group of Hispanic students in the institution. The objective was to provide writing skills through source materials with a…

New York's Bilingual Pupil Services program, funded by federal and city governments, promotes linguistic and academic progress among limited-English-proficient elementary school children in selected schools and provides comprehensive in-service training to bilingual paraprofessionals training to become licensed teachers. Recognition as an…

The purpose of this report is to acquaint the reader with the culture of the refugees entering American schools, to identify some of the educational problems they and educators face, and to help identify solutions or possibilities within educational management terms. In the first section of the report, the values, customs, traditions, beliefs, and…