In this study, the authors examine the language practices of first- and second-year college students as they build disciplinary literacies within a cocurricular engineering leadership program. Conducted by two teacher educators and literacy/biliteracy researchers situated in the highly diverse U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the study examines the role…

Research Findings: DVD classroom newsletters are one proposed technology tool to promote classroom-to-home connections. The present study explored the experiences of prekindergarten children from predominantly Spanish-speaking homes with bilingual (English and Spanish) DVD classroom newsletters. On average, parents reported that children watched…

Based on sociocultural theories of learning, this paper draws on findings from a research project "a day in a life of a bilingual practitioner". It explores how two multilingual practitioners in English early years settings supported the learning of young 3-4 year-old children, and their parents and teachers. The paper challenges the…

A primary tenet underlying American Sign Language/English bilingual education for deaf students is that early access to a visual language, developed in conjunction with language planning principles, provides a foundation for literacy in English. The goal of this study is to obtain an emic perspective on bilingual deaf readers transitioning from…

Immigration and the role of language in education have been major issues in governance and education across the world. The current study looks at a family biliteracy program for 2- to 6-year-old students and their parents. The findings shed light on the importance of teacher-community partnerships in bridging the linguistic gap between…

Background: Sentence repetition performance is attracting increasing interest as a valuable clinical marker for primary (or specific) language impairment (LI) in both monolingual and bilingual populations. Multiple aspects of memory appear to contribute to sentence repetition performance, but non-verbal memory has not yet been considered. Aims: To…

Poverty rates in European countries have increased during recent decades and are particularly high in East European countries. Young children are especially vulnerable to poverty. Poverty in early childhood can have irreversible negative consequences for cognitive, social and emotional development, academic achievement and behavioural adjustment.…

Background: Whether and to what extent racial/ethnic disparities in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis occur by kindergarten entry is currently unknown. We investigated risk factors associated with an ADHD diagnosis by kindergarten entry generally, and specifically whether racial/ethnic disparities in ADHD diagnosis occur by…

In this discussion, I explore the unfolding effects of Arizona's anti-bilingual education law (Proposition 203) on schools with predominant language-minority student populations. Instead of facilitating academic progress, policies like Proposition 203 impede teachers from "scaffolding" (Long & Adamson, 2012, p. 39) their…

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…

The primary aim of this study was to explore the relationship between teachers' instruction and students' vocabulary and comprehension in grades 3-5. The secondary aim of this study was to investigate whether this relationship differed for English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual students. To meet these aims, we observed and…

The present study explores young learners' awareness of foreign language learning and of their learning conditions. The participants were 76 Catalan-Spanish children who were learning English at primary school. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal data were collected by means of two different interviews that contained questions related to…

The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the Teachers' Choices Cognate Database. English-Spanish cognates are words that are orthographically and semantically identical or nearly identical in both English and Spanish. To create this free online database, the cognates from every one of the 146 International Reading Association's…

In an educational system based on equity, ensuring the achievement of Pasifika students in secondary education is seen as a key focus of the Government approach to education (Ministry of Education, 2013b) and a major step in addressing the social and economic inequities experienced by Pasifika peoples in New Zealand. While there has been a…

This study focuses on how a Chicana/Latina professor contributed to the development of social consciousness with Spanish bilingual credential candidates in a Teacher Education Multiple Subject Credential Program, in California, USA. As a teacher educator, my goals were to look deeply at my teaching approach and to evaluate what the students and I…