This paper is a case study in the form of a teacher's personal diary of experiences during a semester teaching a class of academically at-risk high school students. It focuses on the interactions among the teacher, the class, and Roberto, a student with negligible English skills. Because of his lack of proficiency in English, discovered later,…

This paper reports on a 2-year-long research conducted under a qualitative research design. The study investigated the effectiveness of an immersion course that followed a realistic approach on preservice teachers' deconstruction of negative and preconceived notions held about culturally and linguistically diverse students. Specifically, the study…

This article describes the development of a Spanish-spelling measure designed to assess the progress made by Spanish-English bilingual children from Grade 2 to Grade 5. Different stages of measure development are described, such as the selection of the focus features, the pilot phase of the assessment, and the finalizing of the operational…

Language maintenance has been an issue debated whenever languages come into contact. This paper presents a detailed discussion of the reasons most often cited as to why languages should be maintained, with a specific focus on Australia because of the country's multilingual makeup. Australia currently has about 150 aboriginal and Torres Strait…

The cultural disparity between teachers and students has been a concern among educators for quite some time. While the student body grows more ethnically heterogeneous, non-Hispanic Whites, especially women, continue to dominate the teaching profession. Ethnicity, language, and socioeconomic status (SES) all play a critical role in the education…

This article presents a case study of an elementary school situated within a prestigious school district that has undergone rapid demographic change in recent years. The authors explore how the school has accommodated growing numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse students while at the same time struggling to maintain district standards.…

In 2000, the Arizona Proposition 203 campaign gained overwhelming public approval by claiming that Arizona's bilingual education programs impeded English-language learning of language-minority students. Established within a context of educational and social antipathy, it is necessary to look at the impetus for language policies like Proposition…

Research shows a serious underrepresentation of Hispanic students entering the math, science, and engineering fields, possibly fueled by a large gap in math achievement between Hispanic and Euro-American students. The current study addressed this concern by examining the general school-related attitudes, coursework, and achievement, with a focus…

This article asks whether children enrolled in a bilingual education program learn English in a reasonable amount of time, and whether older children learn English faster than younger children. Children (N = 89) were found to achieve parity with native English speakers in a range of 1 to 6.5 years and in an average of 3.31 years on measures of…

Using data from a random sample of Latino students in California, tracked throughout their elementary and middle school years, this paper examines ways in which outcomes vary for students of similar language and socioeconomic background who are initially instructed in their native language in transitional bilingual programs. As the students made…

This preliminary study provides an interpretive reading of focus group interviews of four Korean American children in the Phoenix metropolitan area. It examines how these Korean American children are negotiating their ethnic identity as Korean Americans while learning Korean as a heritage language. It shows that maintaining heritage language is…

This article systematically reviews research on elementary reading programs for English language learners and other language-minority students. It focuses on studies that compared experimental and control groups on quantitative reading measures. Among beginning reading models, research supported structured, phonetic programs emphasizing language…

This study investigated the effects of a cooperative peer-assisted reading strategy, dyad reading instruction, on the reading achievement of Hispanic third-grade English language learners (ELLs). Specifically, dyad reading is unison reading of a "lead reader," who reads well, and an "assisted reader," who does not read well, simultaneously reading…

This article determines the interlanguage relationships between oral language skills and phonological awareness abilities in 100 Spanish-speaking Head Start children learning English. Children's oral language abilities, measured using the pre-Language Assessment Scale 2000, along with their phonological awareness, measured using the Phonological…

This study examines the short-term effects of a two-way bilingual education program on the literacy development of students in kindergarten and first grade. This study compared the literacy development of two groups of children who received different proportions of instruction in English and Spanish. Both the experimental and control groups…