This paper reports on an ethnographic case study which was carried out in a Kenyan first-grade classroom. The classroom had 89 students with their 2 teachers who taught at different times. The classroom was very crowded and had a high paucity of literacy materials. The study was guided by sociocultural and dialogic frameworks which maintain that…

In the light of a recent curriculum reform to improve the teaching of English in primary schools in Malaysia, this study set out to investigate the extent to which teachers are adopting a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in their teaching. A mixed-method approach incorporating systematic observation, stimulated recall and interviews…

Primary school enrolment in low-income countries has increased in recent years. The quality of education is, however, still a cause for concern. Better measurement of early reading progress has been suggested as a means of improving education quality. Benchmarks based on the number of 'words per minute' (WPM) students are able to read…

How heritage learners successfully maintain their heritage language (HL) and literacy is a significant topic of discussion in the field of bilingual education. This study examines what factors are most closely associated with literacy competence by inspecting Korean heritage learners' language and literacy practice patterns and their literacy…

This qualitative case study examines an after-school, bilingual family literacy programme that brought together several groups to form a community of practice (CoP) that worked to support the literacy development of English language learners and their families. We explored the following question: How do parents, teachers, students, and other…

This paper provides a snapshot of the manner in which English as a foreign language is taught in an elementary school in Helan County, China, in the nation's first decade of sweeping nation-wide educational reforms where English was first introduced as an official subject in 2001 and then as a compulsory subject in 2004. To cope with large…

This qualitative study examines the experiences of Korean-American students, parents and teachers in a newly instituted 50/50 Korean-English dual language immersion programme, where the majority of the students are of Korean descent. Based on home and school observations, as well as interviews with six Korean-American students and their parents…

The present paper investigates students' experiences of being multilingual. Qualitative data have been collected during observation, focus groups, interviews and text writing in a public primary school in rural Kenya. The informants are students in standards one, three and eight whose mother tongue is the indigenous language called Nandi, which…

Globalisation and the global spread of English have led nation-states to introduce English into the early years of schooling to equip their citizens with communicative competence in order to compete within a global economy for individual and national development. In teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language, nations have adopted…

Content-based language instruction and form-focused instruction (FFI) have been investigated extensively in the context of English as a second language. However, there has not been much research concerning FFI in the context of English as a foreign language. The study described here explores the effect of integrated and isolated FFI on the…

Rural African classrooms are still practising discourses and pedagogies that contribute towards students' continued underachievement and marginalisation. The use of behaviourist-based pedagogical approaches and the exclusion of learners' socio-cultural experiences including their mother tongue (MT) still characterise most classroom practices. The…

This paper illustrates how a methodological tool called "drawing-voice" can be used to demonstrate qualitatively what statistical and policy data are not able to reveal regarding the educational realities of Hmong minority communities in northern Vietnam, particularly with regard to the role of local language and culture in school. This paper…

Since the last few decades of the twentieth century, increased independence and autonomy of local schools through the implementation of school-based management (SBM) have become widespread in Western education. SBM is designed to operate within a more general framework of decentralisation of the educational authority. This research set out to…

Increased immigration in Europe and worldwide has led to more pre- and primary school students being educated through the medium of a second language, and there is considerable research, much of it coming from Australia, to suggest that in order to cope with this situation, children will need to begin to acquire, from their earliest years in…

Kiswahili is the medium of instruction in Tanzania for 7 years of primary education and thereafter, English takes over at secondary and tertiary levels. However, there has been a debate about the efficacy of English in Tanzania's education system with some researchers recommending a switch to Kiswahili as a way to ameliorate the situation. By…