Motivations of Maori heritage language learners are explored within this qualitative study. "Te reo" Maori (the Maori language) is currently classed as endangered (Reedy et al., 2011), which calls for the exploration of the motivational experiences of Maori heritage language learners. A total of 19 interviews with beginner, intermediate…

The article introduces a Czech environmental education middle school program focused on helping students develop place attachment to their community and on increasing their interest in natural area in their region. The evaluation applied a mixed approach combining pretesting/posttesting of the students (N = 158), two group interviews with selected…

This study compared the Mandarin performance of elementary immersion program students and high school world language program students in the same school district. A cross-sectional design was employed to gather information on Mandarin proficiency of fourth and fifth graders and Level 4 and Level 5 (AP Chinese) high school students who took the…

This case study examined how one instructor navigated between two competing discourses in an intermediate Spanish heritage language (HL) classroom: on the one hand, teaching "Standard Spanish" to help students achieve professional success, and legitimizing home linguistic practices on the other. In addition to expressing both…

The Latina/Latino population is the largest minority group in the United States and has the highest high school dropout rate of any ethnic group. Nationally, just over one-half of Latina/Latino students graduate on time with a regular diploma, compared to nearly 80% of Whites. Because of the growing population and the wide achievement gap, there…

It has been long established that Latino/a teachers have unique capacities to advance educational trajectories for their English language learner (ELL) students. However, while the Latino/a ELL student population continues to expand in numbers, the number of Latino/a teachers entering the teaching profession remains small. In this empirical…

The main goal of this study was to expand understanding of a Korean-American community's cultural identities through storytelling and artmaking, which was conceptualized as "Visual Storying" in this study. Ethnic minority students in the United States often experience confusion or conflict between American and their heritage cultures.…

Heritage language speakers struggle in European classrooms with insufficient material provided for second language (SL) learning and assessment. Considering the amount of instruments and pertinent studies in English SL, immigrant students are better prepared than their peers in Romance language settings. This study investigates how factors such as…

This paper examines the differences between second-language learners and heritage learners of Russian in terms of their linguistic performance, a finding supported by current research (Andrews, 2001; Kagan & Dillon, 2001/2003), examines the implications of these differences for the creation of testing tools, and offers a sample of a test designed…

From its origins over three decades ago, interest in the field of Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) has grown and has produced a wealth of research. While our understanding of the sociolinguistic profile of Spanish heritage language learners has increased and we have advanced in our knowledge of the linguistic abilities and strategies Spanish…

Despite the important use of pop culture in many instructional settings, its use in the heritage language (HL) classroom remains largely unexplored. Thus, this article reports findings from classroom-based qualitative research that examined the use and role of pop culture in advanced Korean HL learners' literacy engagement and identity…

This cross-sectional study investigated the bilingual lexical skills of 175 US school-age children (5 to 18 years old) with Cantonese, Mandarin, or Korean as their heritage language (HL), and English as their dominant language. Primary study goals were to identify potential patterns of development in bilingual lexical skills over the elementary to…

This text studies the phenomenon of teaching and learning of space, particularly the one inhabited and produced by those who live in a place of the Andes known as "the place where waters murmur" (Lugar donde murmura el agua or Putre). Notions of Humanistic Geography and Sociology of Social Experience are used to understand education as…

Immigration from Eastern European countries to Portugal is a recent phenomenon. Within the last decade, economic migrants from Ukraine, Russia, Romania and Moldova set up a number of supplementary schools across the country. No academic attention has been given to the phenomenon of supplementary ethnic schools in Portugal, whilst there is a…

Learning and retaining Chinese characters are often considered to be the most challenging elements in learning Chinese as a foreign language. Applying the theory of meaningful interpretation, the chunking mnemonic technique, and the linguistic features of Chinese characters, this study examines whether the method of meaningful interpretation and…