There is a critical issue of special education teacher shortages in the United States. Student populations, many of whom are multilingual and have disabilities, continue to grow while there is a decrease in the teaching workforce. One policy initiative developed to combat the teacher shortage is the Assistant to Teacher Program. The Assistant to…

Today, about 350 languages are spoken and signed in the United States, many of which are heritage languages (HL). A HL is a language to which a speaker has an ethnic, historical, or sentimental connection. This dissertation reports on an ethnographic case study on the language and literacy socialization practices of one trilingual family (English,…

Existing research has suggested that multilingualism is an asset in many regards (e.g., cognitively, socially, culturally), yet many U.S. schools have created linguistically exclusive environments for multilingual learners (MLLs) by prioritizing/centering English language instruction and perpetuating deficit views of multilingualism for students…

This qualitative phenomenological study used narrative research to investigate the diversity gaps in teachers' preparedness and their perceptions of diverse teaching methods in multicultural middle school classrooms. The student population became diverse in the last years. To close the diversity gaps, create equity and social justice it was…

Advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) over the past decade have largely been driven by the scale of data and computation used to train large neural network-based models. However, these techniques are inapplicable to the vast majority of the world's languages, which lack the vast digitized text datasets available for English and a few other…

This dissertation examines the way novice social studies teachers learn to support multilingual learners in their social studies classes. I take a critical lens to practice-based teacher education (PBTE) to understand the decisions novice teachers make as they support multilingual students in their content classes. In this way, I bridge…

Transnationals constitute one-third of the population of the economically prosperous Singapore. Applying a family language policy (FLP) framework and collaborative autoethnography from data (interviews, videos, and diaries) spanning 13 years, this study delves into the linguistic journey of an Italian-Chinese family with two children born in…

Translanguaging theory highlights the dynamic use of multiple languages and communication modes by multilingual people in their daily experiences. Museums are informal family learning spaces where multilingual families use languages and other semiotic resources to create learning opportunities for their children. Using a microethnographic approach…

Although existing research describes how teacher candidates (TCs) have incorporated translanguaging pedagogies through practice-based assignments, little research closely examines how TCs engage in discursive shifts, or moment-to-moment linguistic decisions, in translanguaging pedagogies during literacy instruction in their field placement…

In this paper, we examine how researchers and teachers in a multi-year professional development program shifted their conceptualizations of equity. Following (Grapin et al (2023) Sci Educ 107:999-1032), we ground our analysis in two conceptualizations of equity that exist across fields: equity-as-access (learners should have access to disciplinary…

TrUDL is a pedagogical approach that considers the intersections of "translanguaging" and "Universal Design for Learning" (UDL) to support the needs of students in any classroom, but especially emergent multilinguals labeled as disabled (EMLADs). In this article, we offer tools to help educators ensure their lessons support the…

This mixed-methods case study develops a monolingual-multilingual continuum that depicts how multilingual students draw on their linguistic repertoire as a resource when undertaking assessments in journalism education. Guided by Hult and Hornberger's heuristic for considering language planning and policy as a resource, the central question the…

This study investigates the relationship between acculturation and language attitudes among Turkish immigrant parents and their children's heritage language proficiency, using Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and Berry's acculturation theory (Berry, 1997). Fifty-two Turkish parents (M age = 38.15, SD age = 4.84) completed…

Drawing on the evolution of our thinking around expedited learning and more egalitarian classroom spaces where learners are afforded greater agency and opportunities to tap into their full linguistic repertoires (Todeva & Morule, 2009; Todeva, 2016) and on insights from complex dynamic systems theory, this paper offers a framework for…

The article examines the content of teacher education curricula provided by universities located in European multilingual border regions of Austria, Germany, Estonia, Italy, Slovakia, and Slovenia with the aim to reveal the key components of primary teacher education curricula for multilingual schools and compare them against the EU guidelines to…