People have enough trouble defining themselves and determining what they want in life when they operate within a single language and culture, but the job gets trickier when they live in a world of multiple lexicons, grammars, histories, cultures, audiences and social systems, where identity and perceptions vary by language context. This paper…

Transnational and multilingual families have become commonplace in the twenty-first century. Yet relatively few attempts have been made from applied and socio-linguistic perspectives to understand what is going on "within" such families; how their transnational and multilingual experiences impact on the family dynamics and their everyday…

Little research addresses the experiences of students with autism living in multilingual families. This multiple case study project examines the language-development-related knowledge and beliefs of paired mothers and educators of three Somali American boys with autism. Data include serial interviews, observations, and analysis of educational…

The Seal of Biliteracy is as an initiative to incentivize and credentialize bi-/multilingualism in K-12 education in the United States. While it has been widely celebrated as a positive development in U.S. educational language policy, it is important to consider to what extent marginalized students benefit from this initiative. This critical…

Through the Ministry of Education program "Programme des Écoles Integrées" (PEI) in Côte d'Ivoire, 26 rural public primary schools may use one of 10 local languages as the language of instruction in Grades 1-3 prior to switching to a French-only system. The purpose of a PEI school is to support basic academic skills development and…

This article is the guest editors' introduction to the special issue "Language in Epistemic Access: Mobilising Multilingualism and Literacy Development for More Equitable Education in South Africa". The issue offers complementary perspectives on improving epistemic access for all learners but especially those whose home language does not…

In line with van Kampen et al.'s (2018) research about specialist and practitioner perceptions on the goals for CLIL in the Netherlands, the present study addresses Hüttner, Dalton-Puffer and Smit's (2013) call for investigating teachers' beliefs about CLIL in European countries like Spain where this teaching approach is highly institutionalized.…

In this paper a particular context where receptive multilingualism at work can be observed is discussed. The Swiss armed forces underwent a series of quite dramatic downsizing measures, which lead to a situation with increased amount of mixed groups and linguistically mixed situations regarding the first/native language of officers and the…

In this paper, we report on data from 40 middle and secondary school mathematics teachers and teacher candidates as they begin to articulate the intersection of language-friendly pedagogy, mathematics teaching, and a multilingual technological tool by way of a two-hour introductory workshop. We use an Anthropological Theory of the Didactic which…

Across the four selected papers, Cenoz and Gorter present a research program entitled "Focus on Multilingualism" (FOM), which is underpinned by two questions: (1) how to understand multilingualism, perhaps from a humanistic perspective, and (2) how to implement it in education. In exploring these questions, the authors cite an…

For years, research has shown that language learning at an early age has great benefits. Most recently, a May 2015 study published in "Science Daily" suggests that exposure to multiple languages in childhood produces better communicators ("Children exposed to multiple languages"). A 2014 study in Singapore showed that infants…

This paper critiques the role of translanguaging in deaf education by examining how, and under what conditions, translanguaging practices can enhance learning and teaching. The paper explores the premise that translanguaging represents an additive view of bilingualism and multilingualism for deaf learners and offers an innovative departure from,…

Purpose: The prioritization of multilingual and multicultural education (MME) must spread beyond educators and researchers, who have long known the benefits, to the politicians and policymakers and to the general public. This paper aims to propose that the MME field needs a good economist who can explain MME benefits in terms of the language of…

This article looks at the contribution of insights from theoretical linguistics to an understanding of language acquisition and the nature of language in terms of their potential benefit to language education. We examine the ideas of innateness and universal language faculty, as well as multilingualism and the language-society relationship. Modern…

It's one of the ironies of United States culture: We love our history as "a nation of immigrants," but at the same time, we're conflicted about immigration and the changes it brings. In this article, Patricia Gándara examines the research on one area of debate: whether multilingualism should be considered a problem to be fixed, or a…