This classroom discourse study examines how curriculum becomes a resource for identity performance in one ESL classroom. Conceptualizing identity as performance, I adopt a small stories approach to analyze how one routinized vocabulary instructional activity was appropriated by classroom participants to perform identities and construct the…

In this article, we discuss three cross-cultural memoirs used in three different university courses that introduced students to the complex identities that form both inside and outside of language classrooms. In arguing for the value of using such memoirs as content in university courses, we provide a detailed thematic analysis of Peter Hessler's…

This study examines the effectiveness of a specially designed intervention in changing preservice teacher beliefs about the education of linguistically diverse students. The experiment involved a semester-long online letter exchange with English learner (EL) pen pal partners from two public schools. The research questions included: What effect did…

This study qualitatively investigated students from a Mexican university and a U.S. university and how their intercultural competence (IC), the ability to appropriately and effectively communicate with others from countries and cultures other than one's own, was affected by a five-week telecollaborative exchange. To examine the ways in which…

This study explores language policies in "almost-bilingual" classrooms, in which most but not all students share a home language. Teachers who are bilingual face a dilemma in these settings. Should they draw on shared linguistic expertise to benefit the majority while excluding a few, or should they forego significant benefits for most…

This qualitative study examined how specific instructional supports intended to scaffold emergent bilinguals' oral production of explanations facilitated or constrained students' attempts to explain. Findings demonstrate that explanations were very rarely produced, and when they were produced, the explanations were not particularly informative.…

Experts in the field have advocated for critical approaches to Spanish heritage language (HL) curricula in which learners' proficiency in the language varieties that they bring from their homes and communities is considered an asset and culturally valuable knowledge. The proposal described here focuses on the adoption of a programmatic…

Return migration from the United States to Mexico has been increasing in the last decade. Research reports that many returnees, who are English dominant, drop out of school to look for work in call centers and transnational companies (Anderson, 2015). Others pursue higher education in English-based programs such as those for becoming English…

The purpose of this article is to examine how a first-grade ESL teacher understands teaching and learning as she explores her agency (and that of her students) in implementing and experimenting with project-based instruction (PBI) in her economically, culturally, and linguistically diverse classroom. Utilizing video-cued ethnography and drawing on…

Teacher leadership has been variously defined but generally understood as expanding teachers' visions beyond their own classrooms. Bilingual education teachers, working with emergent bilingual students in often marginalized situations and contexts, must develop a critical consciousness to embrace leadership identities. This requires engaging in…

The growth of TWBE programs--mainly due to the surging interest of White English-speaking families--presents the field with myriad challenges and hopeful possibilities. Critical scholars in bilingual education point to an urgency to reissue Guadalupe Valdés's "cautionary note" due to a neoliberal path targeting TWBE programs, posing a…

This study profiles three Mexican American, dual language teachers in a qualitative cross-case analysis and asks (a) How do dual language teachers' linguistic backgrounds influence their language ideologies?; (b) How are language ideologies evidenced in teachers' instructional practices? Participants could be perceived as homogenous Mexican…

Using Latino critical race theory as a lens, this qualitative study explored ways in which young children's translanguaging practices informed the design of culturally relevant sociodramatic spaces in a bilingual early childhood classroom located along the Texas/Mexico border in South Texas. The authors identified aspects of language development…

Peer interactions are central to student experiences and present tremendous opportunities for language learning and consequences for educational equity, yet these opportunities have often been unrecognized and under-examined. This special issue offers new perspectives examining the potential of peer interaction to foster language, literacy and…

This article examines everyday classroom peer interaction among emergent multilingual high school students who are new to the United States, new to school, new to English, and new to alphabetic print literacy. Data were collected through observation and video recording within a daily 90-minute, English language and literacy block class over the…