As language programs are endangered in K-16 contexts due to low enrollments, and for budgetary reasons, it is more important than ever to find enduring ways to help promote the study of languages and to make studying languages enjoyable for everyone. For sustainable language education, we need to focus on and promote the true purpose of…

Language program evaluation has the potential for positive program impact by providing an opportunity for program stakeholders to reflect on their goals, examine their outcomes, and determine ways to move forward to maximize a program's effectiveness. However, many stakeholders are either unaware of the affordances of program evaluation or unable…

Previous research on participation in mathematics classrooms has focused on adults' perspectives, which overemphasize the role of talk. Drawing on sociocultural theory, I define participation as a complex and situated phenomenon. I describe a participatory research collaboration where a Spanish immersion third-grade teacher, and I brought the…

As language classrooms become increasingly diverse, educators face a daily challenge of navigating linguistic, cultural, and learning differences among students from different cultures and backgrounds. The diverse language environment, which many educators perceive to be challenging to manage, also presents valuable opportunities for implementing…

In the US K-12 public school settings, each state's annual English language proficiency (ELP) assessment, as part of an educational accountability system, has tremendous impact on English learner (EL) students' academic paths and success. It is thus critical to establish a robust validation framework and empirical evidence to ensure that states'…

A translanguaging lens in educational research focuses on social, cultural, and power dynamics of language and multilingualism in practice. It also represents a potentially transformative pedagogical practice that centers the languaging practice, power, and agency of multilingual learners to transgress classroom language borders. However,…

This paper focuses on the concept of intersectionality, which has been used to account for multiple forms of identity and inequality. It argues that intersectionality is a powerful theoretical lens that could be used in analyzing language teachers' identities and their various contexts. It is also deeply connected to an orientation and…

As the vision in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) takes hold in schools and classrooms, there is an urgent need for teacher professional development (PD) programs that align with NGSS-designed curriculum materials and address the unique strengths and needs of diverse student…

To ensure quality of education, a language framework should be the foundation on which second language curricula are developed. In 2010, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), as suggested by Vandergrift (2006a, 2006b), recommended the use of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in the K-12 Canadian school context and…

Teacher preparation programs throughout the United States have begun to include issues of second language teaching and learning in their curriculum in an effort to better prepare their teacher candidates to meet the needs of the increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse student population in K-12 schools. In this article, we argue for the…

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-medium schools where their bi- and multi-lingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. This article draws on a social literacies perspective to explore how a second-grade teacher and her multilingual students re-framed one English-medium classroom to welcome and include…

This article explores the development of a guidance document titled the "Framework for Equitable Instruction" (Framework), which aims to support multilingual students' content-area learning and language development. The Framework was developed by WIDA, a national consortium of states, as part of its system of language standards,…

This research employs a language ideologies framework to examine the language practices and beliefs of bilingual first grade students in an ESL classroom, in which the teacher valued and encouraged Spanish and translingual talk and writing. Using ethnographic methods of data collection and analysis, the findings pointed to the influence of both…

This article maintains that in spite of their seeming progress, Mexican-origin students in the US continue to face barriers that are typical of the complex challenges endured in public schools by minoritized and racialised peoples in the American context. It begins with a brief overview of the current-day demographics of the Mexican-origin…

Around the world, the popularity of English has escalated, particularly at the primary school level (Butler, 2015), yet provision of sufficient qualified teacher expertise to meet demand continues to be inadequate. The OECD report on Equity and Quality in Education reports that: "The highest performing education systems are those that combine…