Critical Language Awareness (CLA) instruction can and should be a part of K-12 education. This study reports on a CLA unit taught to Spanish-English bilingual 5th graders enrolled in a dual language bilingual classroom in the southwest U.S. Scores from a pretest and three posttests administered throughout the school year were compared to peer…

This study aimed to further understanding of immersion language development by examining in-class freewriting, classroom-assessed reading, and year-end STAMP 4Se proficiency levels in 4th-grade Chinese immersion over an academic year. Specifically, we aimed to understand (1) how learners express themselves in freewriting, (2) growth in freewriting…

As more diverse groups of students are gaining access to instruction grounded in questions, sources, tasks, and informed action, there are calls for additional attention to ways to support inquiry-based instruction in a variety of settings. In the authors' ongoing conversations about bringing inquiry to life in Spanish immersion classrooms, they…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine English reading comprehension skills in Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). In particular, we examined the contribution of Spanish and English oral language skills and of the language of instruction (i.e., English only or dual language) to…

This paper presents evidence of the effects of dual language immersion (DLI) programs on the academic outcomes of students in elementary grades. Leveraging enrollment lotteries from four cohorts of DLI applicants across 10 oversubscribed programs, analyses estimate the intent-to-treat effect of access to bilingual education on reading and math…

Purpose: This study aims to characterize Spanish-English emergent bilingual (EB) children's language experiences and to examine how these experiences contribute to their bilingual development over a 2-year period. All EB children were enrolled in dual language immersion (DLI) programs. This setting provides a unique opportunity to explore how…

Since the 2017-2018 academic year, Montgomery Public Schools (MCPS) has invested in the Two-Way Immersion (TWI) program, across six elementary schools, aiming to cultivate bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism among students from Kindergarten through Grade 5. As part of this initiative, this comprehensive study assessed the implementation…

This research project investigates how two Maori-medium pathways (immersion and bilingual) work together in a newly built Modern Learning Environment (MLE), called Te Aka Pukaea, to progress te reo Maori and the aspirations of whanau. In this study, Te Aka Pukaea is also described here as a Maori Modern Learning Environment (MMLE). The overarching…

Children learning Chinese must cope with an opaque orthography lacking transparent relations between oral pronunciations and written characters: a challenge heightened for L2 learners. Use of digital Pinyin input may facilitate connections between oral and written language by allowing learners to access vocabulary they cannot yet write. We…

Nearly 20 percent of California school children are English Learners (ELs), and close to 40 percent of all transitional kindergarten through grade 12 (TK-12) students speak a language other than English at home. Federal law requires that these children receive supportive services so they can access academic content while becoming fluent in…

This brief provides findings from the full report, "Adapting to Changes in California's English Learner Population," which examines how the size and composition of the English Learner (EL) population has changed and whether services, program offerings, and learning trajectories have evolved in response to these changes. Key findings…