This article presents a model for a short-term interdisciplinary study abroad program designed specifically to foster intercultural competence. It provides a description of a one-month interdisciplinary General Education Summer Abroad Program in Valencia, Spain, that attempts to sensitize students to cultural differences, to engage students to a…

This brief provides guidance to policymakers and practitioners on the challenges and opportunities of the "dual language immersion" (DLI) model and presents research conducted with teachers and administrators both before and during their first years of implementing new DLI programs in several Indiana school districts. The brief also…

Studying abroad can be a very beneficial opportunity for a learner in terms of academic, language, cultural, and life experience. This study aims to survey the opinions of twenty-eight university students towards a six-week English programme run by the Centre for Global Programmes (CGP), University of York, UK. Pre- and post-course survey…

The purpose of this review is to provide a comparison of reading outcomes of the two most popular bilingual programs in the United States: Transitional Bilingual Education and Two-way Bilingual programs. To provide context, we present a theoretical framework and a brief historical perspective on how these programs came to gain popularity. We…

Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion programs on students' test scores in reading, mathematics, and science and on English learners' (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intent-to-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in…

Using data from seven cohorts of language immersion lottery applicants in a large, urban school district, we estimate the causal effects of immersion programs on students' test scores in reading, mathematics, and science, and on English learners' (EL) reclassification. We estimate positive intent-to-treat (ITT) effects on reading performance in…

Immersion has been an acclaimed approach for second-language acquisition, but is not available to most students. The idea of this study was to create a mobile immersion environment on a smartphone using a mobile instant messenger, WhatsApp™. Forty-five Form-1 (7th grade) students divided into the Mobile Group and Control Group participated in a…

Second language acquisition research on the immersion context has focused primarily on study abroad, revealing the extent to which that context promotes learners' developing linguistic and intercultural competence. However, little research has examined linguistic development in intensive, domestic immersion contexts. This study investigated the…

The Texas Education Code (§ 29.051) requires school districts to provide every language minority student with the opportunity to participate in either a bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) program. This evaluation report summarizes the performance of students who participated in the district's Dual Language Bilingual Program. Included…

This article details a study conducted to determine the effectiveness of a professional development model for inservice Spanish teachers. Subjects were participants in intensive summer immersion programs abroad that included a rigorous methodology course advocating sound pedagogical models for lessons and stressed 90%+ target language use in the…

Many educators and policy makers look to two-way dual language immersion as one of the most promising options to close achievement gaps for English learners. However, the programs' effectiveness depends on the quality of their implementation. This article reports on a large-scale study of the implementation of dual language immersion across a…

This report summarizes feedback from Austin Independent School District (AISD) elementary dual language teachers who participated in focus group discussions in January and February 2016. Teachers gave their opinions about the program components and suggestions for how to improve the program implementation.

As dual language immersion (DLI) programs experience unprecedented growth, the need for school administrators that understand DLI structures and philosophy, in order to methodically initiate them and effectively sustain them, becomes critical. In this study, DLI refers to educational programs that provide literacy and academic content instruction…

The New Bilingual Teacher Institute follow-up survey during March 2014 allowed new bilingual teachers in Austin Independent School District to reflect on how well their August 2013 training prepared them and its usefulness, professional development, and support and resources received in their first year of teaching.

The authors of this chapter review empirical studies that have been conducted in bilingual education to propose a future research agenda that incorporates the most recent evidence on the effectiveness of bilingual programs, advances in neuroscience, and the body of evidence of the benefits of being bilingual and biliterate. They first describe the…