Language immersion programs seek to develop multilingual, multiliterate individuals able to engage with academic content. Studies of immersion students' language development provide details regarding language proficiency and accuracy, yet they generally do not address how features of written, academic language, for example, syntactic and lexical…

Although there is an increasing number of middle schools establishing English immersion programs, teachers are not well-understood immersion and its application, as educators would hope them to do. Inadequate attention is paid to how teachers teach, how in-service training influences their understanding, and their practice of teaching. There is a…

Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) is a common instructional approach to serve Emergent Bilingual (EB) students through Content-Based Instruction. However, little is known about how novice teachers implement SEI in their content areas once they enter the profession. This dearth of research is particularly pronounced in math, a content area where…

Despite Estonia being ranked among the highest performing nations in the world-wide testing of students, these encouraging results are somewhat overshadowed by the challenge to overcome the divided school system with different languages of learning that impacts crucially on students' social, academic and professional paths. The study examines…

Communicative self-confidence and motivation play a crucial role in learning any language, including English. The absence of these elements significantly impacts students' ability to express themselves naturally and fluently. In Spain, language immersion programs seek to promote the simultaneous learning of language skills in a communicative…

This study describes the experiences of teachers during a data-driven inquiry process to improve literacy-related practices. This action research was initiated at an international English immersion school for native Chinese speakers. Two 9th grade professional learning communities (PLC) from the English and Social Studies departments…

A prescribed English language textbook often directs classroom teaching practices in secondary school classes in EFL contexts, such as in South Korea. The textbook is often accompanied by multimedia resources which are delivered to students as input at a regulated pace with limited opportunities for communicative interaction or spoken output. Such…

The present dissertation brings together research on heritage language acquisition and bilingual education and makes inroads into the limited research on heritage language development in school-aged bilingual children. This study explores how bilingual education, patterns of exposure, and lexical frequency shape adolescent Spanish heritage…

In this study, I investigate the use of applied theatre with French Immersion Grade 8 students to better understand social justice issues. Through unstructured interviews, four participants were asked to recall their past experiences participating in applied theatre projects as a learning experience and as a process to better understand social…

A great deal of time and resources are invested throughout Canada to encourage students to learn French as a second official language through a variety of programs (core French, intensive French, and French immersion programs). Little is known, however, about the impact of these efforts once French language learners complete their high school…

There is currently much controversy surrounding the cognitive advantages that are often associated with bilingualism, especially regarding the so-called executive control advantage. Recently, it has been suggested that bilingualism emerging from immersion education may not lead to an advantage in executive control, but rather to an improvement…

Conceptualizations of language as translanguaging (Otheguy, García, and Reid 2015) help us to render wholeness out of languages and groups of speakers socially constructed as distinct. Yet in practice teachers are still compelled to identify students by dichotomous institutional labels for discrete proficiencies in named languages: identity labels…

French immersion (FI) programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of growing migration to Canada. In the present mixed-methods study, I explore the perspectives and ideologies of teachers, principals, and central office staff in eight school divisions in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta with respect to…

Sparse attention in the educational leadership literature is given to those leading immersion schools, despite the established connection between educational leadership and context, including cultural context. By eliciting principals' accounts of practices in leading Irish language-medium immersion education in secondary schools, this study begins…

The progress of technology and the complete integration of its products in our daily lives is now a reality. In addition to this, more and more young children now own their personal mobile devices, most of which have a connection to the internet. These new portable devices offer unlimited possibilities to their users, yet they also create more and…