Seven cohorts of students (N = 258) who completed a K-5 Spanish Immersion (SI) program in a suburban California school district were followed longitudinally through middle and high school to understand their academic, language, and social emotional outcomes. Academic and language outcomes included Spanish classes and grades, standardized Math and…

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…

China's rising economy has increased the popularity of learning the Chinese language. Chinese immersion programs have gained popularity in K-12 education, particularly for younger learners. However, research on the optimal instruction design for Chinese and English biliteracy development in one-way Chinese immersion programs is scarce. This…

The goal of a dual language immersion program is for students to attain high academics in both the target and the partner language. Students, who enter the program in Kindergarten, are immersed in common core language arts standards with targeted literacy instruction in Spanish for the entire block. By the time students reach fifth grade, they are…

This three-article dissertation examined how policy choices in three key policy areas -- initial enrollment, service provision, and reclassification -- impact English learner (EL)-classified students. The first article examined the national landscape of state statutes, regulations, and state education agencies' (SEA) guidance that support…

Elementary French immersion (FI) language arts teachers often organize instruction around small learning groups. Students rotate through learning stations/centres and work independently with their peers on L2 literacy skills. This study examined how principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) can be used and/or adapted to further support…

This research describes language use by four first-grade students during mathematics and Language Arts instruction in a one-way 50/50 Mandarin immersion classroom. The urban public school was situated in the heart of an African-American community in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Participants were video- and audio-recorded…

This article reports on a study that investigated achievement in math of third and fourth grade dual language immersion (DLI) students, building on research that has demonstrated the academic achievement of students who receive content instruction predominantly in the target language. Our study expands the scope and methodology of prior research…

Language immersion programs are becoming more available as a form of school choice in both private and public education in the United States and beyond. While there is research on the benefits of immersion education regarding overall intelligence, there is still much skepticism as to why parents would place their child in an immersion program vs.…

Confronted with many challenges to improving the quality of U.S. public K-12 education, many policymakers have viewed the study of a second language as a useful but nonessential ingredient of a world-class education system. However, others point out that dual-language education can be a powerful intervention for closing the achievement gap for…

A Mandarin/English two-way immersion elementary program is described from its inception and implementation through the fifth grade, the culminating year of the program. All students in all grades were assessed on their oral/listening, reading, and writing performance in Mandarin using program-created assessment measures. Fifth-grade students also…

As classrooms across the U.S. are becoming increasingly more multilingual and multicultural, there is a need for research that provides insight into literacy instruction that builds on students' linguistic knowledge. The qualitative study of a fourth-grade dual-language classroom examined the ways that peer mediation in Spanish and English…

In this position article, we explore what happens when school district policies regarding desegregation, accountability, and foreign language immersion education collide. Specifically, we contrast 2 immersion programs that experienced distinct outcomes as a result of the conflicting agendas underlying these 3 policies. One program, originally…

This study was conducted to explore the effects of a two-way immersion bilingual program on maintenance/acquisition of Spanish-language proficiency and on reading and mathematics achievement in English over a period of 4 academic years. The researchers used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques to compare the effects of two different…

Discusses a French immersion program in Louisiana, highlighting indications that students in the program are scoring higher on the state's mandated standardized tests than students in the district not participating in the program. Attempting to overcome deficits in language immersion research using testing and demographic data from a large sample…